Reviving Windows Home Server 2011: Microsoft's attempt on Consumer Servers

25 thoughts on “Reviving Windows Home Server 2011: Microsoft's attempt on Consumer Servers”

• The biggest problem I encountered with Windows Home Server was that there was no consumer version antivirus available at the time, as all antivirus companies just treated it as a commercial version and wouldn't provide any consumer version as I asked a couple of them.

• This is so funny. I used windows home server last time. I was trying the RD Web interface. I trying to fix the RD licence, but I can’t.

• For consumers the pro version of windows 10 and 11 does all you need actually

• Another great video! I love the new intro! But i Wonder what Mister-know-it-all has to say about it 😂

• I think I still have my copy of WHS 2007 somewhere… I ran a WHS to serve my HTPC (running Win 7 and Windows Media Center). I even bought software that would automatically rip a DVD or Blu Ray, to a folder and search the internet for the cover art and metadata.. At the time the hard drives that made sense to buy were the 2 tb WD Greens. I ended up with 11 of those in my server. Sadly in 2014 I suffered a house fire and my server and my home theater gear was destroyed. Now I just use Plex on a regular Windows machine for watching my movie collection..

  Perhaps if I ever find my copy of WHS, I'll put together a "retro" HTPC/WHS setup!

• Thanks for covering. I used some of these, as you say it was a cheap way to get Windows Server as the added bits were just on top. I used to use it for software Raid capability as Dell used to sell low end PowerEdge servers really cheap, the perfect fit! Nice to see these comments as I felt like I was the only person at the time using it.

• Does it support TLS 1.2 or anything above?

• Ich denke Windows Home Server währe eher was für kleinere Betriebe gewesen die was unkompliziertres gesucht haben und keine IT Fachkraft haben.

• its not bad because i used it until a couple of months ago you just need a good firewall I used it just fine and it had nice remote feature to access the Computers RDP with out opening ports other than the console if you use a 8 digit code or more its good plus do all of the updates too.

• It was not based on 2008 for Second one it was Bassed on windows 2008R2 which is the Windows 7 Version of Server 2008 was Vista so your need a correction on this I have the product here check Win Ver for the Second one

• Could you kindly give me the iso for it

• I don't think I've ever come across this. I did hear of home server editions at the time but could never figure out who it was really for. Thought this was stopped prior to 2011!!

• First off; fantastic video. Great work, you deserve more views and subs.

  Onto my overall view on the Windows Home Server. I am in my mid 20s, I got into the IT industry some 8 years ago while I was in high school. Even about 5 years ago, I was not very too tech savvy on reinstalling Windows or configuring servers or any of that. Only about 3 years ago is when I got into it. Now, I no longer use Windows at all. I am a Linux user and have left Windows over a year ago. But, what I still feel intrigued by this period of Windows was when they were very oriented on user experience and far friendlier than they are now. If I was the same age now with the same technical knowledge in the late 2000s, I would have definitely considered a Windows Home Server setup. The reason I believe it fell flat, is because it was still very much out of reach from normal users. Yes, Windows Home Server would have definitely been useful to me and my family back in those days (meaning would have been useful to most people), but none of us ever even knew about that, let alone even have the confidence to try to install Windows for regular use which is something no one in my family had done up to that point. Setting up a Windows Home Server would have required a fair bit amount of technical comfort and experience to even attempt it. I believe this is the main reason it fell flat. Most people were just able to use Windows to open their browser and do stuff online. Anything beyond that is too much for them (even if it is very easy to do, they wouldn't feel comfortable doing it).

• Unfortunately, WHS arrived too late in the game; Microsoft was already on board with cloud computing and Azure became the preferred place to store our data; much more profitable for Microsoft.

• I think Drive Extender in WHS ultimatly became Storage Spaces. As I recall it was removed due to data corruption.

• i still have the install disc somewhere

• I had Windows Home Server 2007 running on a Pentium 200MMX. Servers are way to complicated for the average user. Most just want something on autopilot. Good times however. 👍

• I wonder if drive extender morphed into volume manager that is currently in windows 10 today. I am not sure if it can do variable sized drives and multi copy files but I have never played around with it much. Seeing that home server is interesting since I work with windows servers at my job. Some of the stuff you shown there has quite a resemblance to some of the stuff in the normal server stuff.

• I used and loved WHS for 4 years at home. it was great.. simple to use, reliable and what all MS servers should be.. ah well… truenas time 🙂

• I used to work with these, actually pretty cool product. 😛

• The best NAS is still the NAS, which I built myself, of course, it's Linux based, what else!

• Holy frell, you're changing your intro more often than I change my underwear!

• The killer feature of Windows Home Server was the Drive Extender. When Microsoft killed that function, there wasn't anything it provided that made it all that useful. One of my friends specifically bought Windows Media Server 2007 for that feature.
  It was almost a good ecosystem along with Windows Media Center PCs, but never hit critical mass.

• Ist es nicht möglich Win7/Srv2008R2 Updates zumindest vor ESU auf WHS2011 zu installieren, da NT 6.1?
  Damit war updaten dann möglich bis 2021 und mit bypassesu wahrscheinlich bis heuer (POSReady 7 ESU).

• checked my personal archive…in the directory with the whs v1 install media there's a long list with windows server 2003 vlk keys and i think i used them successfully back then. so how about these, like K2HRH-TRVPQ-XYM68-XXMB8-P6PMB for instance … can anybody confirm?

  i used whs v1 because of the drive extender feature which was really nice, and also ditched v2 because it dropped the functionality.

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