Episode 197 of "The Home Server Show" podcast is up, and in this weeks offering:
“This week is all about Storage Spaces. We have Mike Faucher from the BYOB Podcast and we are literally drilling him with questions. Install, Speed, etc. I hope we covered it all! This, the meetup, and some news.”
You can find episode 197 here.
ArsTechnica gives us a hands-on with Windows Server 2012 Essentials.
The comprehensive 3 page post takes a look at the Dashboard, and takes us through the process of adding clients. Email options are also taken a look at as well as Anywhere Access. Its a big read, which you can find here.
CrashPlan is offering either a free year of unlimited backup for one computer which normally costs $50 or for up to 10 computers for approx. 60% off ($50 for the year instead of $120).
Valid for new customers in the US only this offer is intended for those switching from Carbonite however the promotion only checks your email address so should be fine for all users.
Division-M the company behind Drive Bender give us some ramblings on Windows 8 RTM software RAID in the form of Storage Spaces.
“…our testing shows that Drive Bender is still king when it comes to performance.”
You can read their ramblings here.
The Home Server Show 2nd annual Meetup has been set for October 20th.
The event is set to take part in Indianapolis, IN on Saturday, October 20, 2012 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (PDT). An online option will also be available so make sure to get registered for this free event now.
The Doc’s World has done some more testing on Server 2012 Storage Spaces and this time using the final RTM version and the results are in.
The (PC) Doc tells us about the issues he faced when his Storage Space was not displaying in file manager and gives us a run through on setting up Storage Spaces and of course the results of his testing:
The read speeds are on par with a hardware solution but the write speeds are no where close. Even if you throw out the benchmarks, the file copy performance is undisputable and painfully slow. You can argue that it is easy and does not require any hardware, and I would argue that in my experience with this and the prior versions, it is less stable and considerably slower. Considering the market this is attacking, this would definitely be a bad choice for any serious application.
You can read the full story here.
Microsoft have an online Domain Configuration Wizard guide which will help you prepare your Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials or Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials machine.
The guide includes guidance about the options for obtaining the domain and certificate, and about the manual steps you must take before you run the Domain Configuration Wizard.
You can find the wizard here.
With StableBit releasing new BETAs for both StableBit DrivePool (1.2.0.6864) and StableBit Scanner (2.2.0.2706 – for Windows Home Server 2011), the guys have a blog post which looks at some of the new integration features between both products as well as the 3rd party balancing plug-in support available in DrivePool.
Its a comprehensive read which you can find here.
The beta build of StableBit DrivePool has been updated for WHS 2011 users and now includes Scanner integration and 3rd party balancer support.
Version 1.2.0.6864 BETA of this disk pooling add-in with file duplication can be downloaded from here.
The beta build of StableBit Scanner has been updated for WHS 2011 users and now includes WMI integration features.
Version 2.2.0.2706 BETA of this advanced hard disk surface scanner and monitor add-in can be downloaded from here.
