Being in the WHS BETA and allowed to speak to it, I can share some observations on this.
First, WHS is going to be a real winner for many types of people - not just home users with three computers, either. I say this, because WHS makes complete systems backup and granular, brick level recoveries, very easy. Its backup features and performance alone, are going to appeal to a lot of people.
While there are a lot of bugs being reported, a lot of the issues are coming from testers who have installed WHS in very naive ways, or who are trying to push WHS outside its designed uses - e.g., as a domain member, or mail server, etc... If installed and run as intended, there are surprisingly fewer errors than I thought I'd encounter - they are still bugs, but none that a good tester cannot overcome, or come to understand - for example, the NETWORK SERVICE doesn't have modify access to log files and cannot delete them according to schedule [20 days] - pretty easy to fix - kill the logs, give access to the service to modify the log file folder and reboot.
Speaking of reboot - WHS boots as a headless server in seconds - like ten (10) - far faster than any server I have ever seen [and on modest hardware]. It is also fast as greased owl shite - performing backup jobs in a few minutes and in the case of Windows Vista with its management of background I/O BU jobs do not tax systems in any way one would notice.
Like SBS 2003, WHS provides a slick web interface that allows one to access machines and files remotely [XP Pro, Vista Business, Ultimate and XP MCE Professional, only] Like SBS 2003, there is an RDP listener that runs on TCP Port 443, which hands off the RDP request to the internal host.
WHS has Windows Desktop Search running, which allows one to search amongst stored files remotely - via its web interface which is pretty simple. The remote file access does one thing that is pretty cool - it has a pack and go feature that zips up selected files before it downloads them for remote users - smart, since most home users have asynchronous broadband signals with very little "up" speed.
The client software used to join a PC to the WHS server does need to be modified and while the "WHS Connector" is easy, runs well and does its job, it also serves access to the WHS console and installs into the startup group on the client PC. It does not need to do that and probably should not - the installer should provide a choice about whether to install the console - it can be chatty and cause home users to pester the person maintaining the home NW. Removing it from the start up group is easy enough, so I probably should gripe, too much. If any area really needs work, it is the client-WHS communication - many bugs affect communications and depending upon the security suite one runs client side, it can be a challenge. I've tested it with many security products and like all things Windows OneCare these days, WLOC has another problem - it can prevent communications no matter what settings are used - though much of that has to do with early NIC drivers under Vista [not near enough room here to go into all that detail].
For sure WHS has some bugs, but most are actually pretty minor - the majority of the bad ones seem to rest in testers like myself and others that are pushing the product in ways it was not meant to be pushed, or in some cases, as a result of very naive installations and use.
|