Windows Home Server
| A version of the Windows NT operating system | |
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Screenshot of the Windows Home Server, showing the Start menu, About... dialog box, task bar and Internet Explorer 6
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| Developer | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Source model | Closed source / Shared source |
| Released to manufacturing |
4 November 2007 |
| Latest release | 6.0 (Build 2423: Power Pack 3) / 24 November 2009 |
| Kernel type | Hybrid |
| License | Proprietary commercial software |
| Succeeded by | Windows Home Server 2011 (2011) |
| Official website | web |
| Support status | |
| Unsupported as of 8 January 2013 | |
Windows Home Server, code-named Quattro, is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates,released to manufacturing on 16 July 2007 and officially released on 4 November 2007.
Windows Home Server is based on Windows Server 2003 R2 and is intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer file sharing, automated backups, print server, and remote access.
Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server was released on 20 July 2008. Power Pack 2 was released on 24 March 2009 and Power Pack 3 was released on 24 November 2009.
Windows Home Server 2011, the next version of this operating system, was released on 6 April 2011. Microsoft confirmed Windows Home Server 2011 to be last release in the Windows Home Server product line.
The configuration interface is designed to be user friendly enough that it can be set up without prior knowledge of server administration. The configuration interface, called the Home Server Console, is delivered as a application to remote PCs - while the application runs on the server itself, the GUI is rendered on the remote system. The Home Server Console client application can be accessed from any Windows PC. The server itself requires no video card or peripherals; it is designed to require only an Ethernet card and at least one Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer.
Windows Home Server Drive Extender was a file-based replication system that provided three key capabilities:
With drive extender, users could add larger capacity hard disk drives and then could offline lesser capacity drives to upgrade capacity online. For example, if the user was reaching capacity of the share with five terabytes of the six-terabyte capacity used with six one-terabyte drives then the user could offline one of the one-terabyte drives and physically replace it with a two-terabyte drive. The WHS automatically equalizes the redistribution of used space across all available drives on a regular basis. The offline process would compress the used data across the minimum amount of drives allowing for the removal of one of the lesser capacity drives. Once replaced with a drive of higher capacity the system will automatically redistribute used capacity among the pool to ensure space capacity on each drive.
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Wikipedia