Windows Home Server (code-named Quattro) is a home server

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

released to manufacturing A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

on 16 July 2007 and officially released on 4 November 2007. Windows Home Server was based on

Windows Server 2003 R2 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

and was intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

, automated backups,

print server In computer networking, a print server, or printer server, is a type of server that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers, queuing the jobs loc ...

, and remote access. It is paired with the Windows Home Server Console—client software accessed from another computer on the network to provide a graphical management interface. 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 Windows Home Server 2011, code named Vail, is a home server operating system by Microsoft designed for small office/home offices and homes with multiple connected PCs to offer protected file storage, file sharing, automated PC backup, remote ...

, 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. Windows Home Server was the brainchild of Charlie Kindel who was the General Manager for the product from 2005 through 2009. Microsoft has ended support for Windows Home Server on January 8, 2013.

Features

* 10 computers and 10 users: Allows a maximum of ten user accounts to be created on the server console and ten computers to have WHS connector installed, without any

client access license A client access license (CAL) is a commercial software license that allows client computers to use server software services. Most commercial desktop apps are licensed so that payment is required for each installation, but some server products can ...

s. * Centralized backup: Allows

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

of up to 10 PCs, using

Single-instance storage Single-instance storage (SIS) is a system's ability to take multiple copies of content and replace them by a single shared copy. It is a means to eliminate data duplication and to increase efficiency. SIS is frequently implemented in file systems ...

technology to avoid multiple copies of the same file, even if that file exists on multiple PCs. * Health monitoring: Can centrally track the health of all PCs on the network, including

antivirus Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the nam ...

and

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spr ...

status. * File sharing: Creates and operates

network share In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another compu ...

s for computers to store the files remotely, acting as a

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

device. Separate categories are provided for common file types like Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. The files are indexed for fast searching. * Printer sharing: Allows a

to handle print jobs for all users. *

Shadow Copy Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service, Volume Shadow Copy Service or VSS) is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is imple ...

: Uses Volume Shadow Copy Service to take point in time snapshots that allow older versions of files to be recovered. * Headless operation: No monitor or keyboard is required to manage the device.

Remote administration Remote administration refers to any method of controlling a computer from a remote location. Software that allows remote administration is becoming increasingly common and is often used when it is difficult or impractical to be physically near a ...

is performed by using the ''Windows Home Server Console'' client software provided in the bundle.

Remote Desktop Services Remote Desktop Services (RDS), known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and earlier, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allow a user to initiate and control an interactive session on a remote computer or virtual machine ...

connections to the server are supported while connected to the same LAN. * Remote access gateway: Allows remote access to any connected PC on the network, including the server itself, over the Internet. * Media streaming: Can stream media to an

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

or other devices supporting

Windows Media Connect Windows Media Connect (WMC) is a UPnP AV server from Microsoft for Windows XP and later Windows operating systems, to share and stream media on a Windows computer to WMC clients. The first two releases of WMC were made available as stand-alone sof ...

. * Selective

data redundancy In computer main memory, auxiliary storage and computer buses, data redundancy is the existence of data that is additional to the actual data and permits correction of errors in stored or transmitted data. The additional data can simply be a compl ...

: Guards against a single drive failure by duplicating selected data across multiple drives. * Expandable storage: Provides a unified single and easily expandable storage space, removing the need for

drive letter In computer data storage, drive letter assignment is the process of assigning alphabetical identifiers to volumes. Unlike the concept of UNIX mount points, where volumes are named and located arbitrarily in a single hierarchical namespace, driv ...

s. * Extensibility through add-ins: Add-ins allow third-party developers to extend the features and functionality of the server. Add-Ins can be developed using the Windows Home Server SDK, to provide additional services to the client computers or work with the data already on the server. Add-ins can also be

ASP.NET ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name s ...

applications, hosted in IIS 6 running on WHS. * Server backup: Backs up files which are stored within shared folders on the server to an

external hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

Technology

Home Server Console

The configuration interface was designed to be user-friendly enough that it could be set up without prior knowledge of server administration. The configuration interface, called the ''Home Server Console'', was delivered as a Remote Desktop Protocol application to remote PCs while the application ran on the server itself, the

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

was rendered on the remote system. The Home Server Console client application could be accessed from any Windows PC. The server itself required no video card or peripherals; it was designed to require only an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

card and at least one

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

computer.

Drive Extender

Windows Home Server Drive Extender was a file-based replication system that provided three key capabilities: * Multi-disk redundancy so that if any given disk failed, data was not lost * Arbitrary storage expansion by supporting any type of

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

drive (e.g.

Serial ATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

) in any mixture and capacity, similar in concept to

JBOD The most widespread standard for configuring multiple hard disk drives is RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks), which comes in a number of standard configurations and non-standard configurations. Non-RAID drive architectures a ...

* A single folder namespace (no drive letters) With drive extender, users could add larger capacity hard disk drives and then could offline lesser capacity drives to upgrade capacity

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...

. For example, if the user was reaching capacity of the share with five

terabytes The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

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. Users (specifically those who configure a family's home server) dealt with storage at two levels: Shared Folders and Disks. The only concepts relevant regarding disks was whether they had been "added" to the home server's storage pool or not and whether the disk appeared healthy to the system or not. This was in contrast with Windows'

Logical Disk Manager The Logical Disk Manager (LDM) is an implementation of a logical volume manager for Microsoft Windows NT, developed by Microsoft and Veritas Software. It was introduced with the Windows 2000 operating system, and is supported in Windows XP, Wind ...

which requires a greater degree of technical understanding in order to correctly configure a

RAID Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

array. Shared Folders had a name, a description, permissions, and a flag indicating whether duplication (redundancy) was on or off for that folder. If duplication was on for a Shared Folder (which was the default on multi-disk Home Server systems and not applicable to single disk systems) then the files in that Shared Folder were duplicated and the effective storage capacity was halved. However, in situations where a user may not have wanted data duplicated (e.g. TV shows that had been archived to a Windows Home Server from a system running

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate ...

), Drive Extender provided the capability to not duplicate such files if the server was short on capacity or manually mark a complete content store as not for duplication. A known limitation of Drive Extender was that it in some cases changed timestamp of directories and files when data was moved around between disks. According to Microsoft this was expected behavior. This caused unexpected behavior when using clients that sort media based on date. Examples are

XBMC Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10- ...

MediaPortal MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playi ...

, and Squeezebox Server. The aforementioned programs worked fine with WHS; however, files may have appeared out of order due to this caveat.

Cancellation

On 23 November 2010, Microsoft announced that Drive Extender would be removed from

. This led to public outcry in the announcement's comments section. Criticism of Drive Extender's removal mainly related to it being seen as a core feature of Windows Home Server and a key reason for adoption. As a replacement for Drive Extender, Microsoft stated that OEMs would use RAID on their Windows Home Server products.

Computer Backup and Restore

Windows Home Server Computer Backup automatically backs up all of the computers in a home to the server using an image-based system that ensures point-in-time-based restoration of either entire PCs or specific files and folders. Complete

bare-metal restore Bare-metal restore is a technique in the field of data recovery and restoration where the backed up data is available in a form that allows one to restore a computer system from "bare metal", i.e. without any requirements as to previously installe ...

s are initiated through a restore

bootable CD ISO 9660 (also known as Ecma International, ECMA-119) is a file system for CD-ROM, optical disc media. Being sold by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) the file system is considered an International standard, international ...

, file based restores are initiated through the WHS client software which allows the users to open a backup and "drag and drop" files from it. This technology uses Volume Shadow Services (VSS) technology on the client computer to take an image based backup of a running computer. Because the backup operates on data at the

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

level, single instancing can be performed to minimize the amount of data that travels over the network and that will ultimately be stored on the home server. This single instancing gives the server the ability to store only one instance of data, no matter if the data originated from another computer, another file, or even data within the same file. Computer backup images are not duplicated on the server, so if a server hard drive fails, backups could be lost. The "Server Backup" feature added in Power Pack 1 does not include duplication of backup images.

Remote File Access

The system also offers an SSL secured

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

based interface over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

to the shared file stores. The release version offers access to the web interface via a free

Windows Live Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...

-provided URL, which uses

Dynamic DNS Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information. The term is used to desc ...

. The web interface also allows the uploading to and downloading of files from the content stores. However, there is a limit of 2 GB for a single batch of upload.

Remote Desktop Services

The system also supports Terminal Services Gateway, allowing remote control of the desktop of any Windows computer on the home network. Currently supported systems are those which would normally support

Remote Desktop In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...

Professional, Tablet and Media Center editions,

Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions and

Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. The web interface also supports embedding the Remote Desktop

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

control, to provide remote access to home computers from within the web interface directly. Remote sessions can also connect to the Home Server console to configure the server over the internet.

Add-Ins

Windows Home Server allows for developers to publish community and commercial add-ins designed to enhance the Windows Home Server with added functionality. As of January 2010, nearly 100 of these add-ins have been developed for WHS, including applications for antivirus & security, backups, disk management, automation, media, network/power management, remote access, BitTorrent and more. The Windows Home Server SDK (Software Development Kit) provides developers with a set of APIs and tools to use when developing for and extending Windows Home Server.

Compatibility

Windows Home Server features integration with

(SP2 or newer),

, and

(after the release of Power Pack 3) through a software installation, either from a client CD or via a network share. The connector software may also be installed by accessing yourserver:55000 through a web browser, where a link is provided to download the connector software and to install troubleshooting tools. Files stored on Windows Home Server are also available through a Windows share, opening compatibility to a wide variety of operating systems. Also, the Administration console is available via Remote Desktop, allowing administration from unsupported platforms. Windows Home Server does not support

Microsoft Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is an antivirus software (AV) product that provides protection against different types of malicious software, such as computer viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojan horses. Prior to version 4.5, MSE ran on , ...

. 64-bit Windows client support was introduced in Power Pack 1, though the Restore Wizard on the Windows Home Server Restore CD is unable to restore clients running 64-bit operating systems, due to the fact that the Restore CD does not support 64-bit drivers. Windows XP Professional x64 isn't officially supported. However, unofficial workarounds allow Connector software to work on XP x64. Integration of the file sharing service as a location for

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

Time Machine Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

was apparently being considered, but upon Mac OS X Leopard's release, Apple had removed the ability to use the SMB file sharing protocol for Time Machine backups. One WHS provider, HP, provides their own plug-in with their home server line capable of Time Machine backup to a home server. Windows Home Server has not officially supported

Domain Controller A domain controller (DC) is a server computer that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a network server that is responsible for allowing host access to domain resources. It authenticates users, sto ...

capability and cannot readily join a

Windows Server domain A Windows domain is a form of a computer network in which all user accounts, computers, printers and other security principals, are registered with a central database located on one or more clusters of central computers known as domain controlle ...

. Wireless networking is supported. Dedicated devices will have the operating system pre-installed and may be supplied with a server recovery disk which reloads the OS over a network connection. This is utilized on the HP MediaSmart Server, and the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo Home Server.

Resolved issues

File corruption

The first release of Windows Home Server, RTM (release to manufacturing), suffered from a file corruption flaw whereby files saved directly to or edited on shares on a WHS device could become corrupted. Only the files that had

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

Alternate Data Stream New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary software, proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) ...

s were susceptible to the flaw. The flaw led to data corruption only when the server was under heavy load at the time when the file (with ADS) was being saved onto a share. Backups of client PCs made by Windows Home Server were not susceptible to the flaw. Even though the issue was first acknowledged in October 2007,

formally warned users of the seriousness of the flaw on 20 December 2007. Microsoft then issued a list of applications, including Windows Live Photo Gallery,

Microsoft OneNote Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking software developed by Microsoft. It is available as part of the Microsoft Office suite and since 2014 has been free on all platforms outside the suite. OneNote is designed for free-form information gathering ...

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

and

SyncToy SyncToy was a freeware tool in Microsoft's PowerToys series that provided an easy-to-use graphical user interface for synchronizing files and folders in Windows versions XP, Vista, 7 and 10. It was written using Microsoft's .NET Framework and us ...

2.0, which might have triggered the flaw if they were used to edit the files on a WHS share directly. This issue was fixed by Power Pack 1, released on 21 July 2008.

No native backup

Windows Home Server RTM did not include a mechanism for backing up the server. Power Pack 1 added the ability to back up files stored on the Shared Folders, to an external drive. Users can also subscribe to 3rd-party online services, for a fee. However, there remains no way to back up the installed server operating system. Backing-up of the client backup database is available either manually using the instructions provided by Microsoft on page 24 o
this document
or can be done using the WHS BDBB add-in written by Alex Kuretz and available fro
this website

Pricing

While some hardware manufacturers have developed dedicated boxes, Microsoft has also released Windows Home Server under the

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

/System Builder license. In November 2008, Microsoft lowered the price of the WHS System Builder SKU to US$100. Users can also choose to use an existing PC or build their own systems, which would include the use of WHS System Builder. As of 23 March 2009, Microsoft has also made Windows Home Server available to

MSDN Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...

and

Microsoft Technet Microsoft TechNet was a Microsoft web portal and web service for IT professionals. It included a library containing documentation and technical resources for Microsoft products, a learning center which provides online training, discussion forums ...

subscribers. Some computer systems are available only with a bundled Windows Home Server license. As is the case with other versions of Windows it is possible to request a refund of the license fees paid for Windows Home Server.

References

External links

;Official * (from archive.org) {{Authority control Home Server Backup software Home servers Home Server