We’ve begun a new series on the Windows Home Server web site – starting with Home Computer Backup and Restore – to show that using Windows Home Server really is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
We’ve also refreshed the news area of the web site
and community page has a great new look!
Read about what’s new with home servers and check out the cool stories from Windows Home Server users. You can even e-mail the Windows Home Server team your own testimonial or tutorial; we’ll pick the great new submissions and feature them on the site!
-Jonas (Community Program Manager for the Windows Home Server team)
The technical briefs and other documents for Windows Home Server have been updated to incorporate new and changed functionality with Windows Home Server Power Pack 1. Technical Briefs are "Level 200" documents designed for a more technical audience as they explain some of the inner-workings and technical and troubleshooting tips for Windows Home Server.
Most of the documents are now published in Microsoft Word format, so that you can more easily grab subsets of the content for answering questions in the Community forums.
Additionally, you can find a new document entitled, Windows Home Server Developer Guidelines that provides guidance around developing software Add-ins using the Windows Home Server Software Development Kit (SDK). For more information on the SDK, please see: http://www.msdn.com/WindowsHomeServer
Are there other areas of the product where you would like a "technical brief" created? What would be the title of the document and what content would you like to see included?
t.
As we've posted to this blog before, the Windows Home Server team is gearing up for a big presence at the upcoming PDC 2008 show in Los Angeles, CA. With so much riding on the line at this important event, we naturally want to get as much input on our messages from a critical audience - the developers who are building apps, services and solutions for Windows Home Server!
With this in mind - of course the broader goal of boosting the visibility of our Extensibility Platform - the Windows Home Server team last week hosted 30+ developers, OEMs, and hardware partners at our first annual Windows Home Server Platform Extensibility Day. Or make that several days. ;-) The focus of the event was providing partners with guidance on how to develop applications and services using our SDK, available publicly on MSDN. Both the Marketing and Engineering teams worked hard to 'share the love' and evangelize our product's key value proposition - our extensibility platform - with our valued partners.
It was very gratifying to see partners enthused by the possibilities of developing for the Windows Home Server ecosystem. And it was great to hear ideas, get feedback, and help answer partners' questions in person. Hopefully, we'll be seeing the fruits of these efforts show up in more apps for Home Server users! We're thinking of broadening and expanding the event next year...Would you want to attend an event like this next year? And what would you want to see covered topic-wise?
- M
On Sunday September 7th, Steven Leonard, Senior Product Manager for Windows Home Server, participated in a radio interview. "Java with John" is a segment of the Computer Outlook Radio Talk Show. Hosted by John Iasiuolo and Sharon Fry, Computer Outlook is one of America's fastest growing syndicated computer talk shows featuring "What's New - What's Best and What's Next" in the computer and information technology industry.
John, Sharon, and Steven talked about Windows Home Server (of course!). Lasting approximately 45 minutes, the discussion covered an overview of core functionality such as backup, restore, remote access and software add-ins. Listen to a recording of the interview at http://www.computeroutlook.com/_computeroutlookrts/z_jj.php?date=090708
From time to time, people ask the home server team how and why we made certain decisions for the initial release of WIndows Home Server. Currently, you can define 10 user accounts in the Windows Home Server Console and you can install the Windows Home Server Connector software on up to 10 home computers running Windows XP or Windows Vista.
In all of the secondary research that we reviewed and primary research that we did for home server as part of the product planning process, it was very rare to find broadband connected households and home-based businesses with more than 10 people and with more than 10 home computers. Additionally, Microsoft offers a great product, Windows Small Business Server, that scales well beyond 10 users for more sophisticated home-based businesses or small businesses that plan on growing. You can read about the upcoming release of Windows Small Business Server 2008 on the microsoft web site.
We didn't want to build a consumer product that used CALs (Client Access Licenses) as we really didn't think consumers wanted to deal with managing licenses for their home PCs and sometimes when you say CAL, people hear "cow" and respond that they live in the city not on a ranch and don't really have a need for cattle.
However, we knew that there would be rare cases where someone had 11 computers or 12 or 17 or ? in their home. So, long ago we made the decision that a user could have 2 home servers, where a given home computer would only be "joined" or "connected" to one for the purpose of the daily automatic image-based backups and centralized health reporting through the Windows Home Server Console.
The home server team is very customer focused and continues to listen to feedback through Microsoft Connect. A few people have submitted suggestions that we should allow for more than 10 users and/or more than 10 computers. We resolved one of these early suggestions as "Won't Fix" for the initial release of Windows Home Server. But people sometimes resubmit this as a suggestion - the latest one is here (you need a Windows Live ID to access the suggestions on the Windows Home Server Connect site)
So, now we are back in the product planning phase and culling through all of these suggestions. What if we had 2 versions of Windows Home Server - one for the "basic" household and one for the more "advanced" household. What should we think about using as limits for the number of users and computers for a "basic" version and for an "advanced" version?
I am interested in your thoughts and feedback.
t. (aka "todd the product planner")
If you haven't updated your event calendars lately, here's one to make sure you have on your agenda: the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008, or PDC as we affectionately call it. Taking place in Los Angeles, CA from Oct. 27 - 30, this year's PDC is gearing up to be one of the biggest events of the year, and your friends from Windows Home Server land will be well represented!
Last week, a couple of my colleagues from the Windows Home Server product team and I sat down with the kind folks from Microsoft's Channel 9 and 10 to do a couple informal video interviews about our PDC efforts (and extensibility story in general) as well as provide an update on the product.
We thought you might enjoy them, so here are the quick links:
Spread the word about PDC 2008, and perhaps we'll see you there! Let us know what you think.
- M
A coworker recently forwarded me a program that he heard on Puget Sound Public Radio. This call-in radio show was based on the following premise, "Pretend you had five minutes to get out of the house. What would you save? Your family and pets are already safe, so don't worry about them. What possession is irreplaceable to you?"
As he listened to this program, he told me that he thought about Windows Home Server.
Many listeners wrote and called into the show to mention their precious memories. The Windows Home Server team has received many remarkable stories as well! Check out this thread in the Community Forums. Windows Home Server has saved the loss of a stolen home computer, failed hard drives, and, in a few cases, saved people from themselves when they goofed and accidentally deleted important files.
What would I save? I'm installing a carrying handle on my home server as you read this sentence.
Steven
Last year our Japanese subsidiary took the English version of Windows Home Server and packaged it up for the Japanese market. We here in Redmond were amazed at how well it has sold! This success in Japan encouraged us to build a Japanese language version of Windows Home Server and I’m excited to announce that today we’ve officially launched it!
From the song “Big In Japan” by Alphaville (I’m a slave to 80’s pop music):
Aah when you're big in Japan-tonight...
Big in Japan-be-tight...
Big in Japan... ooh the eastern sea's so blue
Big in Japan-alright,
Pay! -- Then I'll sleep by your side
Things are easy when you're big in Japan
Oh when you're big in Japan
The following Japanese companies have announced that they will be shipping Windows Home Server powered home servers or Windows Home Server related products in Japan: Epson, NEC, Mouse Computer Japan, Logitec, Thirdwave, Unitcom, Tsukumo, PDX Japan, Clevery, Regin, Applied, Sofmap, Sycom.
The launch event was held today (August 20) in Tokyo and included demos of the new Windows Home Server products from Epson, NEC, and Mouse Computer Japan. Here’s some links to a few of the new home servers now available in Japan:
· Epson Windows Home Server (shown below).
· Mouse Computer Japan Windows Home Server
· Clevery Windows Home Server
· Applied Windows Home Server
Terry over at We Got Served has some more deets on the Epson device here.
You can now buy Windows Home Servers in over 50 countries. It is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional, and Hong Kong), and Japanese. This broad availability coupled with the growing ecosystem of 3rd party products (including over 60 software Add-ins) that support Windows Home Server further demonstrates the great momentum we are enjoying.
Charlie Kindel
Make that Power Pack 1, actually. That's right folks, our RTM code of Power Pack 1 is in the process of being currently pushed out to existing customers via Windows Update - in all 4 of our in-market languages (English, French, German and Spanish).
- For those of you who haven't already downloaded the update via MS Download Center (and plenty have!), now is the time to make sure your Home Server settings have 'auto update' enabled. If it's enabled, the Power Pack 1 update will download in the background, seamlessly....
- After this, you will see a prompt on each of your client PCs connected to the Home Server to also update their Connector client software (to ensure the Server and Client are in sync).
- Don't forget: for those of you who have previously downloaded the beta of Power Pack 1, you must first uninstall this (per the release notes of Power Pack 1) before you can install RTM
We're clearly not the only ones excited about the release of Power Pack 1. Here are just a few of the blogs, news reports, and such on the update:
It's also a good time to give a big rousing THANK YOU to all of you on the Windows Home Server Beta program who provided an incredible amount of assistance submitting bugs, sending feedback, and validating fixes. We could not have released this critical update with out your help. This one's for you! Time to celebrate!
- M
Last weekend I found some blog posts by a blogger who calls himself "Fear the Cowboy" discussing some of the more severe technical limitations that RAID (especially RAID 5) has compared to Windows Home Server Drive Extender. Check out his posts here.
His posts got me motivated to write this one, which I've been meaning to do for quite some time...
When we were thinking of building the Windows Home Server product and doing focus groups we'd ask consumers "what do you know about RAID". Uniformly the answer was (at least in the U.S.) "Oh, that's a insect repellant".
Geeks & IT professionals know RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" and is a storage technology widely used in the corporate IT world.
Those same geeks, when encountering Windows Home Server for the first time, often ask the question "Why doesn't Windows Home Server use RAID?". The simplest answer is RAID sucks as the basis for a consumer storage product. But, my PR team would rather I not say it in such a negative way. Instead, they want me to say something positive like:
"Windows Home Server is a consumer product that provides an amazingly powerful yet super-simple to use solution to centralizing a mutli-PC household's storage. Windows Home Server includes a new, revolutionary storage technology we call Windows Home Server Drive Extender that kicks RAID's butt."
Or something like that.
Seriously, Windows Home Server does provide an amazingly powerful solution for the storage of a family's digital stuff. This solution is exposed to users in the household as Windows Home Server Shared Folders and to the person who sets up the home server as Windows Home Server Storage.
Server Storage is where the person who sets up Windows Home Server (we call this person "Jeff" by the way) can add or remove hard drives to/from Windows Home Server. "Jeff" accesses this functionality through the Windows Home Server Console. "Normal" family members (such as "Jeff's" daughter who we call "Samantha") don't know or need to know anything about Server Storage. Once a home server is set up, Server Storage is "just there" being useful. Like air. For you geeks, the underlying technology is Windows Home Server Drive Extender, which is really the focus of this blog post.
Shared Folders are literally just that: file folders stored on the server but shared out to home computers. Family members access them using standard Windows (or Mac) interfaces such as Explorer and other applications. "Jeff" can change settings on shared folders if he really needs to, but the system is designed to "just work" for most families out of the box. For the geeks reading this, the underlying technology in use here is SMB/CIFS. Windows Home Server Remote Access makes it easy to access shared folders from outside the home using a standard web browser as well.
On the surface, various RAID technologies purport to meet some of the requirements we set for the storage system for Windows Home Server, which were:
Windows Home Server storage system design requirements
- Must be extremely simple to use. Must not add any new concepts or terminology average consumers would not understand. Simple operations should be simple and there should not be any complex operations.
- Must be infinitely & transparently extendible. Users should be able to just plug in more hard drives and the amount of storage available should just grow accordingly. There should be no arbitrary limits to the kinds of hard drives used. Users should be able to plug in any number of drives. Different brands, sizes, and technologies should be able to be mixed without the user having to worry about details.
- All storage must be accessible using a single namespace. In other words, no drive letters. Drive letters are a 1970's anachronism and must be squashed out of existence!
- The storage namespace must be prescriptive. In other words, our research told us that consumers want guidance on where to store stuff. Our storage system needs to be able to tell users where photos go. Where music goes. Etc...
- Must be redundant & reliable. There are two components in every modern computer that are guaranteed to fail: fans and hard drives. Because they have moving parts, Windows Home Server must be resilient to the failure of one or more hard drives.
- Must be compatible. Compatible with existing software, devices, disk drives, etc...
- Must have great performance.
- Must be secure.
- Must enable future innovation. Both the amount of storage consumers are using, and capacity/$ are growing at Moore's Law like rates (while nothing else really is). This creates a discontinuity in the industry and an opportunity for innovation. The storage system must operate at a higher level of abstraction to enable rich software innovation (file level vs. block level).
It turns out that no RAID technology (I almost wrote "solution", but there is no such thing as a "RAID solution", it's just a big mish-mash of technology) met more than a few of these requirements when we first started building the product.
So we designed an innovative new technology called Windows Home Server Drive Extender and we have shipped that technology as part of a complete solution in Windows Home Server. The Windows Home Server solution meets all of these requirements. And it kicks butt.
Did you know you can get a free evaluation copy of Windows Home Server by going here? For many geographies we'll ship it to you for free as well. Install it on some old computer (the resource requirements are pretty meager; an old PIII with 512MB of RAM will work great) and throw a bunch of hard drives at it to see just how great a job it does.
Or skip the "free crack" step and just dive in and buy an OEM product.
-cek
Our very own Jim Lyon (Wikipedia link), co-inventor of INTERCAL (the programming language most of Windows Home Server is written in), has started blogging. Jim's industry experience and strong wit are sure to make his blog a favorite along the lines of other great technical Microsoft bloggers like Mark Russinovich and Dare Obasanjo.
For those of you who don't know Jim was instrumental in the design and implementation of Windows Home Server's amazing and innovative Home Computer Backup solution (Technical brief). He's the "rocket scientist" behind the "rocket science" that makes it work.
Check his blog out at: http://lyontamers.com/blogs/jimlyon/. Make sure you give him a hard time if he's not being controversial enough. :-)
-cek
The Power Pack 1 train is leaving the station. Today the Windows Home Server team made the Power Pack 1 updates for all of the currently shipping languages available via the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally, we signed off on the Japanese language build and the 3 Chinese language builds.
The Power Pack 1 update for English, German, French and Spanish will be distributed to all Windows Home Server owners on Tuesday August 12th as part of the regular Windows Update distribution process.
If you are anxious to have Power Pack 1 on your home servers, then you can use the following links to find the German, French, and Spanish Power Pack 1 update packages:
If you have any questions, you can always find a Windows Home Server MVP, a passionate home server enthusiast, or someone from the Windows Home Server team on the Community forums - http://forums.homeserver.com .
t.
The Windows Home Server marketing team in Germany recently kicked off an awareness campaign for journalists.
"Sun protection and data protection, before you go on vacation, buy a Windows Home Server system to backup your data and save all your vacation pictures!"
The press kit included some sunscreen and a digital camera promotion in partnership with Kodak. Luckily, they decided to forgo a Windows Home Server bathing suit. (No picture required.)
Steven
The Windows Home Server test team has been very busy doing all of the final testing for the localized builds of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1. The product will soon be available in 4 new language options for a total of 8 localized builds. Currently, the English version of the Power Pack 1 update package is available on the Microsoft Download Center.
In early August, we will add the German, French and Spanish update packages to the Download Center and also distribute the Power Pack 1 package via Windows Updates so if you want to skip the manual steps of using the Download Center you only have to wait a little longer.
In addition, we will be releasing new media kits of the software into the System Builder channel in the coming weeks. So as the new software proceeds through the manufacturing process in the various worldwide geographies, you will see these new part numbers become available.
- CCQ-00061 – English
- CCQ-00060 – German
- CCQ-00058 – French
- CCQ-00057 – Spanish
- CCQ-00019 – Japanese
- CCQ-00068 – Chinese Simplified
- CCQ-00069 – Chinese Traditional
- CCQ-00070 – Chinese Traditional Hong Kong
There is no reason to wait for the new media release of Windows Home Server - if you buy it today, the Power Pack 1 update is free and will be applied via a Windows Update. One small point of trivia, with the initial release of Windows Home Server, the first copy was purchased in New Zealand, as they have a very streamlined manufacturing process in that part of the world …
Also, there is some Power Pack 1 information on the Microsoft Windows Home Server web site. Check it out …
t.
The team is pleased to announce that Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) and is now available on the Microsoft Download Center!
The English version is available now and German, Spanish and French versions will be available on the Download Center soon. Windows Home Server customers who don’t download it on their own will receive Power Pack 1 via Windows Update in August, and the new Chinese and Japanese versions will RTM in August, too.
As many know, Power Pack 1 provides a range of new enhancements, including support for home computers running Windows Vista x64 editions, backup of home server Shared Folders, improvements to remote access, more efficient power consumption and better performance. And, of course, it delivers a fix for the data corruption bug. Documentation for Power Pack 1 (Build #1800, to those who have been part of the beta testing) is available here.
Our OEM partners will be updating their systems with Power Pack 1 and HP will release a software update for the HP MediaSmart Server, delivering enhanced media streaming capabilities from PacketVideo, server-side anti-virus from McAfee and compatibility with 64-bit home PCs.
Windows Home Server can now be purchased in 50 countries worldwide and a growing ecosystem of third-party software developers has released approximately 60 Add-in programs extending Windows Home Server’s capabilities. To help fuel this development we have updated the Windows Home Server software development kit for Power Pack 1, including new support for the client PC side, i.e. notifications to/from home computers.
We continue to hear fantastic feedback from our customers about how Home Server is helping them protect and organize their digital media, access it away from home, and share it with friends and family. Thank you to our beta testers and partners for helping us ship Power Pack 1, and to the Home Server community as a whole, for its ongoing support and enthusiasm.
The Windows Home Server Team
