By on October 12th, 2012

Drive Bender – First 100 Licences $10

Drive Bender are having beers at the DB HQ – Its a Friday Bender.

Deal-of-the-Week

The guys have 100 licences up for grabs at $10 a go, but hurry because once all 100 licences have gone normal pricing resumes.

Drive Bender for Windows is state of the art, single point storage pool technology for all versions of Microsoft Windows. From Windows XP through to the new Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. There is even a Windows Home Server 2011 specific version that is shipped with a native WHS dashboard addin.

Drive Bender presents multiple hard drives as a single pool of data storage, either as one or more drive letters, or a network shared drive. Drive Bender is able to do this with any drive recognized by Windows, including external drive such as USB, Firewire etc.​

More details on Drive Bender are available from here.

Deal of the Week • Windows Home Server
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By on October 12th, 2012

Installing WS2012 Essentials on the HP MediaSmart Server

There’s a great tutorial on WeGotServed  for owners of the HP MediaSmart Server who want to upgrade it to WS 2012 Essentials.

MediaSmart Server

We are shown how to make up a VGA cable so we can access the bios on the MediaSmart Server, and then taken through the process of installing WS 2012 Essentials onto the box:

Overall my whole journey from Windows Home Server v1 to Windows Server 2012 Essentials with the HP EX470 has been joyful. Now don’t get me wrong, it has been emotional – having to quickly learn how to make the infamous VGA cable, hurting my fingers during the assembly and spending a good while trying to figure out why the EX470 wouldn’t boot from the USB thumb drive. But the end results are incredible. Let me say that with 2GB RAM and a dual core CPU, Windows Server 2012 Essentials runs beautifully.

You can find this tutorial for HP MediaSmart owners here.

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By on October 11th, 2012

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 201

home_server_show_small

Its time for another episode of "The Home Server Show" podcast, and this week its episode 201:

“Windows Server 2012 Essentials is back on our minds.  We have the SBSDiva here to tell us everything going on in the world of Essentials.  Should you run Hyper-V on it?  Is it a replacement for Windows Home Server?  Who is running it?  Enough questions, go listen to a great show!”

You can find the audio using this link or watch the video below:

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By on October 11th, 2012

WD RE RAID Hard Drive Review

PC Perspective have a review of the WD RE RAID hard drive.

With the 4TB SATA enterprise drive in hand PC Perspective do lots of testing as well as comparing it to the WD Red HDD.

WD RE and Red HDDs

A great review which you can find here.

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By on October 11th, 2012

A Look at WS2012e

Redmond Channel Partner online take a look at WS2012 Essentials.

redmond-channel-partner_logo

In the article they look at its ease of use, scalability and upgradability and take a look at its new and improved feature set.

You can read the article here.

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By on October 10th, 2012

The Major Features and Capabilities of WS2012 Essentials

Paul Thurrott steps backup from his regular series of articles on WS 2012 Essentials and explains its major features and capabilities.

Paul explains its super-simple domain set up and Dashboard management console, Centralized PC (and server) backup, Storage Spaces, Media Sharing, Remote Access and online services integration.

storage-pool

A great overall read on Windows Server 2012 Essentials, which you can read here.

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By on October 09th, 2012

Windows Server 2012 Essentials RTMs

Its here, Windows Server 2012 Essentials has been released to manufacturing with copies available for you to try today.

Microsoft had the following to say in a earlier released statement:

Today I am pleased to tell you that Windows Server 2012 Essentials has reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) milestone. We are delivering the product to our hardware and ecosystem partners, and it will be generally available in all channels on November 1, with OEM partners shipping server systems by the end of the year.

Let me share some quick product highlights with you:

  • Enable a dynamic, modern work style with access from your devices by using Remote Web Access (RWA), and take advantage of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices for a superior experience with rich modern “My Server” apps.
  • Enjoy peace of mind knowing that your data is well-protected by complementing your on-site backups with Windows Azure Online Backup, as well as utilizing integrated support for the new Windows 8 File History feature.
  • Choose the email and collaboration option that’s right for you, whether that’s in the cloud with Office 365 or a hosted service provider, or running on a local server.
  • Quickly and easily respond to increasing data capacity needs with support for Storage Spaces, which allows you to create elastic, resilient storage for your files and folders.
  • Run the line-of-business applications that you depend on by leveraging our greatly improved application compatibility, now with a single logo certification for all Windows Server 2012 editions.
  • Purchase with confidence knowing that your technology investment can easily grow to Windows Server 2012 Standard if the needs of your business grow.
  • Deploy today with full support for 19 languages, all releasing simultaneously.

Download WS2012 Essentials Evaluation
A 180-day trial version is available right now for you to download whilst subscribers to both MSDN and TechNet can get full versions with retail keys from the relevant site.

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By on October 08th, 2012

Connecting WS2012 Essentials to a Home Version of Windows 7 or 8

How do you connect WS2012 Essentials to a home version of Windows 7 or 8?

Very easily is the answer, but if you are not quite sure when Paul Thurrott in his continuing series on WS20122 Essentials takes you through the steps.

home-connect-05

You can read Paul’s latest instalment on WS2012 Essentials here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on October 07th, 2012

Home Server Show Meetup 20th Oct in IL USA

Don’t forget The Home Server Show are holding their 2nd annual meetup in Indiana in the US on the 20th of this month.

indianapolis

Here’s the schedule (Eastern Time):

  • 10 to 11 Meet and Greet (coffee time for Dave) – Additional setup time if needed.
  • 11 to Noon Physical Gear Demo. Icy Dock, Synology, Drobo, ioSafe, Microserver, Pogo, Tonido, etc. – Essentials 2012 Demo, Windows Phone 7 Demo, Windows 8 Demo.
  • Noon 1 Lunch
  • 1 to 2 Demos
  • 2 to 3 Demos and Present your own gear. *
  • 3 to 4 Google Hangout. Everyone in attendance on the hangout. This is our Live portion for those that cannot join. Smaller gear show/demo for live audience and YouTube video
  • 4 to ? Walking over to Frys

More information on this event can be found here.

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By on October 07th, 2012

CloudBerry Backup for WS2012 Essentials Released

CloudBerry have announced that CloudBerry Backup now supports WS 2012 Essentials, automating data backup directly to Amazon S3, Windows Azure and Amazon Glacier.

CloudBerry Backup for WS2012e - Welcome Tab

CloudBerry Backup for WS2012e - Backup Storage Tab

More details on CloudBerry Backup for Windows Server 2012 Essentials is available from here.

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