Earlier this week, Microsoft
announced that Windows Home Server had gone RTM and would be available to OEM's and through System Builder channels in a few short weeks. This comes after extensive testing, where thousands of volunteers provided feedback, bug reports, etc., to the Product Development team.
So what is WHS? Basically, it is a platform designed for consumer home networks to provide Automatic backup of Windows XP and Windows Vista PCs on the network, a centralized storage of data and media files along with Remote access to files and folders from the Internet, also allowing for future expansion of disk drive capacity.
WHS is designed to run "headless", i.e., once the initial setup is complete all functionality, configuration, etc., is done through a "Connector" that is installed on the client machine.
Through this utility, the administrator can modify a variety of settings including Backup Management, User Account Password policies (forcing use of complex passwords), Media Library Sharing, Remote Access, etc.
Experienced server admins will be happy to know they can also remote into the Server itself. Since it is built on Server 2003 technology, many of the administrative tools are still available.
Installation of the connector is very simple.
