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Here's a list of the things I'd like to see changed in Windows Home Server before it goes gold. Some are very important to me and others should be important to Microsoft. None prevent the product from being usable but it is supposed to be EASY and currently some things just aren't :-p

Backup should survive disconnection and resume when reconnected.

In this day and age of powerful laptops and concern over greenhouse emissions PCs will be disconnected and shut down at any time. For Windows Home Server to be truly foolproof and easy to use it needs to be able to recover from interrupted backups.

Network health status warnings should be configurable.

There are some home users that are intimidated by any sort of warning and the ability to configure which clients get which warnings will make life easier for those of us who administer the home network.

 Excluding files and folders from backup should be easier.

Currently it is a pain to configure a backup with a reduced file set.

Backup schedules should be more configurable and individually configurable for each client PC.

I'd want some machines backed up daily and others weekly and even others monthly. Having one schedule that is the same for all machines is a bit inflexible.

Server storage should be able to show that there is a difference between identical drives.

Both my Seagate 160Gb drives show up with the same name and if one goes bad I won't know which one to replace.

User passwords should be optional.

I know this is poor security but in my home, some of my, users are intimidated by the technology but still want to use it. Careful allocation of rights can reduce the risk.

The Console should be resizable.

'Nuff said!

Added two 160gb IDE drives and a generic 10/100 NIC to my Home Server box and reinstalled Windows Home Server. Everything went much like my previous install but now I have enough storage to try out some more features.

I'll be connecting the other home PC's to the server this week-end but until then I've been playing with my Dell Inspiron 9400 (with Windows Vista Ultimate) as the only connected client. This has been easy and intuitive for file sharing but some things have not been so easy or intuitive.

Automatic nightly backups have not been starting and there is a bit of dross left around when opening backups from the client console. I have reported these as a bug to Microsoft Connect and hope they get some help from this.

Here are some things that I have learned by reading the forums and playing atround with the product:-

You can reset the client console by clicking the Reset button at the login screen (this is not so intuitive).

You can do a repair (basically a reinstall) of WHS from the installation CD. You need to select "Upgrade" to repair the server install without needing a new Product Key (also not intuitive).

You can clean up old backups by selecting Computers & Backup --> Select the computer --> Click View Backups --> Select a Backup --> Select the Delete at next Backup Cleanup Radiop Button --> Click O.K. --> go to Windows Home Server Settings (little gears top right of client console) and Select Computers & Backup --> Click the "Cleanup Now" button at the bottom. (Bit of a round-trip isn't it?)

Shutting down and restarting the client console application can sometimes clear erroneous server state status messages but this can sometimes also result in the console faiuling to connect to the server. (either it can't find the server or claims that the user is unknown!)

All-in-all I'm still very impressed with this beta and it can only get better  as it approaches R.T.M. I only hope that Microsoft listen to the feedback and implement some of the suggestions there.

Cheers,
Neale

Hooray!

I got my invite to beta test Windows Home Server Beta 2 today and have just downloaded and burned the 3 disks that make up the package. I've already reported a documentation error to the Microsoft Connect Feedback site and now I've got to save my wife's email off the spare machine that I'm going to press into service as a home server.

I really think I'm going to need some more disk...

Cheers,
Neale

I had heaps of trouble getting my Vista laptop to play nice on the home wireless network. After a while I thought I had it sussed. Printer sharing was the biggest problem but changing the network card in the XP machine that had the printers attached seemed to work for all machines but the Vista one. It seems that one has to manually create a local port in Vista and point it to the shared printer. How intuitive :-(

Once I got the printers working I found that I could not do any file sharing to or from the vista machine. The XP machines worked fine but I could get nothing to or from the Vista laptop. The network would time-out when copying a file and, more strangely, if I hit the back button in explorer the connection would time-out just returning to the previous folder view!

After much head-scratching (I can tear out any more hair 'cause there's not that much left) I found an oblique reference to encryption standards somehwere on the 'net and that got me thinking. I was using WPA over 802.11g with a very long pass-phrase. I changed back to WEP and file sharing was O.K.

Now I couldn't leave the network vulnerable by using WEP so I looked into the WPA-Personal settings on each of the machines. It seems that I originally chose TKIP as the encryption type when I upgraded the network from 802.11b to the 802.11g cards and added a wireless router. I can't remember whay I chose TKIP for the encryption type but just on a hunch I changed them all to AES and voila my Vista file sharing problems went away!

I don't know why this fixed the issues and I have not had either the time nor inclination to find out. Just posting it all here so I don't forget ans so that others may find my experience useful.

Cheers,
Neale