Right on schedule, Microsoft announced that its Windows Home Server software is off to the presses. This clears the way for HP, Gateway, LaCie, Medion, and now Iomega and Fujitsu Siemens, (both also announced today, the latter in Europe only) to begin selling their Home Server-powered hardware later this quarter.
I’ve been in the beta test program for awhile now for this. It’s actually a nice product for home users. I know everyone is gonna yell that Linux can do most of all this for free. Yes it can, but MS is making it easier for home users on this one. I’m excited
The question is not if Linux will do more for free (that’s an easy one to answer), but rather how well such a device will play with Macs or Linux PCs on the network?
Personally, I think it’s a great idea…I would like to see more competition in the “smart storage device” market, hopefully with some offerings based on FOSS.
As they’ve been working on documenting and fostering third-party development, I’d guess that it’ll work exactly as well as the other OS companies want their system to work with it.
Which companies will permit this and which will deny, though, I can’t guess (and won’t try).
It just shows SMB shares, and everyone works with those, so… the answer to your question is “just fine”!
I was talking more about the extended functionalities. Are APIs available to implement on other OSes? These could be nice as media server + backup storage in a multiplatform environment.
Easier? I don’t think so, you just don’t know all of the possibilities of opensource software. But of course it will be less secure as usual.
This is good news. Two times out of three, when a product hits beta with rave reviews, they pull it from its expected release date and later on release a limited, ‘hipper’ version that doesn’t capture why we were so excited for it in the first place. Now that it’s in presses, we can stop working with betas and start seeing what people can do with this.
EDIT: And by ‘people’, I mean both end users, and third-party developers. Just realized that might have been less than clear.
Edited 2007-07-16 22:30
It’s a shame Microsoft didn’t make the hardware themselves. Microsoft make good hardware (except for the 360 and the problems there
)
I agree. For all the faults I can find Microsoft (and they are legion), I’ve always liked their hardware. Even the Xbox360 is not a bad machine, despite its catastrophic design flaws (which, I imagine, will be fixed in the upcoming revisions). The Xbox360 controller is one of the best out there.
Xbox might be cool yeah…
For me none console other than the ps2 are cool…
Well, have a ps2, have not used it since december.
“The question is not if Linux will do more for free (that’s an easy one to answer), but rather how well such a device will play with Macs or Linux PCs on the network? ”
Forget that, how about how well it works with windows products! I can’t get my Vista box to be accessed by my XP Home laptop. So when I need something from the vista box I either open up the laptop share from the vista box (vista rig can access it, xp one can’t access the vista one) or I transfer the file to my linux file server first.
you know this is a known issue correct? And with about 2 minutes of google searching, you could have fixed the problem?
You can sit there and complain all day, or you can actually do something about it.
Here you go though, since it wasn’t worth your time to look for the fix anyways.
Solution
For computers running Windows XP to appear on the Network Map diagram, you must download and install the LLTD Responder component. With the LLTD Responder, a computer running Windows XP can respond to other Windows Vista computers on the network that are attempting to create a network map.
To install the LLTD Responder to a computer running Windows XP
1. Download the update for Windows XP from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70582
2. If you are prompted to do so, restart your computer.
After your computer running Windows XP restarts, generate a new Network Map with the computer running Windows XP included.
This is great news. This is the best piece os MS software they have ever released imo. I have been running it at home in beta for about 6 weeks and it is brilliant. A real backup burden is now gone from me and it serves files well and your server is accessible from outside (e.g. from work or where ever).
Yeahh… Buy this, if U don’t care and have tons of money… Might be someone who just wanna have this, for the sake of having this… Well, it might be easy to install and configure, and after that, what’s so special about this product?? Tell me.. What’s special??
Then, i have for me, a better sollution…
I have bought this argosy network harddrive-case, and installed a 120 gigabyte harddrive.. It’s quite cool.
Only costed me 300 danish kroners, that would be 56 us dollars… The harddrive itself, i got from a discarded computer, and the only thing i had to do, was to assembly those two things.
I could let the shop assembly that for 50 kroners more, if i knew nothing about this.
Try installing other apps on that device. Where’s the SDK? 24/7 uTorrent/eMule DLs? Your device doesn’t even come close to what a WHS can do.
The only thing I have against the WHS is that IIRC it can’t replace a home gateway… Yet.
That may be true, but I would much prefer a hardware gateway router.
Something about keeping my files on a box directly on the net doesn’t sit well with me…
Which is probably a good thing. Not only it would make it a single point of failure for your home network, but it could expose your personal data directly on the net. Since gateways are regulating network traffic, they are inherently more vulnerable than simple firewalls restricting accesses.
While a separate gateway doesn’t necessarily make your network or your data safe, it’s already an additional layer of protection, which is always welcome when wired on an hostile Internet.
Well… Forgot to say, that the discarded computer was not mine, it lay in a dumpster…
For those who do not want to google for this argosy case:
http://www.argosy.com.tw/product-detial.php?prod_id=35
lol u can really tell the idiots that don’t read what the WHS is for…
It gives you remote access to all of your internal network window spc’s remote desktop … it also performs full unattended backups of your windowspc…
just put your pc’s to sleep … WHS wakes them, backs them up and puts them back to sleep at night it works wonderfully…
people compairing this to a frigging USB harddrive are idiots hell even to higher end NAS’s are idiots … considering all a decent nas does is SMB and http://FTP... This does that and so much more…
… Ya it cant replace a home gateway router but it wasnt meant to … not yet… they said eventually for a future version they might add a light mail server and routing functionality but thats still up in the air
If you’re going to call people idiots, you should at least attempt to do so in a grammatically correct manner.
Hate to say but atleast your files are behind a proper corporate gateway from MS… on a very very solid server.. WHS just like win2k3 and win2k8 are rock solid and quite secure.
Not to mention your WHS server isnt directly on the net, its meant to be behind a router or firewall. As was pointed out by wrawrat
It’s amazing how many people don’t educate themselves on a product before bashing it.
WHS is MORE than just a NAS. Yes it acts as a home network file server, but it does more.
1. Remote Access – It allow secure remote access to your network even if it’s behind a firewall. SECURE, so don’t freak out. MS has an OPTIONAL Dynamic DNS service they are launching with WHS. But ut will work with others like DynDNS.org…
2. Media Center Serving – It works closely with Media Center PCs, Media Extenders, and Xbox360.
3. Headless – It does NOT require you to have KVM connected to it. It is configured and maintained completely from a Web interface. You still can use a monitor and Mouse/Keyboard to use a console on it.
4. Automated Backup (Best Feature) – Once the client is installed on Client machines, WHS can wake up PCs using Wake on LAN. It will not only backup files, BUT whole HDD Images. It uses a compression techique where if all PCs have same system files, it will only store one copy for all PCs. Automaticaly can do this every night. It will not do full backups every night but just update the “image” for each PC. But the nice thing is…..
If you computer takes a dump, you use a special Boot CD on the “dead” computer. It boots the machine and connects it to the WHS and restores that machines image … AUTOMATICALLY…
So hopefully everyone now will see this is more than just a “simple” USB hard drive for file sharing or a Simple NAS.
you need to purchase a full-blown server from one of Microsoft’s previously mentioned hardware partners
As stated in the article the targeted audience are people with media scattered accross multiple PC’s. Woudn’t it be more convenient to buy a software only package instead of yet another PC?
you actually can buy just the software:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070716-windows-home-server-1…
ubuntu recently started ubuntu home server
http://www.ubuntuhomeserver.org/
community project, not official (or not yet, anyway)
That’s a bit off-topic, but why not start submitting articles on that project too?
“Under Microsoft’s current plan, it won’t be selling Windows Home Server as a standalone software product. Instead, you need to purchase a full-blown server from one of Microsoft’s previously mentioned hardware partners. The good news is that the hardware requirements for Windows Home Server are relatively modest. All you really need is a hard drive and the basic guts of a PC.”
That looks pretty contradictory to me.You can only get it with new hardware yet stating its fit to run on older hardware.Guess the hardware vendors and Microsoft have to get their digs out of our pockets first.
It appears to be malware writers who easily make servers from users windows machines. So i wonder why MS doesn’t offer a software addon that turns the box into a home server.
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