I've been a Windows Home Server (whs) user since they announced the beta back early 2007 and it's helpful and saved my ass a couple times. For those that don't know WHS is PC that sits on your network and runs a special version of Windows that can backup and restore up to 10 PCs or Macs* over the network. It also is a file/print server, can be configured for remote access to the server and to all of your PCs. It also has the option for 3rd parties to crate add-ins to enhance the functionality of the WHS.

Well today MS released a public preview of the next version of WHS codenamed Vail and it looks pretty slick! It's built off of Server 2008 R2 (first version based off of Server 2003 SBS) it has all of the media streaming capabilities of Windows 7 such as DLNA streaming and play to capability. It also has remote playback capability in the web browser using Silverlight it can transcode your videos in real time and adjust for bandwidth! It features better backup capabilities and you can now backup the server OS as well. This next version is going to be great for small businesses that don't run on a domain and for home users.
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Anyone else use WHS?

You can try out the beta here

http://connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver

I'll try to get it up and running on my Hyper-V box and give some impressions but it's lookin pretty good!

*mac support available only on the HP MediaSmart WHS but that's by far the most popular one

 

Hmmmm. I've been looking for something to do with my about-to-be decommissioned XP box. A 3.2G P4 still has to be good for something.

 

that would run WHS fine. How much RAM does it have? IDK how great it would be at transcoding video on the fly but it should be fine for everything else.

 

Sweet, i really want to build something like that. Ill probably have all sorts of trouble getting every thing to work right but ill give it a shot. ~

 

It's pretty easy, since it runs off Windows it will work on pretty much anything. If you use the new version it should be able to use any Windows 7 drivers or Vista drivers and work. the older version uses server 2003 so drivers can be harder to find for it.

You can use WHS as the hub for all your media in the house. That way you can stream it to any device in the house and now the with new version you can stream beyond your home to anywhere in the world. WHS is like a NAS or Apple Time Capsule on steroids but the cool thing is that it costs about the same.

 

I heard the beta was found at a bar.

 

fixed

all part of bill's flawless plan

 

I think it has 4GB.

 

that's more than plenty. If your p4 is socket 775 you may want to upgrade to Core 2 or something. Is it a custom built machine?

 

What are the system reqs. for whs?

 

It's an early model - socket 423 (Asus P4T motherboard). All of my personal computers are custom built. I like them better that way.

 

low. Idk what the new one will be but my original WHS system was an AMD single core sempron processor and 512mb RAM. Dual core and 1gb would be better. This new system will probably need 2GB.

A cool feature of WHS is that it doesn't make duplicate copies of the same file. What that means is if I have two w7 machines that WHS backing up most of the system files are going to be identical so it saves space and only copies the file once and that file can be used to restore either machine. now if there's a slight difference between the same file on different systems then yes it will make two copies.

 

oh, well I guess that's as good as it's going to get but that should be fine for WHS.

 

I would think so. I might have to look inside again. I think the disks are mostly PATA and puny by today's standards so I might have to change out some hardware anyway.

 

Cool I have a single core Athlon system in the closet with 2 gb of mem that should do it.

 

and a big hard drive

 

IIRC my old machine has 4 x 400GB in a 1+0 array. That'll get me started. I think I'll just leave the hardware as is.

 

It's got a 160 and a pair of 320's in raid.

 

odd, why is it showing the wrong program dates (I assume for the hs v1)

*edit* eh, just realized the 2nd one isn't a end date.

Anywho I have been thinking of changing over to whs on my home file server to take advantage of some of the windows specific features.

 

don't run them in a RAID array. WHS doesn't work well with RAID and RAID isn't necessary since WHS has it's own redundancies built in.

here's an article discussing WHS and RAID

http://www.fearthecowboy.com/post/Wi...r-vs-RAID.aspx

 

there's even less of a case for RAID in the new version of WHS since it you can backup the OS drive now.

 

Understood. I am going to delete the array to install WHS.

 

from what I've read if you use any RAID then it's ok to use RAID 1 on the system drive but don't use RAID on the drives that will hold your PCs backup data.

 

FYI, when you get this up in running it's best to do the first full backup over a wired connection since you'll be backing up hundreds of GBs of files but wireless should be fine after that. Also use gigabit if you got it, if you don't then you might want it, it makes backups go a lot faster.

 

Looks much better than the first version. May have to give this one a shot.

 

Well I got my WHS running last night (along with upgrading my wife's laptop to Win7).

My old machine worked pretty well for it -- I had forgotten it's content to some degree. Right now it's got 2 700GB drives in it. There are 4 x 1.5TB on the way plus a controller and a drive cage with fan to house them. I'll still have room for five more drives in there if I ever need to add them.

I don't think it meets the min specs for the new version in the processor department but for what I need that's OK.

 

I was hoping when I got my MSDNAA account WHS would be there. I was extremely disappointed.

 

Tonight I received a nice little Lian Li case accessory that let me mount my 4 1.5TB drives in 3 of the 5.25" external slots with a cooling fan in front of them. I pulled the video card and the DVD drive, so it's running completely headless.

Idle power consumption is about 120 watts.

 

^you went with the OG version of WHS. Did upgrade to PP3 yet?

 

I've talked my boss into letting me put WHS Vail beta on our VMWare server to test out, I think it's going to be a great option for our smaller clients that don't have a domain. I was hoping to do that today but didn't have time, hopefully next week.

 

Yes. It's completely up to date.

My old hardware won't support the new version. At some point I'll probably put one of those together just to serve up media if this one doesn't cut the mustard for that, but I'll probably build a HTPC first.

It's a shit-ton faster and more versatile than my ReadyNAS, that's for sure.

 

It should be fine for media it supports Windows Media Connect so it can stream to a PS3 or 360 and it does Library integration in Windows 7 along with SMB file sharing and if you really want to you could enable afp support for old macs. It just doesn't do transcoding, though since it runs windows you can install any app on there if you want like PS3 media server, Ken loves that app.

WHS > NAS

 

Yeah, I really don't need the transcoding. I think it's going to work out fine.

I love having all the PCs in the house backed up automatically. Much better than the USB disk drive I was using occasionally.

I've got half a mind to move the rest of the stuff off my NAS and put its disks in the WHS once it proves its reliability.

 

I've never had it crash. It's based off of Server 2003 R2 which is pretty damn reliable.

Did you know that you can go back and look at files from a previous backup? Select a computer and click view backups and it will then mount the selected backup as a mapped network drive!

 

Yes. It's cool as hell.

 

In my house PS3 streaming has been totally replaced by WDTV Live media players for the $129 there's no need to worry about transcoding, the 2 I have running have been nothing short of fantastic.

 

I don't really like streaming to the PS3 cause it gets so hot, it's overkill. But I'd like a TV that had streaming functionality built-in now that MS announced the availability of Windows 7 Embedded edition that enables embedded devices to run W7 Media Center TVs should be getting good.

Dougler you might like to know that the WDTV now supports Windows 7 play to feature

http://community.winsupersite.com/bl...windows-7.aspx

 

looks like a sweet feature, but sadly my server hardware is relegated to XP compatibility, vista was a stretch for the graphics card, and 7 just plain doesn't support it. It's got to be 6 or 7 years old now, so at this point sinking money into it does reap much reward when I can let the WDTV do all the work, still serve's up files great. Come to think of it, I don't think I've turned on my PS3 since I got the WDTV.

 

Thank you so much for posting this thread, I just tried to stream mp3's and HD content from a wireless PC on the network to my PS3 (wireless again) and it's having bandwidth issues. This will certainly fix the problem. I was just thinking of setting up a PC just for streaming with a hard line to the router anyway. I've got a terabyte drive that this will work perfect for!

 

actually the wirelss in the PS3 sucks for streaming! Even from a WHS, trust me I know! The only way to stream any quality movie to a PS3 is to wire it with ethernet, preferably gigabit if your got it. Connecting my PS3 via gigabit fixed my streaming problems.