On Tuesday Microsoft released to the world the first official preview of Windows Home Server Codename “Vail”. Vail is the successor to Windows Home Server (WHS) a superb product from Microsoft which sadly has not received enough credit or attention.
Home Server is designed to sit at the centre of your home network, backing up all your computers, serving up media and allowing remote access to your data…amongst many other things. It presents all connected Hard Drives (Internal and External) as a single storage pool meaning users don’t have to worry about drive letters etc . It will replicate data across drives to make sure data is not lost should a drive fail. But the real beauty of WHS is that it’s designed for the home user, manageable from a single console, all the techie stuff is hidden in the background (but still accessible if you want it). It’s also extensible using Add-ins written by 3rd party companies, developers an enthusiasts making it possible to use it for all sorts of wonderous things. The HP version even has support for Macs.
The original WHS was built upon 32 bit Server 2003 Release 2 SP2, a nice stable Server OS, but Vail is built upon 64 bit Server 2008 Release 2, an even better and well performing OS. It promises to take all that is great from Version 1 and build upon it.
So far the list of improvements is quite extensive, rather than explain them all here, I suggest going to We’ve Got Served one of the best Windows Home Server websites out there. It has an incredible amount of information and detail in a dedicated Windows Home Server Vail section.
The preview software is available to all and can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect.
Home Server is really great product and deserves a lot more plaudits, I highly recommend you check it out.
