Forum Discussion
Windows 11 Pro for Workstation. Broken features, lack of support.
There are two reasons I wanted to deploy workstation edition for a new system I'm working on. ReFS and RDMA. I'm unable to use ReFS and in my research and troubleshooting I've found out there is very little support, documentation and knowledgeable people in Microsoft that can help.
Workstation edition was properly installed from the start. I've tested the ISO available at the download windows 11 site and the visual studio Business Edition ISO. I've tested both 23H2 and 24H2.
ReFS is not available as a filesystem option in explorer's context menu, storage spaces or disk manager.
Creating a storage space volume in PowerShell and setting returns an error that the filesystem is not supported.
I suspect there might be a problem with my work account and the Windows Business Digital license it applies. I brought the issue up with MS365 support, but they didn't want to take it and pushed me off to the team for activation support. They weren't helpful, they didn't know much about workstation edition. I can see both the key and digital subscription are both active.
There's absolutely no documentation regarding any of the features workstation edition enables. Even when starting support tickets or reviewing windows documentation there is no mention of workstation edition. There is an option for enterprise edition.
I'm at a loss of how Microsoft supports this edition of windows and where to get any help.
2 Replies
Workstation-specific features (such as ReFS/persistent memory support) require server-grade hardware (such as Xeon/Westmere architecture + ECC memory) to be fully enabled and may be limited on standard PCs.
It's an HP Z8 G4.
After disabling Windows Business Edition licensing on my cloud account and reactivated the pro for workstation license the features worked. This is a licensing/ feature conflict and as a bug probably still exists.
Compatibility checks for certified hardware only happen using Storage Spaces Direct. You can use consumer drives hardware (not recommended). Just need to understand how those work and can blow up storage spaces in certain situations.
