MS Windows Home Server

Top of the Range WHS Offer

Fancy a top of the range Windows Home Server on the cheap?

If so, then Tranquil PC are offering the SQA-5H-3000 at £100 off (from when it was first released) plus a FREE pre-paid 18 month subscription to their offsite backup, sync and VPN service called HomeServerSync valued at over £200. PLUS if you want the unit "ready to go" then you can ask for the unit to be pre-set, ready for immediate use for just 99p – That’s less than two dollars!

The SQA-5H-3000 Home Server comes pre-fitted with 2GB of RAM and a low energy, quiet Samsung 2TB HDD plus a 3 year warranty for £499 plus VAT.

For the chance to get this lowest cost, multi-drive, multi CPU, SQA-5H-3000 Home Server at this price with these offers, then head over here for the details.

Aurora Preview Available

As well as the new refresh of the Public Preview of Vail Microsoft has also announced a preview of Windows Small Business Server codename Aurora.

Aurora is based on Windows Server 2008 R2, the same platform as Vail but is designed for the small business owner. Allowing up to 25 users instead of Vail’s 10 limit plus Active Directory support it is an ideal product for the small business or home office. But its no good thinking Aurora as a premium version of Vail because rightly so it doesn’t include media streaming or Media Center integration.

Would you like to try it? Then you can try a copy from Microsoft’s Connect website.

Also available to read online are the Windows Server Code Name "Aurora" Preview Release Notes.

Vail Public Beta Refresh Available

Windows Home Server code name "Vail" has had its Public Preview refreshed, and very good it is too.

New in this latest build is:

• Alert Email integration – configure the server to send alerts via Email
• Previous Versions for Server Folders are turned on by default and are exposed in folder properties
• Silverlight 4 support for media
• MAC Support for all MAC lovers
• A SDK Preview which provides API references, how-to build add-in documents, templates for Visual Studio 2010 and samples of complete add-ins.
• PLUS much much more.

But make sure you read ALL the available documentation as there are quite a few issues with this beta software, including:

• Install QFE KB2314472 which addresses an issue where saving files to a server shared folder may fail with a time-out or sharing violation error when a large amount of data, typically more than 1TB, is present on the server. After you install the server software, and before you copy any data to the server’s folders, download and install QFE KB2314472.
• Drive Extender data from earlier Vail beta versions are incompatible with this version as the low-level data format for Drive Extender has changed with this release and is no longer compatible with data written by Drive Extender in earlier versions of Vail. Drives that were used as part of a server storage pool in an earlier version of Vail will show a status of incompatible version in the Hard Drives tab of the Dashboard. Incompatible hard drives can still be added to the default storage pool, but all data on the hard drive will be lost. So before installing this version, make sure you copy all server folder data from server storage to an external USB drive or to a client computer. After installing, copy the data back to the server storage folders.

As always you can get your copy from Microsoft’s Connect site.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 102

The Home Server Show podcast episode 102 is available with the weeks Home Server news, plus details of the hosts DIY computer builds.

Listen in here.