Windows Home Server
Over the weekend I completed my Home project with one of the coolest products Microsoft has done for a long while (IMHO) - Windows Home Server.
After I almost lost the family digital photo album when my hard drive crashed on my PC I begun looking for a solution to store all my photos, videos, music and other content. It's actually quite scary when you realise that the family digital photo album almost got destroyed.....
I looked at NAS solutions and other products on the market but about the same time in Microsoft we started work on Windows Home Server and I joined the Beta.
So what is Windows Home Server....Well you can read the Product Blurb but in essence it's a custom version of Windows Server 2003 that provides a centralised place to store all your important files. It then shares those files over your home network as well giving you access from the Internet. Windows Home Server also provides you the ability to backup all the PC's in your House automatically.
So why was I looking at this as my solution for my Home photos? Windows Home Server allows you to plug in a number of Hard Drives and it presents all the storage as one contiguous drive as well as replicating the data across the disks to prevent data loss.
When I was on the beta I had an old laptop (a Dell D600) with 512mb of memory - I had a whole bunch of hard disks that I plugged into it through USB and IDE cases. It worked like a dream. (an old laptop provides an inbuilt UPS too :) )
We've now RTM'd Windows Home Server so last weekend I upgraded my homegrown system to a solution from Tranquil PC. The T7-HSA is a totally silent Windows Home Server that has a large number of USB ports and will even power external hard drives from the same unit.
Setting up Windows Home Server was a complete doddle. I took it out of the box... plugged it in to power and network and then installed the Connector software on one of my PC's. The connector software allows you to backup your PC automatically and is also used for initial configuration. (Once you've done this you can then just use the browser).
I had it up and running in about 15 minutes!
I then added a couple of external Hard Disk Drives and enabled the folder duplication.
This was all very straightforward but the thing that impressed me the most about Windows Home Server was how simple Remote access over the internet is.... From the Windows Home Server Console all I had to do was go into Settings and then kickoff the configuration. Using UPNP it automatically configured my home router and then asked me what I wanted my domain name to be...
Windows Home Server allows you to setup a homeserver.com URL so you can have contoso.homeserver.com and then access all your files and even remotely access any PC in your House!!!!
It doesn't stop there either - I quickly discovered there are over 20 Windows Home Server addins !
The team at Tranquil PC have even come up with an innovative USB Key Backup Solution too!
So if you want to learn more - go to the Windows Home Server site or check out some of the videos demonstrating it below:
Comments
Anonymous
October 11, 2007
PingBack from http://www.artofbam.com/wordpress/?p=7653Anonymous
October 11, 2007
Windows Home Server is cool. You can get a great AddIn for Windows Home Server called LobsterTunes (http://lobstertunes.com) that lets you browse and play all your music from home on your Mobile device via Wifi or cellular when you at home or away.Anonymous
October 12, 2007
agree with you Jason this is one great product, easy to install, and offers an easy way to store data and backup pc's in the home. I too was on the beta and I thought the product was so good I bought the rtm with my own money!!Anonymous
November 07, 2007
Are you able to gain remote access to your WHS using Windows Mobile?Anonymous
November 07, 2007
Are you able to gain remote access to your WHS using a pocket PC running Windows Mobile?