By on September 29th, 2007

Windows Home Server First MVP

Congratulations to the first Windows Home Server Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Grey Lancaster. The MVP award is an annual award presented to individuals for their exceptional contributions to technical communities on certain technologies.

Grey_Lancaster

Grey was first awarded as a MVP in the Small Business Server (SBS) professional category in 1998. We welcome him as the first Windows Home Server MVP Oct, 2007.

More details are available from Microsoft’s MVP Site.

Thanks to The Norwich Group for the information.

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By on September 28th, 2007

Windows Home Server Release Documentation

Release_Documentation

Microsoft have just released “Windows Home Server Release Documentation” at their Download Center. The document contains late-breaking information to help with the set up and run your Windows Home Server. It is available in English and German and is divided into three sections. Pre-installation which contains the information you need to know before you install. Installing which contains Setup information and finally post-installation, listing any issues that affect how the product functions. Information may also be included to correct or enhance performance, reliability, or security.

The .doc document is available from the following site.

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By on September 28th, 2007

Dutch Hardware.Info Video on Windows Home Server

For our Dutch readers Hardware.Info TV has some great video on Windows Home Server with guest Hugo Leijtens from Microsoft explaining this new control system in detail. The video is in 3 parts. The first being entitled What is Windows Home Server? Next is a product demonstration and finally there is a look at Intel Helena Island Barebone for Home Server.

View the 3 part Video

English WorldLingo Website Translation

Thanks to Patrick Van Ermengem for the info.

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By on September 27th, 2007

Code2Fame Challenge Winners Announced

The Code2Fame Challenge winners have been announced. The three finalists presented their add-in’s to the panel of judges who included Paul Thurrott, Charlie Kindel and Ed Bott amongst others.

GroupBack row in picture , left to right: tech journalist Paul Thurrott, analyst/industry pundit Rob Enderle, director of product management for Windows Server Solutions Steve VanRoekel, Home Server engineering GM Charlie Kindel, and author and blogger Ed Bott.  Prakash, Andrew and David are pictured in front, left to right.

In third place winning $1000 was Prakash Gautam for Community Feeds for Windows Home Server which pulls RSS feeds to an Xbox or any Windows Media Connect device.

In second place is David Wright for Jungle Disk. An inexpensive online backup and storage add-in for our home server taking home $5000 for his troubles.

And the Winner in first place Ladies and Gentlemen is Developer Andrew Grant for his add-in Whiist. The add-in that allows users to easily host multiple web pages and photo albums on Windows Home Server wins him a cool $10,000.

Andrew_Grant 

As the team said:

“Many thanks to all of our Code2Fame contestants for their great submissions. It was hard to choose the finalists, let alone the winners. One of the coolest things about the contest was the variety of applications….and Windows Home Server isn’t even widely available yet!”

Well done folks, the community of add-in developers gets better and better. All I want now is an add-in that will wake me up at 7.30AM and make me a coffee…umm!  Thanks to the Windows Home Server blog for the info.

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By on September 27th, 2007

Add-In: Community Feeds for Windows Home Server

Community Feeds for WHS allows you to view RSS and other XML based content feeds on the Internet from your Xbox 360 console. The software supports viewing text with images, listening to audio and viewing videos downloaded from the Internet to your home console. Reads news, weather, sports information, gaming sites and enables you to listen to blogcasts and podcasts .

xbox

More Info and Download.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on September 27th, 2007

Add-In: Jungle Disk Online Backup – Powered by Amazon S3

Jungle Disk for Windows Home Server allows you to back up your files stored on your Windows Home Server off-site using the Amazon S3 Storage service from Amazon.com. Your data is backed up to multiple Amazon.com data centers around the country. With Amazon S3 there is no minimum and no maximum amount of data you can store. You pay only for the actual amount of storage you are using, which costs $0.15 per gigabyte per month of storage used, and $0.10/0.18 per gigabyte of data uploaded/downloaded.

You can install Jungle Disk as an “add-in” for the Windows Home Server Console where you can configure online backup with just a few clicks. Once configured, Jungle Disk runs in the background keeping your data protected at all times against loss from fire, flood, theft, or catastrophic machine failures. Jungle Disk protects your shared folders and allows you to keep your most important, irreplaceable files backed up online.

Jungledisk1     Jungledisk2

The software include features such as multi-version historical backups, byte-level delta updates, and easy file restoration. In addition to automatic backup, the PC version of the software offers the ability to access your online storage as a mapped drive directly from your desktop to see what you have backed up to S3.

Protection mechanisms include:

  • Your data is fully encrypted prior to leaving your Home Server machine using AES-256
  • Checksums of your data are verified during the upload process to eliminate the chance of corruption
  • Amazon stores your data on multiple servers across the country to protect against data loss
  • Multiple file versions are stored, allowing you to restore older copies in case of local corruption

The add-in is currently in private internal testing and will be available shortly at a price to be announced, but it should be less than $20.

More information about Jungle Disk for WHS and pricing are available.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on September 27th, 2007

Windows Home Server Glossary

I have updated our WHS Jargon Explained page. There are now 35 Home Server related words and their definitions, so if you get stuck on any abbreviations or not sure what a certain word means then check it out. Oh and by the way, if you can think of any others that may be missing then please let us know?

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By on September 27th, 2007

Find Compatible Hardware for Windows Home Server

If you are doing a DIY build and building your own Windows Home Server then it is a good idea to buy hardware that is compatible with Home Server. The best places to check for this information is the Windows Server Catalog of Tested Products and the Hardware section of the WHS forums. Another place that may be useful, but not specifically targeted at server users is the Windows Vista Hardware Compatibility List and the Windows XP Hardware Compatibility List.

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By on September 26th, 2007

Three documents from Microsoft on WHS

We have three documents from Microsoft for you to flick through. The first is a technical brief available for download entitled WHS Technical Brief – Remote Access which provides an in-depth look at the features and functionality of Windows Home Server Remote Access. Learn about enabling, testing, troubleshooting, and customizing Remote Access. The 22 page document (19 pages in PDF format) is available either as a .docx file which can be loaded in Word 2003, Word 2007 or Word Viewer 2003 or as a PDF file.

Also available is an updated version of the Reviewer’s Guide for Windows Home Server. Now at version 1.0a with 3 pages added, making it a 23 page PDF document which explains the Windows Home server product features.

The updated Reviewer’s Guide has been taken down for some reason. The original 1.0 version is still available from here.

UPDATE: And now even the original version has been taken down, hopefully Microsoft will put up another link soon.

WHS_Reviewer_Guide

Of final note is Troubleshooting Windows Home Server Connector Installation. This 11 page .doc document can help troubleshoot problems if you see “An unknown network error has occurred,” “Configuring computer backup failed,” or some other error during Setup of the Windows Home Server Connector software.

Thanks to Blink.nu for the details on the first document.

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By on September 26th, 2007

Add-In: Recorded TV Manager for Windows Home Server UPDATED

Rick Drasch has updated his Recorded TV Manager Addin for Windows Home Server. The add-in uses a Windows service application on the Home Server to monitor Media Center recorded TV folders and automatically move or copy content throughout your home server network.  This update fixes problems with installation of the addin, improves client/server synchronization somewhat and adds the Activity Viewer which provides a chronological view of AutoCopy activity.

More information, release notes and the downloads are located on Rick’s beta site.

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