MS Windows Home Server

Now available on the download section of Microsoft’s Connect website is the just released German version of Power Pack 1. Both the update package and full ISO’s of Power Pack 1 German edition are available for download.

To give you some ideas on how to test Power Pack 1 (PP1), the Windows Home Server Team is posting weekly Feature Focus documents on Microsoft’s Connect website. Posted last week was Feature Focus of the Week – PC Applications. And this week the second feature focus of the week, Backup and Restore was published as well as the third one; Disk Removal. All three documents are available in .doc, .docx or PDF formats.

Gaen Smith posted the following in the Windows Home Server Forums – One man’s experience with Power Pack 1:

I have had nothing but positive results with PP1!!!  I am running a homebuilt WHS with a Intel 3210SL Server Board, Dual Core Xeon Processor, 4 GB of DDR2 800 memory, 12 Seagate 500GB HD and 3 VFD displays (to monitor system states 24/7).  I have over 1TB of uncompressed DVD’s (I own em) 500GB of Windows Lossless Audio Files, and over 500GB of system files.  I have added an extra 2 500GB drives using eSATA connectors.  When the corruption issue first raised it’s ugly head it hit me pretty hard, so I reloaded and only had one drive for WHS and shared the others using standard share practices and over the last week have been copying then migrating my disks.  I also backed up over 300GB worth of files at a time to my two external SATA disks and not one hitch!!  I have 6 computers doing full backups and sharing audio and video files with the OS’s ranging from WINXP Pro, WINXP Media center 2005, Vista Home Premium, and Vista Ultimate.  As a test I even had all 6 running uncompressed HD movies simultaneously and not one hiccup.  My Roku is also performing flawlessly.  My hats off too the WHS team, this is what a good product is about and now I am pushing it to family and friends.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!

In a new market research study, senior analyst and author of the new report Ted Theocheung of the diffusion Group (Dallas) states that the home server is poised for significant growth. Below are highlights from the report:

• The big winners in this emerging product category being consumers and not PC companies.
• The Windows Home Server will initially gain acceptance from a small group of enthusiasts, with consumer companies dominating this area with more user-friendly products in the long term.
• Home server shipments have been forecased to rise from 1.2 million this year to 90 million in 2015.
• Early adopter enthusiasts, like us are using PC-based systems, but CE devices will bring home servers to the mainstream.
• A new wave of home servers from CE companies will hit in 2010 that challenge the PC products. And by 2012 the CE devices will make significant strides against the PC models.
• Ultimately service providers will become a main conduit for providing the CE systems, outpacing retail sales of PC-based systems.

More details on the report are available from here.