Consumer Electronics Installer Blog : Reliability, Storage and Backup

Monitoring Media Center PCs

kollenkark — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:45:00 GMT

One of the top concerns we hear from installers is reliability in home entertainment components. A great way to ensure Media Center PC reliability is to deploy the system so that it can only be used for entertainment purposes and it isn't being used for applications, games, browsing, etc. Stick it in a closet or rack and forget about it. Updates, hardware failures or client error can still impact availability from time to time. Wouldn't it be great to have a way to remotely monitor Media Center and know about a failure (and fix it) before the client knows anything went wrong?

I've been kicking around an idea for some time about using other MS technologies to help monitor and maintain Media Center PCs. While I haven't had a chance to prove the concept just yet, Operations Manager seems like it could be a good candidate for this. Custom installation companies could use it to monitor devices in clients' residences or leverage a subscription OM based service hosted in the cloud.

Inteset just announced a hosted monitoring service called the "Inteset Heartbeat Monitoring Service" that will monitor Media Center systems and resources, as well as, provide an opportunity for an additional revenue stream for installers who use the service. Nice!

It's great to see someone in the channel starting to address this need.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 (aka UR1)

kollenkark — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:52:00 GMT

The Windows Homer Server team has announced a new minor release that adds new functionality and improvements including:

Windows Home Server Connector Software
Windows Home Server Data Backup
Remote Access
Home Computer Backups

More details…

Windows Home Server blog: http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/default.aspx
Channel 10 interview with Todd Headrick from WHS: http://on10.net/blogs/larry/Windows-Home-Server-Power-Pack-Announced/Default.aspx

Welcome to Microsoft’s CE Installer blog!

kollenkark — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:19:00 GMT

Our team believes that Microsoft technologies can enable consumer electronic installers to be more successful. We plan to use this blog to help us develop a better relationship with the installer community by sharing solutions and new information.

Over the course of the last year, our team has been working hard to help home entertainment professionals understand the opportunities that exist with Microsoft products. You can see the results of some our efforts at http://microsoft.com/ceinstaller, The Ultimate Install Contest and the articles “In the News” section on this page. Other efforts are still in the works and we hope to share more as we make progress. Be sure to subscribe or check back here for the latest developments.