In a bit of a departure from the normal Windows Home Server based hardware review, today I find myself presented with an Acer AC100S server loaded with Microsoft Small Business Server 2001 Essentials (SBS).

Back when WHS v1 first shipped, many small businesses immediately saw the benefits that a home server could bring with its low cost, centralised storage, client backup and simple management, so it came as no surprise to see a version targeted at small businesses when Microsoft released the revamped Home Server family in 2011.

Acer describe this server as:

The Acer AC100S delivers essential server-class features and expandability along with unique Acer ITSmart utilities and Microsoft® Small Business Server 2011 Essentials together to ensure the success of startup and small-size businesses. The ultra-micro tower server is ENERGY STAR® certified and features an 80 PLUS® efficient power supply that saves space and energy while keeping your employees and office highly productive.

So that is a big claim from a small box, lets see if the AC100S can live up to the expectation.

Hardware

The AC100S wears a very similar case to the last Acer server I reviewed, the Revo Center RC-111. Measuring 200 (8in)w x 205 (8.1in)d  x 200 (8in)h there are some minor cosmetic differences, but it is essentially seems to be the same case, which is no bad thing as it is very sturdy and solidly built. In operation the AC100S is almost silent with the big 120mm fan keeping things cool without adding any unwanted noise. Power consumption hovered around 38-48 watts with the two supplied WD Caviar Blue disks, which is a very impressive figure given the potential power that lies within this little cube.

The AC100S supplied for review has an Intel Xeon E3-1260L 2.40Ghz (4 core, 8 thread) processor, 4GB DDR3 memory and 2 x 500GB disks (Western Digital WD5000AAKS Caviar Blue). Power comes from a 200w 80+ (bronze) power supply and internally there is a single (half height) PCIe x8 slot should you wish to add a graphics card or TV tuner (or whatever) to your server.

The usual trip around the buttons and sockets reveals two x USB 2.0 ports at the front, along with a the main power button and a family of status lights. There are also LED lights for each of the hard disks, which will normally be green, but can flash red if the RAID set has got out of sync or is rebuilding.

Around the back are all the normal connections, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, four x USB 2.0 and the very welcome addition of a VGA port. Having a screen attached to your server greatly simplifies the installation of an operating system and frees the manufacturer from the need to produce a custom headless installation process. Putting Windows 7 or Linux onto this hardware will be no issue, should that be your choice.

The four hard disk caddies are the same screw-less design used on the RC-111 and it is both quick and simple to change hard disks without any tools. Unlike the RC-111, the AC100S can have its front door locked to prevent accidental removal of the disks or to protect the power button from unauthorised shutdown.

Small Business Server 2011 Essentials

This is the first time I have seen SBS 2011 Essentials, so lets quickly see what the major differences are with WHS 2011:

Windows Server 2008 R2 provides the common core to both server platforms, but whereas WHS is licensed for 10 users, SBS can have up to 25. WHS has media serving and conversion capabilities to serve music, movies and pictures to a local network which SBS completely lacks. SBS can be an Active Domain controller but WHS can’t.

Once installed and running, the AC100S and SBS 2011 Essentials have a very similar look an feel to WHS 2011, but unlike most WHS 2011 OEM servers, the Acer AC100S has a VGA port which allows it to be managed directly rather than having to connect using an RDC connection.

Log in and you will find the familiar Dashboard with all the normal functions and management tools, but you will see three main differences:

1. The Dashboard is blue not green
2. You wont find any media streaming controls
3. Acer ITSmart is the initial screen when the Dashboard loads.

The first two are self explanatory, so let’s have a closer look at the third, Acer’s ITSmart software.

Acer ITSMart

Initially ITSmart draws you a simple diagram of your network and some of the primary capabilities of the server. To the right you are able to control and configure Printer and Fax sharing, Server Health Monitoring and Client configuration.

Server Health allows you to see all of the servers hardware details, so lets look at what is on offer.

Starting with CPU, all of the Xeon E3-1260L cores can monitored (the < > are used to scroll between CPU 1-4 and CPU 5-8).

Next is hard disk activity.

And then the network.

Memory is next, with the default SBS 2011 not really troubling the 4GB of RAM.

Now we have temperature.

And fan speed.

And finally voltage. Again the < > will allow you to scroll through the available values.

Moving to the Client section, we have the Power Saving controls. These allow the server to manage the standby/sleep of its clients. For this to work, there is an add-in that needs to be installed on each client.

The add-in can be deployed to all the clients remotely without needing to visit each one individually.

I haven’t encountered an add-in that uses this technique on WHS before, so I don’t know if it is something that WHS supports or not, but it is very neat and simple here on SBS 2011. Each of the clients dutifully loaded the add-in on their next reboot, with some new sections being added to the local Launchpad application.

Everything else on the dashboard performed as you would normally find on WHS, with the only thing really different being user accounts. Because SBS 2011 is an Active Directory domain controller, any clients capable of joining a domain (XP Pro, Vista Business, Enterprise & Ultimate, 7 Pro and above) can join the servers domain. This allows a user to log into any client PC joined to the domain in the same way you would expect to find in an large enterprise. Neat for a small business, but of limited use to a home user.

Intel tools

Outside of the Dashboard, Acer have installed some additional Intel tools to control the deeper elements of the server.

Intel Rapid Storage Technology controls the on board RAID built into the motherboard. Out of the box, the two Western Digital Blue 500GB hard disks are configured into a RAID 1 array, which makes sense for a business to ensure maximum up time for the server in the event of a single disk failure. There looks to be plenty of flexibility with the configuration, and I tested putting the array out of sync by booting up with only a single drive. Upon the re-connection of the missing drive the array rebuilt seamlessly in the background, with the only visible sign something had gone wrong being the blinking red lights on the front of the server. Once the array had fully synchronised, the lights returned to green.

Also provided is the Intel Management and Security Status tool. This controls the Intel Active Management Technology which is all about remote control and healing of the server, and Intel Anti-Theft technology which can help protect against theft.

In Use

This server is very quick, the Xeon processor makes very short work of file serving, and because there is no media conversions or other streaming duties to bog it down, it remains fast at all times.

In the testing environment, I was not able to simulate the 25 simultaneous users that its license allows, but the Intel on-board RAID coupled with the WD Caviar Blue disks should make very short work of all the file serving required to keep a small business running.

Although there is some additional overhead for an SBS server over a WHS server (Active Directory domain, DHCP & DNS and so on), this doesn’t seem to impact the AC100S performance one bit. In fact, this server should make an excellent platform to deliver other small business services such as email or databases should they be required in addition to the standard file serving and client backup.

By way of a very quick comparison, Windows 7 was installed to give you an idea of the relative performance of this hardware. We can overlook the low graphics scores as they aren’t important to a server, and as this hardware can take a half-height PCIe X8 card you could always opt to install a graphics card if you need one.

Verdict

The AC100S looks to be a very capable Small Business server, powerful, unobtrusive and expandable. Microsoft SBS 2011 Essentials presents the right level of enterprise functionality to allow a central logon policy, centralised file storage and client backups.

It would be nice to see Acer offer this hardware with WHS 2011 in addition to SBS 2011, as I am sure the extra power of the Xeon processor would be greatly appreciated by some home server enthusiasts who would find an Atom powered server a little to limited.

Pricing wise the Acer AC100S is available for $999 in the US and for  £840.00 ex VAT in the UK.

A AC100S data sheet in PDF format can be downloaded directly from here.

Acer AC100S Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The Acer Revo Center RC-111 is the latest home server from the Taiwanese PC giant, and it looks to be a very promising and capable device. Details of the final hardware configurations, destination markets and prices are not available at the moment, but it’s clear that this looks to be a well put together domestic server that should find favour amongst any WHS fans across the world.

Hardware

Build quality is up there with the best of them, measuring around 20 (8in)w x 22 (8.5in)h x 21 (8in)d the metal chassis feels suitably solid and strong. Quiet in operation, and drawing around 30 watts of power with the two supplied hard disks, the little black cube seems unobtrusive and well suited to a home environment.

Up front the lines are kept clean and uncluttered with the most things being hidden by a full height front door. The door is edged with a metallic orange handle and contains four little holes for the disk status LED’s to peek through. On the left side of the case are the main status lights, a backup button, a USB 2.0 socket and the power switch sitting right on top of the server.

Opening the door reveals the four user removable hard disk caddies, that I am happy to report are the screw-less variety which make installing additional hard disks an absolute breeze. There is no mechanism to lock either the front door or the caddies into the chassis, which although a minor issue may be important to some.

The back is also simple and uncluttered. Here we find an e-SATA port, two USB 2.0 sockets, a gigabit LAN port, power input and finally a reset switch for putting the server into recovery mode when performing a rebuild. There seems to be a PCI-e x1 port behind the half-height slot on the case, but it wasn’t used during the review so I can’t confirm if its available for use.

Internally, our review sample had an Intel Atom D525 processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory and 2TB +250GB hard disks.

+250GB disk?

One unexpected feature of the Revo Center, and not something I have seen on a home server appliance before is a 2.5” hard disk fixed inside the server, completely separate from the main removable disks. When you think about it, this is a clever idea which allows the operating system to be installed on a non-removable disk, leaving all of the user accessible disks free for upgrades without worrying about accidentally removing the boot disk.

Ok, so on the negative side you will need to crack open the case to replace it in the event of a failure, but as you can see from the image above, it isn’t difficult to get at it in its position beneath the main storage bay.

Rebuild

It is inevitable that rebuilding a headless server is going to be a more complicated process than rebuilding one with a keyboard and screen. The Revo Center has the same challenges to address as any other manufacturer, and Acer have chosen to solve the problem by requiring the user to have a free USB thumb drive. One isn’t provided so make sure you have one available if you ever need to rebuild the server.

To rebuild or reset your server, first you run the recovery DVD application on a client PC; it will request the minimum 8GB thumb drive, and will then proceed to erase and configure it ready for booting the server. When this is done, you insert the thumb drive into the Revo Center, power on and poke a bent paperclip into the rear reset hole. Meanwhile the original recovery application sits and waits for the server to show up on the LAN. All being well, the client will see the server and commence the installation/reset of the servers operating system.

This is all actually a pretty painless process, and once the thumb drive is configured, it’s no harder to rebuild than any other headless server I have seen. One thing to note however, is that the factory reset process will install the operating system to the largest hard disk it finds. So if you want the OS on the smaller internal 2.5” disk, and its a fair assumption that you would, then you need to ensure that all the other 3.5” drives are removed. There doesn’t seem to be an option in the factory reset process to choose which disk receives the OS.

Windows Home Server 2011

Once completed, anybody familiar with WHS 2011 will see that the factory rebuild process brings a couple of extra bits not found on a regular WHS build.

System Information

Acer have included their own System Information add-in which provides you will all sorts of useful information about the Revo Center hardware that isn’t available on the standard WHS dashboard.

Initially the screen shows hardware information, CPU, memory and storage usage along with temperature, voltage and fan speed details. From the menu on the right, other things can also be configured.

The Hardware Health and Performance Monitor page allows you to set the monitor refresh interval and to set the performance threshold of CPU, memory and storage.

Network Settings lets you change the TCP/IP settings without needing to RDP into the server directly.

The front LED’s brightness can be controlled if they are too bright for you.

And finally there is control of the built-in Firefly server which allows serving of the music library directly to iTunes clients.

Lights Out

Lights-Out Community Edition also gets installed by default, which allows you to put the server into sleep mode or wake the system up at chosen times. All this will help save electricity if you sleep the server when its not needed. During sleep the Revo Center consumes about 11 watts of power compared to the 30 watts when running.

In Use

No complaints about the level of performance delivered by this server. The combination of the Intel Atom D525 and the 4GB of DDR3 memory provide plenty of power to fuel all the standard WHS 2011 duties. Files are served without delay, media is transcoded in the web pages just fine and the console is always snappy and responsive.

From an end user point of view, there wasn’t any perceivable difference to the performance when using the 3.5” or the 2.5” disk for the operating system. This is welcome news, as it seems there are no penalties for using the smaller disk, freeing up the removable drives for file storage, which  greatly simplifies upgrades for any non-technical owner of this server.

Expanding outside of the case is possible using the rear USB 2.0 or e-SATA connections (no details available of whether e-SATA is port multiplier capable or not). The USB 2.0 count isn’t as generous as many other servers, but with the availability of todays multi-TB hard disks, this should be enough for most peoples needs.

The front mounted USB port and backup button provide a facility to copy files from a USB device, and have them stored in a shared  folder and classified according to type. I have seen this sort of copy capability on other servers, and it provides a simple import mechanism if you need it.

Verdict

As we don’t currently have any details of availability, hardware configurations or pricing, it’s very hard to make any value for money decisions on this server.

Looking purely at it’s build quality and capabilities, it hard not to like the Revo Center. It sits small, quiet and compact on the desk; the Intel Atom D525 provides plenty of oomph to power Windows Home Server 2011; the internal 250GB drive simplifies storage upgrades and the case offers enough expansion to keep most domestic users satisfied.

Lets hope the current hard disk pricing blip doesn’t damage the prospects of this server in the marketplace.

Exclusive Acer Revo Center RC-111 Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

From French SME Splitted-Desktop System the qY.Server runs from a AMD Sempron 2 GHz and up to 8GB of memory and can take up to 4 hard drives, but only those of 2.5", the same size which are found in laptops and are more expensive.

Here’s the specs:

• Motherboard s2350 mini ITX format
• AMD Sempron 2 GHz
• RAM up to 8GB
• 1-4 2.5-inch internal drives (including models 3 shelves up to 1TB) , SSD and HDD technologies
• Fanless
• Power consumption <30W (varies depending on the type and number of hard drives)
• 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports
• 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 front, 6 rear
• 1 DVI
• 1 HD Audio port
• 4 internal ports SATA-II
• An internal compact flash connector
• Microsoft Windows Home Server

The base system including 2GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive (fine for the OS) is available from 379 Euro.

More details (in French) are available from here.

The French qy.Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

We have more information and pricing for the Riley Server Processor and Storage units plus a pre-order special for our readers with early orders to be shipped before Christmas.

The Riley Server with the strap line ‘be seen, not heard’ is very appropriate as both the processor and storage units are completely fan less, and even with four 3.5" HDDs in the storage unit it is almost silent!

Riley is designed as a component based unit – you choose the processor type you want for the application, and then you choose the additional mass storage unit(s) to deliver the capacity you need.

The processor unit (available in 3 configurations) has space for 2 x 2.5" hard drives. One to host the WHS OS and the other for the WHS2011 backup drive, protecting the whole of the 1st drive.

With the processor unit connecting to the storage unit via a single eSATA cable this allows for an exceptional data throughout delivering 92MB/s read and 136MB/s write.

The storage unit comes setup for RAID-5 and allows up to 4 hard drives to be fitted, and if you run out of room you can also add one or more expansion units.

We have a coupon code for you whereby if you order ANY Riley CP** Processor unit with ANY Riley SU** Storage unit you can save £99 + VAT:

N114R5Y0UPZ

Please note the SU12 12TB unit will not be shipping for some time (and can’t be ordered)

All other units will start shipping from the 15^th December on a first come first served basis

All units can be pre-ordered from today, and will be delivered pre-Christmas

To learn more visit: http://www.tranquilpcshop.co.uk/riley-series/

The Riley Server Processor and Storage Units is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

They currently have 2 models available. The iBrick IB100 which you will recognize as the LaCie 5big Backup Server and the iBrick IB200 which uses the HP MicroServer chassis:

The IB100 runs WHS v1 and comes in a 5TB configuration for $1395 or as 10TB for $1695 with all 5 days full in either configuration:

The IB200 runs WHS 2011 with all 4 bays filled in either a  4TB configuration for $1495 or as 8TB for $1795:

More details including data sheets are available from here.

Ldisk Pre-Installed iBrick Servers is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

This great looking server comes in either 4TB or 8TB configurations and can be further expanded thanks to its 2 x USB 3.0 ports. Powered by an Intel Atom 1.8 GHz dual core processor and 2GB of RAM the WD Sentinel DX4000 features an LCD display panel on the front of the unit which displays system status and critical alerts and comes complete with dual Gigabit Ethernet configured in Adaptive Fault Tolerance mode, which keeps your network available by automatically switching to the second Ethernet port if the first one should fail.

Equipped with WD’s Enterprise Class WD RE drives these can be configured as a RAID 1 array (2 drives only) or a RAID 5 array (3-4 drives), the WD Sentinel DX4000 can hold up to 4 SATA hard drives.

You can also view the real time updates for these drives, your RAID array and your network status through the WD Sentinel’s Dashboard.

With Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials being a close cousin to WHS 2011 this little server from WD will look nice in any Home Server users home.

You can currently purchase the 4TB model (WDBLGT0040KBK) for $950 and the 8TB model (WDBLGT0080KBK) for $1450.

More information is available from here.

Western Digital Announce a Small Office Storage Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Known as the "Riley" series of servers, they will include the following features:

• Processor units powered by Intel dual core Atom, or i3/i5 processors
• Processor units include two 2.5” HDD bays to provide server OS drive and server backup drive
• Storage units provide RAID0, 1, 5 or 10 (default 5) optimisation across the 4x internal 3.5” HDD bays
• Multiple storage units can connect to the processor units (depending on processor model)
• 100% fan less operation
• Near silent operation (processor <3.5dBA, storage <6dBA)
• Low power consumption
• Single piece construction, without vents or any joints
• Optimised for ‘living space’, visually and acoustically desirable
• 3 year limited warranty
• Designed and manufactured in UK

Details on pricing and availability is to be announced

Tranquil PC Riley Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The HFX PowerNAS 2011 from Austrian HFX is a fan less Home Server with 4GB of RAM and an Intel i3 or i5 CPU. With space for 5 x 3.5" hard drives the HFX PowerNAS 2011 isn’t cheap, but at $1,599 (1,095 Euro) you are getting a fine piece of hardware.

• 5x HDD 3,5“ bays for HDD
• 1x HDD 2,5“ intern for system
• Intel Sandy I3 or I5 with 4GB RAM
• Zotac H67 with Intel RAID
• 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
• 4x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA
• 1x GB LAN, 7.1 Audio
• LCD 2x 16 lines in white
• optional DVD or Blu-Ray
• Windows Home Server 2011 installed
• 4,5kg to 10kg
• 20cm (h) x 24cm (w) x 24cm (d)

More details are available here, whilst a PDF brochure is also available.

The HFX PowerNAS 2011 – Naughty but Nice is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The T7-SEHS has the following features:

• Dual Core 1.8GHz CPU
• Rugged chassis, made from extruded aluminium, which also facilitate the fan less cooling of the total system
• Slim size, measuring in at a mere 57mm wide
• Low power consumption, of under 16W

And the super quiet character of the T7-SEHS, measures only around 15-16dBA.

Available in configurations from £199 + VAT to £399 + VAT, all come pre-fitted with 2GB of RAM, and a choice of 500GB, 1TB or 2TB of storage. With the external USB2 ports allowing for low cost storage extension as required.

For a limited time, Tranquil are offering the unique T7 SEHS Home Server from just £199.00 +VAT which comes with 2GB 1x 2.5” 500GB HDD – with 1x slot free.

More information on the T7-SEHS with Windows Home Server 2011 can be found here.

Tranquil PC Announce the T7-SEHS with WHS 2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

On test here is the Leo HS4, which sits at the top of Tranquil PC’s range of Windows Home Server 2011 powered servers.

Case

The Leo HS4 shares its enamelled steel, five drive-bay case with Tranquil PC’s SQA-5H range of home servers. Quiet in operation and solid in construction, these are excellent cases and at 213 (w) x 331 (d) x 195 (h) (mm) they are not going to take up a lot of space in the home. And don’t be put off by the black cube appearance, as it can be also be ordered in white.

Although they share the same case, one major between the Leo HS4 and the SQA-5H is the number of the hard drive bays available. The case itself can accommodate up to five hard disks, all of which can be used on a SQA-5H, but due to the increased cooling requirements of the Leo’s Core i3, one of the drive bays has been given over to the processors heat sink.

In the current world of 2tb and 3tb hard disks, this is more of an inconvenience than a major problem, but having to dedicate an entire drive bay to a heat sink does give the impression of a compromised design.

If you need more storage that the remaining four bays provide, you have plenty of external expansion options in the form of eSATA or USB 3.0. But if its a single box solution you are after, and you don’t need the extra processor power of the Leo HS4, then consider the SQA-5H range of servers, as the lower spec Atom processors require less cooling and hence retain the use of the 5th drive bay.

Hardware

Internally, this Leo HS4 came with an Intel Core i3-2100t @ 2.50Ghz processor, 2Gb of RAM and a single 2TB hard disk. If you are ordering one of these servers directly from Tranquil PC, you can upgrade to either an Intel Core i5-2400S or i7-2600S, increase the RAM to either 4GB or 8GB and choose additional hard disks.

The correct choice here really comes down to what you are going to do with this server and what operating system you are planning to use.

For vanilla Windows Home Server 2011 duties, the basic configuration will serve you just fine. If you are planning on installing additional software server or going to be requiring heavy duty on-the-fly media transcoding, you might benefit from one of the optional upgrades.

On the front of the Leo HS4 you will find a pair of USB 2.0 ports, the power button and some status LED’s.

Around the back things are a bit more interesting, with 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, an eSATA and gigabit Ethernet. These should provide plenty of options if you wish to expand on the internal storage capacity, but for those of you looking to build your own mini data centre at home, Tranquil PC offer the factory option of a two port eSATA expander.

As the eSATA expander offers port mutilplier capabilities, you will be able to add up to two of Tranquils matching SQA-ex expansion cases, giving you a maximum of ten extra hard disks. Using 2tb hard disks, this could give you up to 20tb of additional storage (2 expansion cases x 5 bays in each x 2tb).

Finally there is the 12v DC power input, as the Leo HS4 comes supplied with a laptop style external power supply.

Service plate

Although the Leo HS4 ships with Windows Home Server 2011 as standard, any of you that wish to install a different operating system will welcome the inclusion of some video ports behind the Service Plate. Being able to plug a screen into a headless server greatly simplifies the process of installing a alternative operating systems.

Behind the cover, the video bases are pretty well covered with DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI all being available, in additions to analogue and optical sound outputs.

In Use

The supplied hardware spec for this server is more than a match for the demands of domestic WHS 2011 duties. The Core i3 processor has plenty of capacity for transcoding media and delivering HD movie files to your local network devices.

The file server always remained responsive, and the management console was quick and snappy to use. All in all, WHS 2011 doesn’t trouble this hardware at all.

Power consumption is a major factor for any hardware that is left running 24/7, and the Leo HS4 returns a very respectable 30 watts during normal operations, although this is going to increase depending on the number of hard disks you install.

By way of a comparison, the hidden HDMI port was used to install Windows 7 onto the Leo HS4.

As you can see from the Performance Information screen above, the Leo’s is only let down by its graphic performance, and with no options to install a graphics card, it isn’t really going to cut it as a home theatre PC. But that’s not why you buy this hardware, its not an HTPC, its a Home Server.

Verdict

As there are not too many PC manufacturers supporting the Windows Home Server platform at the moment, so it is great to see a company who is providing high quality and flexible hardware.

This quality comes at a price unfortunately, but if you require a quiet, efficient and powerful server with the flexibility to grow and expand over time, then you should certainly consider the Tranquil PC Leo HS4.

Tranquil PC – Leo HS4

Tranquil PC Leo HS4 Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The Acer RevoCenter RC110 – RC111 looks similar to its v1 offering but naturally has beefier hardware. Sporting a Intel Atom D425 in the RC110 and a D525 Atom in the RC111, both units come equipped with the four 3.5" hot-swappable SATA bays which can be further expanded upon thanks to the 3x USB 2 ports, 2x USB 3 ports and the eSATA port.

The Windows Home Server Blog states that availability dates for global markets will be available soon

You can download the RevoCenter datasheet  and find out more about the RevoCenter from Acer.

Acer RevoCenter for WHS 2011 Closer to Release is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The 3 servers on offer are the VSS-4HC @ £625.00, theVSS-4HA @ £458.33 and the VSS-6IC Colorado Editions @ £666.67.

These server comes with features not typically found on small home servers, such dual Intel network adapters featuring redundancy and teaming and use either the ‘Sandy Bridge’ or Atom processors, which make these servers remarkably energy efficient.
 
Windows Home Server is installed on the internal 2.5” hard drive, which is housed in hot-swap bays and can be configured as RAID 5 or RAID 10 to protect against drive failure.

The servers come installed with either 2Gb or 4Gb of DDR3 memory, and with either 1 or 2 x 160Gb mirrored hard drives.

More details on these Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials servers are available here.

ViridianPC Announce Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials Range is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

One of these new machines is just 34mm high, made from a single block of aluminum and fan less and this sample unit has an mSATA internal 80GB HDD that plugs directly into the main board, and being solid state is again silent.

“…we can reveal that the product will happily cool an i3-2100T or i5-2390T CPU, even in a long term 100% CPU load test!”

One of Tranquil PCs Super Slim PC carved from a single piece of material.

This example outline design for a Tranquil PC embedded system sports ZERO noise, ZERO moving parts, LOW (35mm) profile with numerous mounting options.  This version can be powered by Intel i3/i5 or even i7 processors (-S series, not the ‘mobile versions).

The first machines should become available during mid to late September

Home Server Hardware – Just Like Apples is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The H67 Personal Server is a cube like affair with a 120mm silent fan in the front which glows blue and has space for 2 hard drives thanks to its two hot-swap bays.

The H67 Personal Server is available in different CPU configurations, with a choice of either a SandyBridge Pentium G840 (2.8GHz), a Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz), different i5 cores or a Core i7 from-2600S (2.8GHz). With 2GB of RAM  as standard with a maximum capacity of 4GB the unit comes complete with a 250GGB hard drive and can be further expanded thanks to its  2 x USB 3.0 ports and 4 x USB 2.0 ports. Also included is a HDMI port.

Weighing in at 7.1kg the cube is 200 (W) × 350 (D) × 213 (H) mm in size the H67/G840 Personal Server pricing starts at 54,760.00 Japanese Yen (approx. $705)

More details are available from here.

The H67 Personal Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

From the review it appears that the Seagate Barracuda Green has a performance advantage over WD’s Caviar Green:

Seagate’s drive reached 124 MB/s and WD’s hit 125 MB/s. On the other hand, the Barracuda Green held a significant advantage in write speed (109 MB/s vs 76 MB/s). Overall, it proved to be the superior drive in a head to head comparison to WD’s 3TB Caviar Green. 

The full review can be found here.

Seagate 2TB Barracuda Green Reviewed is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

With the same basic core components as used in the Leo HS4 and Leo SS4, the BBS2 Power delivers huge amounts of processing power for a high performance platform, yet consumes as little as 21W when idle.

The motherboard supports hot swap HDDs for all 4 bays and supports on board RAID 0,1,5,10.

The BBS2 Power comes complete with the following:

• 4x Hot Swap HDD bays (tool less)
• Intel 1155 socket – factory fitted with i3-2100T (upgradeable on order)
• Integrated RAID (Intel RST) on board (4 ports)
• 2x DDR3 RAM slots (1x populated with 2GB)
• 1x Low Profile PCIex slot (factory fitted cards)

Features

• Fan less cooling of the CPU (even i7)
• Small stylish cabinet
• 1x eSATA port
• 2x USB3.0 ports
• DVI / HDMI / DisplayPort
• 1x GBE LAN
• Multi channel Audio incl SPDIF
• Low acoustic level (HDD cooler fan only)

Applications

• Home Server
• Business Server
• Media Server
• CCTV IP camera Server
• High capacity, high performance work station

What do you get

• BBS2 Power appliance
• 2GB DDR3 RAM (1x spare slot)
• Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor (i3-2100T 2.5GHz)
• 120W internal and 120W external (12V) fan less AC adapter
• 24 month RTB (return to base) warranty

The BBS2 Power unit provides great value, for the self builder @ £479.00 and for a limited period that drops to £434.00 (using coupon code BBS2SAVE) – and that includes the i3-2100 CPU and 2GB DDR3 RAM (both upgradeable).

More details are available from here.

BBS2 Power from Tranquil PC is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The T2iWHS series is powered by Intel’s latest 2nd generation Core 2 CPU (the i3-2100T) and is available in either Satin black or Metallic silver.

The silent fan less chassis is a near silent unit with a low power consumption, consuming just 23W with 1 hard drive. There is a limit to the number of internal HDDs, with just  2x being available, but for many a 2x 2TB server is more than enough and Tranquil PC are now including all of the Leo HS4 services with the unit – AVA Media CD ripper, MonStor Storage Manager etc.
 
What do you get:

• T2iWHS Home Server appliance incl Window Home Server 2011
• 2TB Low Energy Primary Hard Disk
• 2GB DDR3 RAM
• Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor (i3-2100T 2.5GHz)
• AVA Media CD ripping Add In (new 5th July 2011) Innovative storage expansion manager (to create storage pools, and also manage data duplication)
• Media Kit including PC Restore CD and Server Restore DVD
• 120W 12V external power adapter
• 24 month RTB (return to base) warranty

Rear connections:

• Display: DVD-D
• DisplayPort
• HDMI (Audio / Video)
• Audio: Centre / Sub – Rear – Side – In (Line) – Out (L/R) – Mic’ In – SPDIF Optical
• Storage: 2x USB 3.0 – 4x USB 2.0 – 1x eSata
• Network:10/100/1000 LAN
• Power: 12V DC Input

The T2iWHS series has low power consumption, is powerful and rack mountable, but looks equally as good on the desk and is affordable. Priced at £549 you can save £45 + VAT at checkout by using the coupon code T2WHSSAVE

More details on the T2iWHS series are available from here.

WHS 2011 in the Rack Mountable T2i is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Currently available for purchase in Japan, the specs are as follows:

• CPU – Atom DualCore D525
• Memory – 2GB DDR3 SODIMM (1GBx2)
• HDD – 4TB (2TBx2)
• PSU – 200W
• VGA – Onboard Intel GMA 3150

There are 2x USB2.0 ports on the front of the unit and 4 on the back including a eSATA port for extra expansion as the internal storage space is occupied by the 2 hard drives.

The model number for the Coordy HomeServer Cube D52 is HSCD52-11D, which is currently on sale for 47,800 yen (approx. $595).

More details (in Japanese) are available from here.

The Coordy HomeServer Cube is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Their entry level Silent Home Streamer is powered by the Atom D525 DualCore Processor, has 2GB of SODIMM DDR3 memory and comes complete with a 250GB SATA hard drive, and costs from £300.

The Mini Home Server (available from £550) is their mid-range offering, which comes with 4GB of DDR3 memory and is powered by an Intel i3-2100 Core processor and comes with a 750GB WD SCORPIO BLUE hard drive.

Finally, the Pro Power Server is their top of the range model which is powered by a Intel Core i5-2400 processor and has 8GB of memory and a 3TB WD CAVIAR GREEN hard drive. Available from £850.

Each of these Home Server’s are fully configurable during checkout from this UK based supplier – Great stuff!

More details on all three machines are available from here.

Thanks to WeGotServed for the heads up on this story.

Three New Home Servers from UK Builder is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

We informed you last week of Windows Home Server going on sale in Japan as well as many other countries, and from this event in Japan came some interesting news. As we can see from the following pic, I-O DATA have a Windows Home Server 2011 NAS coming soon:

This unit will be equipped with a D510 (1.66) dual core Atom processor and will be available in both 1TB and 2TB hot swappable configurations and can easily be expanded using the 2x rear eSATA ports or 5x USB ports (Front × 1, rear × 4).

RAID 0 and 1 are both supported and the unit has dual LAN ports, a VGA port and a DC in jack connector for the external PSU unit and both configurations will have 2GB of memory.

No pricing as of yet but we will keep you informed of further updates.

Thanks to Japanese MVP Masahiko Sada, the PC DIY Shop and I-O DATA for the images.

I-O DATA will have WHS2011 Hardware is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Due to be available at the end of June, AWIECO are launching a range of Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials powered systems from Germany.

Available in different configurations these servers combine design, performance, low power consumption and fanless operation:

The compact and robust case made of aluminum and acrylic glass is a real eye-catcher. On the front-panel are a Power and HDD LED as well as a display, which shows status information about the CPU usage or LAN utilization for example. Big cooling rips on the side of the server provide an optimum cooling of the CPU and the entire server. Moreover, a special passive hard disk cooling system is on the top. The temperature of the hard drives is constantly monitored and if the temperature reaches the limit caused for example by high workload or high ambient temperature, then two silent security fans will become active in case of necessity to ensure a fast cooling of the system

Inside either an Intel Atom processor of the latest generation is working or for more demanding users an Intel Core i3 or i5 Sandy Bridge processor. On the back of the server up to 5 hard drives can be added quickly and easily. Through the support of 3TB hard disks up to 15TB can be used in total of storage for the own data. The 64-Bit operating system Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is preinstalled on a separate 24×7 optimized hard disk inside the case.

AWIECO Server Specifications:

More details are available from here.

Add-In Company Launching WHS Hardware is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Available in 3 hard drive configurations 1TB, 5TB and 10TB costing $1,199, $1,599, and $1,999, respectively and the 5big Storage Server comes with RAID 0, 1, 5,or JBOB modes for data reliability,

The unit is powered via a 64-bit dual-core hyper threaded 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor has 2GB of DDR2-667 SODimm memory and has dual gigabit Ethernet links for link aggregation, delivering up to 180MB/s– for fast file transfers and system restoration.

With these features the 5big Storage Server is up to twenty percent faster than traditional NAS solutions and thanks to Microsoft’s Single Instance Storage (SIS), the 5big Storage Server will provide file-level duplication, so duplicate files will only be stored once, saving up to 40% space.

Other features include:

• Microsoft’s DFS-R technology, allowing corporate administrators to complete an offsite backup of their critical data. NAS-to-NAS replication performances on the 5big Storage Server go up to 112MB/s. The DFS-R technology can also be used as a simple tool for offsite backups.
• Mac compatibility: The 5big Storage Server will work in heterogeneous environments. PC and Mac users will be able to work and collaborate on the same storage unit. Thanks to fast AFP performances, the 5big Storage Server can complete a 320GB Time Machine® backup in just 2 hours.
• Fast server backups: Back up the 5big Storage Server to eSATA hard drive attached. Back up 10GB to the external hard drive in a minute, or a 1TB 5big Storage Server in just two hours.

The 5 bay hot-swappable 5big Storage Server comes with 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x eSATA port, 2 x Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 Base-TX ports and 1 x VGA port.

More information is available on the 5big Storage Server here.

The LaCie 5big Storage Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Using the latest dual-core Intel Atom processors these Home Servers utilize the Intel ICH9R chipset and only draw around 30W when coupled with green hard drives. The VS-4HA Colorado Edition is available in 4 configurations, from no hard drives installed up to a massive 12TB unit.

With 2Gb of DDR3 memory (4Gb on the 12Tb model), these small servers can hold 4 SATA hot-swap drives and feature an internal 2.5" disk drive for the operating system. The units can be further expanded thanks to the 4 x USB 2.0 (2 front & 2 Rear) connectors plus an e-SATA port with port multiplication if required.

These servers also come with features not typically found on a typical small home server, such as:

• Full hardware based remote management with KVM over IP and virtual media, which allows the user to perform any task necessary on the server from a different PC even including BIOS changes and OS installation.
• Dual Intel server class network adapters that allow advanced features like teaming and redundancy.
• Type A USB connector on the motherboard for booting from a memory stick.

All units can be ordered with a mirrored HDD option and can be configured in RAID 5 or 10 for data redundancy and have onboard graphics utilizing a Matrox G200eW chipset.

The VS4HA Colorado Edition is planned to launch as soon as Windows Home Server 2011 is available for sale, with prices expected to start at £525 for the 0Tb model up to £1300 for the 12Tb model. However, at the moment pre-order discounts of up to £100 are available

Viridian PC have stated that other Colorado Edition servers will be released over the next few months, featuring not only the Intel Atom processor, but also low-power Core i3, Core i5 and Xeon processors and storage of up to a staggering 60Tb. All will share the common features of dual Intel server-class network adaptors, IPMI remote management, dedicated hard drive(s) for the operating system and RAID 5 capable data arrays.

Although a new company, Viridian PC Systems Ltd (who are based in NW England) was founded with a mission to deliver the best range of home and small business servers in the world, and it looks like with their first offering in the form of the VS-4HA, they could be on the way to achieving that.

VS-4HA Colorado Edition specifications:

• CPU : Intel Atom D525, 1.8 GHz, dual core, 64bit, 1MB cache
• Chipset : Intel ICH9R
• Memory : 2Gb DDR3 800MHz SO-DIMM (max 4GB) – (4Gb on the 12Tb model)
• Networking :  2 x Intel 82574L Gigabit LAN ports
• Storage : 4 x 3.5” SATA hot-swap drives (1Tb, 2Tb or 3Tb each dependent on model), 1 x 2.5” 160Gb internal hard drive
• USB : 4 x USB 2.0 (2 front & 2 Rear)
• Remote Management : IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) v1.5 / 2.0 with Virtual Media and KVM support
• Power supply : 200w
• Physical dimensions : 9.85” x 7.88” x 11.82” (H x W x D)
• 1 year return-to-base warranty as standard.

More information is available from Viridian PC.

VS-4HA Colorado Edition from Viridian PC is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Available in 2 configurations, the black RevoCenter weighs in at less than 10ibs and off course comes complete with WHS2011. Both configurations come with 2GB of DDR2 memory, gigabit LAN, 5 USB, eSATA and 1 PCIe x1 which are powered by the Intel ICH9R Express chipset.

The AH341-U1T2H model priced at $399.99 has one 1TB hard drive in one of the four 3.5" bays and a Intel Atom D410 Processor (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache). Whilst the AH342-U2T2H at $499.99 has one 2TB hard drive in one of its 4 bays and a Intel Atom D510 Processor (1.66GHz, 1MB L2 cache) processor.

Both units come with a six-month trial to McAfee Total Protection Service, have the one-touch USB backup button and a 1-year limited warranty as did the Acer Aspire easyStore.

The Acer RevoCente should be available very soon, and very nice it looks too, just like its WHS v1 brother the Acer Aspire easyStore.

More details are available from Acer.

The Acer RevoCenter for WHS2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The device I’m going to introduce you to today is going to take away the step of manually connecting your camera.  In fact it can call home from anywhere where there is a Wi-Fi hotspot and all within the same form factor as a SD Memory Card.  Let me introduce you to the Eye-Fi Connectx2.

First let me give you their overview and features direct from their website:

overview

Keep forgetting photos in your camera? Get the 4GB Connect X2 card to make saving and sharing memories effortless.

Automatically upload photos and videos to your computer and to your favourite site – they’ll just land there already organized. Choose from 25 websites, including Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and more. See comparison chart

features

4GB memory: Store up to 2,000 photos or 90mn of video with top-notch Class 6 speed. Works just like with your regular SDHC memory card. Perfect for your compact camera!
Wireless: Upload JPEG photos & videos fast through your home Wi-Fi network thanks to built-in 802.11n speed.
Endless: Get the only card that can free-up space for you after pictures are safely delivered. Never worry about running out of space again.
Automatic back-up: Wirelessly upload JPEG photos and videos to folders of your choice on your computer, or even directly into iPhoto for Macs.
Organized: Photos and videos can automatically land in date-based folders, so memories are organized effortlessly.
Compatible: No need to buy a new camera. Check here to confirm that your camera can be turned into a wireless uploading machine.
Effortless sharing: Wirelessly send your JPEG photos and videos to a popular website. See the complete list you can choose from, which includes Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, MobileMe, and YouTube.
Pick your pics: You can select which photos and videos are uploaded.
Get notified: Get email, Facebook or Twitter alerts when your photos are uploading online.
Quick and sweet: Set up takes just minutes.

Getting Started

First we get the packaging open to find the Connectx2 card itself in the shape of an 4GB Class 6 SD Card.  However, on board the card there is a microprocessor and a Wireless N (2.4GHz only) communications device that can make a connection to the internet or to your system through your home router/access point.  Also included is the Eye-Fi USB Adapter to allow you to setup the card from any PC or Mac with a USB Port.

There are a number of ways to install and setup the Connectx2 card in your home server environment.  We choose to use a remote desktop session on the Windows Home Server because you will need this to eventually setup the card to bind to your server.

First insert the Connectx2 Card into the Eye-Fi USB Adapter and then insert this into a free USB port in your server.  After a few moments of auto detection you should fine a new drive present in My Computer and depending on your setup you may be prompted with the auto play window.  You need to open the drive letter and fine the ‘START HERE’ folder.

Inside you will find the ‘setup.exe’ so open that to start the setup process.

What follows is the pretty standard installer.

When you are asked for the location to install to go with the default on C:

The Eye-Fi software is broken into two parts.  The Eye-Fi helper which runs in the background monitoring for connections from the card and the Eye-Fi Centre which allows you to configure the card and monitor uploads etc.  The first part of the installer is complete and hitting finish will then go to the next stage.

Part of the setup for installing the Eye-Fi Centre is to check for the latest update from the web so take this into account if you run a very strict firewall in your network environment.

We found an update so click ‘Download & Install Now’

Again plenty of information screens to let you know what is happening at each of the stages

Eye-Fi helper has to listen out on the network for connections from the Connectx2 card so it makes sense to allow Eye-Fi to communicate on the network rom your Home Server.

After the components have been installed Eye-Fi Helper will check your network to ensure connections can be made to the card.  Hit ‘Next’ to start the process.

So long as you unblocked the Windows Home Server firewall in one of the previous steps then all should be well.

After closing the previous Wizard you may notice a notification in he system tray that and Eye-Fi card has been found.  This should then kick off the installer for Adobe Air. 

As I mentioned before Eye-Fi has software for both Windows and Mac and Air provides a means to program for both platforms.  Adobe Air needs to be installed in order for the Eye-Fi Centre to run.

If this is your first time using the Eye-Fi Centre you will be prompted to setup login details.  An email address and password are required and this enables you to use some of the online feature that Eye-Fi provide.

Once you have entered your details click ‘Create Account’ to continue.

You will then be sent an email to confirm your account.  Follow the steps in the email.  At the same time the firmware of the Connectx2 will be updated if necessary.  Click the ‘Update’ button to continue.

Eye-Fi Centre will keep you informed of each step.  Be sure not to remove the card from the reader, or the read from the computer whilst the update is in progress.

Once the firmware update is complete the Eye-Fi Centre Setup Wizard will be presented.  The first step is to add an available Eye-Fi network to the card.  From the drop down list next to name select your Wi-Fi network.

Then you have to enter in the password and select ‘Add network to card’

At this point I had a problem.  I run a wired network in my office but it is out of reach of my wireless access point.  This meant I could not get a good enough signal at my server where the Connectx2 card was setup.  At this point I took the card and reader and set it up in my laptop.  I went through all the steps from before (minus the firmware update) to get back to this point.  I then could get the Connectx2 card to successfully connect to my Wi-Fi network.  The next steps are carried out on my laptop but could have been completed exactly the same way on the Windows Home Server.

Once you have your wireless network added clicking next takes you to the section where you can decide to upload photos and videos to Eye-Fi View.  Eye-Fi is an online service that allows you to view you photos from the internet.

I only wanted my photos to be copied to the server so I unchecked this option

Likewise you can set the card so that it will upload to many popular photo websites or even use FTP or SCP.  Again I only wanted photos to be copied to my Windows Home Server.

On the next screen you get similar options for the videos.  I chose not to use any online services.

On clicking next you get a confirmation screen of the actions that will be set on the card.  Click ‘Finish’ to continue (user error here meant this screenshot was over cropped)

It is at this point I took the Eye-Fi Card and Reader back to my Windows Home Server.  From the system tray I right clicked on the Eye-Fi icon to bring up a menu and selected ‘Open Eye-Fi Centre’

In the Eye-Fi Centre you should notice two tabs on the right hand side of the Window, ‘4GB Wifi’ and ‘My Activity’.  If you highlight ‘4GB Wifi’ you will see a little cog wheel which is a button to allow you to open the settings.  You can also get to the settings from the File Menu.  You may see more than one listing for the same card.  This is a side effect of running non-server software in a server environment.  More about that later. 

This time I went straight to the ‘Photos’ tab.  There I selected ‘Change folder’ to select the Photos Share I wanted on my Home Server. 

I then moved to the next tab ‘Videos’ to do the same change of destination and Eye-Fi Centre will prompt you to select a save the settings.

At this point Eye-Fi Centre will detect that the destination for photos has changed from the Laptop to the Windows Home Server.  You may not see this dialogue box if you have done the whole setup on your Windows Home Server.

You’ll then get confirmation that the change has been made.

The same can then be done for Videos.

One neat feature that I wanted to use was Endless Memory.  This is a unique feature of the Eye-Fi card which allows you to set a threshold of when the card should remove already uploaded media from the card.  It will wait until the card is over a user defined used capacity and only the oldest item which have already been uploaded will be deleted.  So long as you let the card connect frequently enough to your Wi-Fi then you will never need to delete any media from your memory card.

Final thoughts

I was very impressed with the Eye-Fi Connectx2 card.  In practice photos were immediately transferred from the camera to the server but there are a few things to consider.  Most people will be using 802.11g (54mpbs wireless) and you can only expect transfer speeds over wireless network in the region of 1-2 MB/s.  For photos this is fine but if you have a camera that is capable of HD Video then you could be looking at quite large files that require many minutes to transfer.  You should look into setting the standby time for your camera to a much longer timeout than default.  However, Eye-Fi is smart; it will resume large file transfers where it can but sometimes you need to take another photo to kick it into life.

Eye-Fi Connectx2 works with regular picture formats but you need to purchase a Pro card to work with RAW images.  Also Eye-Fi connect supports nearly all cameras but you should check for compatibility before purchase. I can confirm that AVCHD videos upload perfectly with the 4GB Connectx2 card.

Currently the Eye-Fi Connectx2 retails for £50 in the UK. It may seem expensive for a 4GB Class 6 SD Card but once you factor in the amazing features I think it’s definitely worth it.

Windows Home Server Considerations

Eye-Fi Centre has not been designed with a multi user server environment in mind such as Windows Home Server.  Generally the software is robust but you can get it confused as it will run more than one instance if you let it.  i..e in a Console Session and in a Remote Desktop Session. 

We had issues with the stability of Eye-Fi centre after installing Adobe Air.  These were all resolved after rebooting Windows Home Server.  So far the software has been very well behaved and I’ve been able to automate one of those jobs that took my time.  The added bonus is now my family can take photos and near instantly see them in Media Centre.  I don’t know of any other gadget that can do that.  Also I have piece of mind as I know as soon as each photo hits the server it’s backed up with Wuala.

Eye-Fi Connectx2 Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

HP have thrown us as all a partial home server lifeline in the shape of the ProLiant MicroServer. Designed primarily for the small office rather than the home, the ProLiant looks to be a worthy replacement for the MediaSmart server hardware.

I say hardware, as the ProLiant doesn’t ship with an operating system, and a regular copy of WHS from Microsoft won’t come with all the extra bells and whistles that put MediaSmart servers head and shoulders about all the other Windows Home servers.

Hardware

Looking at the hardware, the ProLiant MicroServer is a compact and sturdy box, standing a little shorter and wider than a MediaSmart server at (HxWxD) 10.5 x 8.3 x 10.2 in (26.7x 21.0 x 26.0 cm).

Finished in matt grey and black, the front panel plays host to four x USB 2.0 ports, HDD and network activity lights, and the power button. Also we find a big illuminated HP logo that will change colour to indicate the servers status.

Unusually for a home server (sorry this isn’t a home server is it) it has more USB ports on the front than the back. I would imagine the idea of this is to allow users in a busy office to connect and disconnect USB hard disks without having to disturb the server by fishing around on the rear for spare sockets.

The front is completed by an optical drive blanking plate and a lockable front door. Opening the front door reveals the four SATA drive caddies, and exposes the motherboard which can easily be removed by undoing the two light-blue thumbscrews at each side.

The MicroServer ships with a  160gb 7200 rpm Seagate disk (I didn’t realise they still made them that small anymore) inside a simple design drive caddy, which feels secure and robust enough to hold the disk securely in place inside the server. Unlike the screwless caddies HP used on the MediaSmart, disks need to be fastened in place with screws.

One very good feature is the location of these screws. Instead of supplying them in a plastic bag, HP have bolted them and their torx key in place inside the front door. You never have to scratch around looking for the screws, as they will always be securely located within the server. A nice touch, and one that shows that HP have paid attention to the design of this little server.

Finishing off the hardware tour around the back is the gigabit Ethernet port, eSATA, VGA, two x USB 2.0 ports and of course the power input. A large fan quietly keeps everything cool.

Internally the server uses a 1.30GHz AMD Athlon II Processor Model NEO N36L and the motherboard is based on an AMD RS785E/SB820M chipset, 1gb of DDR3 is supplied, along with the previously mentioned 160gb hard drive.  This all sounds a bit limited, but remember that this is a server and these specs are perfectly adequate to power a small business or simple home server.

The 1gb or RAM is provided on a single stick, leaving an additional slot available for you to add extra RAM. By upgrading both slots, a maximum capacity of 8gb is achievable.

We also have two half height, half length PCI-e expansion slots, one x16 and the other x1. Possible uses for these in a server could be anything from installing extra network cards to turn this into an Astaro Security Gateway appliance, or adding graphics and TV card for media PC duties. Having these available gives us plenty of flexibility for potential uses for the ProLiant.

There is a thumbscrew on the rear that allows the removal of the top of the server giving access to the empty optical bay.

Although the server doesn’t ship with an optical drive, installing one looks to be a pretty straightforward. Remember the hard disk screws inside the front door? Well look to the center of that picture and you will see four screws labelled ODD (Optical Disk Drive I imagine). These screws are slightly thicker than the hard disk screws, and allow a half height optical drive to limbo under the status lights and securely slide into empty drive bay, connectiong up to a spare SATA port on the motherboard.

Finally power consumption when powered down is 10w, which rises to around 35w when in operation with its single supplied hard disk.

Installing an Operating System

As mentioned earlier, the ProLiant Microserver doesn’t ship with an operating system, but luckily there is plenty of free or paid-for operating systems to choose from.

I clearly had to install Windows Home Server given the nature of this website, and one thing to watch when installing WHS v1, is that the BIOS default SATA configuration is AHCI, which will need to be switched to Native IDE. With that done, WHS installed without a hitch. Well, not quite without a hitch as there is no network card driver available on the WHS installation disk.

I tracked down a suitable driver on the HP support web site called cp013021.exe which seemed to do the trick for me. You will also find that the WHS installation won’t find a driver for the VGA or the SM Bus Controller either, but not having these drivers causes WHS no problems in operation.

For basic WHS service, the AMD Athlon and 1gb of RAM performed perfectly well, but power users who require plenty of applications running might want to consider installing more RAM as 1gb doesn’t really go very far if you stray from vanilla WHS.

If you don’t want to run to the extra cost of buying WHS, then this server is perfectly at home running free server software like FreeNAS or VortexBox (although this is going to need an optical drive).

The inclusion of a motherboard based USB 2.0 port makes the ProLiant MicroServer a perfect choice for a flash memory embedded installation of FreeNAS. This option installs the embedded OS onto USB flash memory, and leaves the hard disks dedicated to storage. Quick, simple and it is almost like that USB port was installed specifically for FreeNAS.

FreeNAS works very nicely on this server, and could be a perfect solution for some users.

Finally I installed Windows 7 64-bit onto the ProLiant to see what its performance would be like as a desktop PC or a Windows Media device. Unlike the installation of WHS, Windows 7 64-bit had no problems locating and installing all the drivers it needed for the ProLiant’s hardware.

The server performed reasonably well under Windows 7, although I found the redrawing of the desktop and screen updates to be a little laboured and sluggish, but otherwise everything seemed acceptable as a low-end desktop PC.

I would expect these graphical shortcomings to be resolved by adding a proper PCI-e graphics card and some extra RAM, should you wish to use this as a desktop PC.

Verdict

I mourn the passing of the excellent MediaSmart range, but HP have given us a worthy hardware replacement in the form of the ProLiant MicroServer.

With the impending release of Vail or Windows 7 Home Server, consuming very little power, running cool and silently, the HP ProLiant is well placed to offer a home server enthusiast a solid and cost effective platform to house their server.

If you are in the UK, and are very quick, then HP is currently offering £100 cash back on this server, with prices around £250 (£150 after cash back) this is a stunningly good deal if you are able to get one in time.

HP Official ProLiant MicroServer site

HP ProLiant MicroServer Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

We have seen the HP MediaSmart range develop and expand into the domestic market over the last few years, but this is only the second server in the MediaSmart family to wear the small business orientated StorageWorks brand.

The X310’s bigger brother, the StorageWorks X510 is essentially a re-badged business version of the MediaSmart EX495, but the lower hardware spec and reduced software capability X310 has no domestic market equivalent. So why would anybody want a reduced capability server?

Hardware

Well the answer is pretty straightforward; cost. Although the X510 is a great server and comes loaded with HP’s excellent media friendly MediaSmart software, if we are honest it is a little over spec’ed for the typical small business user and is far better suited to media rich domestic duties.

With this in mind, HP have lower the hardware specifications, removed a lot of the media transcoding and streaming software and slightly simplified the casing for the X310.

Anybody remotely familiar with MediaSmart/StorageWorks servers will immediately recognise the X310 as part of the family. The external cosmetic differences include a matt black finish, changes to the lower silver foot section and the removal of the door mounted light-pipes in favour of drive LED’s at the bottom of the case.

Connection wise things remain the same. There is still a front mounted USB 2.0 connection, and around the back you will find gigabit Ethernet, three x USB 2.0 ports and an eSATA connection with port multiplier. All of these connections add up to plenty of potential expansion capacity once you have fully populated the internal drive bays.

Inside, the X310 has an Intel Atom D510 @ 1.6GHz and 2Gb of RAM, which is more than adequate for core WHS duties especially after the burden of media transcoding and streaming software has been removed from the Data Vault software bundle.

The X310 comes in a single 1Tb storage capacity variant, which is perfectly fine as adding additional hard disks to the three spare drive bays it absolute child’s play using the same screw-less caddies we have seen on the other MediaSmart servers.

Software

To illustrate what software has been removed, lets compare the X310 and X510 Data Vault console screens:

So it looks like we have lost:

• Web/iPhone Streaming
• HP Media Collector
• HP Video Converter
• Media Server (Twonkymedia)

All of those functions run better with a powerful server and will not be very useful to a small business user, so it seems sensible to lower the hardware costs and do without them for the business market.

Lets have a closer look at what has been included.

The Tour page tries to explain the concept of what the Data Vault server is doing, bringing together file storage, user accounts, backups and remote access all into a single server.

The Systems Status page is much more useful and addresses a missing facility from the core Windows Home Server software. Here you can see what you server is up to, how busy your CPU is, how your storage is being used and what your network utilization is.

If your office uses Macs as well as Windows PC’s, then the next page gives you information on how you are also able integrate them with the X310.

There is some basic media streaming capability with the X310. This initial page shows you what is available, and how to access it, either from the home (or office) network or from the internet.

The Windows Home Server software is able to stream media by default, and this screen reminds you of the fact in case you didn’t know.

What isn’t standard in WHS is the ability to be an iTunes server. The X310 retains this capability from is bigger siblings and will be useful if a small business user wants to fill their office with music.

HP MediaSmart servers have a pretty cool utility for putting photo libraries onto the internet and this is also retained on the X310.

Last is a jumping off page to purchase additional plug-in software for your server. Not exactly an applications store, but there are some useful packages here that will benefit the server.

Verdict

Would a regular small business user notice the lower hardware specification of this server?

Well no, not really as the X310 is very spritely and its performance belies its humble hardware specification. In use the X310 is every bit as quick as the X510 for basic WHS file serving and PC backup duties, is quiet and only consumes around 25-30 watts of power.

Sure, a home user is going to want to store video, converted to other formats and stream it to multiple client devices, but in general a business user won’t. So why pay extra for unwanted capabilities? It is when you see that the price for a 1Tb X310 is currently $519 and a 1Tb X510 price starts at $649 and goes up to $949 for the 3Tb, that all this makes sense.

Core WHS capability, fast performance, no unnecessary software, lower price.

Oh, and the X310 Easter Egg is pretty cool as well.

HP X310 details page

HP Entry NAS Appliances

HP StorageWorks X310 Data Vault Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

There haven’t been that many Windows Home Servers specifically designed for the small business market, so what does the 5big server from LaCie have to offer a home user?

Hardware

With love it or hate it Cyclops styling, the LaCie 5big server is nothing if not distinctive. Its blue eye (reminiscent of the Dr Who character Davros) is in fact its power switch, which can thankfully be dimmed or switched off if you want it. The 5big case measures 173 x 196 x 220 mm (6.8 x 7.7 x 8.6 in) in size, so it is small enough to fit in just about anywhere.

The base hardware for the 5big server is an Intel Atom D410 1.66Ghz and 1Gb of RAM, which is a little below the minimum spec we have come to expect from our servers these days, but should be sufficient for a small business if they are only going to be using the core WHS capabilities. Power users or anybody who wants to run heavyweight applications on their server might want to look for something with a higher spec.

The review 5big server came pre-loaded with five Samsung 1Tb hard disks that fully populated all of the available drive bays, which are oddly only accessible from the back of the server. This is quite a stylish looking server, so I suppose having the drive bays on the font didn’t fit the intended visual aesthetic of the server.

Also around the back are its external connecters, which are power in, four x USB 2.0, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet and strangely an audio output jack. I don’t recall seeing an audio out on a WHS server before, but it’s there if you need it; office music server anyone?

If quality were measured by weight alone, this server would be a class leader because the 5big is heavy, very heavy and solid. The 5big really seems to be well put together and I would expect it to survive the rigors of life in a small business environment without any issues.

In use

Getting the server up and running is all standard WHS stuff; install the connector software, connect the server to the network; set an admin password and finally wait for the updates to install.

Once the server is up and running, you will find some additional software that LaCie have included in their installation:

When opening the WHS console the first thing to be displayed is the LaCie add-in. This allows you to manage some additional settings and to get further information about the servers hardware and wellbeing.

The first option available is Printer Management. Clicking the blue button will take you to the print settings section in the consoles main server settings section. From here you can perform rudimentary management of any print queues on the server.

Next is the Multimedia Server button, which takes us to the TwonkyMedia server settings. I can’t really see TwonkyMedia being a big benefit to a small business user, but the fact that its supplied with the server is a bonus for a home user.

The Hardware Management section allows us to control the fan speed, dim the all seeing blue eye or access some power management settings.

With an eye to the small business user we now find the internet settings section. This will allow you to configure the server to access the internet if its path is blocked by a proxy server that requires manual configuration. Putting it here saves a non-technical small business user having to scratch around with a terminal session.

Finally we can access basic  health information about all of the installed hard drives.

The 5big server performs perfectly well as a Windows Home Server. The WHS console loads quickly and is very responsive to use, files and media are all served without delay or hesitation. Power consumption hovers around 30-35 watts under full load, there is very little noise to be heard and the box runs pretty cool.

Conclusion

However you look at it, this is a very nice bit of hardware. It’s as heavy as Battleship and is simply oozing quality, from its designer looks to the fit and finish of its components. This is certainly a top of the line Windows Home Server.

But this level of build quality comes with a price. The the 5Tb server on review here is currently priced at $1,199 or £939 which is going to be beyond the reach of most domestic WHS buyers.

Anyway, home users with lots of video media to convert and stream would really do better to look elsewhere, as this is clearly a server with businesses in mind. It feels built to last and should be a perfect fit to a small business network.

It comes with Time Machine software so will be usable for any business with a mixed PC/Macintosh network and in a business environment, where availability and accessibility of data is the key requirement, the relatively low hardware spec of this server simply wont be an issue.

LaCie US website

LaCie 5big Backup Server Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The enclosure

Right from the minute you hold the packaging, you know this isn’t going to be your typical PC peripheral. ICY DOCK know they have created an unusually attractive design, and have even cut a hole in the box to give you a glimpse of what awaits inside.

And what’s inside is a quad bay external enclosure finished off with a solid aluminum alloy outer case and white end panels, offering connection to your data via USB 2.0 or eSATA connections.

The aluminum outer casing makes this enclosure feel incredibly solid and strong, and the silver and white theme even extends to the white LED activity lights for each drive caddy. The ICY DOCK web page lists the MB561-S4-1 as having a ‘Mac Mini design concept’, which I can sort of see, but the reality of it is simply an attractive modern design that will look good partnering any server and not just with a Mac Mini.

Once you get past the unconventional look of this enclosure you will find that is very conventional in its capabilities. Up front we find four drive caddies, with normal ejection buttons and locking handles/levers. The caddies require you to use four screws to retain each hard disk in place, and although this isn’t overly difficult to do I often wish we could see more of the screw-less caddy design favored by HP in the MediaSmart/DataVault range of servers.

Around the back things are a little less conventional with the inclusion of a detachable rear fan. ICY DOCK don’t really explain why it needs to be detachable as I can’t imagine that you will want to run a quad bay enclosure without some decent airflow to stop your disk drives cooking. Perhaps they are expecting the fan to fail as making it detachable clearly makes it easier to replace. They have helpfully included a fan speed switch that includes an smart-auto option that more or less renders the switch redundant; but I guess we have the choice if we want it.

More mundane things on the rear are the power socket, locking port, USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. This enclosure doesn’t have any form of RAID controllers built in, so the two ports simply provide access to the disks using straight forward JBOD access which makes it perfect for use with Windows Home Server and its Drive Extender technology.

What isn’t quite so perfect though is the 480mbps you get when using the USB 2.0 connection, which might be ok for a single drive but things will slow considerably when you have loaded up with four disk drives. The good news is that the MB561-S4-1 includes an eSATA connection complete with a Port Multiplier that will allow you to access all four disks from a single eSATA port on your PC. The eSATA connection provides up to 3gbps so each drive should be considerably quicker compared to the USB 2.0 port.

In use

Some disks were installed into the caddies and the enclosure was connected to an HP MediaSmart server using the eSATA connection. Having previously had problems with HP MediaSmart servers and Port Multipliers, I was a little hesitant to switch it all on. But I shouldn’t have worried, as the ICY DOCK disk drives were all seen by the HP first time without any issues. Windows Home Server allowed the external disks to be added into the server pool and everything performed as expected.

Overall noise levels were very low with the only noticeable sound coming from the fan, which varied depending on the level it was running. Power consumption with two drives installed was around 15-20w which seems reasonable to me.

Conclusion

If you have fully loaded your server with disks, and are looking for a stylish and quality storage enclosure, then seriously consider looking at the ICY DOCK MB561-S4-1.

It’s got notch build quality, stylish and unconventional looks, and has fast and flexible connection options. The eSATA and USB 2.0 ports gave no problems integrating with a MediaSmart server, and the additional speed and simplicity of the eSATA Port Multiplier is a welcome addition if you want to keep things simple without compromising access speed.

MB561-S4-1 at newegg.com
MB561-S4-1 at amazon.com
MB561-S4-1 at Scan.co.uk (UK)

ICY DOCK MB561-S4-1 official web page

ICY DOCK MB561-S4-1 Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

In addition to the HP MediaSmart and DataVault server families,  the debug board is also supported on the Acer Aspire easyStore H340.

VOV Technology lists the reasons you would want this device as:
– You want to play with the BIOS settings or re-flash your BIOS
– You want to boot from a USB stick to install another OS (Vail, Linux, Windows Server 2008, OpenSolaris)
– You are a software/kernel/addons developer
– You want to tinker but not risk shorting your MediaSmart Server
– You don’t have the time to build your own custom cable
– You don’t want to buy expensive tools for a one time project
– You want the ability to troubleshoot any bootup problems without running a recovery that will destroy existing data
– Buying is cheaper than building!

The debug board comes in three variants, VGA only; VGA + PS2 Keyboard + PS2 Mouse or VGA + PS2 Keyboard + PS2 Mouse + Serial Port. We tested the top of the line model with  the serial port. These days a serial port isn’t going to be useful to many people, home automation, UPS, weather stations or custom hardware controllers are possible applications for a serial port, so I imagine the mid-range VGA + PS2 will appeal to most people.

Installation

The debug board is very well constructed and has a high quality look and feel which gave me no concerns or worries about connecting it up to my HP server.

Installation will be very easy if you have ever opened up a MediaSmart server to change its RAM or processor, always be careful poking around inside your server and bear in mind that you might void your warranty on some servers. Opening up a MediaSmart server isn’t for the faint hearted or anybody who isn’t comfortable around PC hardware, so be sure you are happy to perform this installation.

Once the server is open you will see the appropriate connector on the motherboard and it is a pretty easy thing to plug in the debug board. The biggest problem I had with the installation was removing the review debug board from the server so it could be returned; it was a really tight fit and needed plenty of wiggling to free it from the motherboard.

One thing that was not clear to me was what to do with the board once it was connected, as there is no real exit point on the front of the server for the cable to come out. The image above is from VOV Technology and it shows the debug board taking up the upper drive bay. Although this keeps things neat and tidy, it won’t be an option for anybody who has fully populated their server with disks.

In use

Once installed, and with a screen, keyboard and mouse connected up, the MediaSmart server was booted up and I was immediately happy to see a normal looking BIOS screen, followed by the familiar (although not familiar on a MediaSmart server) Windows Home Server boot screen, and finally a Windows login prompt.

Everything worked as expected, I was able to log into WHS using a directly connected screen and keyboard rather than using a terminal server connection. If this is all you do with the debug board, you are wasting the opportunity of unlocking the greater potential of your server.

To illustrate what was possible with the debug board, I removed the normal Windows Home Server disks, and replaced them with some blank ones. Then Ubuntu was installed from a USB memory stick which went without a hitch, with all the onboard hardware being detected and configured without any issues.

In use Ubuntu on the MediaSmart was the same as with any normal PC, and that is really the point here, you now have access to the missing capabilities that were already present on your server but were only missing the ports to access them.

Conclusion

The debug board is not a device for everybody, but for those people who want to unlock the potential of their server. After installation you have converted your headless server into a normal PC capable of any compatible operating system or BIOS update.

Ok, so there is one thing missing that really turns your server into a normal PC, and that is sound. Obviously a MediaSmart server has no onboard sound card, but external USB sound solutions are available and I imagine that one will work perfectly on your enhanced server.

This is a really neat and quality solution, and you should have no hesitation from installing one of these boards if you want to really push the capability of you server to the max.

Further details along with pricing are available here.

HP MediaSmart VGA/PS2/Serial Debug Board is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

But no, after visiting Tranquil PC product page for the Safe Server Module (SSM), I fully understood what this device is and what it is supposed to do. What we have here is a replacement system hard disk, one with dual 500gb hard disks, configured in a RAID 1 mirror, in the shape and size of a single SATA hard disk. Total WHS system disk protection.

Hardware

Although primarily intended for Tranquil PC’s SQA-5H range of servers, in reality the SSM should fit in all shapes and sizes of home servers and will protect them all equally. The SSM body is constructed from a brushed metal alloy, with plastic front and rear and feels strong and robust in the hand.

Up front are the drive bay doors and a couple of status lights. Accidental opening of the doors is prevented by the use of locking switches. The status lights normally blink green but will change to red in the event of a problem with a drive. If you have the SSM mounted out of sight inside a server, management software is supplied supplied to let you know what is going on.

The Tranquil PC SSM is based on the Silicon Image SiI5744 chip set, which in addition to the standard 3Gbps SATA port also provides access to the storage via a USB 2.0 connection. Although USB isn’t going to be much use in its intended day-job as a system disk replacement, Tranquil PC have conveniently left the USB 2.0 connection available so the SSM can also function as a USB hard disk. Used in this way, the SSM gets its power via USB and needs no other connections.

Around the back you see the USB 2.0 connector, SATA port, power and some DIP switches. The manual doesn’t cover the use of these switches, and when Tranquil PC support were asked what they were for, I was told they set the RAID function and it was best not to touch them. So I didn’t.

Access to the two 500gb disks is easily achieved by sliding the unlocking switch, and pushing the door open. The action of opening the door pulls the disk out of the drive bay. They are both Samsung drives if anybody is interested.

In Use

As it shares the same dimensions as a normal hard disk, physical installation of the SSM is as straightforward as installing any regular hard disk. The power and SATA connections are in the standard place so the SSM can be used in caddies, cradles or cases, and as it presents itself as an normal SATA disk there are no driver issues either.

One hurdle to using the SSM is the little matter of rebuilding your server. For servers with sufficient space and hard disks, you will need to enable folder duplication and rebuild your server with the SSM as its new system disk. The supplied instructions let you know how to do this for a SQA-5H, and you should follow the manufacturer instructions for you own particular server hardware, but please remember not to do a factory reset if you want to keep your existing data.

With the server rebuilt and the SSM in place, everything performed as normal. The SSM gave a good account for itself and was every bit as quick in performance as the hard disk it replaced. A bonus of using the SSM in a previously single disk server is that you now have a free hard disk to add back into the storage pool letting you to enable folder duplication.

The SSM comes with a management tool which gives basic information about the RAID 1 array and any issues it might have. This is particularly useful if you are installing the SSM into a chassis like the ASUS TS mini that does not allow you to see its front status lights.

In normal operation, everything is safe and happy.

But if you ever need to replace a drive,  the array will automatically rebuild in the background while leaving the remaining drive available. This means you can get your server up and running quickly following on from a disk replacement, which is really the point of this device; resilience.

Verdict

This really is a very clever and impressive little device, directly addressing the inherent weakness of Windows Home Server system drive resilience.

In a single step, you add the reassurance of full system disk mirroring to a home server that wouldn’t previously be capable of RAID, giving you total protection from single hard disk failure.

Installation is as easy as installing a new hard disk and a system rebuild is really a small price to pay for this extra peace of mind.

Oh yes, and you also get a free copy of the AVA Media CD ripper as a little bonus.

Tranquil PC Safe Server Module web page

Tranquil PC Safe Server Module Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Hardware

Finished in shiny black with a silver top grill, the TS mini is an attractive little server which takes up no more space than a couple of hardback books, 245mm (h) x 96mm (w) x 204mm (d) to be exact.

The power button is on top, and the front panel has four status LEDs to let you know what’s going on. Having no hard disk caddies to slide in and out means it has no doors to open, which this gives things a nice clean and uncluttered look and a decidedly solid feel.

Around back you find the afore mentioned USB 2.0 and eSATA connections along with a gigabit Ethernet port.

ASUS have given the TS mini an Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz processor and 2GB of RAM which is plenty to keep WHS ticking along nicely for most users, and allows the innards of server to stay cool and quiet.

The model on review here is the 1tb model which it achieves using a single hard drive, and ASUS have left internal space for another SATA drive if you wish to have the reassurance of folder duplication.

Finally comes the laptop-esque external 90w power supply which helps the TS mini to keep its overall size down. When up and running the server consumes about 30-35w with its single supplied hard disk and about 17w when its powered off.

Installing more storage

Having 1tb out of the box is great and is as much storage as a lot of people will ever need, but as this is achieved using a single hard disk, Windows Home Server can’t protect your data using folder duplication. True, the TS mini does allow you to use the ASUS WebStorage service, but this is really about having off-site backups for use in an emergency, folder duplication is a more practical way to ensure your data is kept safe.

So how hard is it to add an extra internal hard disk to this server? The answer is reasonably easy. Reasonably because you have to be comfortable opening up the server and looking at its internal bits and pieces; not everybody will be because not everybody is a techie.

If you are comfortable inside a PC, then power down and start with the two rear thumb-wheels and slide off the left hand panel. Next, lay the server over on its right side, unscrew the three screws holding the server together and give the blue grab handle a sharp tug and a bit of a waggle.

The top plate will come off in your hand and you will see the space ready for another drive to be installed.

Fix the six supplied fat-headed screws to your new hard disk, slide it into the spare space above the existing disk, and it will lock in with a click. Slide the top plate back onto the server, replace the screws and then the side panel and you are done.

So this isn’t quite as easy as adding a disk to something like an HP MediaSmart server with its screw-less caddies, but it is still reasonably straightforward. And remember, if you really aren’t comfortable opening up a PC, then there are still the six x USB 2.0 and two x eSATA connections on the rear ready and waiting to be connected to external USB hard disks.

In use

All of the normal WHS components are present, correct and do what they are all supposed to do well enough without any undue delay or problems. The Intel Atom and the 2gb of RAM are plenty for routine WHS server duties and keep things moving along nicely.

ASUS do provide some additional software add-ins over and above the familiar WHS software, these are:

ASUS Xtor Manager – A backup and synchronization manager
ASUS WebStorage – Online storage free for the first year
ASWM – A system information management tool.

First up is the ASUS Xtor Manager, which is essentially a backup and synchronization manager which allows external disk drives to be kept in sync with folders on your home server.

This tool breaks down into three parts, the File Manager, Backup and Sync.

Starting with the File Manager, you are able fully manage files and folders on your server and to any external disk. Folder creation and deletion, along with file and folder copy all replicate the capability of a Windows Explorer on the local box, so this is useful if you want to manage your storage without using a Remote Desktop connection.

The next tool is Backup, which lets you select a specific folder on your external device, and have the contents copied across to the home server.

Lastly is the Sync tool, which will run a comparison between selected folders on the server and an external drive. Once the comparison has completed, you get the choice of which direction to synchronize the data (server->external or external<-server). None of these are life altering, but useful none the less.

The next plug-in is the ASUS WebStorage cloud backup service, and as an owner of a TS Mini you get 500gb storage free for a year.

When registered and configured, this tool allows you to selectively backup WHS shares to the cloud.

The final plug-in is the ASWM system management tool. We have seen this sort of thing before with other manufacturers servers, it allows direct control or visibility of the hardware that isn’t available through the generic WHS console.

We start with a system summary view, giving very basic information about the server.

More detailed information is available from the left-hand menus. This screen is giving us the motherboard fan speeds.

This one is memory utilization.

You get the idea now, this one is CPU. There is more information available under the inventory section, which lists various bits and pieces of the server but I think we all get the idea of this plug-in now.

Summary

The ASUS TS mini is a good, fast server little server that will appeal to a home user looking for a no nonsense NAS style device.

It is solidly built, unobtrusively small and compact with low power consumption and very little noise.

Internal hard disk upgrades are going to be a barrier to some, but there is of plenty of scope for external storage expansion if you can’t face pulling the TS mini apart.

The Intel Atom and 2gb or RAM keeps things fast and snappy, and the addition of a years cloud backup will be a bonus to some.

ASUS TS Mini Website

ASUS TS mini Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Following on from its big brother with the X500 range, the X300 comes in at under $600 for the 1TB capacity model and is powered by the Intel Atom Dual Core processor running at 1.6 GHz.

The HP StorageWorks X310 1TB Data Vault will be shipping from HP from the 9th June at $549 (shipping and tax not included).

Its great to see Home Server being targeted more towards the small business owner as well as to end users.

More details are available from here.

The HP StorageWorks X300 Data Vault is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Perhaps you can expand by connecting standalone external USB hard disks, but the thought of all of the cables and power bricks put you off. Instead why not look at using a five drive expansion case, and good start would be to consider the Sans Digital TowerRAID TR5UT-B.

I will start off by saying that this device is a little bit over specified for a Windows Home Server, because it has a very comprehensive RAID capability. I know there is debate over whether a WHS server should or shouldn’t have a RAID array connected to it, but for the purposes of this review, I am going to leave the RAID off and review it as a simple Port Multiplier eSATA controller connected to an HP MediaSmart server.

What do you get?

The enclosure has a very sturdy metal construction, finished off in fingerprint loving glossy black paint, and a black mesh front door. This model is also available in silver, but then it would look odd with a MediaSmart server sitting on top of it in silver wouldn’t it?

On the front there are indicator lights for each drive bay, along with a power light, a PC link LED and finally a main power switch.

The rear panel is decorated by the eSATA and USB 2.0 inputs and the standard power connector. Here we also find the main 120mm cooling fan, and the intake for the smaller power supply fan. Finally there are some good old fashioned dip switches to set up the RAID array if you not able to run the supplied management software.

The five drive caddies are made from metal and plastic, and require four screws to secure a hard disk. Accidental removal of a caddy is prevented by a two stage release mechanism; slide the silver slider to release the black lever, then pull the black lever.

Aside from the five drive expansion case, the TR5UT also ships with a HighPoint Rocket 622 dual port eSATA 6GB PCI-express host adapter card which clearly isn’t going to be of much use in a MediaSmart server, but will be a great addition to a self built server or a desktop PC.

Also included is an eSATA cable, a USB 2.0 and power lead, along with a SATA to eSATA bracket plate to turn a spare PCI slot into an eSATA connection, which is only going to be useful if you have no eSATA already and can’t make use of the HighPoint card. Oh yes, I nearly forgot the bag of screws to secure the hard disks to the caddies.

To RAID or not to RAID?

I know we are not going to use the RAID capability, but the TR5UT does gives you some pretty comprehensive options for configuring the RAID array. You can have:

Clean Mode – JBOD (Just a bunch of disks); The disks present themselves individually to the server (arguably the preferred mode for WHS).
Large Mode – All disks are spanned, and one large volume is presented that is the sum of all drives present.
RAID 0 Mode – Spanning like Large Mode but capacity will be five times smallest drive instead of using all the space on mismatched drives.
RAID 1 Mode – Allows one drive to duplicate to another.
RAID 10 Mode – Combines the spanning of Raid 0 and the duplication of Raid 1.
RAID 3 Mode – Stripes data across the disks, and uses a single disk for parity.
RAID 5 Mode – Stripes data across disks keeping parity information on multiple disks

If you want to keep things simple, you can just install new drives into the enclosure, set the dip switches to the desired RAID level and power on whilst holding the setup button (helpfully you need a paperclip or pin to do this, to prevent accidental erasure of your data) and the TR5UT will configure everything for you ready to use. Of course, any existing data on the disks is lost, but you would expect it to be.

If you want to get more advanced, then don’t bother with the dip switches. Instead connect up the TR5UT to your PC and install the supplied RAID management software, and providing you have sufficient hard disks in the enclosure, you can mix and match different RAID arrays to suit you needs.

The example below shows a RAID 0 array on two drives, and a Large (spanned) array on another two drives.

There is plenty of flexibility in the creation of these arrays as long as there are enough physical drives to support the chosen modes. I am sure your desired configuration can be catered for if you have a complicated requirement as its all pretty comprehensive.

When configuration is complete, the logical drives are presented back to Windows, either via USB 2.0 or eSATA to be formatted and used by Windows in the normal way.

In use

So having played with all the RAID modes, and been very impressed by the level of control and the amount of options available, it is time to completely disable them and switch to JBOD mode for use with WHS. In this mode, any hard disk installed into the enclosure is passed directly through to the host PC as is.

If you are using the USB 2.0 interface, there are no real complications here, you will always get all of the installed disks available on the PC. However, if you choose the faster eSATA interface and you are not using the supplied HighPoint card, you need to make sure your eSATA interface has sufficient port multipliers
for the number of hard disks installed.

Taking the HP MediaSmart as an example, the number of port multipliers available is as follows: EX47x = 4, EX48x = 0, EX49x = 5. When using eSATA, owners of the EX48x server can only use a single disk and would be better off with USB 2.0 if they want multiple drives, whilst EX47x owners can use up to 4 drives and EX49x owners can fully load with disks.

With all this in mind, I connected the TR5UT up to our trusty HP MediaSmart EX475, and as I was only using three hard disks in the enclosure the eSATA connection should be perfectly sufficient. Then came the problems.

The default eSATA drivers installed on the EX475 didn’t play very nicely with the TR5UT’s controller. From a cold start, the EX475 wouldn’t see the drives offered up by the TR5UT, and I had to reboot it once the MediaSmart server was up before the drives would be available. Once rebooted, everything was fine, but there will clearly be some issues for EX475 users in the event of a power failure if they are expecting things to recover automatically.

I tried many different versions of the eSATA drivers, but they all had differing issues. The later versions seems to deactivate the MediaSmarts port multiplier capability, so things got worse rather than better as I could only access a single drive. I can’t vouch for how this device is handled by other servers, but the HP EX475 really gave me problems.

Now this might be an unfair criticism of the TR5UT, as you will remember that is ships with a Highpoint Rocket 622 eSATA card, which I am sure will work great for all system builders who can install such a card, but we wanted to review this device as an add on to a compact OEM home server, and as such eSATA proved to be problematic.

Putting eSATA aside though, the TR5UT performed faultlessly using its USB 2.0 connection, but you are clearly going to get less performance using that connection. By using the reboot method, I continued to test the TR5UT with the eSATA connection, as it would give a better idea of what this device could do.

In clean mode all of the hard disks simply appear in the Windows Home Server console as external disks, so it was child’s play to bring them into the storage pool as you would do with internal disks.

Once added to the pool, the TR5UT served external drives were used in the same way as normal internal drives.

In theory, using multiple disks like this on a single eSATA interface is going to provide less throughput to each drive, as all of the disks are sharing the 3gbits normally dedicated to a single device. In practice though, I found no real-world discernable difference to server speed when using the TR5UT. I am sure that there is a measurable performance reduction to these disks, but the reality to a user at the other end of the Ethernet connection really isn’t noticeable.

Conclusion

It was very disappointing to have such a fundamental problem with the eSATA connection on the test MediaSmart. An EX49x or X510 wasn’t available for testing, so I can’t comment on how they would work with it, and as the EX48x only has a single port multiplier, eSATA isn’t going to be the best option either.

However, assuming you have no eSATA driver issues with your particular server or you use the supplied eSATA card in your own server, then this is a nicely robust and very flexible device. It seems well constructed, solid and built to last.

The amount of RAID options available offers some very powerful configuration choices should you need them.

Access to the data on the drives was fast and any reduction in speed using the port multiplier really wasn’t noticeable on a client PC.

Good
Good quality and solid construction.
Very flexibly RAID options.
Choice of USB 2.0 or eSATA

Bad
Driver support on the HP MediaSmart EX475 didn’t allow easy operation with eSATA.

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid/tr5utb.html

Sans Digital TowerRAID TR5UT-B Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Its a great 11 page review which looks at general purpose hard drives, performance drives and those designed for the enterprise.

Loads of benchmarks are included plus cost per GB and bang-for-the-buck graphs, which you can find here.

2TB Hard Drive Roundup is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

What’s in the box?

Inside the box there is the usual ensemble of a power supply, UK kettle lead, ethernet cable, information pack and a DVD case with the 3 discs required for a WHS setup. The DVD case also includes a rather neat bootable USB flash drive that can be used to restore the OS should other routes fail. Obviously the unit doesn’t have a DVD drive built in so the bootable USB device is the next best thing, and frankly should be the default install methodology for other OS’s such as Windows 7 but I digress!

Technical Specification

CPU-Z Report

Power Usage

The initial power usage of the unit was 37 watts, quickly settling down to 32 watts with three 1 TB drives installed. Heavy file transfer didn’t take this beyond 44 watts. I am told that each further drive will increase power usage by approximately 5 watts.

Initial Impressions

The unit retains the five caddys of the original SQA-5H, and let you slide 3.5" SATA hard disks in and out easily and retain the hot plug capabilities, (on the data disks). The colored tabs at the front don’t represent anything in particular but allow you to create your own logical system of discs. External drives can be connected using either the two USB sockets at the front of the unit or using the four USB sockets on the back of the unit. These are all USB 2, so no sign of USB 3 capabilities as yet. There is also one eSATA socket on the back of the unit for faster transfer rates. Also on the back of the unit below the USB ports is a panel, and if you remove it you have access to a VGA connector to which you can obviously attach a monitor for troubleshooting purposes

The main upgrade for the unit is on the processor front as this has been upgraded to the Intel Atom D510.

The SQA-5H-2000 is very quiet because of a large slower rotating fan on the back of the unit extracting the warm air from the otherwise passively cooled bespoke motherboard.

The unit has a number of LEDs, which highlight various statuses and error conditions quickly, easily and relatively intuitively, however there is a label on the bottom of the SQA-5H to explain each one. Disk storage use can also be ascertained by LED status.

Tranquil Safe Server Module

This unit was also supplied with the Tranquil Safe Server Module (SSM). The SSM was delivered with 2x 500GB 2.5” HDDs, in a RAID1 mirror array, including a Tranquil build of Windows Home Server (PP3) for either the Series 1 or Series 2 SQA-5H. The SSM can also be added to an existing SQA-5H – and the Server initialized again (losing the data, so back this up first!), or you can Restore the Home Server with the supplied new DVD, with the SSM fitted and recover your data.  By replacing the first hard disc in your SQ
A-5H, (or many other WHS machines and potentially WHS home brews), with a SSM, you are going some way towards protecting the operating system and primary data partition from HDD failure.

There is a good write up of how to use the SSM on Tranquil’s own blog here.

There is a note in the SSM box in which Tranquil "recommend" that you take off the tin plate in the front of the hard disk carrier so that the LEDs can be seen, however this is mainly because the SSM won’t actually fit in the carrier if you don’t take the plate off!

As you can see the SSM very neatly combines two 2.5" inch drives in to a 3.5" disk format drive. It is of course far smarter than a simple caddy because of the RAID1 mirror capabilities. All in all a very neat unit, a credit to Tranquil’s technical team.

The SSM can be remotely managed from a client PC application, but we will look at this further in a separate article, to be published later on www.mswhs.com.

Start Her Up!

When you insert the Start-Up CD in a client PC you are presented with the screen below:-

To start the install process you would select the option "Initialise your home server" and the familiar WHS install process begins.

Name your server – I just stuck with the default name of "Server"

Enter the system default password – don’t forget this otherwise it’s a system rebuild!

Set your update settings as appropriate.

And the install process continues…

Add-Ins

The AVA addin is installed as a matter of course.  The AVA Music Disc Copier add-in, automatically copies CDs into shared lossless and MP3 libraries – though to use it you’ll need to hook up a USB optical drive.

But there are 3 other addins available if you need them.

• FireFly Server to stream your music to iTunes or any other DLNA equipped device.
• Logitech SqueezeServer to stream your music to a Squeezebox device.
• Tentacle Software Disk management add in

Pricing

The SQA-5H-2000-S2 which comes with 2GB of RAM and can be specified in Black or White retails at £469 , an extra 2GB can be specified for £36. One extra 1TB disk can be requested at £79, two extra 1TB disks at £154, three extra 1Tb disks at £224 and four extra 1TB disks at £294.  The SSM module is available for £169. (all prices ex VAT) If you order any SQA-5H plus at least ONE extra HDD during March 2010, you will receive a free Xtreamer Media Player.

Conclusion

The only chink in the armour is the fact that there is no scope to add any PCI cards to use the machine as a network tuner source with software such as DVB Link TV Source, but this is a small foible that most machines share unless they are homebrew WHS machines.

Otherwise the Tranquil SQA-5H-2000-S2 is a very capable machine and well specified, though a relatively expensive unit. But as the unit can be expanded at will with those impressive 5 caddies and an array of USB and eSATA ports, I think that it’s probably a price worth paying. This unit definitely has a leaning towards the more professional/serious enthusiast end of the WHS market, but this is a role that it fills incredibly well.

Is the SSM module a must have? This depends on your own degree of paranoia but it could save you an awful lot of work and heartache if the system disk was to fail – a great idea but quite expensive!

Tranquil SQA-5H-2000-S2 and the Safe Server Module (SSM) is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The Acer Revo R3610’s day job when it isn’t moonlighting as a Windows Home Server is what I can only describe as a netbook without a screen; not the fastest PC you can buy, but small and capable of allowing its users to surf the Internet and know that it will run most of the things they will want.

It is designed to either sit on top of a desk, or by using the supplied VESA mount, hide itself around the back of your LCD TV, giving your TV the power of the Internet. This internet enabling of an existing TV is made even easier with the supplied wireless keyboard and mouse.

Hardware

At its heart, the R3610 has an Intel Atom N330 running at 1.6Ghz and an NVIDIA ION chipset providing the graphics. Storage options vary depending on model, but RAM at 2Gb or 4GB and hard disk at 250gb or 500gb seems to be the order of business if you look around online stores for one. Finally we also have built in wireless networking.

There are plenty of ports and connections on the R3610, which is really helpful for its forthcoming transformation into a home server. Top of the list is an eSATA connection followed by no less than six USB 2.0 ports with a Gigabit LAN RJ45 bringing up the rear.

The less useful connections from a server point of view are a VGA and HDMI monitor connections, headphone and microphone jacks, optical SPDIF and a multi-in-one card reader (supporting Memory Stick, MMC, SD or xD).

Day Job

In its day job, this is a great little device. Safely screwed to the back of an LCD TV, the R3610 just peeps its power switch over the top of the screen so you don’t have to grope around the back to turn it on. With similar attention to detail, the multi-card slot and some USB ports are up facing so you can insert memory into them without having to resort to moving the TV.

The supplied keyboard and mouse seem up to the job, and were stylish and of good enough quality so not to disgrace your TV.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit comes pre-installed which worked fine on this little PC; actually it worked even better when most of the bloatware was removed, but I think we are all very used to that problem with any preinstalled operating system. I am not really going to delve into a review of the R3610 in its day job, as I am really more interested in how it can become a server.

So it was unscrewed from the TV and reunited with its desk stand ready for to have Windows Home Server installed.

As a server

Making the little R3610 a Windows Home Server requires a little bit of work upfront. Firstly, as the R3610 has no optical device, so you will need to make a USB copy of your WHS installation CD or alternatively obtain a external USB CD ROM drive.

Next you will need to ensure you have changed the SATA interface mode from AHCI to Native IDE in the BIOS, unless you are happy seeing Blue Screens of Death every time you try and install the server. There may be a technical way to allow WHS to run in AHCI mode, but I found this method perfectly ok for the review.

Finally as the WHS installation disk doesnt have them already, you will need to get a copy of the network card drivers from the Nvidia site, otherwise nothing will be able to talk to the server on the network which really defeats the point of having a server.

With these three steps accomplished, Windows Home Server installed onto the R3610 without any undue problems or delay.

The first order of business for me once I had got Windows Home Server running and connected to the network was to install a second hard disk to supplement the built-in one. This obviously isn’t necessary if your R3610 is only going to be on light service duties or you don’t want to enable folder duplication.

I used the eSATA port and my chosen hard disk was soon active in the WHS storage pool.

In use

So how did it perform? Surprising well to be honest. The Intel Atom N330 seems to make short work of normal WHS duties, and performance from this little server was every bit as good as any dedicated OEM server. I tested it against my normal WHS box, and it was comparable in the copy times for all the different files sizes I tested.

The console was always snappy and responsive while web access was served without delay, and there always seemed to be plenty of CPU cycles available for streaming.

Having the additional eSATA disk connected gave extra storage capacity, and there were no perceivable delays or holds up when the external disk was in use. The 4gb o
f RAM in our review R3610 is probably overkill for general purpose WHS duties, but would be of great benefit for anybody who runs a lot of applications on their Windows Home Server.

The R3610 itself is practically silent in use, and any noise it does make certainly isn’t very noticeable or intrusive.

Conclusion

Whilst the hardware specifications of the R3610 make it superior to many OEM Windows Home Servers, taking the design of the hardware into account, I don’t feel comfortable recommending that the R3610 is left on 24/7 like you would with a more traditional WHS box.

The R3610 has a small case, and I can only assume there is limited air-flow to the internal components. Ok, so perhaps I am wrong and by having the bulk of the storage in external drives, and the R3610 can certainly connect a lot of drives if it wants too, you might have no problems leaving it on 24/7.

Instead I see a niche that this server can fulfil, and that is of the occasional Windows Home Server. So that sounds odd, as I am sure that most of us are used to having our servers up 24/7, backing up PC’s, running Mail servers, hosting web sites, streaming and converting video or whatever else.

But this could be different. Screwed to the back of an LCD TV, it can become an unobtrusive uPNP server for the ever increasing number of uPNP/DLNA type media receivers out there. Switch it on when you need it, and use it to watch TV – perhaps backup your laptop – and power it down at the end of the day.

A lifestyle Windows Home Server, could that catch on? If it does, then the R3610 should be at the top of your shopping list.

Acer Aspire R3610 technical details

Acer Aspire Revo R3610 review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

There are 3 models to choose from – the Harmony T7, the Harmony T2 and the SQA-5H.

Harmony T7 – Series 2

The Harmony T7 – Series 2 Home Server is an ideal, affordable starter unit. Powered by the latest Intel Atom D510 Dual core CPU, this Home Server delivers outstanding performance, coupled with low power consumption. This high quality unit will be at home anywhere, similar in size to a typical hard back dictionary. With wall mount option, it can be secured out of sight and out of mind. Supporting 4x external HDDs, this is an excellent Server start up option. Why not couple it with the slot on T7-HDx units (and have up to 9TBs of storage)

Harmony T2 – Series 2

The Harmony T2 – Series 2 Home Server for mid range users. Powered by the latest Intel Atom D510 Dual Core CPU, this Home Server delivers outstanding performance, coupled with low power consumption. This slim server supports 2x internal high capacity HDDs, 4x high speed USB HDD ports, and optional 4x eSATA ports. With numerous professional mounting options, this server can sit on your desk, fit in a 19" rack, sit on the floor, or even be secured to a wall.

SQA-5H – Series 2

 
Tranquil PC’s flagship Home Server, the SQA-5H, powered by the latest 64 bit ready Intel Atom D510 (2×1.66GHz) Dual Core and running Microsoft Windows Home Server. This server provides high capacity, quick installation storage, and a long list of new features. The power consumption is still very low, and it’s still a very quiet server too!
With new accessories such as the SQA-Ex (additional 5x HDDs) and the SQA-HDD1 (HDD carrier) along with a 3 year warranty, this is the Home Server for the discerning buyer.

All models have the following features in common:

• Windows Home Server (PP3) Operating system
• Powerful Intel 64 bit D510 CPU (Dual 1.66GHz)
• High Speed Network – Gigabit LAN
• High Speed 800MHz RAM (up to 4GB)
• Silent and reliable Fanless CPU cooling
• Power efficient and cool HDDs
• Designed and manufactured in UK
• AVA CD ripping engine + various Media servers
• 24 month warranty (Except SQA-5H which is 36 months)
• Prices range from £249+VAT for the basic Harmony T7, up to £399+VAT for the SQA-5H-1000

More information and a comparison chart comparing all 3 models is available here.

Tranquil PC Series 2 Home Servers is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The unit can load up to 100 Blu-ray/DVD/CDs into the S1Digital Bly-ray Disc Changer which is simple to use and enables almost instant access to movies without having to physically find and load each movie.

When connected to a Windows Home Server via USB 2.0, you’ll be able to automatically archive your Blu-ray, DVD and CD discs to the server by using the included My Movies for WHS software. Every movie and audio disc is automatically stored on the hard drive, catalogued and metadata and cover-art downloaded. As each movie or album is stored, it is immediately available on your home network for playback.

A typical Blu-ray disc can take an hour or more to archive, but using this solution, you simply load up the changer and hit go. You don’t have to load each disc one by one. The changer will automatically move from disc to disc so you don’t have to worry about spending days manually storing movies and music.

The s1Digital 100 Disc Blu-Ray Changer is available with the MyMovies for Windows Home Server software with an MSRP of $1499 from here.

100 Disc Changer for Windows Home Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Similar in looks to their Artigo A2000, Via have announced the M’SERV S2100, a mini low power 64-bit server which is an ideal home for Windows Home Server.

Measuring just 13.5cm by 12cm by 26cm (5.3" x 4.7" x 10.2"), the VIA M’SERV S2100 is powered by a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano processor and supports 2 slots of DDR2 memory. Two SATA bays with integrated power ports are mounted within the case, and a type I Compact Flash socket can be used as a bootable SSD for embedded OS for installing a slimmed-down version of WHS.

Connectivity includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports while two USB 2.0 ports at the back are supplemented by one port at the front allowing for storage expandability.

No software is supplied, this is hardware only, but it would make a good choice for home builders wishing to build a small low power Windows home Server.

The unit is available now for system integrators and OEMs and will be available from some online retailers shortly with a price to be announced.

More details from Via here.

Via M’SERV S2100 Mini Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!