Minimum hardware requirements for Windows Home Server

I was at WinHEC 2007 a few weeks ago and Windows Home Server was one of the hot topics of discussion. On the show floor, there were two speakers talking about WHS and demonstrating the product, and there were typically five to ten people in that part of the Microsoft booth at all times. One of the staff demonstrating the product was Chris Gray, the project lead, who was extremely knowledgeable about the product, as one might expect, and very friendly.

Charlie Kindel, General Manager of Windows Home Server, gave an overview talk about WHS. One of the key attributes of WHS is that it is designed to be a plug and play, headless appliance, as easy to install as possible. The hardware concept is described as

• Small form factor
• No monitor / display
• Low cost x86 CPU
• Rear connectors: Power, USB, Gigabit Ethernet
• Two to four internal drives
• Storage expansion options
• Affordable for consumers

With these attributes in mind, the minimum requirements are:

• ≥ 1.2GHz equivalent x86 CPU
• One internal hard drive (80GB min.) with tool-less expansion
• 512MB RAM minimum
• 1GbE network card
• Four external USB ports
• ≤30dB acoustics

Explicitly disallowed are:

• Wireless network adapter (too hard to configure without a display and keyboard)
• Video connector (since designed to be a head-less appliance)
• Optical drive (restore over the network)
• Keyboard and mouse ports
• RS-232 and parallel port

Microsoft has done a good job identifying their target market and defining an appliance that will serve that market well. One or two more posts on WHS to follow.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a Microsoft shill, just an enthusiastic beta tester. I do not work for Microsoft and only use a few of their products (XP, Office, Streets and Trips, Hotmail, TellMe, and that’s about it). I’m dual booting Ubuntu with XP on most of my home computers and am evaluating Open Office as a no-cost alternative to Office. Not being a fan of bloated software with way more features than everyday users need, I’m really impressed that Microsoft has decided to keep WHS simple and to allow third parties to write applications and develop hardware solutions rather than doing everything themselves. I hope that this is an indicator of things to come from Microsoft.

Windows Home Server – Microsoft has a winner on their hands!

I’ve been using the Windows Home Server beta for a couple of months now and I’m really quite impressed. There are sites that describe the features in great detail… no need for me to repeat this list here. As usual, the Wikipedia description is quite good and complete. My favorite features are:

• Automatic or manual backups – your PCs will wake up from suspend or hibernation and backup automatically.
• Single Instance Store – it makes backups more compact by saving only a single copy of a file if there are multiple copies on the machines on your network (like MP3s, photos, program files, etc.)
• File duplication – rather than keep redundant copies of all files, it backs up selected shared folders on multiple hard drives.
• Easy expandability – no need to buy identical disk drives… just add new drives to the server and they get added to the storage pool. They can either be mounted internally via PATA or SATA interfaces (or SAS if you’re hardcore) or externally via USB or Firewire.
• UPnP media server via Windows Media Connect. I have it streaming my MP3s to a new SMC SWCWAA-G digital media adapter.
• Remote access over the internet, directly accessible via dynamic DNS at a domain that Microsoft provides free of charge.

In my opinion, the Mirra used to be the best backup solution available, but it drove me crazy by backing up my entire Outlook Express email every time I received a new note or deleted one, which drove me crazy and hurt performance. Here is my comparison of Windows Home Server, the Seagate Mirra, and the WD My Book World Edition (the latter is based on available product literature, not first hand experience):

Feature	Windows Home Server	Seagate Mirra	WD My Book World Edition
Automatic backup	PCs “wake up” each night and backup over LAN	Continuous backup (can affect performance)	Continuous backup? (EMC Retrospect)
Multiple versions of files	Yes, through Volume Shadow Copy	Ten versions kept	?
Number of HDDs	One to “unlimited” (limit is by PC case, # of SATA/PATA ports on motherboard, and USB expandability)	One	One (World Edition) or two (World Edition II)
Expandable capacity	Yes, just add internal or external drives	No	No
Print server	Yes	No	No
Data redundancy	Yes, optional copies of folders on multiple HDDs	No	Optional internal mirroring
Remote access to home PCs	Yes, but only through IE, not Firefox.	No	No
Remote access to data	Yes, through Dynamic DNS with a domain name provided by Microsoft	Through Seagate’s servers on Internet	Through Mio Net’s servers
UPnP media server	Windows Media Connect	No	No
User replaceable drives	Yes	No	Yes
Data de-duplication	Yes (Single Instance Store)	No	No
“Bare metal restore”	Yes	No (only data files backed up)	Probably (depends on Retrospect)

More posts will follow on what I really like about Windows Home Server.