April 02, 2009

April 2, 2009 (Computerworld) The attraction of a home server, such as Windows Home Server, is obvious for any household with several computers. But even if you have just one PC, the technology offers significant benefits -- such as automatic backups that will let you survive a catastrophic hard drive failure without losing any of your precious data. Microsoft's Windows Home Server is built using the same code base as the company's robust Windows Server 2003, but it's been streamlined (and somewhat limited) for consumer use. In addition to automatically backing up every Windows XP and Vista computer on your network, WHS can monitor the health of all the Vista PCs on its network. If the server is equipped with two or more drives, it will automatically duplicate all its files to provide data redundancy in case one drive ever fails.

It also allows file and printer sharing; it can stream audio, video and digital photographs to any device that supports Windows Media Connect (including the Xbox 360 gaming console); and it can be configured to allow remote access, so you can access and control your server and all the machines connected to it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

The recently announced Windows Home Server Power Pack 2 adds important new features to the server operating system -- including much-improved support for Windows Media Center Extenders and client PCs running Windows Media Center -- and fixes a number of bugs.

Note that Windows Home Server is limited to 10 client computers. Windows, Linux and Macintosh computers can connect to the server (either locally or remotely over the Internet) and access shared files, but only computers running Windows XP and Vista can take advantage of automated backup on home-brew Windows Home Servers.