Home Server Defined - What Home Server Does - Why You Need Home Server - Our Ideal Home Server Setup

    PC Buddies is very excited about Microsoft's new Windows Home Server.  What is it, and why are we so excited?  Microsoft's Windows Home server is (in its concept) an appliance that will act as both centralized storage for all your home-based computers, but also as a backup server and remote access end-point.

    Why are we excited about this?  Simply because it offers many greatly needed services for home-level users;

1.) Automated, image-based, "nuts-to-bolts" backups for up to 10 Windows based PC.
2.) Centralized File Storage.  All your files in one place!
3.) Data protection through Redundancy. Data stored on several drives, not just one.
4.) Remote Access.

    The Home Server is what they call a "Headless System", meaning it won't come with (or even need) a monitor or keyboard or mouse.  It will connect to your network via a cable and you'll administer it through your network from any computer connected to that network.  This may seem like a foreign concept to most home users but to many network administrators this technique is old-hat.

    Once connected to your network you initially run a "Connector" software that will guide you through connecting to the server.  Shared folders are made easier to access through a shortcut on your Desktop, and the Automated Backup connector is installed and configured.

    The Home Server will act as a centralized storage point for all your files.  Why is this important?  It's important for many reasons.  First of all, having your files in one place makes them easier to find and backup.  The server will be set up in such a way that ONLY the files that are important to you are shown.  No more wading through hundreds of unrelated files and folders to find your stuff.  Because of this centralized approach at file storage you can also get access to your files from many computers.  Need to share a photo with someone else's PC on your network, now you can tell them where it is and that location will be the same for EVERY machine on your network!  As an added bonus, centralizing your files makes changing or upgrading or replacing your PC a piece of cake.  No more dreadfully long file transfers.  Just connect your new machine to the Home Server and make a few minor changes, and VIOLA, there are all your files!

    You may wonder, "Why should I move all my important files to one location?  Aren't they just as susceptible to being lost or deleted there as they would be if they were left on my hard drive?"  That's a good question, but the Home Server has that covered.  The Home Server will have multiple hard drives installed, and your data will reside on more than one disk at any one time.  If one of the disks in the server fails, your data is still there!  If the drive on your desktop or laptop fails, your files are at risk.

    The Home Server also offers something called "Shadow Copies".  Basically, the state of all your files are stored multiple times.  Twice a day snapshots of all your files are taken and stored separately.  Say you made some changes to a file, and a day or two later you realize those changes were not what you wanted?  Simply find the file, right-click on it, choose "Properties" and you'll see a Windows Dialog Box with a "Previous Versions" tab.  In that tab will be a listing of that file at different times.  If the file is deleted, you can simply create a new document with the same name, right-click on it and click the "Previous Versions" to get the entire document from a day or even week or longer ago!

    The Home Server will also allow you remote access to it, and any other machine connected to it remotely.  Basically, from any machine in the world connected to the Internet you can connect to your home server at a sub-domain of homserver.com (like pcbuddies.homeserver.com) and have access to all your files, or even access to your computer, which you can take over and control just as if you were sitting in front if it!  This might be more than what most people need, and it does present a security risk if your passwords aren't "strong" (in other words, longer than 8 characters, mixing numbers, letters, symbols and capital letters), but it can be pretty helpful if you're in a bind and away from your home machine.

    One cool benefit of this is if you're on vacation with your digital camera.  Instead of hoarding all your photos on multiple memory sticks, you can upload those pictures directly to your Home Server.  There they'll be safe and sound (and backed up) and your memory sticks will be empty and ready to use again.