L
Lang Murphy
I've been playing around with Windows Home Server (WHS) for the past couple
of weeks. (There -is- a tie-in to Vista coming... just be patient...) I'm
pretty impressed.
What impresses me most is the relative simplicity of setting up a home
server that:
The last feature is where we come to the tie-in to Vista. And that feature
isn't just for road warriors, imho. Visiting Grandma and want to show her
the latest photos of the grandkids? Oops, forgot to copy them over to the
shared folders on the server? Need to access one of your home PC's directly
to get to your Pictures folder? Gee, I hope you have either Vista Business,
Enterprise, or Ultimate installed on that PC because any Home flavor of
Vista does not support Remote Desktop hosting. Meaning... can't get there
from here.
Many folks might read this and say "Big Whoop! I don't need that anyway."
Which in many cases will be true. Point being, if you're interested in
having a home server and interested in the ability to access your PC's via
the web, then you might give a second thought to which flavor of Vista you
buy. Are there server OS's out there right now that offer this capability
and more? Yes! Are there any server OS's out there -anywhere- near as easy
to install and configure as WHS? My guess would be no. The point is, again,
if you think you might be interested in having a home server to backup PC's
and provide file sharing and do it all in the simplest fashion possible, and
also access your server and PC's remotely, specifically the latter, then
consider with aforethought which flavor of Vista you buy for your client
PC's at home.
Hope everyone has a great July 4th!
Lang
of weeks. (There -is- a tie-in to Vista coming... just be patient...) I'm
pretty impressed.
What impresses me most is the relative simplicity of setting up a home
server that:
Automatically backs up, daily, all client PC's that have the WHS connector
software installed.
Lets one add diverse drive types to the "storage pool" without having to
have a degree in hw configuration.
Provides a quasi-RAID 1 feature that duplicates shared files if the server
has more than one hd.
Automatically creates a "Shared Folders on the Server" link on the desktop
for PC's with the WHS connector software installed.
Allows one remote access to shared folders and PC's via https.
The last feature is where we come to the tie-in to Vista. And that feature
isn't just for road warriors, imho. Visiting Grandma and want to show her
the latest photos of the grandkids? Oops, forgot to copy them over to the
shared folders on the server? Need to access one of your home PC's directly
to get to your Pictures folder? Gee, I hope you have either Vista Business,
Enterprise, or Ultimate installed on that PC because any Home flavor of
Vista does not support Remote Desktop hosting. Meaning... can't get there
from here.
Many folks might read this and say "Big Whoop! I don't need that anyway."
Which in many cases will be true. Point being, if you're interested in
having a home server and interested in the ability to access your PC's via
the web, then you might give a second thought to which flavor of Vista you
buy. Are there server OS's out there right now that offer this capability
and more? Yes! Are there any server OS's out there -anywhere- near as easy
to install and configure as WHS? My guess would be no. The point is, again,
if you think you might be interested in having a home server to backup PC's
and provide file sharing and do it all in the simplest fashion possible, and
also access your server and PC's remotely, specifically the latter, then
consider with aforethought which flavor of Vista you buy for your client
PC's at home.
Hope everyone has a great July 4th!
Lang