Update: Entries are now closed for this Q&A - thanks to everyone who participated. Keep a lookout for the interview soon!
Over the past couple of years, the Windows Home Server team have progressed from (almost) a secret sect with the seed of an idea (and a few failed attempts to get the project off the ground) all the way through to a fully-fledged product team with a popular blog, huge community forum, community sites (such as this one!) and most importantly, a shipped product out there in the marketplace.
But there’s a lot we don’t know about the Windows Home Server team - who they are, what they do, how they work, their design and development influences, views on the future of the home server market, favourite 12″ remix of the 1980s etc. but I’m glad to say, they’ve agreed to come clean and give you an exclusive, behind the scenes glimpse into their team with a Q&A session next month.
Rather than have me ask lots of extremely dull questions, we thought it would be a great idea to ask the community for questions that you want answers to. So from today, for the next week or so, please submit questions via the comments on this post or privately and we’ll collate the most interesting and send them over to the team to answer. So, if you want to know which feature the team are most proud of in Windows Home Server, the high and low points of the development process or just who eats the most muffins on the team, this could be your golden opportunity to find out.
A couple of guiding points:
1. Please include your full name, nearest city and country with your questions. Helps make things a bit more personal.
2. No guarantees on which questions get answered - the way things work, more interesting questions get more interesting answers, so think carefully!
3. Questions about WHS v2 (I’m guessing) may not make the cut, but feel free to submit.
4. Please do not submit product suggestions, support requests and other similar issues which belong in the Community Forums.
Check back in a few weeks time for the Q&A, but for now, let’s have your questions!
August 28th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Well someone has to be first…..
Going forward, how will you decide what should be core funtionality in WHS vs what should be left to add-in developers to provide?
Allan Marsh
Wellington
New Zealand
August 29th, 2007 at 4:04 am
As developers, what do you say to everyday consumers who feel that WHS is too expensive?
Woody Leonhard
Phuket, Thailand
August 29th, 2007 at 6:27 am
What scope is there for any future WHS support for Macs? I’m particularly thinking about OS 10.5’s Time Machine feature as this would be great if it could integrate with WHS.
Prakhar Bahuguna
Manchester
United Kingdom
August 29th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Will you be delivering a WHS via MSDN?
As developer I can’t develop for WHS if it isn’t distributed via MSDN…and as a result you will also lose lots of support as lots of developers won’t simply develop for this platform.
I have read many posts on this but didn’t find an answer
Will beta testers be rewarded with e.g a free version? With Vista Microsoft did this for testers that had submitted issues and put a lot of time testing this great product. And hopefully European testers aren’t left in the cold like with the Code2Fame contest.
Regards,
Steve
August 29th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Here are the first that come to mind:
- When will WHS be able to record dvr-ms files? (don’t accept “it’s not possible” as an answer, I have Media Center integrated in my WHS and it works like a charm!)
- When will Media Connect 3.0 be available on WHS?
- Will there be a ‘network’ Recycle Bin, using shadow copies is to complicated for regular users!
- Will we see an update (Service Pack with new functionalities) before WHS V2?
Cheers,
Danee
August 29th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thanks for making this possible.
1) Do you have the actual date of the WHS release for UK?
2) Will the existing WHS beta testers be invited to the future release of WHS (be it updates, patches or v2)
3) What is your dreams with WHS - where do you want to see WHS in the future? Kinda like Bill gates saying that he would love to see Media Center in every living room
4) Thank you!
Tony Sutton
Norfolk, UK
August 30th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
If it is the case that HP have delayed the MediaSmart Server at the request of MS on the grounds that the bundle software doesn’t fit nicely enough we would assume that MS have an influence with the OEMs making WHS systems.
Why is it then, that virtually all of the units being announced are only shipping with one hard drive meaning that customers who move all their videos, pictures etc. to the WHS will not be afforded the full protection it offers out of the box?
Only one hard drive means no folder replication and a key part of the functionality offered by WHS is lost.
Colin,
Gravesend, UK.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
[To a development team member]
What was (or were) a personal favorite feature, or idea of WHS — that may not (or may) have been implemented in v1.
(I’m curious to know what features failed the Chopping Block, and what the feature priorities were for v1)
August 30th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
When do you plan on supporting 64 bit windows xp and windows vista pcs? Currently you are not bale to install the connector software on a 64 bit version of windows, disabling backups and making WHS administration more difficult.
Thanks,
Tony Ford
Phoenix, AZ
USA
August 31st, 2007 at 2:30 am
What’s it going to take for you folks to hire me as an SDE to help build v2?
Brendan
Madison, SD
August 31st, 2007 at 12:43 pm
My questions would be:
1. Why is WHS not available to MSDN subscribers? Do Microsoft want serious developers or only hobbyists (i.e. Code2Fame)?
2. What is the correct upgrade path for a beta tester to RTM, given that the only current availability is an OEM system builder version which is presumably locked to one motherboard when installed? I don’t install any OSes on my other PCs under such a restriction (like many others, I periodically upgrade hardware, so I have full retail versions of Vista/XP) so why should I for WHS?
3. Do the team recognise that the ill-feeling generated within the community due to the above points may have negative impact upon our desire to beta test microsoft products in the future? (point 2 would of course have been solved by free copies of RTM for active beta testers)
4. Can the team answer any question about RTM/MSDN availability without using the words “120 day eval”?
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
What happens if the primary hard drive fails on a headless and cd-rom less server.
Such as the HP one that is all over the web.
Its not like you can just put in a restore CD
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Can we have the ability to serve media to a Media Centre Extender such as an Xbox 360 rather than just using shared folders
This would truly make it a server for all media
I don’t need to be able to record or play media directly on the server just be able to push it out to other devices and make it the centre of a digital home
Would also be great to be able to remotely administer Vista Home Premium
September 6th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
For future implementations of WHS, how will they be implemented and installed on exsisting WHSs. I would like to know so upgrading is not a hassel.
Emiliano
Miami, Fl. USA
September 8th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I’d like to understand the tradeoffs and focus of their drive redundancy system. It allows for full duplication of content but not of the system volume or backups (would be nice to understand the reasons behind this). It would also be nice to understand if there are ways that the Drive Extender technology could be enhanced in the future to allow for weighting of different qualities of storage (for instance, older drives could be trusted only as a store for fully duplicated content).
Fieldhouse
Portland, OR
January 19th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Hi, (and great work),
(Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA, retired computer geek, from Guinness if you care)
This falls into the category of “give a person a fish and (s)he will eat for a day; teach ‘em how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime”.
What books (or other media) would you recommend to read / access to learn about the Windows Media Server (as packaged on the HP MediaSmart server).
More techy questions posted on the forums but I figure that since you guys / gals have gone through the learning process……..
And who does eat the most muffins?
Thanks,
John
July 1st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I am in Canada so how can I make a server at home to be accessed across in the UK to my father inlaw so he can watch home videos from us without downloading everything? I want it to be secure from hackers as there will be important videos we would like to keep forever.