Windows Home Server... sounds really great!

I have recently been doing some research about NAS boxes (network attached storage), because I want a good backup solution for the mulitple computers in my home, and I also want to share my digital music througout the house. Well forget about NAS boxes! What I will describe below is much more than NAS -- its an entire platform that provides NAS and much more, provided by Microsoft and various OEMs later this year. It has been a secret until this week!

You may have heard about the recent announcements from Apple about their new iPhone product. And of course the news media is talking these days about Windows Vista and Office 2007. But something that isn't getting much attention was announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2007), and I think it really has huge potential.

I'm speaking of Windows Home Server (WHS). This is a new version of the Windows OS that in some ways is unlike any that we've seen to date. Here is some basic info first:

1. The target audience is anyone with multiple computers in their home, or who have multiple computers plus other devices on their home network.
2. Based on Windows 2003 Server, but easy to use and intended for use at home.
3. Availability, from Paul Thurrott: "The product will enter a private beta in late February or early March 2007 and will be released publicly in the second half of 2007. Microsoft will make WHS available in two ways: Bundled with new WHS hardware and software-only, the latter so that enthusiasts can install the system on the hardware of their choice."
4. The devices -- hardware with the software -- might cost around $500 or so (depends on the OEM vendor of course -- they have been working most closely with HP on this so far).
5. No monthly fees for any of the below detailed functionality or services.
6. It is a "headless" machine, meaning there is no monitor. Also no keyboard or mouse, as you control the box from any other desktop or laptop PC in your house, via software installed on those machines (much like through a Web browser, except it doesn't actually use HTML).
7. All the machine has in terms of ports and such is the power port, an ethernet port to connect to your router, and 4 USB ports. Given its uses, nothing else is needed.

So what does WHS do? Well, here are the the main features that MSFT is talking about for now:
Central storage of your media and datafiles. You can store your music, photos, video, etc. on this one box, instead of having it scattered on the various computers in your home. This media will be available through the WHS machine to each desktop or laptop in your house. Other types of files, such as word or excel files (or anything) can of course also be centrally stored on the WHS box. Right now, if you want to access a file or your digital music from one computer on another, the one that has the files needs to be on. But by moving it all to a central WHS, the other computers in your house need not be on for you to do what you want. For example, you can access your music through non-computer devices on your network, like an XBOX 360 for instance, without any computers (besides the central WHS) needing to be on.

This also means you can centrally store your bookmarks/favorites, on the WHS, instead of separately on each computer, or via a bookmark service on the Web. Another use would be to centrally store your rotating screensaver or desktop pics (e.g., images of your kids or whatnot), so that this one collection is the basis of all the screensavers on all the computers in your home.

It also means you can centrally store your data in your own home, rather than getting central storage by sending your datafiles to Google (GDrive) or Microsoft (LiveDrive) for remote storage... although that might still be advisable for ultimate remote backup, if you trust those companies enough compared to the risk of flood or fire at your home!

Automated Backup of your computers and data. Right now many of us manually do backups of our most important data files, or figure out a backup "solution" to make that easier, or actually ghost entire hard drives on our own, for each machine in the home. Many people don't do it very often, or at all, because it just isn't straighforward. In Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced some backup-related improvements such as Previous Versions, Complete PC Backup, and Backup and Restore Center. But even Vista's backup utilities are all about an individual PC: they work only with the PC on which Vista is installed... and lots of us won't even have Vista computers for a while anyway.

The WHS will make backup a complete no-brainer. Paul Thurrott describes it this way: "WHS provides a single solution for backing everything up in your home, every night, without having to push buttons. This includes a new form of image-based PC backup--similar to Complete PC Backup in Vista, but based on new patent-pending Microsoft Research technologies--as well as drag and drop access to individually backed files, from different points in time." So it backs up the entire hard-drive on each machine in your home -- every night between midnight and 3:00 am. And it does this using very smart technology that uses snapshots and so on, so that it isn't duplicating files each time. In fact, consider all the files that are identical on each of your machines -- e.g., all those core Windows files that you know nothing about. This backup service will not duplicate those as it does the backup of each machine -- it is smart enough to just backup each unique file once. It also doesn't backup files again if they haven't changed since the last backup. But of course it does all of this "under the hood", so when you need to find a file version from a particular date, it is easy to do so. You can see how this approach would greatly cut down on the space that would otherwise be needed on the WHS for backup. How smart is this new technology in this regard? Well, Thurrott reports that he has been told that it can backup 15-19 TB of data stored in 300 GB or less of backup space. Pretty good, eh?

Naturally, the first time it does a backup it takes a while, but subsequently it would be much quicker... but since you are asleep while it is happening, it doesn't much matter. (Although I didn't hear of this as a feature, it would be nice to be able to also do the backup on demand -- say, after you just created a great file you don't want to lose... or be able to do it when computers are shut down... for folks who turn off their computers over night.)

Restore at the file/folder or entire system level. If you accidentally delete a file, you can get it back from yesterday's, or last week's, backup version. Same for an entire folder of files. Or if lightning or a virus strikes and your system gets corrupted and you need to do a complete re-install of Windows, you can do so quickly and easily using the complete backup that was taken automatically... last night between midnight and 3:00 am while you were sleeping. No more "lost weekends" due to reinstalling windows, all the apps, trying to get back your data from backups (if you had any recent backups!), and so on. You can do this even if you can't even boot up -- because you'll have a boot CD that will get you connected to the WHS from which you will copy over the last good image of your entire drive... and now you are back up and running on that laptop or desktop PC.

Remote Access to WHS. The WHS machine provides the ability, from any browser, to type in the IP address of your WHS, and you are taken there. You are connected to the WHS box under your desk or in your closet, from your vacation in Bermuda. Play music from home on your laptop anywhere in the world. (To make this work, Microsoft is providing WHS users with a free personal Internet address via Windows Live.)

Remote Desktop. The WHS box provides desktop access to the actual computers in your home, via Remote Desktop using WHS as proxy. This means you could use the apps on these machines, including games, office apps, photoshop, etc., from any machine with a browser and internet connection (because it goes through your WHS box as proxy, through the IP address assigned to it.) This sounds similar to things like GoToMyPC, if I am understanding it correctly.

Printer server. You can hook up your USB printer directly to the WHS server, and it will be available to all the computers on your network. Many already hook it up directly to their router, or have another print server solution... but we don't. I still have it hooked to a single computer and then shared. That is fine... until that one computer is turned off or gets messed up... then no printing until it is back online!

Computer health monitoring. As Paul Thurrott describes "WHS also monitors the health of each PC it is protecting. WHS will monitor Windows Security Center in XP (SP2 and up) and Windows Vista, and provide a single dashboard view of the health of all of the PCs in your household. So if someone turns off anti-virus for some reason, you'll know about it. There's no remote management of this in the first version, though that will come in a future update."

More than just NAS, its a rich windows platform. Developers can build applications for this WHS platform, from small add-ons and gadgets to bigger applications. They said that if you can install it on Windows Server 2003, then you can install it on WHS. Many things it wouldn't make sense to install on the WHS box, but think of apps for Home Automation, like lights, heat, etc. Or digital picture frames in your house of the future - someone could write a script that randomizes the photos stored in a folder on your WHS box for display in the picture frame. The General Manager of WHS at MSFT said: "I love the idea that I have no idea what Third party developers are going to build to extend the WHS." There will be a "Gadgets Gallery" for WHS, and they will facilitate collaboration amongst WHS developers in other ways too. Lots of possibilities beyond what you can do out of the box.


One person described the WHS as "the CPU of the home".

Another person said the possibilities with WHS "reminds me of the stories of Bill Gates' house, with all the digital stuff he had... many years ago." It seems the rest of the world might be catching up later this year!

A few other bits of importance:

• Your WHS box would be accessible from computers in your network that has the "connector" software installed on it. These must be Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista computers to use all the functionality. Have a Mac too? From Paul Thurrott: "You can access the WHS shared folders as you would any other Windows share, and that means your backup program -- like Apple's Backup -- can use a share as a save location as well."
• User Accounts. You can control access to the data on the WHS so that different family members have read/write, read-only, etc. access to particular files, folders, etc.
• A guest account is available, but is not turned on by default. Using this, people who come to your wireless-networked house with their laptop can just type \\server and have whatever access to content on the WHS that the Guest Account has been allowed (its not clear to me if the "connector" software is needed for this kind of basic filesharing access -- perhaps that is only needed for the other features, like automated backup and remote desktop and so on?)
• No drive letters to keep track of. Per Paul Thurrott again: "WHS aggregates all of the storage attached to the server into a single store pool, regardless of whether that storage is internal, external, or a combination. As you add drives to the server, the available storage pool simply increases.

So to me, the WHS reminds me of seeing how computers "just work" in the futuristic sci-fi movies and shows (like how Captain Picard uses computers in Star Trek The Next Gen for instance). If even only a majority of the above promises becomes a reality, this will still be pretty cool I think. And yes, all of the above can be done today, but not in an easy way for the non-techie to do and not all from one device, and practically out of the box.

I think that this technology will be quite disruptive in the market -- in a good way for consumers! I think that today's NAS and NAS-like machines are in trouble. I also think that online central-storage services, like those from Google and Microsoft, are also in trouble.

Again, all of the above can be done today. But I don't think that there is a way you can do all this for less money, time, or simplicity than what WHS will provide.

I want one of these WHS devices... now!

If somehow the above wasn't enough info for you, see these links for where I culled the above info from... in rough order of how valuable I think they will be to you, so if you only have a bit of time, start at the top of this list with the two videos:

http://www.on10.net/Blogs/jesse/windows-home-server-will-live-in-your-closet-simplify-your-life/
25 minute video, in interview format, that shows a lot of screenshots of the WHS software interface.

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=270965
25 minute video, in interview format, about the WHS. Kinda funny actually, and very informative.

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_preview.asp
Great writeup from guru Paul Thurrott. He is often skeptical of new MSFT products, but he is very excited about the WHS!

http://www.engadget.com/photos/windows-home-server-early-gallery/126876/
Picture gallery of the HP WHS device, at CES I assume -- including screenshots of the software interface.

http://kindel.com/blogs/charlie/
Blog from Charlie Kindel who is I think the General Manager of the entire WHS product at MSFT. Something I'll be watching for sure!

http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-225-121.html
The HP page for their version of the WHS device, called HP MediaSmart Server for now.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2079953,00.asp
A brief item from PC Mag about this, and its announcement by Gates at CES.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server
Stub entry at Wikipedia about the WHS.

http://www.stopdigitalamnesia.com/
In my opinion, rather lame marketing from MSFT for the WHS. For me, the videos above are much better.