Ok, so this looks like a major step in the right direction with the remote web workplace enhancements. It has a new Views filter that rather quickly renders picture thumbnails.

The Good

Yes, something for the ladies there.

One interesting (or annoying, depending on how you work) part is that only filenames are clickable, clicking on the icons themselves does not open them. However, clicking on them does select them, so conceivably with the large amount of images you won’t have to strain your fingers to select a bunch of files on the page.

There is also a built in Search functionality, which actually seems to work rather well.

(btw, whoever owns this code, you should validate your inputs. Hitting Search on an empty search input field still pushes you forward to the results page even though you didn’t search for anything, making me wonder what else isn’t being validated)

I’ll give it an A on the picture management side, could have used a streaming screen saver or a slideshow function.

The Bad

The Video side of the home isn’t quite as well put together. There are no video previews or image snapshots. There also seems to be no option for the ability to stream files from the server, it’s very much a download and play type of an affair. Downloading multiple files gives me an option to download them as a self extracting executable or a compressed zip file, which doesn’t really do much in the way of media usability. No ability to create a playlist, which I am sure won’t go far with my audience that spends half their day on freeones downloading 15 second previews of larger movies and would like them streamed down from the home server.

The Ugly

The remote desktop access is too whiny. Four prompts after hitting Connect to your Home Server link, ending in a long bunch of text and techie jargon that no regular home user would understand (in order to RDP to the server you must add it to your Internet Explorer trusted zone) or follow. Pass, back to logmein.com.

Not much new to report on the Home Server console. I think this is the biggest fail for WHS, given that the PP has been under development for as long as WHS has been on sale. The Addins section is Microsoft’s opportunity to create an “App Store” like experience for its users and a way to promote its developers. Yet there is seemingly no way to add or search for addins from this screen. There is the general “Jr. Server Admin” rookie link leading to a chm that no home user would ever explore but no link to the web site to obtain them. The Live Search (hey, it’s default on the box) doesn’t show a Microsoft addin download site in first two pages of search results (“whs add-ins”) and the chm also fails to list where to download them. It does however list the worlds most unfriendly TechNet style process for installing an addin, with two more steps than it would take you to recover from an alcohol addiction. This is a Home server, right?

Finally, the client console software autoupdate still fails. It sends the user to download a Troubleshooting package or to call Product Support.

All in All

Microsoft’s big problem with this solution is the apparent lack of fit and design – if it’s a server appliance it requires far too much server management experience (reading, downloading software, deploying it, reading chm files). It is not very user friendly, it doesn’t seem to update properly, it requires far too much effort to discover and install add-ins to extend it’s functionality. If it’s a home NAS solution it hides far too much of its power. If it’s just a Microsoft mee-too for the consumer NAS market then it really fails in usability and user friendliness when compared to the solutions 1/4 its cost.

If you paid $500 for 500GB and the above features, would you be wowed? Consider that for half the cost you could have this. Given the amount of time PP spent in development I’m not sure what level of hope there can be in a v2 of this.

Windows Homo Server Pride Pack 1 has stepped out of the closet. Or Windows Hell Server Porn Protection is out. All relative to how low your morals are I suppose. There will not come a day on which you will convince me that there isn’t some dirty mind inside the bowels of Microsoft coming up with the most inappropriate acronyms to push this running joke of “So what do we call it?” that is WHS naming.

What’s in the pride pack? 64bit Vista backups. Enhanced remote access.

Either way, enough to make me dust off the unplugged WHS and check out what’s new.

Long weekend is upon us, it’s computer project time.

With Windows Home Server out of picture and unplugged I’m left to search for something more reliable. What is popular out there? I’d prefer it have some sort of an Xbox connectivity to it but am not that picky if it doesn’t.

So far I have checked out LinuxMCE, XBMC for Linux and a few others but so far XBMC seems to be the boss. Just gorgeous. There is of course just installing a copy of Vista Ultimate but that seems too ungeeky.

My requirements – ability to store system backups, pictures / slideshows, remote access to pictures and video and the ability to be easily backed up for offsite/secure storage. Oh, and not corrupting files on a file server, that would be just fantastic.

(if you say Mac Mini, so help me god, I will hunt you down and kill you)

One thing that I find impressive about Las Vegas is that every time I go back it seems to be a different city. The expansion and buildout is just incredible.

People change too. A few years ago you would walk down the strip and bump into Mexicans handing out stripper callcards just a foot or two away from an evangelical Christian throwing profanities at people passing by in short skirts, warning about the end of time, cause thats what Jesus would have done. The crazy Jesus guy has been replaced by the Ron Paulbots, which appear more mindless, antagonizing, insane and confrontational than even the Jesus guy ever was. The stripper mexicans are still there but they are looking more appropriate than ever.

But here are a few funny things. This was a convention going on at Mandalay Bay – PPAI. Promotional Products Association. This is a conference about SWAG! Huge too!

Then there was that other conference…

And finally, there was CES, perhaps the least impressive of the three. However, there was some funny stuff at the CES, courtesy of Microsoft:

This is a little childrens book that was given away as SWAG at Microsoft’s CES podium. As someone in our group mentioned, “Better get two, cause Windows Home Server won’t be around for long”, so I did. The book is just hilarious and I had to share the scans from it. “Big people have a server at the ‘office’. The ofice is a boring place where big people go and do boring things. Offices  are why big people get grumpy, and say bad words.” – Couldn’t have put it better myself, way to go WHS!

As a Microsoft fan, I have to admit, I was really downed by the whole experience. The Microsoft Zune section, which was huge, was damn near empty. The most exciting technology that people were gawking over was a table, at which a brilliant marketing person (yes, it is a double negative and it roughly translates to “moron”) pitched the table with the following feature of Microsoft Surface:

“So thats how you can learn more about the food and wine thats on your table.

But what if you wanted to be social? Here you can pull up your friends onli..”

Err, what about just talking to the people at your table? I guess thats in Surface 2.0. Talk about a divorcemaker. Can you imagine heading to a restaurant with your wife and in the middle of her story you start checking your email and the pr0n spam pops up at the same time as the 16 year old is putting food on your table? Now you’re being sued for alimony, sexual harrassment… Maybe Surface 2.0 could have a quick LawyerFinder hotspot, so you can immediately get representation from someone familiar with MS Surface.

Overall, the CES was very underwhelming. Frankly, major sections of it looked like Computer Pro shows that travel the country and sell offbrand broken/stolen second hand equipment to unsuspecting audiences at county fairs and third rate venues. CES did have better lighting tho. It also had about 200 booths selling carrying cases and stickers for your cell phone and iPod. The big crown of the event was the 150” Plasma TV. This thing was large, obscenely large, yet beautiful. The rest of the TVs… meh… They made them bigger and thinner. It was about as unpredictable as Steve Jobs wardrobe.

There was only one thing that really caught my eye for the most obscene, most useless invention ever that I just have to have it. They riced out a Corvette and put Saturn logos on it – four screens, one seat. Thats right, they destroyed a likely $60,000 car and put in a bunch of electronics but yanked the passenger seat.

Yay for progress!

Steven VanRoekel is quoted by Cnet commenting on the initial sales of Windows Home Server: “It’s definitely tens of thousands, which in a month and a half is good”

I deal with managers all day long so let me try to help you with what I’ve so far coined as:

Middle-managers Counting System

The following conversion chart helps convert middle-manager numbers into real world numbers based on the circumstance the manager is in (bragging vs. defending.)

Middle Manager – Reality

When talking about things positive for the company:
Some, most, plenty, lots – 0
Successful – 0
Everyone – (everyone I know outside of our own company) – One person
Tens of thousands – Two people
Millions – Three people, from different companies

When talking about the install base:
Some – 0
We don’t report numbers – 0, and the two dudes that bought it asked for their money back.
Runaway success – 1 person that wrote in something positive about the product. (ToDo: Case Study)
Mass appeal – “We have it on good authority that a girl installed our software. I don’t know if she’s hot.”

When talking about things that are negative for the company:
Lots – 100% customer base
Some – 50% customer base
Very limited exposure – 30% customer base
A few cases – 20% customer base
Virtually none – 10% customer base
Absolutely zero – 9% customer base

And of course, the one even I have used:
Still investigating the issue – 100% customer base, 100% shipped product that is not yet installed, and we’re pretty sure 80% of the issue is not going to be fixed in the next relase either. Oh god, tell me Live.com is still hiring.

So what did Steven actually say, when put through the DeManagerLiser:

“I think we burned 20,000 DVD’s, half of which shipped to HP, Sony and discount software warehouses. The rest we expect to offer up as confetti to the CES organizers”

Here is problem with WHS that I believe CNET didn’t address: Backups are not sexy. When you design an appliance that is not sexy, it doesn’t sell well. And when even that killer feature that you pitch turns out to be faulty, people switch. So far WHS has done more for Linux and Windows Media Center than it has done for its own brand, at least with the tens of thousands (two people) that I’ve talked to about it.

Has the file corruption on a file server you bought to protect your family treasures been big enough to destroy WHS? I doubt it. But here are five things WHS can do to get to that 4.5 million sales in the next month. Yes, month:

1. Gateway Mode – Turn the Windows Home Server into the family gateway, armed with parental controls and AD-like policy management for web site blocking, report computers.
2. Microsoft iTunes – Family collection of shared MP3s, videos, etc availabe for sync to an iPod or the two Zune users.

And the sexy stuff:
3. Play XBOX game backups stored on the WHS.
4. Media streamer hooked into Youtube.com. This alone ought to be enough to kill Apple TV.
5. TV Interface – It’s in the living room, right? So why not let it work with the TV instead of forcing a client (Vista/Xbox) on it?

I think the WHS concept falls apart on the company culture. When I first told Kevin Beares that I just didn’t get the hoopla over the WHS and asked him how this was any better than a networked USB drive he went on to list a bunch of things that I couldn’t even begin to translate to a consumer. So I told him we’d look at WHS only as a SOHO business solution.

What I think really killed it for me, and what I am sure many of you will agreee with me on, is that this product is way too Microsoft Business to be used by a family. Kevin told me that everyone inside of Microsoft loved it and used it. Well, yeah, no shit, this is an awesome geek toy. But a consumer device it is not. You can see the Microsoft Business dry look and feel in the remote access features alone – way too much SharePoint 1.0 look, virtually void of any positive consumer experience – Excel 2007 stylesheets have more consumer appeal than the file listings. Not even a slideshow. No image previews…

I like WHS. But I hope WHS team is hard at work with a shippable SP1 this month. Yes, this month, because time is short. Because if all you do is appeal to geeks, geeks that now have a spare box in their home that doesn’t seem to do any more good to them than a file server with a file corruption bug, you’re going to be losing that spare box to a Windows 2008 server, Cougar or whatever else that “box” can be repurposed to. Heck, most geeks reformat and reinstall their main dekstops more than a few times a year, so if you want to solidify your current install base it needs to be more than just a limited-use/limited-appeal proposal.

It is quite a masterful act to take one’s foot out of his mouth and his head out of his …

But Windows Home Server is going to make me do just that; Something fairly severe has come up on the radar, something that I’m afraid makes Windows Home Server quite useless. Microsoft has identified a number of circumstances under which files on the home server may become corrupt, something that is pretty much unforgivable given the product primary function and promise being data integrity and protection.

In light of this issue, and in the light of there being no immediate fix, I recommend you unplug your WHS now. I have unplugged mine. Sorry, data integrity is paramount when it comes to protecting your family’s digital memories.

Now that most of the home data is sitting safely on the Windows Home Server it’s time to think backup strategy. It’s called a strategy for a reason – disaster is not something you want to experience but it’s an absolute certainty that it will happen so you plan.

Our truely precious family data (mostly financials, documents and pictures) are stored on Own Web Now’s enterprise storage network, that thing is never going to disappear. Until now I also used MozyHome backup service, although highly amateur and frankly substandard form of offsite backup by any measure, you cannot beat backing up a few TB of raw video and mp3’s for $55 a year. Worked fine on the workstations.

However, we’re in file server land now at Casa De Vlad, and that means backing up the server. So I tried Mozy. Woops:

Mozy doesn’t support Windows Home Server. It does not even support file shares (presumably for this very reason) so no way of running it off a workstation to backup Windows Home Server file shares. Now MozyPro supposedly does the file server backup but at $0.50 / GB, I’m more inclined to trust OWN for twice the cost. So Mozy, bye, bye.

But I figured I’d try out something in the meantime. There is already a Jungle Disk Online Backup add-in for Windows Home Server which uses Amazon S3 for the storage backend. Fair enough, giving that a shot right now. It is horribly slow but…

…. but I live in Florida and I need a backup I don’t have to maintain. No tapes, no USB drives, no burning CD’s. I just want it to pick my important data and let me have access to it when Florida sinks into the ocean or gets blown over into Mexico as a result of the latest hurricane. If I wake up in the middle of the night and the house is on fire I am not running to the Home Server, I’m sacking the dog, water bowl and getting the hell out of here. And as my place is burning to the foundation, or waterfront propery on the Gulf of Mexico, or someone robbed the house, or it just turns out to be my unlucky day in the lightning capitol of the world that is under tornado warning as I write this blog post…. Lucy better be hanging out with my stuff. (If you get the Lucy reference you are way too old. So old Susan Bradley is pulling up the bands of her era from a dusty encyclopedia talking about the British Invasion)

Life with the Windows Home Server is pretty sweet. Today we spent the afternoon streaming Die Hard 4.0 from Windows Home Server to the Xbox in the living room. Katie spent the morning listening to the MP3 streams from the same.

P.S. I also owe Katie an apology for the blog earlier this week when I implied she only uses the Xbox to stream MP3’s. She reminded me that she also has two blogs, that she remained married to me even after I installed Office 2007 on her PC, that she emailed Karl while driving around the other day and I added “and you text around on your Blackjack all the time” to which she replied: “I don’t text, I email! SMS? What am I, some sort of an animal?”

Many of you wrote in (vlad@vladville.com) with questions about the home server hardware I chose after my last Windows Home Server post. Terry Walsh also discussed moving his home server around and the Windows Home Server Blog recently talked about the new OEMs working on WHS solutions so I figured I might as well share what went into mine. Now keep in mind that this is what I went with, the options are there for your consideration and guidance but your choice should ultimately fit your lifestyle and your desired use of this server.

First of all, let me say that you buy computer hardware when its a good deal, not when you need it. Mega warehouses like NewEgg, Tiger Direct and others have blockbuster deals when they are expiring models or just have a few items in stock and you can get gear ridiculously cheap. But that doesn’t help you much, what if you wanted Windows Home Server under the Christmas tree and wanted something affordable and scalable? Get ready to bleed, tight cases ahead:

The Case

Don’t be fooled, Windows Home Server is all about the case. Moreso, it is about the right case for you! Is this server going to sit in your living room? In your home office? Above the washer & dryer? Garage? This is a lifestyle choice, one that can go horribly wrong if you choose to get a PowerEdge 2950 rackmount server cooled by an airplane jet engine and stick it under your TV. Likewise, there will be a temptation to get an HTPC case, so it can blend in with your entertainment gear, good choice until you realize most those cases come with two hard drive slots at best and will make a complete eyesore of your living room once you start daisy chaining external storage devices.

My Windows Home Server will be living under my TV next to my Xbox. So for my intents and purposes I chose a small form factor mini-tower barebones from ASUS. There are several really important reasons for this:

BIOS Fan Control – ASUS BIOS comes with intelligent and configurable fan control, meaning I can set the server to run as quietly as humanly possible to fit into my living room. Likewise, if I were ever to do any maintenance I could speed the fan up and work at 100% without fear that my system would melt.

Front expansion slots – This server has enough room to hold two 3.5″ hard drives and two 5.25 slots. So if you need four drives in your system you can get 3.5″ mounting brackets for $2.

PCI expansion slots – Most small format cases are very deceptive about the expansion slots that are built in. For example, some will mention multiple slots like 2x PCI and 1x PCI-e but what they don’t mention is that they tend to overlap. I needed at least two slots, one for the wireless network controller and one for the storage controller.

My choice: ASUS V3-P5V900 Intel Socket T(LGA775) Intel Core 2 Duo / Pentium D / Pentium 4 VIA P4M900 2 x 240Pin VIA Chrome9 Barebone currently retailing for $124. This system includes the case and the motherboard with integrated video, audio, gigabit ethernet and a somewhat lousy storage controller. Whenever possible you should avoid built in / integrated SATA controllers, especially when they are SATA-1 (150). Basically, for $124 you’re just left looking for processor, ram and hard drive, all of which are very subjective.  This case is just over 14 inches high 7 inches wide so make sure you measure your entertainment center if thats where it is going. I chose a mini-tower / small form factor PC because I figured the storage demands would grow and the easiest way to expand the storage capacity is to attach those external RAID enclosures with their own power supply. They are roughly the same size as this case. Also, the CPU fan exhaust is on the left so make sure there is ample room there for hot air to be blown out. (feng shui tip: if you nail this against wall/wood/metal/glass on the left it will pack the heat back over the CPU and subject your system to overheating and fire, or in feng shui: super very extra bad!) Cost: $124.

The Processor, The Memory, The Hard Drive

You can be as cheap or as fancy as you want here. This system comes with two DDR2 slots and socket 755 which can hold anything from a low end Celeron that can be obtained for less than $50 in a retail package with fan & heatsink all the way up to multicore Core 2 Duo processors. Memory runs at 667 MHz and can hold two slots for total of 4GB.

I went with a rather conservative setup. For the processor I picked Intel Pentium E2160 Allendale 1.8GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor because it was the cheapest dual core processor. Cost: $82. For the memory I went with just 1GB DDR2 module WINTEC AMPO 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model 3AMD2667-1G2-R, again cheapest possible match on the clock and comes with the heat spreader. Cost: $19. Finally, the hard drive: Western Digital Caviar SE WD5000AAJS 500GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. Cost: $99.

The storage issue is the biggest swinging point. Do you go with 1 TB or two 500GB? Do you assume this will be the sole storage point of all your precious digital media (in which case you’re buying double for redundancy) or is this simply a backup point (in which case the bigger the better)? How many people and at what frequency will the data be accessed (buffer size, storage architecture, etc). The choice is yours.

The Storage Controller

This is probably more important than all of the above: storage controller. This is the piece that assures your data integrity, storage scalability and the storage selection to begin with. The case I chose came with 1 IDE and 2x SATA1 (150) ports. Aside from CD/DVD drive, I would not rely on those ports for storage. Onboard controllers have a staggeringly high failure rate and once that fails you may as well throw the entire system away.

I chose the SYBA SD-SATA2-2E2I PCI-X SATA II Controller Card controller for a few reasons: price, convenience, expansion. For under $40, this is hardly a gamble when it comes to storage. Second, it comes with two SATA-2 (3 GB/Sec) ports so my data will fly. Second, and most important, this gives you two eSATA ports. I can use this in the future if I need to provide additional storage or if I want more highly redundant storage – RAID 10 anyone? I am not a fan of USB hard drives, so for me this was a must. Cost: $40.

Accessories & Extras

I would not consider these to be essential but I wanted to give you an idea of what else went into it. I was not sure if this server would live in the living room, home office, or somewhere without Ethernet connectivity. So I got a wireless controller GIGABYTE GN-WP01GS IEEE 802.11b/g PCI Wireless. Cost: $16. Even though my retail processor came in with thermal compound of its own, I always replace it with something more appropriate for Florida weather: Arctic Silver. Cost $6. Finally, a copy of Windows Home Server software.

Conclusion

For a little less than the HP MediaSmart server (on sale for $599) I got a heck of a lot more for the grand total of $559, with more RAM, faster processor, expandable storage and components that I can swap as I please. Extra storage of 500GB would have cost $99, 1TB for $270. Extra memory would be $19 for 1GB, $36 for 2GB extra sticks. Total cost: $559. Not bad!

Last night I took my first steps with the released version of Windows Home Server. Here are my initial thoughts:

1. I should have paid $600 for the HP model, the install was excruciating and took forever.
2. They did a heck of a job creating the installer and the deployment tools. The initial stage of the install looks like Windows Server 2008 / Vista and had all the drivers for my Intel 965 chipset so no floppy needed for a SATA controller (SiS)
3. RTFM: Needs an 76Gb drive or better
4. Headless or RDP? So the idea is that this server is deployed headless, but you have to activate it, but you shouldn’t log into it, but you have to install an antivirus on it because it doesn’t have one.
5. Addins: Not very intuitive at all, comes as an installation package (.msi) but what do you do with it? RDP and install? Open on the desktop? (you actually dump into \\server\software\add-ins if you’re curious)
6. Pushy: When I deployed the client software it wanted to run a backup within a minute. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I just got this new toy and you want to destroy my network and my ability to play with it first? (something can be learned from Apple here). When I told it to defer the backup it wanted to run it an hour later. It gave me no options of what I wanted to back up, so I am assuming it would have tried to squeeze everything over.
7. Interesting documentation. I have mixed feelings about this because I tried to behave like a stupid user would. Stupid user would never be able to get the WHS online. I first let it have a go at my hardened firewall, it failed. Then I let it go at a stock WRT-54G router, which is probably the most widely used wifi device on the planet. No go again. Then I followed the documentation – they wanted 3389 redirected. Ok, not a problem – no go either. Then I decided to do what a user would have done – stuck it in a DMZ. All worked! Yay! This is where the user would likely have stopped, leaving a box on their home network wide open.
8. Patching: Impressive. It powered itself on, patched itself without a click and told me it would be right back.
9. Remote access: Impressive. Just… impressive.
10. Backup tool: Impressive.

These are my initial thoughts and I went through them as a user. I have to admit that as a user I am really not interested in WHS at all,  I have a far more sinister commercial interest in WHS… WHOS to be precise (Windows Home-Office Server) but I wanted to look at this solution through the users eyes and frankly I would be a little confused because it is a little rough around the edges.. I’d probably return it to the store. It’s not an Xbox, that’s for sure, and frankly, home users are the ones with questions like “Should I be installing those Microsoft things it nags me to get (software updates)” – they wouldn’t figure this out.

However, assuming a proper setup and better OOB (out of box) experience, this is one solid puppy. It could have had a bit more of an Apple or even Xbox touch to be a killer product – for example, it follows the broken Microsoft El Generico disease they have had since friggin clippy “Learn more about Remote Access to computers” on the front page, with a stock Microsoft image. Just how many lines of code would it have taken to pluck an image from my library and make my first impression of the remote console a little bit more personal? Going to the picture library gives me the same 1996 look and feel of upload, download and search… how about preview? How about thumbnails?

Extensibility. The real appeal of the WHS solution to me is in its extensibility – this beast already has the ability to run a DHCP server, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and even manage home appliances and automation tasks. But, you wouldn’t know about those. Why? Well, the add-in section of the Windows Home Server site looks like a high school science fair report while the promotional site looks like a million bucks.

So to sum it up, my first impression is that this is absolutely amazing and has a ton of potential but I hope they spend money to polish it instead of spending money trying to sell it because as-is, my parents would return this to Best Buy. I am really looking forward to playing with it some more.

Windows Home Server finally hits the shelves today. There is a ton of news coverage over it, everything positive. Two models are on the street already, the product is easy to use, price is very attractive (starting at $599 for the HP MediaSmart Server that showed up at CES).

The most interesting summary comes from Nick Mokey at Wired:

“Windows Home Server gives users access to the features of having an ordinary server without needing the expertise to deal with it.”

And with those two lines comes the end of SMB server computing as we know it – the complex setup, overinvolved options, expensive maintenance and convoluted licensing are coming in a $599 plug-and-play box which at its core runs…. yup, SBS 2003.

For the riff-raff, this is a tombstone. For the true solution providers though, this is nothing but a godsent opportunity from Microsoft to target new markets and open up new possibilities where they were too complex and too expensive to ever stand a chance before. To those of you that think “Home”, that’s not “Business” I dare you to find me one SMB business owner that doesn’t do a ton of work at home. How is that computer managed, backed up, secured, monitored, accessed… This is the answer.