In readiness for the release of PP1 for WHS Microsoft released a Knowledge Base article KB 955690 on 17 July. The article discusses the kinds of files that are unsupported on a home network that uses Windows Home Server. These files include Microsoft Office Outlook personal folder files (.pst) and database files.
Additionally, it discusses other computer programs that may not be designed to work on a home network that uses Windows Home Server.
Outlook .pst files
The Microsoft Exchange Server team created .pst files to let users maintain a copy of their e-mail messages on their local computer. These .pst files also serve as message storage for users who do not have access to an Exchange server. For example, you can use Outlook as a front end to an Internet hosted mail service. However, the .pst files are unsupported over a local area network (LAN). Therefore, Microsoft recommend that you not store .pst files on Windows Home Server.
For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 297019 Personal folder files are unsupported over a LAN or over a WAN link
Interestingly Microsoft go on to add - Note If you do decide to use your Windows Home Server home computer to store your .pst files, we recommend that you use the Windows Home Server backup solution to create a backup copy of the files. For more information about the backup function and about the restore function in Windows Home Server, see “Technical Brief for Home Computer Backup and Restore“
Database files and other computer programs
Additionally, other computer programs may not be designed to work on a home network that uses Windows Home Server. For questions about whether a specific program will work if the files are stored on Windows Home Server, contact the program vendor before you save the files to your home server and before you access them from your home computer.
Although Quicken is specifically mentioned there is no reference to Microsoft’s own Personal Finance Manager product Microsoft Money which was on the previous list of incompatible applications - so that’s one for careful testing.
Remote access as an alternative
You can use the Remote Desktop feature in Windows to access another home computer. Or, you can use the Remote Access feature in Windows Home Server to access your home computer from the Internet. If your home computer has Outlook, your database program, or other computer programs installed, you can use Remote Desktop or Remote Access to guarantee that you are using the software within the supported configuration. For more information about the Remote Access feature in Windows Home Server, see “Technical Brief for Windows Home Server Remote Access“
You can discuss this article on this thread in the WGS forums
July 20th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
hrmm, we do this all the time in the work environment, the PST files sit on a network share which is mapped as a local drive for the users.
and we also have a nasty old Access 97 database on the server too.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Me thinks this is MS being the big bad evil giant. ” Don’t do this, because we want you to buy our own product.”
Or is it just that hey haven’t tested it and don’t want to be caught with their pants down for a second time.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
PST files never have and never will be supported on a network drive. By the very nature of their design anything other than local storage is not supported. I used to work for Microsoft PSS and this was a very (very) frequent support question always with the client saying “it used to work why not now”. Well try it at your own risk and good backups are just common sense, but if your PST craters, be prepared to fix it becuase calling MS will not get you any help.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:31 am
All
Ever heard of an Exchange Server? That is where those work pst files are at. Designed to be the repository for a company email system.
MS is not trying to pull a fast one here. Work servers are beefy, complicated and expensive.
WHS is NOT an Exchange Server, nor ever will be. If you want to store pst files on your WHS, do so at your own risk.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:34 am
Sorry, I should have provided a link: http://www.microsoft.com/EXCHANGE/default.mspx
My bad…
July 21st, 2008 at 8:51 am
Sorry Gents.
I was looking more at Quicken rather than pst’s files.
But looking how WHS does serve it seems to me better to just save ever thing local then let the server backup that.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am
I’m using mesh quite sucessfully to sync the outlook folder in appdata.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
MS provide an unsupported tool for backing up PST files:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8B081F3A-B7D0-4B16-B8AF-5A6322F4FD01&displaylang=en
This copies the files over the LAN to any location you choose - can be slow depending on the size of the PST file but I’ve not had any issues with this solution for the last three years.
Andrew