Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server on a Budget

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I've been blogging about my experience with Windows Home Server,. Robert McLaws has a great article on building a Windows Home Server on a budget.

Personally, I have it running on a Dell Poweredge SC420 server and it has been running without issue backing up my PCs, and providing a central file store.

Windows Home Server: Week 2

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I have Windows Home Server beta running, and it is running well. One thing missing though is media serving capabilities. I have multiple Vista PCs running Media Center, but I have several DVDs ripped to my file share on Windows Home Server. I wanted to be able to bring that media to a central location and watch on my TV in the family room. We have a theater room that has a projector and Media Center PC, but the family room has no PC connected to it. I could opt to have the media stored on the WHS and purchase another Media Center PC, but to have one that looks good in the family room usually will run many hundreds or hit the thousand+ mark.

Anyway, I did some research into new network media gateway devices. These support all the popular codecs, providing access to photos, music, and video. I decided on the Dlink DSM-520 (pictured), since it also supports resolutions up to 1080i, HDMI, and composite output and costs under $200. First I installed the software that comes with the DSM-520 on my WHS machine, added the shares to the software. Hooked up the DSM-520, pointed it to my WHS, and we're off.

Now I am able to view all my media on the family room TV, and still maintain a centralized media store for the Media Center PCs, and other devices throughout our home. The Dlink has worked without a problem, no stutters, no issues at all. We do have a wired house so all PCs have a 100MB and the WHS is 1GB so that helps out. The combination of WHS and the Dlink DSM-520 provides me with a complete solution for backing up, storage, and centralized media capabilities, my opinion? They Rock!

More Testing on WHS

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Not really a test, but I currently have four drives on my Windows Home Server beta providing 1TB of storage. One of the USB enclosures are giving me a little trouble not being recognized after boot up. Yesterday I had to reboot the WHS machine, and the one drive didn't come back online. When going to the admin interface it displayed the drive as being offline. All share access went on as normal. I was able to access my duplicated shares without any problems. In addition, the file share that weren't set up for duplication were still there with files in them. Some files became unavailable until the USB came back up and joined the rest of the drives in the cluster.

So far everything works great. This has to be one of the most error free betas I have worked with.

PC Mag Reviews WHS

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

PC Mag has a review on Windows Home Server. Check it out.

Storage Management Rocks on WHS

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

As I blogged earlier, I've been beta testing the new Windows Home Server (WHS) product from Microsoft. The storage management features of this server just plain rock! As you can see in the figure, I currently configured about 758GB of storage, and one drive is available which will bring the storage level to over 1TB! Adding additional storage is as easy as plugging in a USB drive, and adding it to my drive array. You can click on a share being managed by WHS and enable duplication. Duplication is like having a mirror set, so if you lose a drive in the array you don't lose your data. All of this storage configuration is done on the fly and doesn't affect the access to the files.

Windows Home Server Beta Testing

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I've been selected as a beta tester for the Windows Home Server software. After looking over the documentation, there appears to be three primary features to the product:

Remote access: You can access any of the PCs on the home LAN from a remote location. This service is provided for free via a website.
Media Sharing: The ability to send your media to devices on the network, this includes central storage of Recorded TV for your Media Center PCs, and streaming to your Xbox 360.
Backup and Restore: The ability to backup all PCs within the network. This is assisted by using a client CD to configure each client on the network, and synchronize passwords on the client machines with the Windows Home Server machine.

The software appears to run a scaled down version Windows 2003 server. Many of the features that an enterprise uses have been removed from the software to ensure that it needs a lower performance PC than a server class machine. In addition, it provides 10 CALs for the users on your home network.

I'll be loading the software up this weekend and see what else it provides.

Windows Home Server Installed

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

By far the easiest install I've done in a Windows environment and I installed operating systems on many machines. I think I clicked once or twice during the entire install. The only problem I had was getting the OS to recognize my Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet adapter in the Dell SC420 machine I installed Windows Home Server on.

Getting the clients set up is a breeze as well. Just load some client software on the machine and they're set up for shared folders, and backups. Microsoft is really aiming at the consumer with this product.

It appears Microsoft is also able to reuse a long standing product and have it entered into a new market. The installation package listed Windows Small Business Server during the install. This explains why the OS allows up to 10 users. Windows Home Server is a tweaked version of SBS for the consumer.

So far it looks to be a great addition for the home network. If you have an old PC sitting around doing nothing, get ready for Windows Home Server to be released later this year. It's going to help you get control over everyone's PC without have to deal with domains, or extensive workgroup management.

Beta Test Windows Home Server

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Microsoft is going to open the beta testing for Windows Home Server beta 2. Now is your chance to get to test this new product aimed at the consumer market. We talked about Home Server before and how it will provide the consumer with a centralized management point for their home network.

Windows Home Server Team Blog

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Windows Home Server was unveiled at the CES in Las Vegas last month. Now the Windows Home Server team is blogging. We'll be watching to see the latest on this new product out of Redmond.

Hat tip Inside Microsoft...

Another Unveiling: HP MediaSmart Server

redmondgadgets@santry.com — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

The HP MediaSmart Server was another product unveiled today at CES. This machine will run Windows Home Server. The new Windows Home Server OS will be for centralizing your media and other files over the network. It will include backup capabilities as well as other features for managing your media.