If you read the Q&A that we did recently with the Windows Home Server team, you’ll have seen that they are now thinking about what new features and functionality should go into the next version of WHS.
Hopefully you’ve all been submitting your ideas to Microsoft Connect, but I’d really like to know what you want to see. Here’s my list:
1. System volume backup and restore
2. Media Center integration
3. Online Backup
4. Antivirus Integration
5. Windows Update Management
6. Family Diary
7. Family Website Templates
8. Parental Controls Filter
9. New WHS Console UI
Let me know what’s on your wish list for big new features and I’ll pass them through to the WHS team.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Here are my honest suggestions:
1. More speed
2. More stability
3. More control over notifications
4. Better handling of multiple read/writes
5. MCE integration, or at least better partnering with Media Centers in the home
6. Removal of all Server 2003 references
7. More polished Remote Desktop experience
8. More information about drive health, and scandisk/defrag options
9. 64 Bit connector (just to shut those people up - I know it’s on it’s way, and actually I don’t need it
10. Some form of users/settings/install backup to USB key a-la Tranquil
11. More polished Windows Update integration
12. Webguide for WHS integrated for streaming online media
13. More speed
14. More stability…
The speed issue is, I think, largely down to the priority of the drive balancing. NO drive functions should be initiated while large transfers are in progress, as it completely kills the network speed. Also, for a very advanced piece of server software, WHS is rubbish at handling more than one activity/connection at a time - try copying a large file or collection of files to it from one PC on a network, and then connecting to the console from another and see how long you have to wait… I dread to think what a WHS network is like if you actually have ten active clients interacting
October 16th, 2007 at 10:37 am
I would like to see more media streaming functionalities. I want to use WHS as a streaming center for my home, which supports many different streaming clients, from different vendors, not only Microsofts own protocols and solutions. And I want to use any audio and video encoding format, not only some of them.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:18 am
For me WHS should go toward “Windows Home Media Server”.
So :
1) MCE integration
2) Good media templates for web access (like Webguide but even better) for Photo (.mac gallery anyone http://gallery.mac.com/emily_parker ?) music, and -my dream- video (with silverlight integration please !) to share media with friends & the family
3) More polish : WS2k3 references, 3hours installation with many reboot (I know it won’t matter for the general public, but it makes me fells like I paid for a beta product today)
4) More integration with Ms offerings like skydrive, silverlight, foldershare, OneCare, HD photo … It should be a show of Ms product !
5) WS2K8 (But I guess it is a given :p)
October 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
1. hdd identification (serial number)!
2. mce, if not then control your mce machine with the webguide integrated in the whs site
3. fix the names in the browselist in whs site
4. Balancing should be faster, at least do it in the “off hours”
5. console functions should be webbased, I have an xp mce, vista premium and 2 macbooks at home, now I have to rdp to my whs to control the server, while there is absolutely no reason most functions couldnt be available in a web interface (like starting backup or configuring the server)
October 16th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
This is great stuff, guys - keep it coming!
October 16th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I’m too lazy to post all of this to connect, so here’s what I think should be in the next WHS
a) An important thing: do not base it on Longhorn Server, because then the hardware footprint required to run it would increase a lot, meaning a lot of home servers being released now won’t really be upgradeable to the new software, which would be a bad thing.
b) There should be an easy way to upgrade WHS ver1 to ver 2 without losing any data or having to reconfigure anything. This could be tricky without a DVD drive in the server, but I’m sure that the MSFTies will find some awesome way of doing it.
c) It definitely needs to link in better with MCE.
d) An easy way to sync your My Documents folders on all machines using WHS: ie. maybe the server looks at the documents folder for each user on each computer and pushes synchronised copies to the other computers using a file share or something. Either that or each computer is modified so that it looks on the server for My Documents instead of Documents And Settings\user (this is easily done). An even better thing would be to sync your whole profile (incl. your wallpaper, settings, etc) between computers but this could be a bit complex in a home environment.
e) Perhaps something similar to Windows SideShow on Vista, ie. for small LCD displays on WHS hardware which could show server status, network status, etc. It would be a nice way to see what’s going on without having to log onto your machine and go into the console.
f) On a similar tangent, since some people have graphics cards on their home-built WHS boxes, it would be good if instead of showing a logon desktop, the WHS could show a slideshow of your photos. Then your WHS box could double as a digital photo frame.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Aside from what most of the people above said, there are two things that I’d like to see in v1, let alone v2.
- 64-Bit connector - Yes, I know not many people have 64-bit yet, but like it or not, that’s where we’re going.
- Ability to Remote into Vista Home Premium - I realized it’s not a problem with WHS, but it doesn’t make sense to me to make this great functionality, gear it towards your average consumer…who can’t use it becuase the average user has/will have Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium. If you have WHS, there should be the ability to easily turn on Remote Desktop on your Home Basic and Home Premium PCs.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I agree with the above.
I would like to see more robust backup setup features. The ability to schedule the backups based on the client systems habits. For example my wife tends to be logged into her laptop only in the afternoon. My son is only on in the evening. I would like to priorities the backup based on when the client systems are logged on to the home network.
The second item I would like to see on the WHS is the ability to know if updates are available and needing installation for the client systems. The client systems could store a copy of the Windows Update install notifications on the server for administers review. I want to know if all 5 client systems are up to date.
Third is a means to monitor the one-care status of the client systems form the WHS. Is the user keeping the one-care software up to date? What programs are going through the firewall etc. Have there been quarantines.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Been running WHS since the first public beta.
We have five clients and one server at home that I look after.
My number one pain point right now is security, and somewhat releated internet content filtering.
What happens right now is both kids have their own computers and run with restricted accounts. That means they are not able to run Windows Updates or updates to the security software on their computers. Additionally, they are unfortuantely old enough to understand that when the weekly virus scan runs and impacts what they are working on they can just cancel out of it.
Additionally, it owuld be nice to be able to setup rules such as “internet access is available between these times” and “this user does not have permission to access this site” that would follow users from computer to computer.
I view this as one of the big missed opportunities for WHS version 1. Without commenting on the quality of OneCare, it should have been something that was built into the planning of WHS. For example, if you have WHS Connector and OneCare both installed on a PC they want you to use two different backup processes and will complain if you aren’t using theirs. It would also have been nice to have a client security tab in the console so I could check when the secuirty software was last updated, when it was last run, what the reports are, etc.
It might have even been an idea to have built a combined OneCare + Connector client so that every computer would be covered by those features.
The reason for using OneCare in this example and not some generic anti-virus product is that Microsoft owns OneCare.
The second pain point is users moving between computers. Having lived through roaming profiles on Windows NT at work I can understand why that was avoided. It would still be nice if MyDocuments location could be automatically mirrored to a local and server location. It would also be nice to have things like bookmarks follow you from computer to computer.
Thankfully my third point is not a “pain point” right now, that is being able to backup the system volume on the WHS. I love the drive redundance feature for the data, but I am left to question why that same feature was not extended to the system volume. Failing making the system volume redundant there needs to be a simply way to backup and restore this critical data. Not havingthis feature is a potential huge achiles heel.
A feature I would like to see is a way to backup a system over the Internet. The typical child gone to college, supporting a parents computer, etc. Espically in the case of the parents scenario the software is not going to be changing all that often so the incremental backup is going to be mostly new documents. This should be fairly light to stream over a typical high speed home Internet connection. For situations where that is not feasible it would be nice if the WHS Connector could talk to the server and determine what needs to be backed up and then archive the new information to CD or DVD to be physical transferred and imported into the server.
The other feature I would like is to see some sort of calendar built into the product. In a home scenario there really is no calendar server like there is at work. Most family members older than 10 have some sort of electronic calendar that they carry with them. While supporting every possibible hand-held calendar or cell phone is not realistic being able to sync calendars for Windows powered smart-phones and BlackBerries with complete data backups for those as well would be very significant. In the past six months my daughter has had to reenter her data twice, once when she got a new phone and a second time after it went in for a repair. While she does not currently have one of the listed devices, having that feature available would definitely make an unique selling point for Windows powered devices.
Hopefully some of these features will make in into WHS 2, but more importantly hopefully the team will come up with some brilliant new ideas that we have not even thought of yet. I already can not imagine life without a WHS.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
For Brother Jonathan:
Go here and you can Remote into Vista Home Premium http://portal.tonychan.org/Default.aspx?tabid=58&EntryID=123
October 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I really wish it would remote into Vista Home Premium as well. I didn’t think I could justify the expense just for remote desktop, and quite frankly, I had expected home server to support that. If I pay $200 for an OS that claims remote desktop as a feature, then why do my other OS’s need to have it? If I had Vista Ultimate, then I would be able to remote desktop in without WHS anyways. I don’t see the value added.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
It would be Extremely nice to be able to backup the WHS settings, so if the primary drive fails I can just restore it to last nights backup. Also it would be good for this to be able to be done with a larger primary drive to.
You can restore most of it manually, but it will take time and is a real pain to setup the addins again!
But otherwise I love WHS! It certainly saves me from hell if a machine dies :o)
October 16th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
This could be a long list. But I’ll just pict the most important.
1 - Media Center Integration
2 - Online Backups
3 - Ability to copy backups to removable drive for offsite storage
4 - Lower CPU priority of backups so that it’s easier to keep using the computer when a backup is running.
5 - More robust balancing. I had a LOT of data corrupted because the power went out while WHS was balancing. Which is pretty much all the time you’re using the server.
6 - Backup WHS Settings
October 16th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Better One Care integeration is very important.
Backup of system volume essential.
Integration of media functions would be great. Support of a tuner, like in media center would be very nice, if it could be programed to record shows and then serve them to any connected PC. At least being able to stream slide shows and music to simple devices on the network.
Mark mentioned copying backups to a removable drive for offsite storage is also a great idea.
I like CoryB’s idea of a family calendar function, althought on-line solutions may be more effective. I also like his idea of supporting the kid that has gone to college.
October 16th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
What I’d really like to see if integration of the Zune connector client or the ability to install Zune software on WHS-this would allow streaming of mp4 podcasts and other content to my xbox 360 . The ability to act as a media center backend would be nice as well (recording of SD and OTA HD content). Although until they get a directv solution, or sort out cable card issues and switched digital video, media center is dead in the water.
A recovery system would be realy nice-I do still sweat about losing the system drive, although, supposedly you could recover simply by reinstalling on a new drive, but a failed drive during the first beta messed me up.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
RDP client installed with hte connector for Vista Home Premium and below.
Proxy for internet access. Could be used to filter websites making a central point for family filtering (for example).
Bob
October 16th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
1 - MCE Integration / MCE Server (think SageTV, but reliable)
2 - Management of OneCare (see WLOv2 featurelist - ‘master computer’)
3 - Ability to set custom RDP port
4 - Firefox web UI tweaks
October 16th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
1. Slingbox integration - integrating this into Webguide would be sweet
2. CMS type feature (e.g. Joomla/Drupal) or simple web templates for displaying family media - photos, videos, simple blog
3. Online storage - although I think the Amazon S3 add-in will be near perfect
4. Allow RDP connection to the WHS (without the add-in)
5. Windows Updates management (WSUS)
6. Better way of assigning permissions to shared folders. For example, I might want a user to see \server\photos\beach ONLY … and no other subfolders under ‘photos’. Some way of setting a base folder within shares and locking them down to only that folder without creating a new share.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Excellent list. Ditto to all.
Two more I would like to add.
1. Have the Media Server piece include excellent iTunes integration.
2. In utopia: integrate the functionality of the Astaro Security Gateway.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:26 am
- Integration of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 which will allow web site templates, announcements, calendar, document libraries, photo libraries, blogs, wikis, drag-and-drop layout per user, access control and much, much more.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:33 am
For me, the single coolest thing they could do is make it a Windows Media Center server. It just makes sense now. I don’t want my PC doing Windows Media Ceneter, and I don’t want an extra PC doing it either. Windows media connect is crap compared to media center.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I’d like to see:
1. Windows Media Center integrated into WHS. Allow WHS to be a TV tuner farm and centralize TV recordings. Allow TV recordings to be schduled over the internet on your WHS website. Make MC extenders able to stream DVDs and release a software extender.
2. Add Zune software into WHS. Store and organize all content on WHS and have Zune software on the client access it off the server. Associate Zune libraries and devices with user’s accounts on the server. Make the wireless syncing work with WHS.
3. Allow automatic online data backup to Windows Live Skydrive
4. Integrate Windows Live OneCare to keep WHS secure and monitor security of client PCs
October 17th, 2007 at 8:53 am
1. Contacts server, with Outlook integration
2. Microsoft Money, Windows Server edition
October 17th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Actually, what I really would like to see is all the backups to be stored into multiple drives, like the shares. Second, a 64-bit connector, because I think the are loads of people running Vista x64. (I still think Vista x86 should never been released in the first place).
October 17th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
…and the abillity to backup/restore the system. I was having loads of problems getting WHS installed in the first place.
(Installed WHS on a SATA drive wich eventually gave some error not to be able to prepare the drives. Eventually I cloned the disk to another (IDE) drive and continue with the setup. That worked,and cloned the drive back to the drive I wanted to be the system/data drive).
Maybe there’s some easier way around this, but when my server is down I would like to be able to have it up and running again asap in it’s previous state and installed services.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I agree with most of what has been listed, especially the MCE server functionality. Some mostly minor additional thoughts:
1. On the User Accounts panel in WHS Console, show if a user is presently remotely connected and the last time he/she was connected.
2. On the Computers & Backup panel, show the date/time of the last backup so I don’t have to drill down for that info.
3. Remote streaming of media so we can listen to our music collection at our weekend place.
4. Easier bulk uploading of photos so our daughter in another country can easily keep us up to date with her adventures.
5. SharePoint integration.
6. Continue to enhance functionality of the WHS Console so I don’t ever have to use Remote Desktop into the server. I know very little about Windows Server and would be happy to keep it that way. Examples would be access to power settings and logs.
7. Ability to publish Web sites to the server using FTP that is built into the design software I am using on my client.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Simple wish-list:
1. Seamless integration with MCE i.e. ability to serve up recorded tv to networked MCE/VMC PCs around the home without the need for reg hacks etc. Possibly the ability to record derectly to WHS from MCE/VMC PCs without reg hack.
2. Automatic moveing of recorded tv from MCE/VMC to Recorded TV folder on WHS.
3. Balancing storage. why does it take so long - days or weeks sometimes. I know its an important feature of WHS but I don’t understand why it takes so long. Sometimes it appears to have finished only to start up a few minutes later even though no additioal data has been added to the Pool.
4. On-line backup to other servers e.g. a friend or relatives WHS or FTP server for example.
5. I sometimes would like to see a graphical view of network traffic to/from WHS from within the console. Not a major requirement, just nice to have.
6. Centralised parental control of networked PCs - ability to limit time spent per session, number of sessions per day, time of day, internet access, programme access on each PC in the home based on the user logon.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:18 am
uggestions for WHS 2.0:
Contrary to other opinions, you SHOULD base the next version of WHS to on Windows Server 2008. The core windows server 2008 takes a very small memory footprint, and that’s perfect for whs. If I don’t want IIS services, for example, they shouldn’t be loaded, or even take up space on my hard drive, and server 2008 does that.
1. WHS has a performance balancing problem which needs to get fixed. Start a backup and try to access the remote website at the same time, it isn’t pretty.
2. Widen the choices of system/data/folders/shares backup across the internet (off-site). How can I keep a internet backup from foobaring performance to that same remote website? (When a JungleDisk backup is running, it tends to hog the line…). Perhaps some good integration with Skydrive here will work well, assuming MS isn’t going to get greedy for us to store a few GB of disk space (make it cheap and lock us in). The 1 Gb limit in Skydrive doesn’t cut it, I’ve got 2.4 Gb in family photos alone, and 21Gb of music, not counting documents, taxes, financial information - you get the idea….
3. Open up the Connector API to third parties (ie, add-ons for the connector), just like you’ve done on the server. You could do things like:
- Can I write a piece of SMARTDRIVE disk monitor code that sits on the local PCs, and then report stats and problems to the central home server console?
- Can I see the temperatures of all my online machines from the server console?
- Can I get a WHS critical alert that says the disk drive on my son’s machine is about to die?
- Can I see low disk space notifications of client machines on the central console?
- Can I detect when a large amount of workstation disk space has recently gone to a bunch of video files (by comparing history), and perhaps nip my son’s up-and-coming porn collection in the bud?
Have another contest, this time expanding add-ons to the connector side as well as the server side, and you will see some mind-boggling add-ons….
4. I personally like the idea of an internet proxy, but others may not. Using the server 2008 modular feature means people who don’t want it don’t even need to load the module into memory or take up space.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
1. MEDIA CENTER functionality in WHS
2. make the screen blank during backups in the night (my PCs are upstairs, but when I wake up in the night, I can see the monitors shining during the backup. Should be easy for the WHS agent to make the screen dark during night backups.
3. per PC option to do daily backups or not (and only wekly backups) - from some, rarely used PCs, I do not really need daily backups and I want to save the power consumption for the nightly backup activation.
-Peter
October 21st, 2007 at 3:56 am
I would definately like to see the 64 bit operations for the server.
The abilty to backup the system volume would be nice even it had to be a double layer DVD, just so we were covered for a good recovery.
On the opposite side of the fence, I would not like to see MS integrated AV - Alwil (AVAST) has supported VISTA throughtout its beta cycle and promised us WHS withing 30 days of release here. They have come through with a beautifully executed product that does the job even though it is still in beta. I don’t think competing with a partner who is so dedicated is what MS wants.
I would echo the ability for reverse RD for Vista Home Premium. Most laptops come with this product if they are fairly high end, yet we can RD to server, but not reverse RD to the laptop from our desktop. That should be fixed.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:51 am
1. Wendy on the next WHS Beta.
2. Ability to backup the system drive similar to the client backups.
3. Wendy on the next WHS Beta.
4. Built in VPN support for off site connection and backups.
5. Wendy on the next WHS Beta.
6. NNTP mirroed Forums for the next WHS beta.
7. Wendy on the next WHS Beta.
8. Tom Z can come along also.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:59 am
a way to deal with a house fire scenario
by this i mean backup to removable media or USB tape drive.
with the ability to select which files get backed up in this scenario
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Pretty much agree with everything up here, for me the key items from this list would be:-
* WSUS integration so that you have a central control point for all your system updates
* Media Server enhancements to support TV tuners in the WHS box and thus provide a central recording/playback source
* External VPN connectivity so that you can have the benefits of central backup, etc for family PCs away from home, e.g. university students
* Remote backup of the WHS itself over the net and/or the option of backing it up to removable media such as a USB disk to provide a restore option for the server in case of failure
* The add-in model works well but the UI fails once you start getting more than few add-ins running as you end up having to scroll around a lot and don’t get immediate visibility of all tabs
* More information on client PC status, e.g. disk space left, etc so that you can use it as a central diagnostic access point for the whole network
Good work guys, keep it up
Simon
October 25th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
1. TV tuner/centralized DVR support.
2. VPN endpoint for remote security.
3. Family e-mail server. Allow people to register domain names and tie them to your homeserver account so that the WHS can act as a family e-mail server with shared calandar, contacts and tasks. Something like exchange-lite, with either full outlook connectivity or just a web-based client.
October 25th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
My view of WHS is of a Management Console for all machines connected to it. I have 4 laptops and 2 desktops (along with my WHS) and managing these machines is a challenge. WHS is off to a good start with the backups. Thus I would like to see:
* AD for user management (that way I don’t have to provision the same users on all of my machines)
* RDP to/from any type of Windows OS
* Roaming desktops (that work)
* WHS ‘My Documents’ replaces local ‘My Documents’ - that way users can roam from machine to machine. I know
you can configure this manually but it would be nice to automate it.
* OneCare integration - See Avast solution (also remove the 3-user limitation from OneCare - just pay per user)
* User Management Controls from WHS (e.g. Parental)
* Remote Windows Update (with ‘Restore Desktop on Reboot’) - my wife get’s angry when I have to reboot her laptop.
* Others -
- System backups - WHS is waaay to vulnerable right now - I would hate to have my system drive crash and have
to rebuild everything from scratch.
- Remote (Internet) backups - good for travelers and kids off at school
- Speeeeed - way to ‘Single Process’ oriented - see comments on other posts.
- Fix the Vista Ultimate backup blue screen issue with NVidia drivers - systems crashes every time. I’ve had to take
it out of the backup rotation.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
In addition to some of the excellent suggestions already mentioned I think it would be quite good to see some way to backup “off site”. It is all well and good to back up to one machine, but what if my house itself has an issue or there is an earthquake, etc. It would be good to “hook up” with a mate who lives in a different city and depending on the files selected we can act as a DR site to each other. Something like a SyncToy for WHS. Of course the users would need to be able to select which subset of the data should go thru this as getting all the data sync’d over a broadband connection is not very practical.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Full capability for media streaming both on the local network and for those connecting via the internet.
Allow streaming of personal videos to be handled by the server and not the client.
November 24th, 2007 at 1:37 am
Proper Remote Desktop Client with built-in Wake Over Lan/Internet. Amazing these days, that this hasn’t been done. Think of the energy saved by having WHS’s hibernated waiting for activation. Of course, there are those who will want/need WHS’s on all the time. I already do this with my XP and Vista servers. My Vista takes 150 Watts when running, and XP 50 Watts. Having them in hibernate does save power. WOL activation can also be used when backups are scheduled, and remote systems wake up the WHS, or the other way around. Just don’t understand why this kind of technology isn’t being done already. It’s a WOW factor.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Outlook Express E-mail server, so that same e-mail account could be accessed from different machines in the home.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:45 pm
A facility to backup the server.
A mini email server
A great product!
December 17th, 2007 at 9:04 am
I would like to see more granular control of what gets backed up. I would like to be able to pick what folders get backed up as opposed to the whole drive. I have a drive that has my music collection on it, but it also contains a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need backing up.
December 25th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
- client management uintegration, ie Home policy management ( move MyDocs \MyPictures \MyMusic to server shares. ) (regkeys and script startign would be #1 and #2 prio)
- Set backup times per machine so I do not need to wake my kids by a computer that is waking up to do its backup.
- Differential server backup
- Server / data backup to remote site/service ( for a fee)
January 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Some kind of proxy server, even if a stripped down version of the corporate version, with cach and filtering capabilities.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
You can all this now if you just support and use free open source code. That’s why open source (GPLv3) is better for society, as everyone can benefit and contribute to the overall success.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I would like to have the server able to function exactly as an additional drive common to all clients on the network. If I start to compose a document from one client, I can save it on “drive S” and open it from another client and just continue where I left off. To use it as I wish, there would be an equivalent to “My Documents” on the server and most saved files and folders would be there rather than on the local harddrive.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Just about everything here looks good. BUT…We Need Better Integration and Functionality with Windows Media Center !!
February 29th, 2008 at 4:54 am
I’ll pitch in my vote for an off-site backup capability for the server. I really like the workstation back-up feature, and I wish I could have a similar feature to back-up the server over the network to an external hard drive on a workstation. But it can’t be NTBackup - it has to be as easy to use as the workstation backup feature.
On the e-mail server side, I would also like to have an Exchange Lite. I don’t think it needs to be an SMTP server - it would be just fine to configure it to download mail from ISP mailboxes, gmail, hotmail, etc, which would eliminate a lot of the management chores and let you retain the advantages of spam filtering those services provide. The main motivation is to let you keep your mail on the server and access it from any of your workstations.
And a further extension to the Exchange Lite I would like remote access to e-mail, including a web-mail interface and Network ActiveSync, so I can get my mail on my Windows Mobile Smartphone. Microsoft is making noises about extending their mobile offerings for consumers, and I hope WHS is going to be one of the cornerstones of this offering.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
Seperate hadware used only by server and clients on server thinking on eniviroment and powerconsumption. Addibble hardware (Memory, grafic card, CPU) for clients. Possible to use Thin hardware clients and/or Virtual Pc. Much easier insertion of hardware.
UPS for server can also support clients also addiblbe as a hardware module for server same with Router/firewall so less cables are needed.
Enviroment and power consumption must today be much more prioritized.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Personally, I’d like to see:
The system drive as fault tolerant as a the data drives, so it could be removed/replaced/expanded.
Windows update patch management for connected PCs.
A way to sync the entire data store to an external HDD. Not a backup, but a complete, fully replicated data store (ala DFS).
April 20th, 2008 at 3:06 am
The ability to configure the file storage system to prevent the contents of a directory from being divided on multilple hard drives in the storage pool.
1 Folder content = 1 drive storage. Do not split when balancing the system.
If I lose a drive - I want to know that the contents of a particular folder on the remaining drives are 100% complete and does not have any content stored on the failed drive.
If I have 100 directories - and 5 drives, then on average I have 20 folders per drive. If a drive fails - then I have 80 good directories and have lost only 20 directories. If the directories are spread across all the drives, if I lose 1 drive - I can actually lose all 100 directories because they are useless w/o 100% of the content being available.
I would also like the ability to printout the directory structure and file contents of the storage pool on a drive by drive basis. That way, by knowing what was on the failed drive - I can easily implement manual recovery procedures from my offline storage/back.
This would probably be beneficial for the storage of video - if v2 is going to take a bigger role in becoming a media server.