header_418_generic

Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco

By on November 26, 2010 in News, Windows Home Server

Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Whilst I thought the company would undoubtedly take a beating in the press for the decision, I’ve been amazed at the scale of the community response, on this site, on other sites and on Microsoft Connect. The response has been awesome – a true measure of the passion that exists in the community for this product. If you’ve not had the chance to comment, then please take a couple of minutes to share your thoughts with Microsoft. Connect is a great place to do so – all comments are registered in Microsoft’s product feedback/bug database and are visible throughout the organisation.

Inspired by the thousands of comments I’ve read over the last few days, I took the opportunity to write to Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, regarding the situation. As you may know, for the last three years Microsoft have invited me to be a part of their MVP Program, which tasks me and a number of other community representatives with representing the “voice of the community” specifically for Windows Home Server. Steve Ballmer has repeatedly asked for customer feedback from MVPs where they believe there is a serious issue concerning a Microsoft product. This is the first time I’ve been compelled to take up the offer – with confused messages coming from Microsoft regarding the thinking behind the decision, and little response coming from the company to the feedback that they’ve received from the community this week, I wanted to ensure your views (and mine!) were being heard by the right people at Microsoft.

Here’s my email to Steve:

From: Terry Walsh
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 12:21 AM
To: Steve Ballmer
Subject: MVP Feedback – Windows Home Server “Vail” Crisis
Importance: High

Dear Steve,

I’ve been a Windows Home Server MVP for the last three years, and I know you’re always keen to hear feedback about your organisation’s product and services from the MVP community.

There’s a significant storm brewing around Microsoft’s next-gen home server platform that I wanted to give you a heads up on and hopefully, inspire you to act. I’ll keep it as brief as possible (excuse the bullet points).

The Story So Far…

  • The decision has been taken to align the code across future versions of Windows Home Server, and two new business oriented releases – Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
  • A core component of the next –gen Windows Home Server (the storage subsystem) called Drive Extender has been found by your developers to create issues on the two small business SKUs with LOB applications.
  • As a result, the decision has been taken to remove the feature from all three SKUs (as the code is aligned). This is eight months into a public beta.
  • Drive Extender is widely regarded as one of the great Microsoft innovations over the last few years – it provides all of the benefits of RAID, with the ability to mix and match hard drives create a storage pool, protect files and folders and dies away with drive letters. It’s fantastically consumer focused and sits at the very heart of the home server proposition.
  • Culling the feature in the home server platform effectively removes the major differentiation vs a growing stable of cheaper and better featured Linux NAS boxes. It fundamentally cripples the consumer proposition.
  • The decision was announced two days ago – since then over 600 negative comments have been left by existing customers on Microsoft Connect, a further 300+ on the Windows Team Blog (here and here), and my own website has had around 200 comments (here and here) deriding the decision. 99% of them say the same three things:

    a. Why should an issue around LOB application support for small business impact a consumer targeted product which does not need LOB application support?

    b. There is little reason to upgrade to the new version of WHS as it now offers significantly less features than v1.

    c. The implication of aligning the code for home and small business products has effectively led to Microsoft losing sight of the consumer (and existing user base), in favour of the new small business customer.

What We Need From You

The development team have announced a planned RTM for all three SKUs by 1H 2011. There’s more than six months available to investigate, act and test. I’d be really grateful if you could:

  • Check out the feedback your customers are providing – they’re telling you clearly what they need from you.
  • Investigate the decision to remove Drive Extender from all three SKUs & the implicated lack of customer focus.
  • Invite the team to look at an alternative way forward for the home server SKU:E.g. Fork the code, pull Drive Extender v2 out of the Small Biz SKUs and reserve it for the consumer proposition.Or: Port Drive Extender v1 into Windows Home Server Vail

I understand Windows Home Server remains a niche product, and the small business server opportunity is compelling. My headline is that the next-generation of the product is currently on life support, but with improved consumer focus, clear thinking (and better consumer marketing, but that’s a different story) Microsoft has the opportunity now to save Windows Home Server before it flatlines.

Thanks for your time and best wishes,

Terry Walsh

Editor, We Got Served

www.wegotserved.com

In truth, I have little knowledge of how Steve Ballmer’s customer feedback loop works with regard to how emails are received, who reads them and how they’re responded to. However, this morning I received the following CEO-class succinct reply:

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: 26 November 2010 05:30
To: Terry Walsh
Subject: RE: MVP Feedback – Windows Home Server “Vail” Crisis

Let’s look into it

So, clearly there’s never going to be any promises, but with hundreds of comments sent by you to Microsoft directly via the Connect website, and a heads up to the guy at the top of the tree, I trust Microsoft are now clearly aware of the passionate views of the community around this issue. There’s now awareness and commitment from the CEO to look into the issue, although what that really means remains to be seen. The fact that I received a personal reply on the evening of Thanksgiving is hopefully a sign that the company will take your feedback seriously. I guess we’ll find out in the coming weeks and months just how consumer focused the Microsoft organisation is in 2010/2011.

In the meantime, if you’ve not had the chance to comment, please take two minutes to add your thoughts on the removal of Drive Extender over at Microsoft Connect. Kudos to liveside.net, neowin.net, withinwindows.com, and mediasmartserver.net for their coverage and analysis this week of the issue.

As I discussed in my post this week, Microsoft have lost sight of the customer Windows Home Server was originally designed for – that’s perhaps understandable as the platform is being managed by a merged “Home and Small Business Server” team with few remaining original team members that created the vision and built WHS v1. The team bleeds small business, it’s in their DNA – they do an awesome job of delivering to that customer, and the thousands of small business partners that sell and support their platforms the world over. But through ignorance or convenience, they’ve done the home server customer and community a huge disservice this week. From the outside, their communication looks poor, their thinking muddled, their engineering sub-standard.

The question now is do they have the desire, the ability and the bravery to fix it?


Enjoyed this post? Share it.

If you enjoyed reading this post, then why not share it with your friends and followers?

About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
View all posts by Terry Walsh →

Sign Up for WGS Daily News

If you don't want to miss out on the latest news from We Got Served, why not subscribe to our daily digest? You'll get the day's headlines and a short summary of each news item delivered straight to your inbox each morning.

, , , ,

← Older Comments
  • Nick C

    err going…

  • Nick C

    @RicjP
    You know – you are right, but…
    I have seen so many SME's out there who have a zilch server/backup environment. It is sometimes money, sometimes 'all too hard'. WHS type products (with DE absolutely core to it )can do some much for these guys. After that they may migrate to a more enterprise like setup.

    I personally believe there could be millions of these kind of businesses worldwide, surely that is a big opportunity even for MS?

    • DrewE

      Microsoft can't think that far.

      This is proof of that.

      Lets hope that they will wake up now before it is too late.

      I know that there are LOTs of unnumbered businesses that need something as simple and effective as the WHS solution.

      I was looking for a NAS when I stumbled across the WHS. After reading the manual that was included about what it could DO, before I bought it. Then I bought a machine with 2TB of storage for starters. I have since swapped two the the original 500GB drive for 2TB drives I now have 4.6TB of usable space. I have ALL folders duplexed/duplicated. I have already had to recover once BUT with DE, absolutely NO DATA LOSS. Just some time to do the recovery manually.

      I used to sell Novell Netware back in the 1990 and WHS is THE BEST THINK THAT I HAVE SEEN SINCE. Now MS is SO DUMB and trying to kill it.

  • Scott

    Wonderful response Terry. We as a community have invested a great deal into WHS. I would hate to lose all that has been put into it and the great features of it.

  • JD1

    Well done, Terry! Let's hope something comes of it. Otherwise, I know many people who will never even consider upgrading to Vail.

  • Ookami the pet

    Kudos boyo, thank you. im gonna be building my first home server soon, and well.. drive extender seems to be the biggest integral part of WHS.. so… nice job getting them to listen. ^^

  • Richard_W

    Thanks Terry. You said it best. Keep us posted on what you find out.

  • adam

    I find it interesting that Steve Ballmer was just quoted as saying "Cool starts at home". Which is now the new direction of the Windows 7 Phone. When MS focused their windows mobile platform pre-7 on just business it was a failure for years and was passed up by iphone and droid.

    Again, they are repeating the same behavior. They are removing the coolness factor of a product and in my opinion the end result will be a failure in both the home and business markets (again).

  • David Beardsley

    I think if Microsoft only wants to pursue large market products they should not be creating products like Media Center and Home Server. Creating these products and then abandoning them or inadequately supporting customers does harm. Experiences like these make me hesitant to buy any future Microsoft home product, even if it seems great and fits my current needs, because experience is showing they are willing to pull the rug out from under customers and business partners in short order (i.e. HP Media Server, Linksys extenders) if their "vision" changes.

  • pinball2k

    I was on vacation and heard the news last night. This makes no sense to me. I'm running WHS since the original Beta. I love the product and recommend the present version love the product EXCEPT there is no easy way to easily back up the WHS . I spoke to the MS staff at CES last year and have been a Beta tester of Vail since initially availability. I really love this product because Vail is now functionally rich and simple solution for a household. You get:

    - Easy back ups for local PC system files and the Registry and now Macs (although Macs are easy to back up)
    - Make 2 copies of any folder (and subfolders) by clicking a check box.
    - Allows easy sharing of files including music, photos and video and others

    Everything without technical know how. No hassles it just works.

    Now Microsoft takes the heart out of Vail. It really does. Please do something right four your customers and put Drive Extender back in the product. It's really not a product without it.

  • H2SO4

    Hopefully SteveB would really look into this issue. But as I know, most of this kind of reply was not sent out by REAL SteveB. I also feel huge disappoint of the stupid decision as an employee/user…

  • Akin Koksal

    Well done, keep up the good work.

  • Thomas Kisner

    Thank you sir. I hope they listen, Microsoft always say they listen…

  • Jeremy Stewart

    Thanks Terry for taking the time, effort and energy to contact Microsoft about this for all us. I have made my comments on Connect and hope that Steve and the rest of the Microsoft team listens to it's user base for a technology which is highly touted and useful. Thanks again!

  • RogerThornhill

    Masterfully written.

  • vaughan

    the spin about cheap large drives being available as an alternative to DE was pathetic the machine that i have WHS on has 8 1.5 tb drives and 4 2tb drives looks like i will have to go out and get a real NAS instead

  • http://twitter.com/clausndk @clausndk

    Great work Terry!

    Have you heard anything back yet?

    • http://www.wegotserved.com Terry Walsh

      I'm hoping we'll all hear from Microsoft shortly, but at this point, I'd be very surprised if DE made a return.

  • Darth Meatloaf

    It's not just a simple port – it has to be recompiled as a 64-bit service in order to run smoothly or even have a possibility of being optimized.

    I hope they fix it one way or another, though…

  • gpmark

    Nice job but you have one glaring error. Linux server, particularly Amahi, already have an equivalent of DE. My experience is that Greystone works as well as DE. And with utilities like Redo, backup works just great – even across platforms! Amahi was easier to install than WHS, runs faster on identical hardware, and has more features. Price – Free!

    Earlier this year I moved almost everything from Amahi to WHS. I've now made the decision to upgrade Amahi and get rid of WHS as a result of this fiasco. Also, the lack of support for Media Center from OEMs is causing me to reconsider and I'm looking at replacing the Windows 7 Media Center since it's not stable enough for prime time.

    My take is that just as the Linux community is getting things right Microsoft is retrenching and losing ground. This is a major faux pas that is already causing people to look elsewhere and a bunch of people with solutions have jumped on the situation. It may very well spell disaster for Microsoft.

    • Ray

      Hi gpmark,
      I am one of those people that has downloaded Amahi/Grayhole and have installed it on a test computer with only one hard drive for now. From the outside it looks pretty good however I am not liking the fact that their's NO GUI to add drives, I hear there something in the works to add the GUI for Grayhole but right now the team is trying to get Amahi ready for Fedora f14.

      Right now what I would miss with WHS v2 would be client backup in the way it handles it, its very very good, no wasted space cause it only backups one copy of each file no matter how many copy's their are, thats fantastic and the other thing I would miss is the ease of adding drives. Their is a huge community for Amahi with many applications but the thought of command line programing just hurts my head, I feel like I am back in the DOS days.

      And one more thing, their no windows library support. Microsoft really is jerks for giving us a taste of something only to wet are lips and then pull it.

  • http://www.sflesch.com Sean

    Thanks Terry! Too bad the same couldn't have been done for Windows SteadyState. There was a lot of protesting out there when that was officially killed, but Microsoft wasn't listening.

  • Ray

    Bodog,
    How di you reach Ballmer? I want to send him an email

    Thanks,
    Ray

  • http://twitter.com/johnloeffler7 @johnloeffler7

    Great email to Ballmer, Terry, thank you for all of the support you have given the WHS community. Not unlike most of the folks on this board, I have invested heavily in the "digital home"…. premium HTPC, home automation, DNLA devices, mobile connectivity to my media and home automation, desktop virtualization… and WHS (HP EX495) became the centerpiece, tying it all together. I was looking forward to new capabilities and speed with Vail and new hardware from HP. I was crushed by the near-simultaneous announcements by HP and Microsoft. Indeed, I began to feel something was very wrong when HP made the Drobo announcement. I feel there is incredible opportunity for the connected home… just don't understand why everyone seems to be abandoning it.

    Anyway, thanks again for your support, I do not anticipate a reversal from Microsoft, but I sincerely hope I am wrong. As a result, I will be purchasing an EX 495 as a spare/for parts, as it seems I will be using that solution for some time to come!

    John

    • http://www.wegotserved.com Terry Walsh

      Hi John,

      Thanks for the note. I don't think that *everyone* is abandoning the connected home – the interviews I've done with Drobo and Netgear recently have convinced me that there are a good number of businesses out there that get it. Unfortunately, Microsoft really seem to have an issue with consumer-oriented innovation right now. Enough people have told them what's needed here, but I have little hope for a positive result.

      Ignore your customers at your peril, the saying goes…

      Terry

  • Sevla

    Honestly, i do not understand.

    For years Microsoft as been pursuing the home consumer market living room with the idea of a centralized Media Center pc, it comes along with the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, you could watch tv, videos, pictures and music on your lcd tv instead of watching it on your pc monitor, idea that i adopted from a very early stage, what unfortunatly brought to my living room a very bulky and noisy machine, due to the amount of hard disk drives i needed for the storage of my files and the backup of the whole system.

    • Bob

      It is because of the 'cloud'. Everyone knows that MS only really cares about their back office market and how their other products relate to the back office and MS is starting to realize that the whole server in the office or home idea may have it's days numbered so they are shifting their resources and their focus in that direction. They want everyone to run their programs off of Azure (including your 'home server' functionality) so that they can lease those resources to you.

      I for one am not buying into the Azure idea, I will use the Amazon cloud before I ever consider using Azure as a development platform because Amazon has more of a clue about the cloud and are substancially cheaper that MS but in any case my next home server will be running something where the vendor can't change partners on me like Apple and MS can do, something like Linux or BSD.

  • Sevla

    Then Microsoft Windows Home Server cames along, another wonderfull idea (funny enough i have not adopted it yet, only test drived it and decided to wait for Vail, wich im currently beta testing), imagine you could have a machine somewhere in a cupboard, shelve, basement, atic, wherever you could run a Cat5 cable to, set it up, add your data to it and manage it remotely, oh god i want one of those, imagine reducing that bulky and noisy machine in my living room for a small, sleek and silent home theatre pc case with only one or two hard disk drives to run Microsoft Windows Operating System and to manage tv recordings, leaving WHS to store all my data, backup all my pc's, laptops and keeping my data safe by means of redundancy that Drive Extender will offer?

  • Sevla

    Well not a wonderfull idea anymore as from what Microsoft announced, WHS Vail will not have the Drive Extender redundancy strategy out of the box.

    Solutions?

    Solution 1:

    Use RAID array redundancy, if i have the time, the patience and the skill to set up, manage and recover a RAID array when it goes wrong, what unfortunatly i have a life and i like it to be simple.

    Solution 2:

    Use three WHS Vail servers, one for storage, one for backups, and one for redundancy.

    WHS Vail 1
    Centralized storage of all my pictures, videos, movies, recorded tv, high definition content, documents and software. Centralized streaming to all my Media Center pc's.
    Centralized backup of all my networked pc's, laptops and WHS Vail itself.

    WHS Vail 2
    Centralized backup of WHS Vail 1 every 24 hours.

    WHS Vail 3
    Centralized backup of WHS Vail 2 every 48 hours.

    Solution 3:

    Remove Drive Extender from:
    Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials
    Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials
    but leave the feature in Windows Home Server "Vail"

  • Sevla

    Well but unfortunatly im not where to tell you how to do your job, but i can tell that i will not be a guinea pig to Microsoft no more, i will not be surprised if i see Drive Extender branded with another name and being sold in the future to 3rd party platform developers as a full proprietary application like Microsoft Mediaroom (which is a derived product of Windows Media Center).

    We as consumers are nothing more than a big networked test lab for Microsoft, for a few of you that are suprised that Microsoft as not made a comment yet, do not be.

    Let's not forget:

    Windows Vista Ultimate Extras fiasco
    Windows Vista Media Center TV Pack 2008 OEM fiasco

    If we look at it from my prespective, we buy the software (with bugs), we help Microsoft by reporting bugs and any problems (WHS v1 DE data corruption anyone? i bet alot of people lost lots of data to a finished product) Microsoft fixes it (PP1) we beta test it (WHS Vail public beta and WHS Vail public beta refreshed) it works and Microsoft decides to remove it because it does not work with their SMB's solutions?

    As i said at the begining,
    honestly, i do not understand.

  • Bob

    It is amazing that so many people don't recognize a 'the check is in the mail' response when they see one. Ballmer doesn't care otherwise we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. The sad part is that just like Windows Mobile which nearly went into exinction (and may still die) under Ballmer's watch this might come back to bite MS in the rear down the road. Without the drive extender it no longer makes any sense to purchase Windows home server, you might as well build your own Linux server and replace it; if I had not just replaced my original HP WHS with a new LX495 that is exactly what I would be doing.

  • Oskar

    Very impressive Terry.

    I hope that those guys at MS do see how valuable WHS is in the future. I firmly believe that these kind of servers will be common in normal households in the coming years, and when that happens MS would have this great head start in this market.

    Many will try and introduce the cloud as a replacement, but I'm not so convinced on that, both on storage size issues and accessibility. Most cloud solutions offer you some limited space that you could easily fill up with photos from a single SD card, theyre offer would have to grove quite fast and quite steep to be able to act as this central safe storage for modern family's. The second issue is accessibility, Imagine what would happen if some good portion of ppl would move they're entire photocollection to this imagined unlimited storage cloud service. This would never be viable with todays internet connections. both on end user level and those central "hubs" of the world that connect us together would come overloaded quite fast, I belive that we are already seeing this with increased popularity of services like facebook and there you have you're photos is quite limited size/quality.

    I would love to see some through article comparing storage options for all of our modern family digital assets. With focus on self host vs. cloud services, including sync options which I believe are lacking in todays software offerings, and no dropbox is not the answere.

  • http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net Matthew Sawyer

    Hey Terry…has there ever been any follow-up to this? The WHS team blog appears to be all but dead, with the last team post and comments coming on November 30.

    Seems Microsoft has just hung us out to dry completely. Such a disgrace.

    • http://www.wegotserved.com Terry Walsh

      There's nothing public coming out of Microsoft right now, which is a real shame.

  • tsandco

    I don't relish FreeNAS and Drobo seems pretty limited and expensive. I don't care to store my stuff on Google servers. They are ready know too much about me as it is. We have many PCs in our home and have Tb of entertainment and memories we would like to never lose.

    If Microsoft blows this , it may just signal the start of a long road to their extinction? Its happend to many technical organizations. I know this sounds pretentious, however Microsoft seems like a very rich chicken with its head lopped off.

    Running around, making a lot of noise, but not getting anywhere except to the hereafter…

  • Chris

    Thanks, Terry!

  • Leonard McCoy

    Thanks to your mail Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft Server & Tool Division, has been fired. I doubt it will bring back DE, though…

  • Simon

    I also consider DE invaluable. I like the ability to add and remove different sized drives to my storage and to have automatic data duplication.

    However, tsandco's comment about not wanting to store data on the web and watching a house burning on the news this morning reminds me that having duplicated files on a server, protects against a HD failure, but it does not protect against loss of the whole server with fire or even with theft.

    It is important to consider off-site backup, too. I am not sure what approach is best here but I am thinking of a set of HDs that I would cycle making copies of recently changed files and then taking them off-site.

    (I bought an EX490 and planned to set it up for Chrismas. I then had an HD failure on a main PC that I had not copied in too many months. Ironic.)

  • Michel D

    V1 with Draha version has made my home made server very reliable.

    If they are willing to continue sale and support for WHS v1 I am happy but I hope that in the future version they bring back the Drive Extender.

  • dave

    IMHO – I see the reason being it all comes down to dollars. MS is very busy at the moment creating cloud computing data centers over the globe and my feeling is that they will very soon try to lure folks into utilizing the "cloud" for services we use today on our WHS boxes.

    Companies get into the recurring revenue (services) business for just that reason – it recurs.

    Why sell an OS to a niche market and provide free updates when you can offer some whiz-bang cloud service that has a recurring charge attached to it.

    I very much recognize that if I had to use my Comcast cable connection to stream a movie from my "cloud" storage it would fail miserably.

    I would gladly purchase a new copy of WHS if they keep in Drive extender – otherwise I will keep my WHS v.1 in place and milk it for the next decade.

  • Klaas

    Whs v2 without DE is like a car without an engine. Just not to use for someone at home. WHS 1 did the job. I store 12 TB of data in it. Just copy to the right content directory and it was done. Now I am back to manage my movies and music directory. Thought we had WHS for this.

  • Ian

    So is there an outcome other than "lets look into it" ? I would say enough time has passed for Mr Bulmer or one of his colleagues to reply upon his behalf…

  • testmonkey

    Excuse my language, but F_ck this M$ TODAY

  • testmonkey

    P.S. Sincerely THANK YOU Terry

  • Bryan

    I am with Ian. Has there been a response or has your comment been ignored?

    As someone who is about to make a purchase in the NAS market, WHSv1 was compelling but was waiting for Vail before this announcement removing Drive Extender. Now I am considering Synology as it seems more compelling than WHS if WHS does not have the drive extender feature. I don't need full RAID, only certain folders redundant.

← Older Comments