Windows Home Server RC1 hits the streets
I’ve been on the beta test programme for this for some months now and I have to say I think it’s one of the more interesting things to have come out of Redmond in some time ! WHS is a slimmed-down version of Windows small business server with no win32 gui and a highly agile rich-content remoting client for access over your wireless/wired local network. It’s sole function is to store, backup and ensure granular restores of the digital soup we all seem to fill our PC’s with these days.
Basically you install the WHS iso onto a box which should have decent-ish hardware but the most important thing is lots and lots of disk space. Next you install a connector client on the machines in your lan enabling them to communicate with the WHS and allowing you to administer the box remotely (Bear in mind the hardware slated for this is meant to ship headless). Next step is to set up backup routines for the machine(s) around your lan and after that it’s pretty much plain sailing. The WHS box will wake up and interrogate your client machines for changes to their disk since last backup then essentially doing a ‘diff’ it then only takes a backup of any clusters on your client machine that differ from it’s locally stored copy. This is essentially like indexing the client machine at the disc-cluster level and only storing one copy of the cluster, even if you have multiple copies on your client machines.
Let’s say you have 2 copies of your favourite album sitting on machines around your house, WHS will compare each cluster on all the disc space in the ‘storage cloud’ within your accessible locale and store off only one copy, essentially ‘normalising’ all your digital data.
I’ve had a lot of fun testing backup, destroy and restore, whole machines, bit’s of drives, system folders, etc etc and have found it to be a very capable tool. The interface is a getting better, was a bit challenging for your average user (which it’s firmly aimed at) and backup/restore wizards also improving. I should point out that it will also securely (ahem!) present specified content to the internet/lan and if they slip some additional functionality in there (cut-down mail and expose web server programmability to the developer community) it’ll be a killer bit of kit very very soon.