By on July 20th, 2012

The Home Server Show 190 – Storage Spaces and Domain vs. Workgroup

home_server_show_small

Episode 190 of The Home Server Show podcast is available and this week the guys are breaking down domain vs. workgroup and Storage Spaces in the new beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

“It’s another Windows Home Server post-mortem but there are no tears; only celebration. Well, maybe not that happy but we are looking more in depth at Windows Server 2012 Essentials. The more it’s torn apart the more comfortable it gets. We talk about domains, workgroups, Storage Spaces, RAID, SSD, and TechNet. The one question we have however, is this a product for the home or not? Listen in and find out.”

You can find the audio here or view the video below:

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By on July 19th, 2012

Video: Domain Complexity can be Entirely Hidden in WS2012e

WS2012e Domain With Administrators PC In Workgroup Mode

Tinkertry has another great video on Windows Server 2012 Beta Essentials, this time explaining that it works fine with PCs in the domain or in a workgroup.

Domain complexity can be entirely hidden from the average PC user whose system is being backed up with Windows Server 2012 Beta Essentials as is demonstrated in this 27 minute video:

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By on July 19th, 2012

Add-In: Lights-Out for WS2012e v1.5.2.1755 Beta

Martin Rothschink has released a beta build of his add-in Lights-Out with full Windows Server 2012 Essentials Support.

Lights-Out for WS2012e v1.5.2.1755 Beta - Status tab

Lights-Out is a power management add-in that allows you to place your server into suspended mode or hibernation and resume on user defined events.

Lights-Out for WS2012e v1.5.2.1755 Beta - Computers tab

Lights-Out for WS2012e v1.5.2.1755 Beta - Uptime chart

Lights-Out (non beta) will officially support Windows Server 2012 Essentials with one of the next updates but in the meantime you can download this beta release from here.

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By on July 19th, 2012

Windows 8 General Availability October 26th 2012

Steven Sinofsky announced at Microsoft’s annual sales meeting that customers will be able to get Windows 8 on October 26th, 2012 either on  a new PC or as an upgrade.

Windows 8 GA Save the Date

Earlier this month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Tami Reller told attendees Windows 8 would be available in October and now we have a specific date which naturally also applies to Windows Server 2012 but we will have to wait a little longer after that date for WS2012e as was the case with Windows 7 and SBS 2011 Essentials.

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By on July 18th, 2012

Video: Are Your Green Drives Killing Your NAS?

Revision3’s TEKZiLLA twice weekly tech show have a segment entitled “Are your Green Drives Killing Your NAS?”

In this 10 minute segment PCPer.com’s Allyn Malventano talks about Western Digital’s new Red NAS Drives with their Time Limited Error Recovery – TLER (normally only available in enterprise RAID edition drives) and automatic dynamic balancing. Allyn also talks about the Scrubbing your RAID feature and if you should replace your the Green drives in your home server right now.

In conclusion:

  • If you are in the market right now for new hard drives buy the WD Red’s
  • If you currently have WD Green, Black or any other hard drives just replace them as they go dead with the WD Red drives

TEKZiLLA - Are Your Green Drives Killing Your NAS

You can listen to this segment here. (08:43 in)

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By on July 18th, 2012

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Feature List

Joe Nalewabau from the Windows Server Essentials Team has written a feature list for Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Beta DashBoard Home Tab

Joe has listed lots of features, including:

  • Storage Spaces
  • File History
  • Microsoft Online Backup Service
  • Support for backing up 50 client machines
  • > 2 TB disk support
  • Remote Web Access (RWA)
  • Windows 8 Metro application.
  • Updated Windows Phone 7 application
  • Remote Connection Monitoring
  • Remote domain join
  • Simplified VPN configuration
  • Improved SDK extensibility with Web Services
  • Simplified moving past 25 users/50 devices
  • Media support
  • Dashboard Updates – Making the Home Page more useful
  • Dashboard Updates – Monitor security and update status for client PCs
  • Dashboard Updates – Servers in the dashboard
  • Add-ins
  • Email Integration – On-Premises
  • Email Integration – Office 365
  • Email Integration – Hosted Exchange

For all the detailed information regarding these features, see Joe’s post here.

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By on July 18th, 2012

Add-In: StableBit DrivePool v1.0.2.6324 BETA

Stablebit_drivepool_M4_logo

StableBit DrivePool version 1.0.2.6324 BETA is available with finalized translations plus an installer update.

StableBit DrivePool is the Drive Extender type add-in for WHS 2011 users that allows you to both pool multiple hard drives into one big virtual drive and to easily add or remove drives at any time whilst providing file protection in duplicated folders.

Here’s the change log for this latest beta release:

  • Finalized translations.
  • Updated UI controls to latest.
  • Updated installer for compatibility with the next Scanner release.

More information on this beta release is available from the DrivePool Development BETA Wiki.

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By on July 18th, 2012

MultiPoint Server 2012 Beta Available

Totally unrelated to both WHS and WS2012e, but for those of you who like tinkering with new products Microsoft’s Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 Beta went live yesterday.

MultiPoint Server is designed for schools and allows a single computer to support multiple users at the same time, each working independently using their own monitor, keyboard and mouse.

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MultiPoint Server 2012 provides a new MultiPoint dashboard, hands-off recovery with disk protection, a Windows 8 desktop experience, allow you to monitor Windows 8 (and 7) clients and also allows virtualized Windows 7 or 8 Desktops.

More details are available from the Windows MultiPoint Server Team Blog.

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By on July 17th, 2012

HP Windows Server 2012 Essentials Webcast

HP have a webcast on Windows Server 2012 Essentials this Wednesday July 18th at 8:00PM PT.

Topics covered will be the features and benefits of Windows Server 2012 Essentials , customer scenarios, the HP Product portfolio and their transition plans, plus a 20 minute Q&A session.

More details are in this demo video:

Here is the information for the meeting:

https://join.microsoft.com/meet/v-jatake/WY9LK1DN

Join by Phone

+14257063500
+18883203585

Find a local number

Conference ID: 25291428

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By on July 17th, 2012

Video: WS2012E Backup and Bare-Metal Restore Demo

A great 20 minute video on the installation of the connector software and a demonstration of both backup and bare-metal restore in Windows Server 2012 Beta Essentials (WS2012E):

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