As those who have followed this blog already know we formed a marketing partnership early on with Microsoft on their exciting new Windows Home Server (WHS) product. While both Microsoft and Diskeeper have had OEM versions of software available earlier this year (Diskeeper 2007 HomeServer has been available since August), Diskeeper coordinated a simultaneous release today, of our official product to the retail market with Microsoft's WHS retail release. "Diskeeper has worked with Microsoft since Windows NT," said Steven VanRoekel, director of Windows Server Solutions at Microsoft. "It is great to work with them on the Windows Home Server platform to provide the maximum system performance and reliability possible to our customers." The Diskeeper 2008 HomeServer provides functionality and accessibility uniquely necessary for WHS. The most visually evident addition is the new integration with the WHS management console. However, under the covers lies an even more vital feature that makes Diskeeper compatible with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Microsoft's new Drive Extender technical paper provides a warning against running the built-in defragmenter on WHS. "Caution: You should not use the DEFRAG utility on your Windows Home Server hard drives... The DEFRAG utility may cause issues with the Volume Shadow Copy Service that runs every 12 hours to create previous version snapshots of the shared folders on the home server." Microsoft Support Article #312067 describes the technical details of the issue with VSS from which this warning originates, as it also affects Windows Home Server. Diskeeper engineers addressed this known incompatibility with defragmentation in Diskeeper 2008’s with a specialized new VSS-Compatible Mode. Using unique file movement algorithms via the online file movement control (FSCTL_MOVE_FILE) mechanism, the impact on VSS with Diskeeper 2008 is dramatically minimized allowing users to access previous versions of files that other solutions, without a VSS-Compatible defragmentation mode, would not. With Real-Time defragmentation, InvisiTasking, and all the new Diskeeper 2008 functionality also included Diskeeper HomeServer is ready to keep your new WHS system running at peak performance.