By on February 16th, 2011

Add-In: Remote Notification 1.5.0.1

The add-in which keeps you up to date on the status of your Home Server no matter where you are has had an update.

Remote Notification Configure RSS Feed

Remote Notification (version 1.5.0.1) includes the following features:

  • Receive your Home Server health alerts in your email inbox
  • Receive your Home Server health alerts on your mobile phone
  • Control the health alerts that are sent based upon severity level
  • Control the health alerts that are sent with custom text filters
  • Control when health alerts are sent with Notification Schedules (Do Not Disturb)
  • Send the alerts to as many recipients as you want
  • Easy setup of your email settings with SMTP Presets
  • Be confident that your server is functioning properly with Daily Reports via email
  • Monitor your Home Server health alerts via RSS Feed
  • View your Home Server’s health alert history for alerts you may have missed

Designed for Windows Home Server v1, Remote Notification is available as a 30 day trail, after which it will will revert to Lite Mode which offers only a small subset of the features available in the full version. A full license is available for $15 via PayPal.

Remote Notification Add Email Recipient

More information is available from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 16th, 2011

The WHS Homepage Reengineered

Gordon Schmidt who is an active member specifically in the Windows Home Server space is re-engineering the WHS homepage (both yourservername.homeserver.com/home/default.aspx & yourservername.homeserver.com/remote/default.aspx).

His goal is to be as creative as he and his 2 younger brothers can be and offer more functionality and customization to the end-user for these these two web pages.

Its great news to see development ramping up for our beloved Windows Home Server – Great news!

http://mykneejerkreaction.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/whsv1-development-project/

News • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 15th, 2011

Add-In: AWIECO WakeOnLAN 0.9.0 RC

AWIECO WakeOnLAN for Windows Home Server 2011 RC and Small Business Server 2011 Essentials RC is out.

AWIECO WakeOnLAN Dashboard

This add-in enables you to remotely turn on or off a computer attached to your network.

AWIECO WakeOnLAN Remote Web Access

This latest 0.9.0 RC version includes the following changes:

  • Improved: Windows Home Server 2011 RC support
  • Improved: Client shut down over Launchpad

More details on AWIECO WakeOnLAN are available from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 14th, 2011

Add-In: TV4Home Adds TV Tuner Support to WHS

TV4Home is a new add-in which installs the MediaPortal TV Server onto Windows Home Server, adding better support for TV tuner cards in both WHS v1 and WHS2011.

Using easy to use wizards the add-in allows you to record your favorite TV shows or stream Live-TV to your network clients and it properly integrates into the Home Server Console/Dashboard to provide an overview of the current TV Server status.

TV4Home-WHS

TV4Home-Vail

TV4Home also provides a web interface with single sign on using the WHS Remote Access Website so you can schedule recordings by using the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) from any Internet-connected PC by simply visiting your WHS Remote Access Website and clicking on the TV4Home link.

TV4Home_-_Web-Interface

Whilst in theory every TV card supported by MediaPortal TV Server (see here) should work, there may be some incompatibilities between the cards and WHS. Especially Windows Home Server v1 which might have some problems that WHS2011 doesn’t have, since it is more optimized for media scenarios. There is therefore a list of cards that are known to work with WHSv1 or WHS "Vail" which you can view here. If you have tested a TV card that works with WHS but is not listed here, please let the developer know via their Discussions page.

The downloads for both WHS v1 and WHS2011 as well as the necessary documentation can be found here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 12th, 2011

Add-In: Lights-Out 1.5.0 Beta

The add-in Lights-Out has a new beta version available.

Version 1.5.0 for both Windows Home Server 2011 and WHS V1 has numerous changes

For the  WHS2011, 1.5.0 build 1440 version , changes are:

  • Client actions – Computer tab has new client actions for shutdown, standby and reboot.
  • New Monitors – Two new monitors allow to watch shares and console session. Status display does now show active monitors in bold, dark blue font:
  • Added support for new move folder wizard

For WHS V1 the changes are:

  • Added client actions for shutdown, standby and reboot
  • Added share monitor
  • Added console session monitor
  • Added display of active monitors
  • Added day slider to uptime chart
  • Added display of scheduled backup times to computer tab
  • Fixed distorted status page when DPI setting of display has been changed to a nonstandard value or when big fonts have been used
  • Changed background and font colours to allow high contrast themes

Here are the download links:

For WHS V1: Documentation and Download

For WHS2011: Documentation and Download

add-ins • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 12th, 2011

Drive Extender Functionality Coming to WHS2011

Windows Home Server 2011 will have an add-in by a third party which will provide similar functionality to what Drive Extender (DE) had.

The add-in StableBit DrivePool will let you add multiple hard drives into one combined storage pool on the Windows Home Server 2011. You can create folder shares on this storage pool, and each folder on the pool can either be duplicated or not duplicated. Files placed in duplicated folders will be protected against single drive failure by being placed onto two separate hard drives.

StableBit DrivePool Folder View

The folder view

As you can see this will allow you to add (and remove) drives of various sizes and types to the pool and folder duplication will copy your files to another hard driver (as was the case with DE), which will protect your shares against a single drive failure.

StableBit DrivePool Folder View

Added a folder

Features:

  • Combine all your hard drives into one big storage pool (except the system drive with the OS).
  • Add and remove drives from the pool at any time without re-partitioning or manually moving folders.
  • Create duplicated folders on the storage drive pool that are protected against single drive failure. If a drive fails on which a duplicated file was stored, the contents of that file will remain readable even without the drive.

Here are the 5 screen shots from the add a folder wizard:

StableBit DrivePool Add a Folder 1 StableBit DrivePool Add a Folder 2

StableBit DrivePool Add a Folder 3 StableBit DrivePool Add a Folder 4

StableBit DrivePool Add a Folder 5

The add-in is currently at ALPHA stage, and a fully functional Technical Preview version will be available in the coming weeks.

StableBit DrivePool Added a Folder

The drive pool

Its great to see a third party adding the Drive Extender functionality back to WHS2011. Information from Covercube.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 11th, 2011

Backup a MAC to Windows Home Server 2011

Windows PC’s are automatically added to the backup which takes place in a round robin style nightly but if you are using a Mac you end up with a launch pad and access to the server, but no default backup.

Our friend Sean Daniel (with help from Fabian and Craig) has put together the steps necessary to get the unsupported volumes to appear in TimeMachine by doing some magic in the Mac Terminal allowing the MAC to use Windows Home Server 2011 as the backup target.

Mac Backup for WHS2011

A great read for MAC and WHS2011 users.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 10th, 2011

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 123

home_server_show_small

The latest episode of The Home Server Show has news on Windows Home Server 2011, add-ins, Virtual Machines, Worm Holes plus lots more. That’s episode 123 which you can find here.

News • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 10th, 2011

Building a WHS with Muscle

"How-To Build a Windows Home Server with Muscle (but no Drive Extender)" is an updated version of an article which was written at Maximum PC:

The next generation of Windows Home Server enables video streaming and transcoding operations, so we built a WHS system that can handle the load

Maximum PC Installing Drivebay

Their build list totals short of $800 and goes through choosing the hardware and building the system as well as setting up Vail on it too, which you can find here.

News • Windows Home Server
Full Story
By on February 09th, 2011

Adding Low Cost Redundancy to WHS

Microsoft have another video in their  Learning Bites series on how to add some very low cost and easy to implement redundancy for your data using software raid which is available from the underlying Windows Server 2008R2 operating system. This allows you to continue using the server until you are able to schedule a maintenance window and replace the affected hard drive and restore your data.

Although this video is designed for Setting up Software RAID in SBS 2011 Essentials the instructions apply equally to Windows Home Server 2011 and shows you how to create a mirror set as well as a RAID5 setup.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
Full Story