MSWHS - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server

By Philip Churchill on November 17th, 2011

The French qy.Server

Our friends from the French Mon Home Server blog has bought the qy.Server running WHS 2011 to our attention.

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.

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By Philip Churchill on November 17th, 2011

The Riley Server Processor and Storage Units

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/

Hardware • News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 17th, 2011

Hard Drive Shortage to Continue into Late 2012

Due to the widespread, long-term flooding in Thailand a 1TB Seagate Barracuda is now $149 compared to the $55 it was a month or two ago, nearly tripling in price in only a few weeks. Likewise a 2TB Samsung hard drive is now £180 in the UK compared to the £50 it was a few weeks back. And even if you want to buy one at these at these prices many retailers are only allowing you to purchase one at a time.

The 1TB hard drives are the ones mostly affected by these increases with some stores selling them at a staggering 180% higher than they previously were, even some would be entrepreneurs are trying to sell them for over $1000 on eBay

Whilst around 60% of the hard drive output is affected by this flooding it has been said that most of the remaining stock is going to the likes of HP, Dell etc. for their PC making needs.

This hard drive shortage is set to continue into late 2012 until stock and pricing comes back to an acceptable level, so in the meantime what can you do?

Fall in love with the delete key to recover some space
Buy a secondhand computer from the likes of eBay and grab the hard drive, where the price of the PC could be cheaper than the cost of a new hard drive itself.
Perhaps just hold out on that hard drive purchase until the later part of next year, that is if you can wait that long.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 16th, 2011

Ldisk Pre-Installed iBrick Servers

iBrick from InteliSAN is a range of customized Home Servers which come with the LDisk add-in preinstalled.

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.

Hardware • News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 16th, 2011

Add-In: LDisk Windows Home Server

LDisk Windows Home Server is a new add-in for both v1 and WHS 2011 users which adds iSCSI Target Storage capability to your Windows Home Server machine.

By using LDisk, you can create a single appliance to provide all your storage and backup needs.

iSCSI Target Storage for Windows Home Server
IP SAN (Storage Area Network)- Block transfer
iSCSI SAN interface over Ethernet
Snapshot with schedules, revert, and convert to volume
Fully protected data using SAN Volume duplication
Supports all Internal or external drives
Drive Extender for WHS 2011
Storage Expansion through iSCSI for WHS 2011

LDisk is developed by InteliSAN, a four year old startup providing high quality, easy to use, Storage solutions to the SMB and enterprise market.

LDisk is currently in beta with final pricing to be announced.

You can request a trial version from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 15th, 2011

Western Digital Announce a Small Office Storage Server

Western Digital have announced the WD Sentinel DX4000 Small Office Storage Server which comes equipped with Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.

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.

Hardware • News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 15th, 2011

Add-In: KeepVault for WHS 4.11

KeepVault for Windows Home Server (both v1 and WHS 2011) and SBS 2011 Essentials has had an update:

Cross Device Access & Restore
Access and restore the files from any of your protected computers using the ‘Selective Download’ feature in the KeepVault software interface. Previously reserved for KeepVault Pro users only, this feature makes it even easier to recover files to a new computer or share files between any computer on your account.

Daily Status Reports
KeepVault Pro & Business customers can opt-in to receive a daily summary email showing the backup status of each of their computers. Quickly check important backup statistics to ensure your data protection is operating smoothly.

Client Computer Backup/Restore (WHS & SBS Essentials 2011)
We’ve worked closely with Microsoft to enable a special mechanism for backing-up and restoring the Client Computer Backups created by WHS & SBS Essentials 2011. Now you can protect these online simply by selecting the ‘Client Computer Backups’ entry in the KeepVault interface and the software will do the rest.

Version 4.11 of this online backup storage solution solution for Home Server users can be found here, whilst additional information on what this add-in can do for you is also available.

add-ins • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 15th, 2011

Add-In: Drive Bender for WHS 1.2.1.6

Drive Bender for WHS 2011 has been updated to version 1.2.1.6

This Drive Extender type add-in for users of Windows Home Server 2011, Windows SBS Essentials 2011and Storage Server 2008 R2 includes the following changes:

Bug fix: During the duplication process (i.e. enabling duplication on a folder) could cause a file to have its read only flag removed.
Bug fix: The file / duplication count for a pool can sometimes read zero.
Update: Some performance improvements on file duplication.
Update: Some performance improvements on file / folder renaming and deleting.
Bug fix: The Drive Bender Manager does not display changes in mount points.

Drive Bender for WHS 2011 is available as a 30 day trial after which it will cost you $40 for private use.

More details on Drive Bender are available from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on November 14th, 2011

The Old and New HP MicroServer Benchmarked

The Tenniswood Blog has a great article comparing the performance of the new HP ProLiant MicroServer with the older model; the 1.3GHZ (N36L) vs the 1.5GHZ (N40L) models.