Executive Summary:
Based on Windows Server 2003, Windows Home Server (WHS) provides a simplified UI, a plug-and-play design, and key consumer-oriented features centered on backup, media sharing, and remote access. The storage capabilities in WHS should be particularly attractive to many business users. WHS is well-suited for homes and for small businesses with limited technical capabilities.
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Windows Home Server (WHS) isn’t going to
solve any enterprise issues in 2008. But it
does point the way to the next Small Business
Server, with new technologies that could benefit
various server products. WHS is also a surprisingly good
solution for small businesses in its own right. Here’s
what you need to know about Windows Home Server.
What WHS Is
WHS is a server system for homes, as the name implies.
It’s designed to be sold in preconfigured home server
hardware—essentially low-end PC server hardware,
though many WHS OEMs, such as HP, have created
some stunning and environmentally quiet (and
thus appliance-like) designs that are particularly well
adapted to the home market. Based on Windows Server
2003, WHS provides a simplified UI, a plug-and-play
design, and key consumer-oriented features centered on
backup, media sharing, and remote access.
WHS isn’t designed to be accessed interactively in
front of the server box. Most WHS hardware doesn’t
even include a monitor port. Instead, WHS is typically
accessed via a special remote console, which is installed
on each PC that you link with the server. You can control
all applicable WHS features from this console.
WHS Key Features
Windows Home Server provides several key features.
These include the following:
Innovative storage scheme. Perhaps the most fascinating
feature in WHS is how it handles storage. Under
the covers, WHS utilizes the same drive letter-based
storage system used by all Windows servers. But to the
user, the storage connected to a WHS server is a single
pool. As you add hard drives to the system—either internally
or externally—you can add their capacities to your
overall storage pool. In this way, WHS is almost infinitely
expandable from a storage perspective, with none of the
usual complexities and overhead typical of the storage
market.
The WHS storage pool is split between the needs
of the system (which are small), PC backups, shared
folders, and duplication. That’s right, WHS also lets you
arbitrarily assign data duplication on individual shared
folders.
An interesting side effect to this system is that WHS
makes it very easy to remove existing storage, for example
to replace it with a higher-capacity alternative. You’ll
need enough free space on your other attached storage
devices to make this possible, but it’s a nice touch.
Centralized PC backup and restore. All PCs that
are connected to WHS are backed up to the server on a
nightly basis. The initial backup is a full backup, while
later backups are incremental. WHS also provides an
efficient way to navigate into backup sets and pull out
individual files and folders. So rather than restore your
PC to a certain point in time to recover an important file,
you can now grab just that file.
PC and server health monitoring. WHS monitors its
own health as well as the health of all connected PCs. PC
security and backup states, as well as other crucial data,
is communicated to connected PCs via a tray-based
notification icon.
Media and document sharing. WHS provides standard
small-to-midsized business (SMB)–based filesharing
facilities, so you can easily share particular
folders and their contents and set permissions as
required. WHS also functions as a Windows Media Connect
client, so you can seamlessly share media files like
music, photos, and video over the home network with other PCs and compatible devices, such as
the Xbox 360.
Remote access. WHS lets you access the
contents of your home server and, in many
cases, your connected PCs, via the Internet.
This is handy for anyone who travels and
needs to access files at home or would like to
back up photos and other files to the home
network while away. Remote access to the
server occurs via a nice Web interface and
even comes with a free Web URL (usually
something.homeserver.com). But you can
also access WHS and any PCs based on Windows
XP Professional, Windows XP Media
Center Edition 2005, or Windows XP Tablet
PC Edition 2005 SP2, or Windows Vista
Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate on your
home network remotely using a standard
browser-based remote desktop interface.
(Other popular versions of Windows, such
as Windows XP Home and Windows Vista
Home Premium, aren’t supported because
these products don’t include the required
Remote Desktop features.)
To get remote access working properly,
you’ll need a Universal Plug and Play
(UPnP)–based router and an ISP that doesn’t
block certain types of network traffic such as
RDP. This remote access feature is pretty
impressive, given that many companies
offer similar functionality for an annual fee.
With WHS, it’s free.
Recommendations
WHS sounds impressive, and it is, but you
might be wondering what effect this product
could possibly have on your business. In the
short term, WHS benefits the smallest of
businesses that are looking for centralized
backup, file sharing, and remote access—
features that WHS delivers with simplicity,
ease, and no need for an IT department or
service provider. WHS isn’t compatible with
Active Directory, however, and it can’t scale
above ten connected PCs, so it won’t be of
interest to many SMBs. Looking forward, it’s
obvious that several WHS features will also
appear on the next version of Small Business
Server as well as other related products. The
storage capabilities in WHS, which were
developed by Microsoft specifically for this
product, should be particularly attractive to
many business users. WHS is well-suited for
homes and for small businesses with limited
technical capabilities.
End of Article
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