So, I posted before my happiness (sic) that Microsoft is basically retiring Windows Home Server in favor of pushing Small Business Server Essentials, and I had made up my mind to pretty much stay on Home Server v1 until the end of time.

Well, my normal A.D.D kicked in and I formatted my server at the house, installed SBS Essentials 2011 and moved about 5 TBs of data across the network.

Windows Update rebooted the machine during the copy, so, well, I copied 5 TBs of data across the network again.

With Home Server gone, I no longer have Drive Extender to seemlessly duplicate my data across multiple drives, and shares are now limited to the size of one drive. To get my movies on one 'drive' I end up spanning a pair of drives together. And to get backups, I know have to set them up manually. I set up a couple drives to store server backups and go to configure my backups.

Now, I wasn't looking to back up the whole drive, just a very small couple of folders off of it, but I don't even get the option to drill into it. So not only have they screwed us out of the convienence of drive extender, now I can't even manually do what was built in before.

That doesn't even cover the fact I don't get Sharepoint or Hyper-V in Essentials. Positive spin, I have found there are a lot of great free options for virtualization out there right now!

I am off to download the sync toys to set up some file replication to get backups going. I have been a HUGE Microsoft fan for a really long time, but I have to say, they are making it hard to drink the Koolaid anymore.

Not that anyone cares. It seems like it is pretty unanimous that people will either be staying with Windows Home Server v1 or moving on to something like Amahi with Greyhole built in to replace the removal of the only real feature of home server, drive extender. Ok, so the backups were nice too, but not worth keeping the product for.

I find it just unfathonable that Microsoft would get 97% feedback that home server without drive extender is no longer a product and still take it out. There is really only one possibility, they are killing home server to move people to small business server essentials instead. Since, you know, the clientelle is so overlapping...oh wait...

Personally, I am virtualizing v1 home server and calling it a day, though Amahi is definitely tempting.