Microsoft dubs Windows Home Server “Vail” as Windows 7 Home Server (update: mistake)

Even though the Windows Home Server team didn’t dare to make an appearance at Microsoft CES 2011 booth, I did spot a single Windows Home Server product featured in the Windows PC showcase.

Discretely displayed at the show is the Lacie 5BIG Back Up Server. On closer inspection of information card reveals an interesting tidbit, its operating system is Windows 7 Home Server. A Microsoft representative later confirmed this is indeed the official name for the next version otherwise known as codename “Vail”.

Since the server is already on the market with the current version of Windows Home Server, it’s assumed this is at least one model that will also be sold with the new OS when it is available (not that anyone should buy it).

No availability or pricing information was provided.

Update: Andrew Edney was able to get Microsoft to reconfirm their display at CES and the information card’s “Windows 7 Home Server” turns out to be a mistake. It has since been edited to “Windows Home Server”. The official names is suggested to be Windows Home Server 2011 instead.

Disclosure: I am attending CES 2011 as a guest of Microsoft Australia.

12 insightful thoughts

  1. 1GB of DDR2 RAM for a 64-bit OS?

    Given the absence of the Drive Extender, vanilla Windows 7 seems like a pretty good alternative to WHS at this point – at least it would include Media Centre.

  2. Drive Extender better be there when this thing launches, after all why pander to the larger companies when this thing is called “Home Server”. Oh, hence the name change?

  3. @someone
    I strongly disagree. Microsoft has to learn WHICH features to remove from software.
    Windows is carying way too much legacy features that could go away and make it leaner.

    Drive Extender was a good exemple of what NOT to remove.

    1. @TheCyberKnight

      Seriously, have you even used Windows Home Server. Drive Extender is THE thing that makes it interesting. It’s like looking at your car and saying changing the wheels for dustbins would make it cheaper.

      If you want to cut some random stuff, start with the design edition that everyone uses rather than the niche product a small number of people use and love.

      1. its sad that they stripped hyper-v from it since ms hasnt updated Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 in 3 years which means it wont properly work with ws 2008r2

  4. I saw a demo of Vail + Windows Phone 7 by the Home Server team, so they are there – I just dont think they have a dedicated booth. The guy who showed me the demo said it was the idea of making Vail mobile, so the demo approach was mobile with a number of them walking around the Microsoft booth area.

  5. If you want to protect your assets on WHS even further and back up your data to Amazon S3 cloud storage, check out CloudBerry Backup add-on for WHS. http://whs.cloudberrylab.com/ . It is one time fee and the rest what you pay for Amazon S3. Besides, there is no proprietary data format and you can access your data using other Amazon s3 tools. Supports all Amazon S3 regions and Reduced Redundancy Storage.

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