This new edition from Diskeeper looks pretty good, I have to be honest I have never been a big fan of Diskeeper, I have always felt O&O Defrag has always had something more to offer.

The initial install is very standard apart from the fact you have to install the initial software from the WHS console and then do a second install for the WHS console integration. In previous editions this has been done through the use of Remote Desktop Connection, where you had to install the program direct to the server and then install the WHS console addin. So I have to say this new way of installing is a welcome addition for many, which should make this program more easy to use.

There is an install guide here.

Once the program was installed, my initial impression was this looks very cramped. I can’t help thinking that Diskeeper have taken their normal desktop program and just blatantly forgot that the WHS console is a lot smaller and cannot be maximised, essentially shoe horning the program onto WHS.

From the initial Diskeeper screen there are many summary section to which you can either scroll down to or use the Goto drop down box at the top of the summary section, to be fair to diskeeper although the initial screen is not much to look at it does have all the relevant information you are looking for just at a glance.

There isn’t really any setting up you have to do for this software, it just gets on with the job at hand, automatically defragging each drive as the server is idle and for this reason it gets a big thumbs up from me. This gives the average user who doesn’t want to have to configure software after install, the ability to once the software is installed, you can just walk away.

By default automatic defragmentation is set for all the time, this for me was something I wanted to change and to do this you can just right click on any drive and select “automatic defragmentation… “ now you can either configure the one drive or all drives at once, I always want my drive the be defragged during the night but others may want during the day while they are at work. The good thing is that you can configure on a day to day basis.

InteliWrite pre-empts fragmentation and deals with it there then, an excellent feature that is going to keep performance at a maximum at all times and as always prevention is better than the cure.

If you go in to the configuration settings there are many things that can be changed, such as file exclusions, event logging, power management, volume shadow copy settings, proxy settings and new volume protection.

You really do get a lot for your money with this edition and I should think so when the software weighs in at $59.95. Now this for me has always been my gripe with defragmentation software, the price of it is always more than it should be, after all this isn’t software that will give you hours of entertainment or pleasure, it basically sits there, doing what looks like nothing.

I will have to report back later on the exact performance, but on first looks it is doing exactly what it says on the tin.

Overall an easy to install piece of software which is easy to configure, but the price for me is what lets it down, and maybe will put off some or even many off buying.

Matthew Glover
www.matthewglover.co.uk

CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server has been updated.

Version 1.3.1 of the online backup solution for our Home Servers include the following new features:

• Alerting notifications
• GUI issues with high DPI fixed
• Purging options work correctly
• C# API – an ability to get backup plan statistics programmatically
• Issue with Overview panel is fixed
• Other issues

And the following is a list of features coming soon:

• Block level backup and restore – backup only modified portions of files
• Virtual Disk – expose Amazon S3 storage as a local disk on your computer
• Storage costs estimates using http://cloudsplit.com/
• Web interface access your backup storage everywhere
• FTP support
• Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network support
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage support
• Sun Cloud Storage Service support

More info on CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server is available from here.

My Movies for Windows Home Server has been updated to version 1.50 Build 9 to fix a problem with the playback of images.

My Movies for Windows Home Server allows you to create a copy of your DVD/CD collection onto your Home Server.

More details are available from here.

Website lifehacker list Five Great Add-Ins to Power Up Your Windows Home Server Console.

lifehacker list their favorites, which are:

• Windows Home Server Disk Management
• AutoExit for WindowsHomeServer
• Remote Notification
• LightsOut
• Grid Junction

You can read more about them and also watch some short related videos here.

The add-in WHS PHP Installer has been updated to version 1.04

The add-in installs a preconfigured PHP 5.2.6 install which includes the PHP software to make it easy and convenient to install PHP onto Windows Home Server.

This latest version includes a modified installer to install to c:\php5 and localized scripts missed in 1.03. and the bug in environment variable not removed on uninstall has been cleaned up.

Thanks to the German Home Server Blog for the update.

More details are available from here.

Version 3.1 of WHS-Download Manager is now available for download.

The add-in helps organize large amounts of data and can download ULRs. The add-in can be configured to download a specified amount of data at a specified time and is optimized for use with Rapidshare, both free and premium accounts.

Version 3.1 contains some bug fixes and adds a new feature: DLC-Container format support. Links encrypted in DLC-Files can be added to the Download-Pool.

Developer Christof Rakowski also tells us that a Client-Version, which will feed links to the Windows Home Server, will be out soon – Great news!

Grab the add-in from here.

D-Links most popular home security cameras can now be managed and accessed within the Windows Home Server console.

After a longer than usual install process (compared to other add-ins) the D-ViewCam add-in adds a D-Link IP Camera tab in the WHS console. Video and motion monitoring are recorded from D-Link security cameras directly to the server where users can configure the recording schedules and access recorded or streaming video from the home server using a web browser.

As well as this users can remotely access their IP surveillance system from any computer with Internet access. 

As you can see four cameras can be viewed at once on a single screen.

At the current time the DCS-1100, DCS-1130, DCS-2121 and DCS-920 D-Link network camera models are compatible with the D-ViewCam add-in for Windows Home Server, although D-Link have stated that they are working on developing more D-Link devices which are WHS compatible

Steven Leonard, Microsoft Senior Product Manager for WHS had this to say:

We are pleased that D-Link is continuing to extend the value of Windows Home Server with the D-ViewCam Add-in, Windows Home Server provides a perfect platform for D-Link’s popular surveillance solutions, providing peace-of-mind for customers at home and in their business.

As well as the add-in D-Link are also providing a 65 page PDF User Manual which are all available from here.

The add-in CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server is now available for download in beta.

We mentioned CloudBerry Online Backup back in August, and today they have released a beta release for you to download. The add-in utilizes Amazons S3 storage to provide additional peace of find in case of fire or theft etc by backing up your data to the cloud.

This 1.3.0.338 release is beta so please send CloudBerry Lab any feedback on what you like and don’t like and let them know if you have any problems.

More details are available from here as well as the download.

WHS Mobile. the add-in for our mobile devices has been updated to version 1.5.3

This latest update now works fine with my iPhone whereas the previous version did not. Developer Brent Friendman has now added a PDF help document to help you setup and configure the Home Server add-in and the app for either your iPhone/iPod Touch or your Windows Mobile device.

iPhone/iPod Touch Updates:

• UI Improvements
• No more waiting for a folder’s thumbnails to load
• Uploading Fix
• Enhanced Security
• Added support for high-bitrate
• Added document viewing (PDF, HTML, XLS, and DOC formats)
• Search has been redone
• Space error fixed
• Now configures correctly on non-English Home Server’s

Windows Mobile Updates:

• Asynchronous thumbnail loading (like the iPhone)
• Bug Fixes
• Smartphone edition (non-touch screen devices) support – With the Smartphone edition, uploading and downloading is currently not supported because the prompts have to be re-written.

More information is available from here.

We have talked about P80 in the past but now developer Kris Rodenhausen has released P80 as a proper add-in which can be installed and uninstalled like other add-ins via the console.

P80 is a website that you can view via your homepage and gives a central overview of various kinds of information that you normally would need to query from all kinds of places (WHS Console, RDP etc).

P80 provides a lot of information into one compact website, which also has the advantage that it can be viewed using a web enabled mobile phone,  which you can also use to shut down and reboot your machines too as long as you have AutoExit 2008R2 or 2009 installed too.

More information is available from here.

ASoft have updated their popular AutoExit 2009 add-in to Release Candidate status.

AutoExit 2009 allows you to shut down and reboot your machines over the Windows Home Server network from within the console, as well as booting up your machines remotely you can also put the machine into hibernation, sleep, log off the user or lock the machine too.

Changes in AutoExit 2009:

• Multilingual UI (supports German, French, Japanese).
• Setup has been made smaller and packaged as a zip file instead of 1 installer.
• Wake On Lan all clients.
• Send a message to all connected clients.
• Warn users when the server is going down.
• Support for Windows 7.
• Possibility to the Wake On Lan port to send to.
• Possibility to enable easy logging on the client side.
• Mac-address of the server is retrieved when opening the diagnostic dialog and the Mac field being empty.
• When downloading an update, it is automatically saved to the ‘Server\Software’ or ‘Server\Logiciel’ folder, if none of these exist the browse directory dialog is shown.
• Fix: On some machines the actions did not work and an error 998 was displayed, this has been fixed.
• Fix: Fixed issue that settings in Vista/Windows 7 weren’t read correctly and made the AutoWOL Server function not work.
• Fix: Now when a client comes out of sleep, a WOL packet is sent to the server if enabled.
• Fix: Small improvement to the update dialog to show the product name.
• Fix: When using hibernate/sleep, the machine sometimes couldn’t be enabled again.
• Fix: Detects if Remote Desktop is enabled on a Home Edition.
• And some other minor adjustments.

More details are available from here.

The add-in Remote Alert has been updated to version 1.3.5.

The add-in that provides remote access notification, additional security layers and remote access activity logging includes the following changes/fixes:

• Network Activity Monitor now works if multiple NIC cards are installed.
• DNS, WHOIS look-up extended to IP connections page.
• Network chart performance improvements.
• Geo-location look-up performance and accuracy improvement.
• Remote Alert GUI fixes, revisions and improvements.
• IIS Log parser sidebar toggle added.

More details are available from here.

The Windows Home Server Team are recommending some more add-ins to install on your Windows Home Server machine.

The featured add-ins are featured on the WHS page on Microsoft.com, and include:

• Grid Junction
• My Movies for Windows Home Server
• Remote Alert
• avast! Antivirus
• Diskeeper
• F-Secure Home Server Security 2009
• KeepVault
• mControl
• PerfectDisk 10 for Windows Home Server
• Recorded TV Manager Add-in for Windows Home Sever
• WebGuide for Windows Home Server
• LightsOut
• WHS Customizer
• uTorrent
• Duplication Info for Windows Home Server
• AutoExit for Windows Home Server
• Whiist
• Advanced Admin Console
• Windows Home Server Disk Management

More details on these add-ins is available from here.

A great list of 19 must have add-ins which should be on your Home Server – What’s yours?

The add-in Asset UPnP has been updated to release 2 and is now available in 2 versions.

Asset is a DLNA compatible UPnP audio server for use on Windows Home Server. Similar in use to Twonky Media, Asset UPnP is available in 2 versions. A free version which just includes the UPnP server and a premium version which as well as the server allows for Internet radio, dynamic playlists, jukebox random selection and a browse by folder & folder feature.

A full list of changes is available from here.
More information on Asset UPnP is available from here.

Thanks to Dave Marchant for the update.

Directory Watcher is a new add-in which enables you to monitor any folder on your home server for changes and emails the user when changes occur. If email at the time is not accessible then you can retrieve the list of changes on the public website.

The Directory Watcher add-in allows you to:

• Set the folder to be monitored
• Set the file types, which are to be monitored
• Set the type of notification (Notification to clients, RSS feed, email)
• Check the status of the service
• Number of days to log the events
• Configure the email settings

More information is available from here.

Nigel “Cougar” Wilks has released his much anticipated add-in "WordPress Installer for WHS".

The add-in will install the popular blogging platform onto Windows Home Server and requires that the PHP and MySql Installer add-ins are already installed. Once the WordPress Installer for WHS is installed all that’s required is the creation of the WordPress Database and User Account by using PhpMyAdmin before running WordPress for the first time.

All the required info is available from here.

The Using Windows Home Server website has a review of the new P80 add-in for Windows Home Server.

P80 is a website which you view via the home page of your WHS which allows you to view various aspects of your WHS in one easy to use web page, just like you can from within the console but in one central location including things that would require you to remote desktop into the WHS.

Reviewer "fasthair" goes through the installation and configuration of the add-in, which you can read here.

Cougar has been busy working on a WordPress add-in for Windows Home Server.

WordPress is what mswhs.com is powered by, and is a superb open source blogging platform. In the past if you wanted to install WordPress onto WHS, it would take a lot of work and configuration, but now the WordPress add-in has just simplified things. But you will have to wait a few days for the first beta build.

More details are available from here.

The  add-in BDBB has been updated to version 1.0.2.2.

Also known as the Windows Home Server Backup Database-Backup, the add-in allows you to easily create and restore a backup of the Backup Database created by the Windows Home Server, which contains the backups of all Client PC’s in the home.

Version 1.0.2.2 is primarily a maintenance release with only bug fixes and the following minor feature changes:

• Redesigned method of drive detection for better accuracy
• Really display TrueCrypt encrypted drives (I swear this works now!)
• Disable Duplication Options for server with single Storage Hard Drive
• Disallow backup to non-NTFS formatted drives (needed for 4GB files)
• Properly handle network shares and usernames with spaces
• Do syntax checking of network path format (\\server\share)
• Store Readme in Software\Add-Ins share so user can access it
• Improved error messages, including start and stop times in the Event Viewer Application logs

More information and the download are located here.

Developer Alex Kuretz has been busy updating his MSS Fan Control add-in to version 1.0.0.8.

The add-in allows you to modify the behavior of the exhaust fans in the HP MediaSmart Server EX470 and EX475 (only), and this latest maintenance release includes a fix for an issue where the Advanced Controls would be modified after rebooting the server or restarting the Server Console.

More information and the download are located here.

Remote Alert is an add-in by Alexander Kent which monitors remote access attempts to Windows Home Server and logs the information. The add-in also provides an additional security layer to help keep your WHS secure from outside intruders.

Version 1.3 features:

• Real time logon activity status (successful / failed) alerts
• Real time network activity traffic monitor
• Real time connected session and resources overview
• Remote access activity history overview (basic client info: IP address & browser type)
• IP Security for IP address or entire network range blacklisting
• Powerful brute-force protection (cannot be fooled via proxies & suspends remote access but does not kill any legit sessions)
• Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack and ARP poisoning detection
• Remote access availability scheduler (i.e. suspend remote access during nighttime, does not affect HP Webshare or additional websites)
• Smart IIS Web logs parser
• Build-in self-checking update notification

More information is available from here.

The add-in WhsDbDataDump has been updated to version 1.0.0 Build 2 BETA.

This add-in extracts the actual backed up data out of the Windows Home Server Backup database enabling you to work with broken databases. And this latest version now has the ability of extracting backed up files from a Windows Home Server backup database too.

Changes:

• Added ntfsdump operating mode. Capable of dumping files directly from backed up volumes. Supports sparse files. No support for compressed files, encrypted files or alternate data streams yet.
• File filtering option (find/findregex) for ntfsdump.

More details are available from here.

WHS Mobile version 1.5 is available for Windows Mobile, the Apple iPhone and the iPod Touch and the best news is that its now available from Apple’s App Store.

“WHS Mobile is the only application of its kind for Windows Home Server. It allows for simple remote management of your Home Server while on the go. You can manage files stored in the shared folders, stream media, manager users, modify ports forwarding to your Home Server via UPnP, start/stop FTP sites with FTP Manager, and remotely access your home computers from a Windows Mobile device. You can even use your Apple iPhone with WHS Mobile. WHS Mobile for iPhone allows direct media transfer to and from your home server. You can search your shares using the Home Server’s Windows Search index for speedy results directly on the iPhone. Stream mp3’s individually or as an album quickly and easily. Remote computer access isn’t currently possible on the Apple iPhone due to the absence of a native Remote Desktop client on the platform. FTP Manager support will be available on the iPhone in the next release of the application. User impersonation allows you to let specific users access shares and features based upon their Windows Home Server account.  WHS Mobile is a powerful and unique add-in for Windows Home Server that expands your access onto your Windows Mobile and Apple iPhone devices.”

The remote access feature is in the process of being redesigned so it is disabled in this release. The Windows Mobile client does not yet work on Smartphone (non-touch screen) models. Documentation is currently in the process of being written. The server and Windows Mobile software to go with the iPhone app can be found below.

iPhone Major Changes:

• Search feature added
• Streaming mp3s with a bitrate greater than 320 kb/s will no longer crash the application
• Added bunch of code to prevent crashes
• UI face lift
• Upload images from your camera and photo gallery!
• Pan and zoom image previews
• Fixed a lot of random bugs
• Multiple user compatibility – User impersonation limits and regulates access
• Is available via the App Store

Here is what has changed for Windows Mobile:

• Some compatibility issues
• Changes for usage with 1.5 and multiple logins/users
• Windows Media Player will launch when streaming WMA.
• Mp3s can be previewed on Windows Mobile 6.0 and above

More information is available from here, whilst the app is available from the App Store here.

UPDATE: The add-in has been removed for sale until some problems have been sorted out.

Two new add-ins from Nigel “Cougar” Wilks.

The first Add-In is called WHS PHP Installer (Version 1.0) which installs a preconfigured PHP 5.2.6 install for Windows Home Server based systems for easy and convenient installation which also allows customization via the PHP.INI file.

Once installed via the add-ins folder you can access a test page at http://yourservername/test.php to verify the installation was successful and to show the PHPInfo() output.

The second add-in is WHS MySQL Installer which compliments the WHS PHP Installer add-in.

At version 0.0.5 Beta this database add-in also includes includes the popular interface PHPMyAdmin, a utility for MySQL.

NOTE: WHS PHP Installer is just over 9MB in size whilst WHS MySQL Installer is 119MB.

The add-in Update History has been updated to version 0.3.0 Beta.

This add-in displays the complete system update history so that Windows Home Server owners can make sure their machine is fully patched and up to date.

New Features:

• Search for new updates. This will search for high priority updates for your Windows Home Server system. This is similar to doing an ‘Express’ search on WindowsUpdate.com
• Install updates. This will install all high priority updates. In fact, this is the same as clicking ‘Update now…’ on the ‘General’ tab of the WHS console’s settings dialog. Note: You don’t need to search for available updates prior to clicking on ‘Install updates…’.
• Launch Windows Update: You can visit Windows Update directly from the newly introduced ‘Troubleshooting’ menu.

More details are available from here.

Technology evangelist Spencer Scott lists 4 of his must have Windows Home Server add-ins which he has tested on his machine.

Spencer lists LightsOut, Advanced Admin Console, FTP Manager and WHS Web Logs as his favs, which you can read more about here.

What about yours?

CompuGeek Software has released an update to TV Manager as a preview build to show what’s been added and changed since version 1.0.1 was released back in September 2008.

The TV Manager add-in moves your Media Center recordings to your Windows Home Server for storage and management, allowing you to view your moved recordings from within Media Center as if it were sitting in that computer’s Recorded TV folder. The add-in also allows you to watch the recordings from the TV Manager Web Interface to non-MC PCs over your local and Internet connection.

Changes in 1.5 Preview include:

• Fixed deleting recordings via web interface or deleting shows from Media Center and then viewing the web interface – would mess up Shows.xml
• Fixed share not being created after install – causing service to crash and install to appear to fail
• Fixed not showing all options on client. Still requires being configured with full Administrative privileges (changing settings).
• Fixed bug in web interface causing an error message to show instead of the page content.
• Fixed Compatibility with WTV.
• Fixed some glitches with the Email Notifications options in the settings tab.
• Added a new interface for clients.
• Added show thumbnails to the web interface.
• Added sorting to the web interface.
• Added an about dialog to the client.
• Add the "All" item in the web interface to show all the saved recordings.
• Added moving recordings at midnight under client settings.
• Added a client service, recordings will be moved even if a user is not logged in.
• Added right click menu to the new client interface (Contains options Play and Delete)
• Added a Series catalog feature that lets you print a catalog of all your recordings.
• Added Windows 7 features (jumplists, progress bars, pin-able taskbar item).
• Added WTV converter for Comskip, allowing commercials to be removed from WTV recordings (Windows 7 Only)
• Added an option to move recordings at a specified time (assuming the client is turned on).
• Added an SDK so users can write plug-ins for TV Manager (read the documentation for more information).
• Re-Added Original Air Date.
• Re-Added ComSkip option — May cause problems.
• Re-Added the Home Server Console tab – The play option might not work yet.
• Removed accidental time zone from Original Air Date column in Web Interface.
• German and French translations implemented into web UI and client.
• Easily deploy client via the web interface or the Home Server Console tab. It auto-detects the language/version of the installer to use.
• The client application can now detect your remote access domain (via it’s SSL certificate) and will load that to prevent SSL error messages.
• The client now requires .NET 3.5 to run.
• The home server add-in now requires Power Pack 2 to function.
• The client and server can detect your “Recorded TV” share’s name (for non-English versions).

More documentation and the download can be found here.

Proxure has released a new version of KeepVault, the online backup solution for our Home Server’s, which provides improvements to upload speed and a new KeepVault Connector “sync tool”.

Version 3.15:

• Up to 50% increase in upload speed
• Includes new KeepVault Connector WHS add-in allowing you to sync files from any PC (either local or internet) to your WHS for protection.  Another step forward making the WHS the center of your data protection strategy.

More information on KeepVault for WHS is available from here and details on how to setup the KeepVault Connector to sync files to WHS here.

CloudBerry Lab has been beta testing CloudBerry Online Backup – an application that allows users to backup their data online to an Amazon S3 account.

Currently available for the Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 platform, the best news of all is that Windows Home Server support via an add-in will be available shortly.

If you look at the screenshot carefully you will see "My Internet Bookmarks backup", an option; it appears which will backup our Favorites something I have been looking for for a long while – Great news!

More details are available from here.

The add-in Update History has been updated to version 0.2.1 Beta.

Update History displays the complete system update history so that Windows Home Server owners can make sure their machine is fully patched and up to date.

This release fixes an issue where the Windows Home Server console could crash when the add-in was trying to access the system’s update history. A small UI glitch has also been fixed: In the initial release (0.2.0 Beta) the column headers were labeled in German, even on non-German WHS systems.

Available for download here.

A new add-in by the name of WhsDbDataDump has been produced.

Similar to WhsDbDump, WhsDbDataDump will extract the actual backed up data out of the Windows Home Server Backup database.

This add-in will also work with broken databases, supporting extracting data from databases with missing dat files and simply filling in the missing clusters with a special signature $MISSINGCLUSTER

This first Build 1 will only dump an entire backed up volume to a raw file, whilst future versions will add more operating modes capable of extracting actual files from NTFS backup volumes.

More info is available from here.

I have been looking for an add-in recently that could handle WOL (wake on LAN) for me directly from my WHS, my main aim was to be able to login to my WHS via my login page (http://xxxxxx.homeserver.com) and login to my WHS console and wake the relevant machine up, thus allowing me save energy and more essentially money.

I have recently stumbled across ASoft AutoExit which at first glance does much more than WOL, it will also allow you to shutdown, restart and logoff. Handy because I use Remote Desktop Connection and anyone who uses this will know there is no shutdown option once connected via this way, ok you can do a “shutdown -s” but looking at this add-in life is going to be made much easier.

The other handy features are reboot, sleep, hibernate and lock workstation, you can even send messages to other workstations, but the handiest feature is the ability to start a Remote Desktop Connection to a specific machine directly from your console.

Installation is easy and is very similar to other WHS add-ins just download the .msi from ASoft’s website and drop into the add-in’s folder in the software share as normal, and then install from your WHS console full instructions are on ASoft’s website. Once installed and your WHS console restarted you will be presented with an information box informing you that during install it created a new folder within your software share called “AutoExit” in this folder you will find an AutoExit manual and the client install application, install the client application on each of your client machines and your done. Now you can enjoy controlling your machines remotely.

There a couple of things to be aware of with this add-in like the Remote Desktop Connection works only if the machine is enabled for it, the way to do this is to right click My Computer >> Properties and select the remote tab and ticking allow users to connect remotely to this computer, this needs to be done for all machines and the ability to use Remote Desktop Connection is only available on Windows XP Pro, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. The other thing to mention is that WOL works only if enabled on the motherboard, this can be enabled from your BIOS settings and if you’re not sure how to do that it’s worth taking a look at your motherboard manual first.

ASoft’s Website: http://www.asoft.be/prod_autoexitwhs.html

The Media Center Blog has a walkthrough of the add-in "My Movies for Windows Home Server", which in this part 1 looks at the installation and the configuration of the add-in.

And if you are wondering what My Movies for Windows Home Server does? It’s basically a movie collection management and playback add-in which also comes with a folder monitoring service, a disc copying service for movies, as well as an automated cd ripper service, and can be used not only by My Movies, but any client that supports reading My Movies’ XML files for movies, or for music, any client that can playback MP3, WAV or WMA files. And it also serves as an ordinary server software for My Movies clients as well.

Read part 1 here.

The add-in which enables you to shut down or reboot your PCs in your Home Server network, all from within the console has been updated. This minor update to AutoExit has fixes as well as some new features that a lot of people asked for, including support for Windows 7.

What’s New:

• Wake On Lan all clients.
• Send a message to all connected clients.
• Warn users when the server is going down.
• Support for Windows 7.
• Possibility to the Wake On Lan port to send to.
• Possibility to enable easy logging on the client side.
• Mac-address of the server is retrieved when opening the diagnostic dialog and the Mac field being empty.
• When downloading an update, it is automatically saved to the ‘Server\Software’ or ‘Server\Logiciel’ folder, if none of these exist the browse directory dialog is shown.

What’s Been Fixed:

• On some machines the actions did not work and an error 998 was displayed, this has been fixed.
• Fixed issue that settings in Vista/Windows 7 weren’t read correctly and because of this AutoWOL Server didn’t work.
• Now when a client comes out of sleep, a WOL packet is sent to the server if enabled.
• Small improvement to the update dialog to show the product name.
• When using hibernate/sleep, the machine sometimes couldn’t be enabled again.
• Detects if Remote Desktop is enabled on a Home Edition.

Download here.

I sit at work (browsing when I should be working) quite often, sometimes thinking I could just do with downloading that software for later, and in order for me to do this I have to log onto my WHS website, then wake one of my machines up using “Asofts AutoExit 2008 R2” and then I can use Remote Desktop Connection to log into the machine. Once I have done this I can start the download I require direct from that machine, all this is taking time and taking money from me, as I have now got to leave that machine on all day. Ok so enough rambling, I have been looking for a download manager for a while now and have recently seen Christof Rakowski’s Download Manager.

This is ideal for me as I am able to just log into my WHS website and activate any download I need, at first glance you notice that it supports Rapidshare Free and Premium accounts, time scheduling, HTTP and FTP, it will also shutdown the server once the download is complete.

“Christof Rakowski’s Download Manager Version 3"

The one to note is with version 3 I found the statistics button kept crashing the WHS console, the only way to recover from this would be to close and then re-open the console but version 3 is still in Beta so I am confident this will be rectified very soon, other than that no problems to report.

Conclusion

I have been using this add-in now for around 2 weeks and found it extremely useful and I am sure you all will to, it is a simple piece of software which is easily installed and most of all easily used with absolutely nothing to configure other than the relevant download you require, the add-in is also available in both English and German so this add-in definitely gets my thumbs up.

To download in IE right-click here and “Save Target As…”

The online backup solution for our Home Server’s has been updated.

KeepVault version 3.10 includes the following:

• Compatibility updates to share storage with other KeepVault family products (KeepVault for windows, WHS, Mac, USB Key)
• Network retry optimization
• General bug fixes

A 15 day free trial as well as the download are located here.

The add-in which enables you to get more control from your UPnP internet gateway has been updated. Version 1.1b provides the following

Improvements:

• added feature test for hijacking detection to diagnostic tool
• last traffic graph scaling is now being stored
• added handling for state variables returning anything despite the allowed values
• hijacking detection is now being automatically disabled if the router uses HTTP basic auth

Bugfixes:

• several UX fixes
• fixed crash on router selection if presentation URL was not provided by router
• fixed handling of traffic graph scaling

More information is available from here.

WHS Port Forward is a new add-in by Alex Kuretz which allows the user to utilize the UPnP feature of Windows Home Server to open forwarded ports from their router to their Home Server

As Alex stats:

“This is useful if you have installed a 3rd party application that requires incoming access from the internet.”

The Add-In removes the need to assign a static IP address to your server or manually forward ports on your router by simply configuring the port you would like forwarded, Windows Home Server handles it for you.

WHS Port Forward requires that your router supports UPnP and that Remote Access is enabled on your Home Server and will inform you if it does not.

More details are available from here.

This Add-In is used to put a Windows Home Server into suspended mode, or hibernation and resume on user defined events.

Description

To go to sleep, you can choose from several methods:

· On demand, when no more clients are active

· Based on a calendar, as a single action or repeated each weekday

· Or as a combination of both methods

You can define times, where the server has to be up and running:

· Using the calendar

· Based on the defined backup time

The reason for me reviewing the LightsOut add-in is that I have recently had the need to use it, I had heard of the add-in some time ago but I have never had the need to use it until now.

The reason for me wanting to use LightsOut was that my mother’s home PC was being backed up irregularly with the backup option she has currently has, I had never given her a WHS box because she only had one machine. Recent events led to me having a spare machine ideal for WHS and my 2 of 3 sisters moving back in with my mother with their 2 laptops, so I thought it was an ideal time.

The machine I used for this was a custom build machine with a Celeron 420 1.6Ghz CPU, 2 x GB RAM 1 x 180GB Western Digital Hard Drive, I may look at putting a second hard drive in there at some point in the future but for now the one will suffice.

The main thing I was looking for from this add-in was that when one of the machines in the house was on, the WHS came on as well, this was pretty much all I wanted it to do. I was going to set a wide range for the backups to occur during the day between 10:00 till 00:00 this way as the machines are used in the day the WHS can back them up rather than wake them up, the reason for this is that the 2 laptops and running wirelessly so won’t be able to be woken anyway.

Install wasn’t as straight forward as most add-ins and there are some playing around with the services on the WHS so you will have to remote in to the WHS via Remote Desktop Connection. First of all download LightsOutInstaller0.8.2.235.msi from here and then place in the add-ins folder under the software share on your WHS.

The first thing you will notice when you re-login to the console and click on LightsOut is that it will show you this:

Disabling this is a requirement in order to use lights-out, to disable the SBCore service you will need to Remote Desktop into your WHS and then go Start >> Run. Type “services.msc” click “OK”. The services panel will open and you need to go down to the SBCore service and double click it and this is what you will see.

Click the “log On” tab and then in the bottom right-hand corner click “disable”, once you have done this restart your WHS, if you have any problems with this please see here for more info.

Once restarted you will be able to go to the LightsOut tab and you should see the below:

Click settings to start configuring.

For my scenario I changed the settings to look like this:

As you can see from my settings I have chosen to shut the server down, solely because each of the machines when turned on will turn the server on via WOL (wake-on-LAN) which must be setup in the BIOS first in order to work. There some further settings you can configure in the calendar section:

Here you can say what time your WHS starts and what time it shuts down it is entirely up to you.

Next thing is to install the LightsOut client on each of your machines, so navigate to the below:

Once you launch the install and run through it you will be completely unsure to whether it has installed or not, but be assured it has installed but the only the thing it does install is a service on the machine.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great add-in that’s been well thought out and definitely has my vote, the only thing that could be a problem for some users is the SBCore service as some might be unsure how to deal with this, all in all though a great add-in.

FirePlay for Windows Home Server has been updated to version 0.90.06

The add-In automates the install of FirePlay for the Home Server and configures the Windows Firewall and also your Router if it supports UPNP. FirePlay is a Flash based client for accessing the Firefly Media Server which comes pre-installed on the MediaSmart Server. It will allow you to play your music through your browser, without needing any other media player. It will therefore allow you to access your music remotely if you have remote access switched on.

In this latest version:

• Added a favicon
• Improved the FirePlay Service to resolve Remote Access detection issues.
• Resolves bug where Remote Access status is switched after install caused upnp issue.
• Now generates a health alert if it can’t find FireFly.

More information is available from here.