The Web's Largest Dedicated Windows Home Server Resource by Microsoft MVP Philip Churchill.
Microsoft Windows Home Server - WHS will automatically backup and restore your PCs and allow you to share and access files from any machine in the house as well as giving you remote access to those files and PC’s as well. This site will guide you on your journey of discovery with WHS.
PC Pro is a UK monthly magazine on…, PCs. They also have a monthly Podcast to complement the mag available over on their web site. On this months show they discuss whether Windows Home Server is set to be another Microsoft operating system flop or the unexpected success of the year.
Thanks to We Got Served for the link to the PC Pro Blog that has links to the show.
This is a review of PhotoSync Beta2 for Windows Home Server. It’s an Add-In that automatically uploads photos from your server to your Flickr account.
Installation. Installation was straightforward and simple. The steps were as follows (Steps 1-4 apply to any Add-In):
1. Download the msi file to a machine on your network
2. Open Shared Folders on the server and copy the msi file to the //Software/Add-Ins folder
3. Click Settings and choose Add-Ins
4. Click the Available tab and click Install next to the Add-In (PhotoSync Beta 2)
5. After the installation finishes it will log you out. After you log back in, you will see the Photo Sync icon in the console.
6. Click the Photo Sync button and it launches a wizard that gives the add-in permission to access your Flickr account.
Use. The way I use the Add-In is illustrated in the screen shot below.
I created one folder called ToFlickr. Then I created a sub-folder for each set I wanted to create on Flickr. After that, all I had to do was copy the folder from my machine to the sub-folder. As soon as the Sync happened, it created the set on Flickr and copied the files to my account. Sweet!
Conclusion. If you use Windows Home Server and Flickr, this Add-In is a clear winner. I recommend it.
This is a guest post by Craig Huggart. He blogs at Tech Rest.
Rick Drasch has just posted Beta 2 of “Recorded TV Manager Add-in for Windows Home Server”. For those of you that don’t know, the add-in uses a Windows service application on the Home Server to monitor Media Center recorded TV folders and automatically move or copy content throughout your home server network.
Overall, the software is much improved over Beta 1:
http://www.fjdrasch.com/WHS/Beta.htm
When using remote access you may find that uploading or downloading a large file or a group of files will cause the connection to time out before the operation finishes with the error message “The remote connection to the computer timed out. Please connect again.”
By default, remote access is configured to timeout after 20 minutes, which is adequate for uploading/downloading about 15 MB even at slow DSL speeds but if you are frequently seeing this error message, you’ll need to adjust the timeout value to something higher. Setting the timeout to 30 up to 60 minutes is reasonable if circumstances require it. Setting a timeout interval that’s too long increase your security risk and can consume an unreasonable amount of resources on a server.
It is easy to change this timeout value:
I got an email from George Hayles regarding the info I posted the other week regarding ATT, Comcast and Time Warner blocking ports that can affect our Home Servers. He has asked if I can get your juices flowing and bring up the subject again, he adds:
“Since we are dealing with an oligopoly here, it may take some time to reverse this dangerous ISP practice. Any grass roots effort we could get going against this or do to encourage Microsoft to bring pressure may be important at this early point in the “battle”. What are your thoughts?
George”
Well, what do you think. Feel free to leave your comments and don’t forget that you can leave details of offending providers on our forum post.
Today Microsoft published a Technical Brief for Windows Home Server Drive Extender. The 20 page PDF document explains the features and functionality of the drive extender, highlighting the benefits of the technology. The document also looks at the drive extender filter and migrator service, tombstones and the balancing of storage.
Dave Mercer the developer of Windows Home Server Event Monitor has updated the add-in from it’s initial 1.0.0.8 release to version 1.0.1.0 to fix some bugs:
More information and a link to the download is available on Dave’s site DAveMercer dot org
After being in beta for the last few months, today sees the launch of the final version of AutoExit 2008 for Windows Home Server.
This add-in can be used to shut down and reboot machines in your home network. Wake On Lan is also supported, enabling you to easily boot up machines remotely. These actions can be executed per machine or for all machines.
Other handy features are the ability to send messages to the different machines, configuring the timeout/message and support for opening a Remote Desktop session to the remote machines and to the server.
Statistics are kept of all actions, so that a detailed trace can be viewed on when certain actions were executed.
AutoExit for Windows Home Server is free and does not need registration.
HP and Microsoft are making available four free webcasts that will unveil and demo the long-awaited MediaSmart Server.
In addition to a live demonstration at these educational events, you’ll also hear from consumer technology industry experts, like Rob Enderle, Rick Doherty, Paul Thurrott from SuperSite for Windows, and Ed Bott from ZDNet on how the explosion in media consumption is driving the need for the new home server category. Reps from Microsoft will also be on-hand to respond directly to audience questions related to the new Windows Home Server software.
Registration is now open for the upcoming 60 minute events:
| Date | Time | Guest Expert |
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4:00-5:00PM (PT) |
Rick Doherty – Envisioneering |
|
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1:00PM-2:00PM (PT) 4:00-5:00PM (ET) |
Rob Enderle – |
|
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10:00AM-11:00AM(PT) 1:00PM-2:00PM (ET) Other |
Paul Thurrott – Supersite for Windows |
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8:00AM-9:00AM (PT), 11:00AM-12:00PM (ET) Other |
Ed Bott – |
For the time in different country’s/time zones click on “Other” under the “Time” category to be taken to time and date.com
Thanks to Łukasz Foks for the information.
Aleksei Nipirakis has started to place you source code to his add-in Home Base onto SourceForge.net.
The add-in that allows your Mobile Phone to download files from the Home Server and lets you blog from your phone as well is now Open Source GPL and will enable other developers to build and develop onto it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/whs-homebase/
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