I built my WHS. I have 3 largish mismatched hard drives a dual core processor and 2 GB of ram. I’m sure this is more than is required. But, it feels good.

I have also changed all my machines “Documents” folders (such as Music, Video, Photos) to point to the home server instead of locally. It works great. My wife saves pictures from our camera directly to the home server and she doesn’t even know it. This saves me the headache of finding all the locations the pictures are saved when she wants to get them developed.

In the past I have wanted a solution similiar to this one. Most of them were complicated by my dynamic IP through comcast. I have tried Server 03, Small Business Server 03, and other open source NAS software, to put a solution into place that accomplished all the WHS tasks. They all required too much maintence and at times were above my understanding. I am very happy with WHS. It is working well for me (One of the few Microsoft products that I am overall very pleased with.)

I also use WHS to share Music and Videos with my PS3. It works really well. The PS3 only plays certain video files though which means most of my video files are Not Supported by the PS3. I could convert them if I wanted but it’s really just too much work.

Shortly after the Power Pack comes out, I’m going to try out Amazon’s Jungle Disc Solution for backing up my home server “off site”. I belive there are an add in or 2 that can help me do that.

I have a Buffalo LinkStation Live NAS (500GB). It’s a piece of junk. It’s horribly slow, doesn’t work well with my Vista machines, and I’ve had to replace it once in the 6 months I’ve had it (bought the “extended service plan”). I originally purchased the Buffalo NAS to accomplish many of the tasks of my WHS. WHS does a much better job and gives me more options than the NAS.

Over all, I would recommend WHS to anyone. You don’t need to be super technical to set it up. After it’s setup you almost forget about it (except for that warm glow you get each time you use it.). I dont have to perform frequent restarts or updates. The WHS just takes care of itself.

The add ins I have are: One that allows me to “minimize to desktop” the WHS Console when remotely connected to the server. This is valuable for me because it allows me to access my Buffalo NAS through the WHS desktop.
One that sends me notification emails. It is suppose to send me email notifications on a regular basis, even text my cell phone if there is something I should know. But, I’ve been having trouble getting it configured. It would be nice to have this add in working. Mostly for cool points. But also so I can observe system restarts, updates, and problems. I have SBS 03 R2 installed at the office and it’s really nice to receive monitoring notifications from the SBS on a biweekly basis.

WHS is a good tool to have on my network. Microsoft doesn’t always build get products. But, WHS is one of the best products I have used from Microsoft.

In addition, there has been NO word about whether or not Vista Bitlocker is going to be supported, as currently even on Vista 32bit it’s NOT working with WHS at all!

WHS doesn’t even see the partition…

In addition, this early release (delayed) of WHS PP1 doesn’t resolve data corruption for either Vista or XP, which you would think would have been given more attention due to the fact this design flaw has been around way too long to be fixed.

So, it appears for all those who are NOT using Vista 64bit, we must wait even more to be unable to use our WHS as a real server. WHS is nothing but a very expensive backup appliance, if you don’t mind your data at risk, for the rest of us. Backup files are NOT immune from the WHS DE design flaw as drive pooling can effect your data/files.

Why should anyone take Microsoft’s assumptions that backup files are 100%, rock solid and without risk or worry from a proven data corruption product? MSWHS already had posted even an unscheduled reboot can lead to data corruption of all your backup files at once. Has this issue been resolved? Or must an additional UPS backup system be purchased here as well?

This isn’t what real people want to be bothered with when using WHS even if additional Vista 64bit is added via PP1.

I didn’t buy WHS for this… Did you? And yes, I don’t use Vista 64bit because of the lack of Vista 64bit hardware drivers and software available. Even Vista 32bit lacks driver support for many applications and devices even still.

So by all means, leave the rest of us waiting, forgetting most of us are using XP, just to accommodate Vista 64bit, when the fact is the larger majority of us suffer with this data corruption design flaw.