Windows Home Server

[Shayla]

Today Microsoft has released an updated preview build of Windows Home Server ?Vail.?

This build has some very welcome changes and some cool new features. Among these changes and new features are the following:

◦ Ability to enable or disable Add-ins at will from within the Dashboard

◦ Improvements to the Getting Started tasks

◦ New color scheme for the Dashboard, Remote Web Access, and Connect Computer website

◦ Client Connector for Mac OS (Yes, you read that right, Mac OS!)

◦ Alert Viewer now allows for alerts to be organized based on computer name or severity

◦ Server Folders and Hard Drives now includes a summary tab

◦ There is now the ability to create a bootable USB flash drive that can be used to restore a client computer

◦ Official support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Betas

However, there are some issues and changes in this build that need to be mentioned up front.

◦ For users of a previous release of Vail, you will have to migrate data off of your test server to another PC or external storage device before reinstallation as Drive Extender has undergone more changes making DE drives from previous releases incompatible with the August preview.

◦ There is a QFE available along with this build that addresses an issue where saving files to a Vail server may fail when a large amount of data is present on the server. It is advised that this QFE be installed immediately after installing Vail.

◦ Storage Check and Repair is broken in this release, as under certain conditions, there may be data loss.

◦ If a hard drive goes missing from the storage pool and you attempt to remove that missing hard drive from the storage pool, the removal wizard may inadvertently remove the wrong files from your server.

For the build number curious amongst us, this is build 7657 and is available from Microsoft Connect today. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today?s release:

Volume label: GR0SHSxFRE_EN_DVD

CRC: 0x7D6C61AD

SHA1: 0x051BBC9A1EEF7BEFD9DADD5584EEEB0C81F07AF2

Source : Tomontech

[Mike Herm]

Ugh I wish they would just release it already... The current version annoys me cause of it being 32-bit and I am limited to under 4GB of RAM, I have a lot of stuff going on with the server like PS3 Media Server, AirVideo (iPhone/iPad streaming), Kodak HD Theater, 3 websites using PHP and MySQL, Document/Music/Picture syncing with GoodSync to my Desktop and iDisk, all the usual stuff related with the Home Server, plus probably stuff I'm forgetting... I have a quad-core in it but it still gets bogged down from time to time, I need to double my RAM and keep this bad boy running flawless.

[revanmj]

Are they going to announce its name? Or they will sell it as "Vail"

[Avi]

http://www.tomontech.com/2010/08/windows-home-server-vail-august-previewscreenshot-galleries/

[Ci7]

Are they going to announce its name? Or they will sell it as "Vail"

my bet

WHS 2011 or WHS v2

[PGHammer]

my bet

WHS 2011 or WHS v2

Actually, Windows Home Server Premium shows up all over the various screenery.

I'm expecting this to be sold either pre-loaded on hardware (like the original WHS) or on DVDs. (That's right; *plural*. WHSP is bigger than not just the original WHS, but larger than Windows Server 2008 R2, which it is based on.)

WHSP's major requirement? Disk space. The niche for WHSP, like WHS, is the file server/NAS/SAN niche (fortunately, drives such as Western Digital's Caviar GP seem tailor-made for use in such a server).

Other than it being x64-only (which is not as big a deal as you would think) the rest of the hardware requirements are straight out of Windows 7 Home Premium's playbook (because Aero is neither supported or necessary, onboard graphics are quite enough).

The reason that the x64-only CPU requirement is not that big a deal is the same reason why x64 shipments of Windows 7, especially preloads, are up by leaps and bounds - x64 is the default *hardware* out in the wild (in terms of new hardware). We are in the fourth generation of x64 multicore *desktop* CPUs, and the third generation of such CPUs in the value/budget category; why not take that hardware you just moved out of, slap a large inexpensive SATA hard drive or two inside, and create a cheap file server?