TechAU.TV down in Australia have a video where they are interviewing Rosemary Stark and Jeff Alexander from Microsoft to discuss the upcoming releases of Windows Home Server.
Both Vail and Aurora are talked about in this 20 minute video.
Welcome to the new and refreshed MSWHS.com, your personal guide to Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. Please note that not all parts of the site are fully operational, but will be soon.
Enjoy your stay and as always your comments are welcome.
Just to let you know we are starting the work to move to our new hosting provider and our new layout which we mentioned yesterday, so for the next 6 hours or more (less hopefully) you will experience either the old site or nothing – What nothing!
OK that’s wishful thinking , but we will see you on the other side of this thing called cyberspace 
After our warning the other day about using advanced format hard drives in version 1 of Windows Home Server, Microsoft have also published a Knowledge Base article explaining the problem.
The article (KB2385637) explains that if you are using one of these drives in Windows Home Server v1 for either Server Backup, the Storage Pool or System Disk then you will experience performance degradation even if using the manufacturers provided alignment tool.
Microsoft’s Recommendation is:
Do not use Advanced Format disks in your Windows Home Server v1.
Although these disks will work in Vail, version1 users should take note of Microsoft’s guidance:
It is important to note that some hard disk manufacturers are releasing Advanced Format drives in the same base models as traditional 512 byte sector drives. Because of this, it is critical that you make sure that the drive you are purchasing is not an Advanced Format drive if you are running Windows Home Server v1. Before you purchase a disk drive, review the product specifications or visit the manufacturers Web site to ensure that the drive is compatible with Windows Home Server. Be aware that Advanced Format drives are not always clearly identified on the retail packaging.
KB2385637 is available to view here.
CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server has had an update.
The online backup service for Home Server users which utilizes Amazon S3 cloud storage, now includes the following in version 1.7:
Integrated Azure Storage option – Azure Blob Storage is another storage option in CloudBerry Backup in addition to Amazon S3. The users can now back up their data to their Azure accounts directly.
Backup files since certain date – This provides more flexibility for those who want to copy only the newer files to their backup storage. This option is available in the backup wizard.
Backup Schedule down to one hour – The added ability to configure backup schedule down to hours. In the previous releases you were limited to configure scheduled backup to days.
Back up to external buckets – This allows you to back up data to another users account while only having a free AWS account. In other words the owner of the account can provide other users with the rights to read/ write data to a certain bucket and those users can back up their data not having to deal with the details of Amazon account setup and payments.
Back up network drives – The previous release introduced an option to backup network shares. Release 1.7 extends it with network drives support. Although under the hood CloudBerry Backup resolves network drives to network shares for the end user the whole process is absolutely transparent.
Unattended mode – It is now possible to run CloudBerry Backup in unattended mode even when run interactively using the console. In the earlier releases when you run the backup using the console you could not close the console or log off and you had to wait before the backup finishes. This limitation is now removed and you can run the backup plan, close the console and even log off from the computer and make sure backup plan will keep running.
More information on CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server is available from here.
The add-in which enable you to access your computer remotely even with a Dynamic IP has had an update.
DNS Updater from "ten atoms" has been updated to version 1.0.0.43 to fix a performance issue and if you act quickly they get the add-in for 50% off, bringing it down to just $9.99
More details can be found here.
Microsoft’s official Small Business Server blog has published some interesting resources on Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” to enable you to get a “hands on” with the product.
The Aurora click-thru demo is also available on the Microsoft Partner Network, where you can also view it through the Microsoft DemoShowcase if you are a member.
If everything goes to plan then within the next 24-48 hours we are on the move. Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth (August last year actually), we asked you to select a new theme design for the site. We have now (eventually) implemented it, which you can have a sneak peak at here.
Due to the wonders of the world wide bubble while the site is migrating over you may experience some down time and/or the old (this) site still showing up in your browser. This will only occur for a short while until DNS propagates around the net.
In the meantime do have a look and leave your comments about the new layout, both good and bad below.
The add-in AWIECO RemoteLauncher allows Aurora and Vail users to access predefined System Tools directly from the dashboard, and just launched is version v0.1.2 (Beta) which offers an improved UI design and fixes a bug which was present within the installer.
More details on RemoteLauncher are available from here.
The add-in AWIECO WakeOnLAN has had an update.
The free add-in for Vail and Aurora users has the ability to turn on a computer remotely. It enables the Server to start up every computer attached to your network and automatically recognizes, if a computer is already turned on or if it is booting up.
Version 0.2.1 (Beta) ChangeLog:
More details are available from here.
