Windows Home Server (beta)

So, Windows Home Server Build 06.00.1371 has officially been signed off and is publicly available... which means we are allowed to talk about it, show it and everything else...

This is good news :-) The WHS Beta is something that I signed up for on the spur of the moment, kind of excited but also unsure how much I'd like the product itself. I expected some kind of scaled-up & more polished version of Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Boy was I wrong! So what is it if not a scaled version of XP MCE? To start with, it's built on Windows Server 2003 - yes, the same server OS that runs the worlds servers in all their various flavours, whether standard, enterprise, web, etc etc. So that was the first surprise.

In fact, for the most part that surprise was a pleasant one.. except for one little thing. I was planning to use a spare PC to trial WHS. In fact, while signing up for the beta program I remember the questionnaire mentioning something about having a spare old PC lying around. Check. Except that since the core OS is WinSvr2k3, it expects server hardware. Which my spare PC was NOT. It's a reasonable P4 1.7 with 1Gb of memory, but it's not server class hardware. Most of this stuff doesn't create a problem, since the board & chipset are pretty standard and installed fine. However, the audio & video are a different story. Now as it turns out I don't need audio OR video capability, but it bugs me to have yellow exclamations in my device manager. It just does.

That apart, the fact that Microsoft have chosen to build this "home" product on the same tested & stable core that powers their most mission-critical servers and applications around the world is a really nice thing.

OK so apart from the warnings about the hardware, this was probably among the easiest OS installs I've ever done (installing Vista on my new PC set the speed standard). Hardly any choices, and when it's done you're told to shut down, disconnect and never log into the console again. My kind of server :-). No, really that's what it says! Apparently many of the native Server 2003 tools will break WHS, so one is advised to steer clear. I did. At first. And then I messed around, and I have not yet managed to break it - this is a first, since most things normally break even when I'm trying to NOT break them :-)

Ok so basically you install the OS, turn it off, disconnect keyboard mouse + monitor, just plug it into power & ethernet under the stairs or something and let it live there quietly. You only need to touch it to perform hardware changes (like adding lots of big fat drives :-)).

From there on, you'll drive WHS via the WHS console, which you can install onto a PC from the Connector disc. The Connector disc is installed on each of your home PCs, so that they can access the WHS unit "the way it's meant to be seen". I have some comments on this methodology which I will reserve for a later post.

Basically at that stage, fire up the console, set a few options on how much space to allocate to what, set up a user or two and decide backup options.

Huh? What was that? Yes, backup. Another nice touch. By default, WHS will want to take nightly backups of each of your home PCs. I like! I didn't turn this feature on of course, since my main PC has 400Gb of storage, whereas my beta WHS box has 120. So maybe next time, eh?
It also comes with a home computer restore CD (which I am yet to try), which hopefully does what it says on the tin.

So the 2 other things that got me fired up about WHS?? First, getting rid of nasty partitioning, volumes, file system choices etc. WHS is a bit dictatorial but I agree with the rationale and choices, so I don't mind at all. I think this is a very significant step. So when the Joneses need more space, they pop out to PC World, buy a 1600 terabyte ;-) drive, just plug in a drive and don't worry about partitioning it, formatting it, choosing a filesystem etc etc.
Allocate storage to your media and that should about cover it...

The final one may well be the killer app for WHS. Naturally you expect to be able to access your movies, music and pictures from all your home PCs and media extenders etc. But what's really cool here is the ability to access all your media over the internet from anywhere in the world free of charge, permanently.

Various painful jargon-ish marketing-speak cliches start here about the "endless possibilities" "imagine what you could do" "where do you want to .." etc etc, but the fact is that it's very very cool. Giving the average user this level of access to their media (in both directions - to view or save content from the office / hotel / holiday / whatever) is pretty nice. Except of course the fact that this will then mean that apart from credit cards used in TK Maxx, everyone's personal documents, family photos, dodgy home movies & the world's private music collections will be available from your friendly neighbourhood call centre ;-) Actually forget the bit about the music, since that's already available :-)

Granted that early WHS adopters aren't exactly likely to be "average" users, but given the right price point, the right hardware / software and sufficient UAT to make it truly idiot-proof, a WHS box under the stairs could well become as ubiquitous as a PC and broadband connection...