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Windows Home Server MVP 2009

Terry Walsh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:33:39 +0000

Just had an email through from Microsoft to let me know that they’ve renewed my Windows Home Server MVP award for 2009, which is a very kind gesture on their behalf.

Whilst We Got Served keeps me hugely busy, it’s great to be a part of the growing Windows Home Server community, and I’m so pleased with how WGS has grown in the past year into such a fantastic community resource for home server and digital home enthusiasts.

A huge thank you to all of our readers, writers, moderators, commenters, advertisers and posters all over the world - WGS wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your passion and contributions.

Thanks too to the WHS team over at Microsoft for the award. It’s really brilliant to be part of such an amazing community of MVPs - here’s to another action-packed year!

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MVP Summit Day 2: Meet the Team…

Terry Walsh — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:35:13 +0000

Tuesday arrived here in Seattle with it’s usual grey outlook and more drizzle - it’s strange how you can travel thousands of miles and yet still feel like you’re back home. This is one pretty damp city in April. Someone mentioned to me that Seattle gets about the same rainfall as many other cities in the USA, but it’s little and often compared to the downpours other states get, so it just feels wetter.

Yesterday we spent our first day on the Microsoft campus. Shipping 1700 MVPs from hotels around the city to Redmond is no mean task and it seems like the organisers here did a great job of handling the logistics.

I won’t go into the specifics of what we discussed, but we had the opportunity to meet with a much larger cross-section of the people who develop Windows Home Server than I have done previously, and they’re a really varied bunch of people from all over the world united by a desire to keep building a great product, and fixing any issues that exist in that product today (some more serious than others).

The general format of our two days is to spend them shut away in a conference room talking around each specific area of the product (say “Storage” or “Backup”) - we meet a Developer and Program Manager for that area, they talk through what they’re responsible for, and then get into what they’re working on right now for Power Pack 1, which as you know, will be going into a public beta soon, and then what features they have in mind for further releases in the future.

The focus is definitely on listening as well as talking - there’s a clear desire to hear what the community wants in future versions of Windows Home Server, and the list of features you created over in the forums has been really useful in helping me suggest what the priority should be from your point of view. The insight I have from yesterday is that the team already have a bigger list of features they could work on than you or I could could possibly imagine - the key is picking the ones that will be most useful/ impactful/ differentiating/ sellable (I guess) for us and those people who haven’t yet wandered into the Windows Home Server world.

We went through until about 5pm at which point my jet-lag was kicking in, which on this trip seems to be a signal for someone to open up a free bar. Sure enough, we had a joint get together with the Small Business Server MVPs (the products are close cousins, and we’ve got to know many of them well over the past few days) on a boat which toured around the area for a few hours.

Today will work in a similar way to yesterday - we talk through the remaining areas of Windows Home Server as well as have the opportunity to find out what’s happening on the hardware front. Same format, different content, same weather I’m sure.

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MVP Summit Day 0: It’s the Dalai Lama!

Terry Walsh — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:32:20 +0000

One of the cool things about the MVP Summit is that you get to stay in a pretty decent hotel. The deal is, you pay for your travel expenses (funded mainly by Virgin air miles in my case) and Microsoft pick up the tab for your hotel. There’s over 1700 MVPs here in town scattered across 4 big hotels in the city, and I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt.

So I wake up Sunday morning ridiculously early (thanks jet lag!) and decide to wander down to the hotel lobby where there’s a Starbucks to pick up a coffee and a croissant (given the density of Starbucks in town, I’m surprised there isn’t one in my room. Maybe one will have opened in my shower later in the week. Stay tuned.)

I walk in and the place is filled with police - there’s 25 police mororbikes parked outside, and a series of police cars of various shaoes and sizes. Either this Starbucks does the best donuts in Washington State, or there’s something going on. Turns out, the Dalai Lama is in town, and he’s staying here at the hotel.

Sure enough, a little later on I meet up in the lobby with Andrew Edney, Grey Lancaster (WHS MVPs) and a couple of SBS MVPs including - Nick Whittmorethe Naked MVP and sure enough, in walks the Dalai Lama himself!

He walked through the lobby assisted by many large chaps looking slightly menacing with ear-pieces, blessed a few of his followers who were dotted around the lobby, and went on his way to the press conference linked above.

A slightly surreal start to the MVP Summit, then.

Anyway, the rest of Day Zero was spent wandering around Seattle getting a little shopping done, gatecrashing an SBS MVP boat trip around Puget Sound up to Bill Gates’ house (Hi Bill!) and then hitting Rock Bottom (a bar) for an evening’s pool/beer/food fest at Rock Bottom, at which I got to meet a number of very nice people, including another WHS MVP, Ken Warren (you’ll find him on the WHS Forums) and a huge number of SBS MVPs. There’s about 70 of those guys and just seven WHS MVPs. Maybe we can recruit the Dalai Lama this week to be our eighth….

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MVP Summit: All the Way to Redmond

Terry Walsh — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:39:58 +0000

Early start this morning, and I’m now on the way to Heathrow on the first leg of my journey to next week’s MVP Summit. Fortunately, I’m flying Virgin rather than BA, and missing the T5 fiasco - however, American Airlines may do their best to scupper me flying from Chicago to Redmond, as I’m due to fly on an MD-80. Let’s see.

Either way, it’s going to be a very long day, (24 -25 hours door to door) and whenever I fly to the US West Coast I tend to be in a jet-lagged daze for the first 3 days. So, if you meet me next week and I’m a bit random, blame the time difference!

My summit schedule basically runs like this:

Sunday: Early Registration & Evening Bash With the SBS MVPs (gatecrashing their party)
Monday: MVP Conference Day 1 - Various General Sessions and MVP Dinner
Tuesday: Windows Home Server Team Day 1 - WHS Team Dinner
Wednesday: Windows Home Server Team Day 2 - MVP Party
Thursday: Ray Ozzie/Steve Ballmer Keynotes - WHS Team Round Table Discussion

At this point, I have absolutely no idea how much I’ll be able to share with you in detail. Certainly the WHS Team days will be an NDA-fest, so what I can share will be pretty general I guess, so apologies in advance. That said, a big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts over on the forum regarding the future of WHS - I’m hearing the big push for Media Center intergration, and it’ll certainly be discussed next week.

Right, need to find some breakfast…

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Meeting the Windows Home Server Team Next Week - What’s Your Message?

Terry Walsh — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:05:37 +0000

So next week is the Microsoft MVP conference, and over 1700 MVPs are heading over to the Microsoft campus in Redmond to meet and hear about Microsoft’s plans for the future, as well as feedback what’s important in their respective communities.

Most of the Windows Home Server MVPs will be there, and we have two full days with various members of the Windows Home Server team, including some pretty senior members of their leadership. This is probably our most focused engagement with the product team all year, and it’s important that we make it count.

So, I’m going to be asked… what’s important to the Windows Home Server community right now? What do they think? What do they want? Rather than make it up, based on what I think, I want to hear from you - all of you. It’s important.

What messages do you want the Windows Home Server team to hear?
What do you want from Windows Home Server in the future?
If you bumped into Chris Phillips (who heads up the whole Windows Server organisation), or Ray Ozzie, or Steve Ballmer, what would you want to tell him about your experience with WHS?

So, if you’ve never posted a comment on this blog, then make this your first and make it count - this is your opportunity to be heard. Head over to the forum and make your point of view heard.

Give the WHS Team Your Opinion

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Congratulations to the New Windows Home Server MVPs!

Terry Walsh — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:21:11 +0000

It’s January 1st 2008, and a number of new Microsoft MVPs for Windows Home Server have been announced, joining Grey Lancaster, Ken Warren and me (who are now officially old-skool). Please give a big round of applause (or if you see them, a big round of drinks) to:

Andrew Edney (author of the Windows Home Server User’s Guide)
Woody Leonhard (author of Windows Home Server for Dummies)
Phillip Churchill (from mswhs.com)
Christoph Dommermuth (from home-server-blog.de)

Congratulations on a job well done in 2007 and I’m looking forward to working with you all in ‘08!

Find out more about the Windows Home Server MVPs over at the MVP website.

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Known Issue: Windows Home Server 120 Day Evaluation Version Expires Without Warning

Terry Walsh — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:30:26 +0000

So, today we had our second monthly update call with the Windows Home Server team. These basicially work as 1 hour conference calls in which the MVPs can raise things we’d like to discuss with the team, and the team can give us an update on what’s happening at their end. Whilst I’m not allowed to chat about 95% of the call, it’s always interesting to hear the news

One thing to communicate to you all is that with the help of a few non-WHS MVPs, an issue has been identified with the Windows Home Server Evaluation Kit. (It’s not that the WHS MVPs are lazy, it’s just that we’re all running RTM!)

The issue is that the 120 Day Evaluation Version is expiring without warning the user it’s about to expire.

What should happen is that after 90 days of running the evaluation, you should receive warnings that the evaluation will expire in 30 days. These warnings are not occurring. When the evaluation expires, the server is set to shut down after 1 hour of use, and if your BIOS is set to automatically start the server, it will restart, run for an hour, then shut down again. It’s fully operational during that hour, but obviously backups etc will not run.

If the server is left for 185 days, your log-in will be blocked, although strangely, the server stops rebooting.

To check how long you have left on your evaluation, open up the WHS Console, to check the expiry date, but subtract 65 days! This date has been incorrectly set to 185 days post installation.

Microsoft are working on a fix for this issue, plus a KB article. There are two known workarounds:

1. Reinstall the Evaluation version to reset the expiry period.
2. Buy and install RTM

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Catch Up With the Windows Home Server Team

Terry Walsh — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:17:27 +0000

This week, we had our first MVP conference call with the Windows Home Server team. We’re going to be talking to the team each month and the plan is for us to share any issues we’re seeing in the community, and for the team to share a little of what’s going on at their end.

As you may know, the MVP programme is covered under a pretty heavy non-disclosure agreement, so I’m unable to talk about the details of most of what is discussed.

But, I did learn a couple of things that I will share:

1. The team are really keen to keep engaging with the WHS community and do want you to keep feeding back on v1, and share your feature requests for v2. If you submit these at http://connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver, they’ll be recorded in Microsoft’s Product Studio tool, and will be checked out by the team. I will also be collating and sharing your top v2 feature requests with the team in the next month or so.

2. There’s lot of exciting things happening over the next six months and beyond - the world of Windows Home Server, really has only just begun! When I’m free to start sharing some of this stuff, you’ll be the first to know.

In the meantime, I know all of the WHS MVPs are keen to support the community in whatever way possible, be it through blogs like this one, the MS Forums or various newsgroups you may be on, so make sure you’re vocal and we’ll ensure you’re heard.

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