Windows Home Server MVP's Appearing...

Over the last couple of days, the listing of WHS MVP's on Microsoft's MVP Site has been slowly growing.  It looks like most folks received notice of the award late on Monday, but they won't appear on the listing unless they mark their profile to be visible to the public.

At this time I'm seeing Grey Lancaster, who has been on the listing since the category was added to the MVP site.  I'm guessing he may have been an MVP that was previously assigned to a different competency, but who got moved over to the WHS group.

Other appearances include Ken Warren.  If you ever frequent Microsoft's WHS Forums, it seems that Ken manages to answer 90% of all questions posted. (Totally made-up statistic, but that's the way it seems).

Also included is Terry Walsh, who runs the We Got Served blog.  Terry manages to collect and generate a great deal of information and news about WHS. His site is often the first place I see new information on WHS.

I'm very honored to be included in the list of awardees as well!  I'm not sure yet what all this MVP status really means, but I'm looking forward to finding out over the next year!

Hopefully the listing will grow a little bit more as WHS MVP awardees fill out their profiles and mark them as visible.  There has been some very strong community involvement in WHS since the early Beta days, and it's great to see that Microsoft recognizes the positive impact of folks that make time to be involved.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007 5:23:47 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

What has Rick Been Up To?

As has been pointed out, I am the author of a new book about Windows Home Server for Wiley Publishing.  The book is titled Windows Home Server: Protect and Simplify Your Digital Life, and it should be available in January '08.  The book focuses on teaching computer users how to make the best use of Microsoft's new Windows Home Server line of products to protect their data and simplify their computing experience.

The Amazon.com write-up covers things pretty well.

I've got a bunch of blog posts in my head covering what I've learned so far as I'm going through the authoring process for the first time.  The editors I've been working with at Wiley are great, and I'm really looking forward to completing the process and actually holding a real printed copy of the book in my hands.  I've found writing to be very enjoyable.  The technical research, and the setup for screenshots and such takes a lot of time, but it's a geeky kind of fun.  It's great to have an excuse to "play around" with my home server and computers each night.

Obviously, blogging is going to be pretty slow until I finish up the book, but as I've said before, that really shouldn't matter.

Friday, August 17, 2007 10:59:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Quattro

Windows Home Server RTM'd

I'm late to the party, but if you haven't heard, Windows Home Server has RTM'd.  Lot's of bloggers already covering this.

From the outside looking in, this seems to have gone more smoothly than other Microsoft projects as of late.  Maybe Charlie Kindel can give us a post-mortem of how they managed to to keep things on track, or at least maintain the appearance of staying on track.

I'm looking forward to seeing the OEM machines actually hit the street, and see how they fare in the market. 

Monday, July 16, 2007 7:09:21 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server Add-Ins I Don't Have Time To Code

1. Memory Stick Backups - A service that will run on my desktop or laptop and automatically back up my USB memory stick whenever I plug it in.  Each memory stick should be backed up to the same location on the server no matter which computer I plug it in to.
2. Download Manager - Automatically hand off regular downloads from Internet Explorer to be downloaded and stored on my home server.
3. User Account Sync - Automatically create user accounts on client PCs for each Windows Home Server user account.  Automatically update passwords.
4. Favorites Sync - Sync my favorites to a folder on WHS. (I know I can do this with foldershare.  Add-in would be much better.)  Also include Desktop Sync, My Documents Sync, etc.

 

Sunday, July 15, 2007 7:53:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, Realities of Beta Testing

My Windows Home Server machine has become such an integral and reliable part of my home network that it is easy to forget that it is not released software.  Early on, I set up some "extra" protection for my data.  All of my irreplaceable data is synchronized to other machines via Microsoft's Foldershare (although I bumped my head on FolderShare's arbitrary 10k file limit a couple of times, it was mostly a smooth process.)

Tonight I received a notification email from the Beta program that contained some very important information.  We are all expecting a new build, RC1, to be released soon, and when that happens, anyone who wants to update to the new build is in for some beta-induced pain.  Due to a bug in the CTP code, installation of the RC1 build will not support the "Server Reinstall" mode.  What this means for users is that your data may not be preserved if you blindly click through the installation.  The email states that all data should be backed up to another medium before you dive into the installation.  Reading through the details, it looks like there are circumstances where the data may remain intact, and if you have folder duplication turned on, it looks like the chances are better for preserving the shares. Hopefully testers will heed the warning, and back up all of their data just in case.

Another interesting point is the shutting down of the feedback section on Connect, which totally makes sense given that there has been a lot of duplication of info between the forums and Connect ever since they opened the forums.

For the curious, the full email is below:

Windows Home Server Beta Participants,

We wanted to briefly touch base with you all to help you prepare you for the upcoming Windows Home Server Release Candidate (RC) and also to say, thank you for your help and participation and for helping to make Windows Home Server even better! We have had a fantastic response to our beta program and we truly appreciate all of your efforts in helping us build a better product.

As of 5/23/07, we will be disabling the ability for you to submit feedback via Connect and will begin our transition of feature requests and problem reports to the Windows Home Server Forums. This is a natural evolution of our product development cycle. The forums are a very active community and we encourage you to participate, learn and contribute. You will still be able to query on feedback that Insider

We also wanted you to be aware of changes we made in the RC release that will impact you if you have large amounts of data that you do not have alternate backups of. In the RC the default option for Server Setup is going to be "New Installation." The effect of this is you will not be able to easily upgrade from Beta 2/CTP to RC or RTM. This is going to be painful for some of you who have large data sets and we apologize up front for that. However, the changes we made were essential to ensuring a great user experience for the product moving forward and as beta testers we are sure you can understand.

For most of you, moving from Beta 2 or the CTP to the RC will involve backing up any data you don't already have stored somewhere else and then copying it back on after you have "clean" installed the RC. If you have followed our guidance that you have backups of anything you were storing on the Beta or CTP you will have another copy of all of your data somewhere else anyway so the initial step of copying data off of your old installation should involve only recent changes and thus a small amount of data.

Server Recovery (the mechanism used to recover a Windows Home Server when the primary drive has failed and replaced) will be a choice in the setup UI in the RC and RTM. However, using this as a way of "upgrading" from Beta 2 or the CTP to RC is not officially supported. There are significant known issues (e.g. due to a bug in the CTP, using Server Recovery to move to RC or RTM will result in a loss of all Home Computer backups and any non-duplicated shared folders may or may not be preserved). We strongly recommend that you clean-install the RC.

We know this is going to be a painful situation for some of you. We tried to make it clear in our documentation and messaging that you should always have backups of any data you are storing on Windows Home Server during the beta and we also were very clear that while we would try to enable an easy upgrade path we could not promise it. We also know that some of you have very large data sets where having another backup is practically impossible and/or the act of copying such a data set is extremely time consuming (our instrumentation tells us that one of you has over 6.5TB of data!). However, based on beta testing feedback we determined that we had no choice but to make some changes to the system that broke the easy upgrade path. We appreciate your feedback as beta testers and thank you for your understanding and continued support.

At this point we *can* confidently say that we will support upgrading from the RC to the RTM version.

Thanks again for all of your hard efforts and contributions to making the Windows Home Server Product the best product possible.

Kevin Beares

Windows Home Server Community Lead

Thursday, May 24, 2007 8:50:49 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Lots of Windows Home Server News from WinHEC

Looks like there's a ton of WHS news trickling out of WinHEC.  New OEMs that were announced include Gateway, Acer, LaCie, and Medion.  It looks like the licensing plans are firming up to include a System Builder option (Like OEM licenses for MCE) but that there will not be a retail SKU.

Lots of Software partner announcements as well.  The most interesting in my opinion is the SageTV integration.  Basically you can pump all your media to your Home Server, including PVR functionality, and use simple extenders to deliver your content anywhere. I'm not sure if SageTV allows for live tv watching, but it'd be awesome to move to a model where the only TV tuners in the home were connected to the Home Server, and all your channels and saved content were available to any TV, PC, or portable device.

Microsoft also announced a coding contest to encourage innovative add-in / add-ons for Windows Home Server.  I've seen many Microsoft coding contests get very few entries in the past.  So if you've got some spare time on your hands, it might be worth pulling something together to submit.  They have some pretty decent prizes in the mix.

More details can be found in Microsoft's press release.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 8:32:02 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

New Windows Home Server CTP Build Available

Just got an email from Connect this evening announcing the availability of build 06.00.1371.  From a quick read it looks like it's going to be possible to upgrade from the Beta 2 build.  There are lots of warnings about making sure that all of your data is backed up, and this is a great opportunity to remind everyone that WHS should NOT be the only place you are keeping your important files.  I use FolderShare to sync all of my important data to a partition on one of my clients (you can exclude this folder from your backup configuration to avoid overly large backups).

I'm downloading the new build now.  Can't wait to see what has changed (going to go look at the release notes now...)

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 7:45:49 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server SDK is Live

Charlie Kindel posted on the WHS blog announcing the availability of the SDK for Windows Home Server.  I did a quick read through and it looks like they're allowing you to extend the platform in many different ways.  Pretty much every UI element is extendable: the WHS console, notifications & alerts, etc.  It also looks like you can peek and poke at almost everything WHS does with backups, hard disks & client computers.

We'll probably see some trivial demos pop up relatively soon, and more complex stuff coming out in the coming months.  I'm real curious to see what scenarios developers will choose to tackle first.

A question for Charlie and the rest of the WHS team:  Are you setting up a gallery or some sort of marketplace for folks to post/share their WHS projects?  I'm thinking something similar to the way the Live.com folks have their Gadget Gallery.

Friday, April 06, 2007 8:28:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | Quattro

Functionality Wishlist for Windows Home Server

In my last post, I talked about how third parties are likely to be the ones to make or break Windows Home Server in the marketplace.  Here's a few ideas that I'm hoping someone will bring to the table when WHS is released:

• Family Sharing - Basically, I'd like to select certain folders on the server, and designate them to be replicated to my extended family.  Hopefully they'll all have Home Server machines as well, and now if I drop some home movies or photos into that bucket, they'd be automatically synced.  Likewise they could add stuff as well.  This can be set up today with Foldershare, but it needs to be simple and available through the WHS console.
• Security Monitoring and Automation - This is one that I think will probably get addressed at least a couple different ways.  If I'm away from the house, I'd love to be able to remotely access my security system.  Maybe flip a couple lights on/off. Remotely access security cameras.  Turn the thermostat back up so the house isn't too cold when I return.
• Offsite backup - I'd like to see this addressed two different ways.  One would be a web-based service where I could pay for a certain amount of space on a monthly basis.  Another way that I think would be awesome is if I could designate a remote WHS machine (maybe at my brother's house) as my remote backup point.  I could just buy a 500GB USB hard drive, he could plug it in to his machine and designate it for remote backups, or perhaps he could just have an easy way to set a quota for my remote backups, and it would make use of the storage pool that WHS manages.
• Amazon UnBox or similar clients - Let me browse and buy from the server, either from the remote web interface or the console, and then let me watch the content on any media extenders in my home.  I could schedule the download remotely early in the day, and then it would be ready to watch on whatever TV was free in the evening (assuming it had a media extender attached.)
• Family Schedule - This is getting into the email/pim realm a bit, and I know that story isn't fully addressed, but a centralized shared calendar view would be cool.  Let me sync any type of calendar to the Home Server, Live Hotmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, whatever.  Somehow make the calendar viewable on media extenders, or on home PCs in an easy, quick way.

What other unfullfilled needs are out there waiting to be addressed?

Saturday, March 31, 2007 8:34:10 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [1]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server Marketing Challenge

I've been thinking a lot about how big of a splash Windows Home Server is going to make whenever it makes it to market.  One interesting challenge that the WHS team faces is that its core function, if it's done properly, is effectively invisible.  It's true that it is very visible when you need it, but these times are few and far between.

Now WHS has other goals and other features.  The "Access all your files from anywhere" model is pretty cool.  Right now I've got it set up using DynDNS (pretty easy but not very consumer friendly), but it looks like by release time there's going to be some sort of integration with Live Domains, so that this will be a simple set up.  Even this functionality can fade into the background though.  Honestly, since I set this up, I used it a couple of times, just to play around with it, but I haven't actually needed that remote access.

Now there's a ton of 3rd party concepts that I'm psyched about.  Home automation integration could be pretty cool, but probably limited to a small niche for DIY types.  If they can partner with ADT or something and get WHS slated as an option when a security system is installed, that would be sweet.

Hopefully the 3rd party market really heats up this space.  It looks like the SDK is going to finally see light in early April.  It'll be great to finally see exactly how open the platform is to extension.

In the end, I think that WHS is going to be successful not so much as a product, but rather as a platform.  As a product it's going to be adopted by enthusiasts, people with home-based businesses, and people who have been bitten by the lack of an executed backup strategy.  But as these folks bring WHS into their homes, and the third party solutions start to take off, I can see lots of compelling software products coming on-line so that the masses will want their own Windows Home Server.

Saturday, March 31, 2007 6:50:52 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Marketing | Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server Lens at Squidoo

I just started a lens over at Squidoo to serve as a gathering point for links and other info regarding Windows Home Server.  There's not much to see yet, but if you have suggestions, want a link to your blog included, etc. feel free to drop me an email. 

Friday, March 16, 2007 3:11:36 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Vista dumped my profile, Windows Home Server brought it back

When I turned on my laptop this morning, Vista had evidently misplaced my profile.  My wallpaper was gone, messenger didn't start, and my desktop was empty except for the default icons. 

Normally I would start digging, checking the event logs, looking in my profile directory on the hard drive, googling for similar experiences, etc., but not today.  Today I decided that this would be a great opportunity to test out Windows Home Server's restore functionality.
I did a quick mental inventory.  Had I changed any important files since the backup from 3 nights prior?  Nope.  Did I have a reasonable "extra backup" if Home Server managed to fail on the restore and trash my disk?  Yup.  Ok, here goes...

I threw in the restore disk, rebooted, and waited.  And waited.  Really it wasn't that long, but I'd think that distributing the restore disk on DVD might make this a little snappier.  Maybe include the restore function as an option on the Server install DVD, and include the CD in the pack for older machines without a DVD-ROM.

After the restore wizard started, it failed to find my Server.  I was pretty sure this would happen since I was living on the edge.  I was hoping to perform the restore over my WiFi connection, and nothing had prompted me to enter my WEP key yet, so I knew it wasn't going to work.  I tried going down the path to manually find my server, but no-where is there an option to enter WiFi info, so I ended up going down to the basement to rummage for an ethernet cable.  I set up the laptop and plugged it to my router. (Suggestion for the WHS Team: If you're going to require a wired connection for restore, then this should be explained in the Wizard.  Some people expect their WiFi to "Just work".)

After this the wizard easily found the server and prompted me for my server password.  Next I was presented with the option to select which computer I was restoring, and then I could choose which backup to restore.  The times seemed a bit out of whack, so there's probably a mix up in the time zone on my server.

Next I was presented with a screen showing me options for the different volumes in the backup.  My first thought was that this is a stark contrast from the simplicity of the rest of the user interface.  IMHO the following screen should've been hidden behind an "Advanced" button:

 

One last chance to back out:

Then off it went.  The initial "Time Remaining" estimate was 5 minutes, and then over the next 15 minutes it slowly climbed to 46 minutes.  I had to leave at this point, so I'm not sure exacltly how long it took, but then I got home later in the day, it had finished.

  ->  ->

After I rebooted the machine, it went through about a half-hour of scrolling text on the screen about recovering orphaned files. 

This made me wonder whether the restore had actually been successful or not.  Usually a half hour of file-recovery related text scrolling on a Windows boot-up means your hard drive is toast.  Thankfully the machine booted right up after it finished.

I haven't dug deep to make sure that the restore really did get everything, but so far nothing is missing, everything is working just like it was 3 days prior. 

Some minor wierdness that I experienced:  After rebooting, I received a warning about the previous shutdown being unexpected.  Now logically this makes sense:  If you restore a computer to a point-in-time where it was running, it's going to think that it was shut down unexpectedly.  This might be a point of confusion for users who are less tech savy.  Second, my display settings had reverted to 1024 x 768 instead of their normal 1280 x 768.  I'm guessing this has something to do with Windows trying to recover from the "Unexpected Shutdown", but I'm not sure.

All together it was a success, although I'm left wondering what Vista had done with my profile in the first place.  Seems kinda odd that I just used some beta software to recover from an error in the production Vista.  If it happens again I'll dig a little deeper, but for this round it was fun to put Windows Home Server through it's paces.

Thursday, March 15, 2007 5:40:42 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server - Work in Progress

Let me preface this by saying that I understand that this is a Beta product, and therefore I am neither surprised or upset by current shortcomings.  The team that is developing WHS seems to be on top of things and I'm confident that they will close the gap with future builds.  From what I've seen so far, the Beta would work great for 95% of people.  I'm just in the other 5% right now.

-------------------

After getting word that I would be included in the beta, I decided to get a new box to run WHS.  This was mostly due to the fact that I cleaned out my computer graveyard a few months back, and could not manage to scrounge together enough pieces to come anywhere near the minimum hardware specs.  I ended up getting a Dell E521, with a Gig of Ram and a 250GB Hard Drive.  I purposely omitted the Keyboard, Display and Mouse, and just planned to borrow these items from my desktop machine in order to complete the install.

When my machine arrived and I sat down to install WHS, I realized that there was no where to plug my PS/2 keyboard into the E521, and my PS/2 keyboard didn't come with the magic USB adapter.  Rather than paying through the nose for a overfeatured keyboard at the local Best Buy, I ordered a cheap USB keyboard from Amazon.  A couple days later I was ready to roll.
The install process was easy, and took roughly 1 hour to complete.  You can see an exorbitant number of screen pics here.  There was no real questions to answer, so I had nothing better to do than to sit there and click away with the digital camera.  The Beta install has way to many reboots, and could go quicker. I'm hoping they can address this with image-based install after development settles down a bit.

After the server installation was complete, I returned the cannibalized parts to my desktop, and set out to install the connector software on my Laptop.  This installation went smoothly as well.  I was eager to start a backup, so I ran the "Backup Now" option from the connector tray icon.  A while later, I absentmindedly closed the lid of my laptop, which puts is to sleep.  After waking the laptop up, I saw an error message that indicated that the backup had failed because the TCP/IP connection had been terminated.  Restarted the backup, and left the machine plugged in and open overnight so that it would complete.

The real test for WHS would come from my desktop machine.  This machine has a failing hard disk.  It has had 2 episodes of corrupted data (fixed by chkdsk/f).  I was excited about getting this machine backed up for several reasons. Most of the important data from this machine is being backed up via FolderShare, but it's hard to know when you've captured everything.  Also, I don't know if a disk error is going to corrupt files and then have the changes get copied through FolderShare.  The other reason is that a good backup to WHS would mean I could swap in a new hard drive and restore everything in short order.  To put this in perspective, the desktop is the machine that my wife uses.  It holds her data, her email contacts & archives.  Unless it's in her Hotmail account, it's on this computer.  In other words, this machine is at least 10 times as important as my laptop.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like WHS Beta 2 is going to save this machine.  At least not yet.

The connector software installed just fine.  Everything appears normal.  Since my Laptop was in the process of backing up, I figured I'd just leave the Desktop to start automatically overnight.  In the morning I checked the desktop and it was displaying an error about the backup failing.  A check in the event log shows a FileNotFoundException.  I figure that maybe the disk had choked again, so I ran it through another round of ChkDsk with all the options.  ChkDsk ran clean, without indicating any errors, so I started the backup again, only to have it fail in the same manner.

I've tried hitting this from a few different angles, but no matter what I try, I still get either the FileNotFoundException error, or a Volume Shadow Copy Service error.  I've filed a bug report and provided logs, but have not heard anything back yet.

I don't want to whine too loudly because I know the hardware is going bad, but I do want to point out that recovering from errors gracefully should be a top priority for the WHS team.  By gracefully I mean that the software should probably alert the user to the problem, but then continue the backup.  In the case of the failing hard drive, it's even more important to backup whatever files you can!  In the case of my laptop, interruptions in network connectivity ate the norm for WiFi, and I would guess that most of the target market is using WiFi for their home network.

Now that I've finished griping, I would like to offer some positive impressions.  Overall, the functionality is very simple to set up.  The user interaction required for the server and connector setup has been stripped to the bare minimum, and that is a good thing since less questions means less opportunities for mistakes.  The only interaction that stands out as possibly a bit difficult or error prone is the selection of a server password.  An option to save a generated key to a USB stick or burn it to a CD would be a welcome alternative (Sort of like the Wireless Network Setup Wizard in XP or Vista).  But remember or writing down one password is a pretty low bar to set considering the functionality that WHS provides.

The user interface is attractive.  The colors are an interesting mix of MCE and Vista stylings.  So far most things are pretty obvious and intuitive.

As soon as I figure a good secondary backup method, I'll be moving a lot more of my files into the WHS Shared Folders.  I'm not comfortable trusting the family photo album entirely to the Beta software yet, but I'm going to keep trying to expand my habits to include WHS functions where I can.

I'll include more thoughts, rants, etc. when I have time to pull together another post. If you are interested in getting in to the Beta, you can sign up for consideration, and there's also a publicly accessible community forum site.

Monday, February 26, 2007 8:32:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server Installation Pictures

 

Monday, February 26, 2007 8:26:14 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, On pause

In a great convergence of events, my new Dell E521 showed up today, and my Beta 2 discs showed up in the mail.  I ordered the E521 without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor, and just planned on borrowing these from my desktop.

I hit a snag because although I have two keyboards on the desktop, one has a PS/2 connector, and the other is Bluetooth.  I went to plug in the PS/2 keyboard and found that there is no PS/2 connectors on the new E521. 

On a whim, I figured I'd try throwing the WHS install DVD into the machine and to see if there was some way to bootstrap the install.  My router doesn't show the machine getting a DHCP address, and the Connector install can't find the server either, so I think I'm out of luck on that angle. 

(It would be a great feature if the DVD would boot a basic remote desktop that you could hit, or if it would start something that the Connector could hook up to in order to do an install without KVM.) 

So, the Beta experience is on hold until I can pick up a cheap USB keyboard.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007 7:42:12 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, Part 4 - Technology

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft's General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is the last post of a 4 part series. (Links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Technology

RH: It is interesting that you opted for a Rich Client vs. Web Interface for the admin panel.  How was this decision made?  Was the connector built using the .Net Framework?  What version?  What language (C#, C++, VB.Net?)  Are there any particular technologies that really shined?

CEK: When building a configuration/admin user experience (Ux) for a network node, one has to consider the following:

- How important is “reach”; that is, how important is it that you have broad multi-platform support?  Windows Home Server is designed to improve the experience in households with multiple PCs. And, especially in v1, our solution is very focused on PCs that are running a modern version of Windows. Therefore the requirement for “reach” does not bubble high up on our list of priorities.

- How important is a “great UI”?  Certainly one can easily build “good” UIs in DHTML, but building “great” UIs is hard. It is even harder to build great UIs in Ajax.  We felt it was super important to create a great UI.

- Designing protocols is hard. Assuming one was to build an admin UI with a rich UI framework (e.g. WinForms/Win32) and run it on the client, what would the protocol back to the server look like? For the Ux to be great it has to be bi-directional and performant. The RDP protocol already exists and is very robust.

- Is 3^rd party extensibility important? If so, how do you build your extensibility model?

These, factors, and many others led us to implement the Windows Home Server Console as a rich Win32 application (using .NET and WinForms) that runs on the server, but is remoted to the client using the RDP protocol. This allows us to provide a very rich Ux without inventing new Ux remoting protocols, while being able to provide a great 3^rd party extensibility story.

RH: Is there any email story other than file-level backup?

CEK: Nope.

 

Further Discussion:

Charlie and I talked a bit about how Windows Home Server can be extended by developers. They are planning on releasing an API that will let developers plug into “Peter’s” experience (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Peter persona). Basically they want to let people build into the user-friendly interface to solve different problems like home automation, media, etc.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007 9:46:42 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [1]  Consumer | Development | Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, Part 3 - Business / Marketing

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft's General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is part 3 of a 4 part series. (Links to Part 1, Part 2)

Business / Marketing

RH: Why did you decide to keep it under wraps?  Other than some comments by Bob Muglia and Paul Thurrott, this was extremely stealthy compared to most other Microsoft projects.  How did you pull it off?

CEK: From the very beginning we knew the concept was a “big idea”. We felt it was important that our initial disclosure had “pop” and the only way to achieve that was through keeping it a secret as long as possible and then having a significant announcement event. 

The fact that literally thousands of Microsoft employees have known about “Q” for more than 2 years, and the fact that have an internal Beta program with hundreds of participants is a testament to the integrity and spirit of Microsoft employees. We were very open with them about our plans, and simply (frequently) requested that they honor what we were trying to accomplish and keep the secret. They did.  I’ve been at Microsoft over 16 years and I pretty much love this company. I’m proud of many things we’ve accomplished as a company, but one of the things I am now most proud of is the way our employees dealt with the “secret of Q”. I especially love the fact that this is in stark contrast to how other companies work to keep secrets.

RH: How did Home Server get started?  Was it a top-down strategic push, or was there a lower level champion for the idea?

CEK: Egads. This is a long story that I am working on writing up for a blog post on my blog.  The short story is:  It started from the bottom up back in 1999 when I was running the Consumer Windows home networking team.  Windows Home Server is my fourth attempt to get it done at Microsoft (Quattro means 4 in Italian). Those 8 years of effort created both a groundswell of grass roots interest as well as an understanding of the strategic and visionary importance from the top.

RH: We've heard about HP.  I know you probably can't name specific OEMs, but can you give an estimate as to the number of OEMs that will be on board when this launches? Are we going to see something from the likes of Dell or Gateway?

CEK: We are not prepared to say anything more than we said in our announcement at CES at this time.

RH: Have you thought about developing a certification program for certifying installers to set this up for people who are still intimidated?

CEK: Yes.

Further Discussion:

I tried to get some more details out of Charlie regarding future plans and features. Charlie indicated that while they have a lot of ideas that they would like to address beyond version one of Windows Home Server, they are really trying to wait to see how the market reacts to the product, and get feedback from real customers before they make decisions. Beyond that they are very focused on getting V1 out the door.

I also asked if they might be looking at a different SKU for the SOHO market that would make use of the technology they have developed for Home Server. Charlie explained that the Home Office market is one of the areas they are trying to serve with WHS. Basically if a business is being run out of the home, it can take advantage of all of the features of WHS.

 

Mary Jo covered some of these same topics today here and here.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007 9:18:49 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Business | Consumer | Marketing | Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, Part 2 - User Management

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft's General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is part 2 of a 4 part series. (Link to Part 1)

User Management

RH: I'm kinda disappointed that there isn't a centralized user store in this edition.  You mentioned somewhere (C9 I think) that this was considered early on, but abandoned because of complexity. Is this something that might come along in a future release, or perhaps released out-of-band so that the Sam's of the world (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Sam persona) can have a mini AD at home?

CEK: Shipping is a feature too. :)  There are tons of technical issues which make delivering an Active Directory based solution in the home hard. But the biggest issue is the fact that the Windows client SKUs for the home are limited in this regard.  Remember, that we have a philolsophy that says “If we can’t do it right, we shouldn’t do it in a particular release”.  It is absolutely on our roadmap to climb this mountain in the future.

RH: Is there any support for centralized parental controls, specifically web use monitoring, content filtering, and usage restrictions?

CEK: We believe this is an important scenario and will enable it in the future. Again, there is ample opportunity for 3^rd parties to add value here.

Monday, February 05, 2007 7:46:35 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Consumer | Microsoft | Quattro

Windows Home Server, Part 1 - Security of Data, User Privacy

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft's General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. 

Security of Data, User Privacy.

RH: Can I password protect files on the Server? Basically, I'm wondering if there are any provisions for maintaining the privacy of data on the Server.  Not all families want to share everything that they have on their PCs with the whole family.

CEK: Yes, each shared folder can have per-user permissions set. By default, Windows Home Server provides shared folders for Photos, Music, Videos, Software, and Public. For each user account you create, Windows Home Server also creates a shared folder for that user. By default only that user has permissions to his/her shared folder.

RH: Can I exclude data from being backed up by the connector (tricky considering the whole-pc backup)?  

CEK: Yes. This is one of the very innovative capabilities we provide, and really enables the scenario to work well.  By default we automatically exclude the hibernation file, pagefile, temp directories, and offline file caches.

RH: What protections are there for theft of data? Can I encrypt sections of the server disks so that if the Home Server is stolen, the data would be protected?

CEK: This is a capability that is on our roadmap for the future.

RH: Are there provisions for Off-site storage of backups?

CEK: We are not discussing the details of this at this point in time, and Beta 2 will not include this capability, but addressing this is very high on our list of priorities.  Regardless of what we do in ourselves in the first release of the product, there is a great opportunity for 3^rd parties to provide value added services in this area.

Sunday, February 04, 2007 8:17:37 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Consumer | Microsoft | Quattro

Quickies: iPhone, Apple TV, Windows Home Server, More...

Way behind on things that I'd like to blog, so I figured I'd hit a few real quick.

Apple iPhone:  Cool.  I'm a big fan of my Motorola Q, but there are many things about the iPhone that made my geek sense go all tingly.  The full touchscreen is awesome.  I share the same concerns as others about the lack of tactile feedback, but I've never been able to use my Q's keyboard without looking, so this probably wouldn't be too bad.  Other than that, the thing is just pretty.  Now I'm not sure I'd ever want to fork over the money that Apple wants for the iPhone, but the innovation that this is going to drive into the smartphone market will be welcome, considering the most innovation we've seen lately is new hinge designs and endless Treo clones.  For those who seem to be down on the iPhone as a mobile web platform, consider yourself outside the target market.  I browse the web on my Q, and want the UX for this mode to get better, not go away.

Apple TV: Maybe cool.  I'm not sure on this one yet.  Really all I want is a generic way to push PC-based content to my TV.  Yes, a really lond S-Video cable would do this, but I like the idea of a simle browsable interface that has a remote control.  Not sure if it's worth $299, especially when the functionality is a subset of most new game consoles.  If the price came down by a third, and it had a totally open interface, then it might be compelling.

Windows Home Server:  Anyone who is a longtime reader of my blog knows that this is one of my favorite ideas.  I'm not sure how much it will live up to my original hopes, but it's a good step in the right direction.  My main questions right now are about how much it integrates user and security management, and how good of a job they have done managing data, and if they have included email, im, and other user data that is typically profile dependent (in anything other than a backup scenario).

 

Now for some really old stuff:

Mac OS X to feature portable user accounts: In my mind, the nirvana for any OS is for all of my user da