DailyTech - Microsoft Prepares Update for Windows Home Server

Submit News

Software Microsoft Prepares Update for Windows Home Server
Brandon Hill (Blog) - November 23, 2007 11:01 AM

17 comment(s) - last by Blight AC.. on Nov 26 at 9:33 AM

HP MediaSmart Home Server (Source: Hewlett-Packard)

Microsoft's latest Windows Home Sever update is scheduled for November 27

Microsoft's Windows Home Server officially launched earlier this month, but the company is already preparing a new update for the platform. Microsoft says that the new update is "part of the ongoing process of continually enhancing the customer experience with Windows Home Server."

The update includes a few feature additions for Windows Home Server. Currently, users who login to their server when away from their home network -- through an external URL like https://yourname.homeserver.com -- are greeted with a security warning. The November 27 update will now provide users with a trusted SSL certificate for their Windows Home Severs. The SSL certification was provided with the help of Windows Live Domains and GoDaddy.

According to The Windows Blog, the certificate error will still rear its ugly head when using an internal URL. "You will receive a certificate warning from the browser. This warning will indicate that the name on the certificate does not match the name of the site that you are trying to access," The Windows Blog reported.

Other new features included with the update include a "Delete All" button to remove home computer backups. Microsoft has also taken steps to make the Shared Folders and Server Storage aspects of Windows Home Server more robust and user friendly.

Windows Home Server systems are currently shipping from Hewlett-Packard (priced at $599 and $749 respectively for 500GB and 1TB models), while solutions from Iomega and Fujitsu-Siemens are on the way.

Users may also purchase an OEM copy of the Windows Home Server software to install on any competent old machine that have laying around collecting dust.

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

WHS is great

By GreenEnvt on 11/23/2007 11:49:57 AM , Rating: 5

I've been using it for close to a month now, and I must say I like it a lot.
Backups work well, though I haven't had to try restoring anything yet.
I have Webguide installed on it, which means I can stream my videos, pictures and music to any pc, including my pda which is nice when in an airport.
I also have it setup as my CallID server for my MCE box, and use it for general storage of all my large stuff. It's got 1.25 terrabytes in it right now, about half full.

RE: WHS is great

By movieman03 on 11/23/2007 1:12:21 PM , Rating: 2

Does WHS come with Windows Media Center?

Parent

RE: WHS is great

By oTAL on 11/23/2007 2:05:27 PM , Rating: 3

It doesn't, although I believe there is some overlap in both products which will eventually make the current windows media center disappear and somewhat merge into WHS.

Maybe MS will start providing something more similar to a Windows Media Extender OS/PC, with no local storage, which accesses remote media on any PC, including a WHS. Just a simples, no hassle, DVR software with a lot of flexibility.

Parent

RE: WHS is great

By ToeCutter on 11/23/2007 3:28:07 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
Does WHS come with Windows Media Center?

It doesn't "come with" Windows Media Center, but it will stream media to any PC running Windows Media Player 11. I use SMB shares to stream to my Mac without issue.

I beta tested WHS last summer and it is pretty slick. The media sharing is pretty easy to setup and the new storage component makes protecting your media library stupid simple.

I has pretty low hardware requirements, so an older PC makes a great candidate for WHS. Just load it up with hard drives, let WHS configure the storage pool and you're all set. If a drive fails, simply mark it for removal, wait a bit for WHS to do its thing, remove and replace it with a different drive.

There are plenty of other products that offer similar functionality, but WHS is ridiculously easy to use.

Parent

RE: WHS is great

By Blight AC on 11/26/2007 9:33:40 AM , Rating: 2

Agreed. It will not only stream to any PC, but also to any Media Extender device, like an Xbox 360.

Parent

RE: WHS is great

By jmke on 11/26/2007 9:19:25 AM , Rating: 2

first thing you do when you use a new backup system, make sure you can restore! otherwise you might be stuck with a safe sense of security, when the time comes that your system does stop working, that you can't restore it because you never tested the restore function and it didn't really work:p

Parent

The issues involved

By crystal clear on 11/23/2007 11:55:07 AM , Rating: 1

Some more detailed information-

Home computer backup technologies
Issue 1
A Delete All command button has been added to the Backup tab on the Windows Home Server Console Settings page. You can use this command to permanently delete all home computer backups that are stored on the home server. The Delete All command can be useful in the following cases:• A hard disk fails on the home server.
• The backup database must be reset because of consistency errors or because of other unforeseen circumstances.

Issue 2
Files on the computer may not be successfully backed up if the latest successful backup is marked as "deletion."

Shared folders and server storage
Issue 1
Data files that contain NTFS alternate data streams may be corrupted on a Windows Home Server computer. For more information, click the following article number943393 to view the article943393 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
943393 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943393/) Data files that contain NTFS alternate data streams can be corrupted on a Windows Home Server-based computer
Issue 2
You may receive an inconsistent notification when a hard disk that is installed in or connected to a Windows Home Server computer fails. This problem is resolved after you apply this update package.
Issue 3
Windows Home Server Drive Extender may not update read-only attributes from the master shadow to the alternate shadow. Therefore, Microsoft Money backup files may not be successfully stored in Windows Home Server shared folders. This problem is resolved after you apply this update package.

For more information about Windows Home Server Drive Extender, download the "Technical Brief for Windows Home Server Drive Extender" document. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/C/2FC09... (http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/f/c/2fc09...

RE: The issues involved

By anotherdude on 11/23/2007 5:55:19 PM , Rating: 2

When I last checked you could not connect a 64 bit windows machine to WHS. When are they going to offer that?

Parent

RE: The issues involved

By TomZ on 11/23/2007 10:15:46 PM , Rating: 2

I read somewhere that Microsoft is working on that and will have it out soon.

Parent

RE: The issues involved

By crystal clear on 11/24/2007 3:30:14 AM , Rating: 2

You read this link-

You can find the OEM version of Windows Home Server for about $200, which is quite reasonable.
(Note that while the current version of WHS installs and runs on 32-bit hardware, the next major release will almost certainly be 64-bit only.)

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs.asp

Parent

RE: The issues involved

By TomZ on 11/24/2007 10:00:04 PM , Rating: 2

No, that's different - the question is whether MS is coming out with client software for 64-bit Windows. There is software for WHS that loads on each client machine - it's currently available for 32-bit Windows only.

Parent

RE: The issues involved

By crystal clear on 11/24/2007 4:44:07 AM , Rating: 2

Somebody asked this question here-

Does WHS come with Windows Media Center?

I cannot quote any M.S.ink but from what I know -

expect such functionality in future updates or SP1 (2 H 2008)

A friend of mine(Israeli) is experimenting on this plus use of virtualization software on the Windows Home Server software.

R&D in Israel is really awesome- one example for you.

November 21, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Windows XP, Microsoft Corp.'s most popular operating system, sports the same encryption flaws that Israeli researchers recently disclosed in Windows 2000, Microsoft officials confirmed late Tuesday.

The researchers, Benny Pinkas from the University of Haifa and two Hebrew University graduate students, Zvi Gutterman and Leo Dorrendorf, reverse-engineered the algorithm used by Windows 2000's pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), then used that knowledge to pick apart the operating system's encryption. Attackers could exploit a weakness in the PRNG, said Pinkas and his colleagues, to predict encryption keys that would be created in the future as well as reveal the keys that had been generated in the past.

As recently as last Friday, Microsoft hedged in answering questions about whether XP and Vista could be attacked in the same way, saying only that later versions of Windows "contain various changes and enhancements to the random number generator." Yesterday, however, Microsoft responded to further questions and acknowledged that Windows XP is vulnerable to the complex attack that Pinkas, Gutterman and Dorrendorf laid out in their paper, which was published earlier this month.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com...

Parent

FORGET THIS!

By JonnyDough on 11/23/07, Rating: 0

RE: FORGET THIS!

By djc208 on 11/23/2007 5:04:57 PM , Rating: 2

Business is considering moving back to thin clients or web clients, and I can see applications for this, but not the kind you're talking about. Gaming is still too resource intensive. Even if most don't support multiple cores right now they can't share the graphics card and provide any real quality. Plus the wireless transmission of live video is fairly difficult.

Now I think you'll start to see more extender-type products that will interface with a setup like WHS. Digital picture frames that will interface over wifi with your WHS to display your entire picture library. Or plugins that allow the new Zune or an iPhone to sync with a WHS to update it's content. A simple PDA like device that uses the WHS for it's processing power and is just a wireless display for low res things like web pages, documents, pictures, etc.

I plan on building my WHS setup in the next few months. I'm going to move my SageTV setup and tuners onto the WHS system so I can have a large system with plenty of storage and tuner cards hidden away in a closet and use one of their media extenders (SD or the upcoming HD) or client software to playback any of my media to any tv or computer in the house with only an ethernet or wireless connection. Or I can use their placeshifter software to watch from any computer with an internet connection. Plus all the benefits of WHS (backup, data protection, combined storage, etc.)

Parent

RE: FORGET THIS!

By imaheadcase on 11/23/2007 9:44:02 PM , Rating: 2

You would be the minority. Most people's homes just want to retrieve data they put on hard drives, %90 of that is just photos/music/movies.

Parent

Where are the 64 bit components?

By TheBeagle on 11/24/2007 5:54:09 AM , Rating: 2

Although I have had reasonably good experiences with WHS so far, I'm locked out of being able to install the console client software since I use Vista 64. Microsoft has been coaxing us to adopt 64 bit software for quite a while, and now when I make that leap, I'm boxed out from being able to access the WHS through my Vista 64 PC. Does anyone know if M$ is going to be releasing at least a 64 bit version of the console app so I can load it and access the server?