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Windows Home Server code-named Quattro [4] is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates , [5] released to manufacturing on 16 July [6] and officially released on 4 November Windows Home Server was based on Windows Server R2 and was intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer file sharing , automated backups, print server , 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. Windows Home Server , the next version of this operating system, was released on 6 April Windows Home Server was the brainchild of Charlie Kindel who was the General Manager for the product from through Microsoft has ended support for Windows Home Server on January 8, 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 was rendered on the remote system. The server itself required no video card or peripherals; it was 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: [21].

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

TV shows that had been archived to a Windows Home Server from a system running Windows Media Center , 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. The aforementioned programs worked fine with WHS; however, files may have appeared out of order due to this caveat. 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. 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.

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 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.

The system also offers an SSL secured web browser based interface over the Internet to the shared file stores. The web interface also allows the uploading to and downloading of files from the content stores. The system also supports Terminal Services Gateway , allowing remote control of the desktop of any Windows computer on the home network. The web interface also supports embedding the Remote Desktop ActiveX 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. Windows Home Server allows for developers to publish community and commercial add-ins designed to enhance the Windows Home Server with added functionality.

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.

However, unofficial workarounds allow Connector software to work on XP x Windows Home Server has not officially supported Domain Controller capability and cannot readily join a Windows Server domain.

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. 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.

Even though the issue was first acknowledged in October , [37] Microsoft formally warned users of the seriousness of the flaw on 20 December This issue was fixed by Power Pack 1, released on 21 July Power Pack 1 added the ability to back up files stored on the Shared Folders, to an external drive.

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 of this document or can be done using the WHS BDBB add-in written by Alex Kuretz and available from this website.

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. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Home server operating system by Microsoft released in This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources.

Closed-source Source-available through Shared Source Initiative. The Windows Blog. Archived from the original on 27 November Retrieved 24 November Windows Home Server Blog. Archived from the original on 22 November Retrieved 30 January Retrieved 14 March Retrieved 8 January Microsoft Corporation.

Retrieved 2 February Microsoft News Center. Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 22 July Retrieved 2 April Retrieved 5 July Retrieved 29 August Retrieved 3 August Windows Home Server Team Blog. Retrieved 10 June Retrieved 7 May Windows SuperSite.

Archived from the original on 11 January Ars Technica. Retrieved 15 October Retrieved 28 April Retrieved 4 October Archived from the original on 25 April Microsoft Connect.

January Retrieved 14 July Retrieved 24 September Retrieved 29 September MS Windows Home Server. Retrieved 13 January Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite. Retrieved 2 July Retrieved 2 March Retrieved 27 December Archived from the original on 31 December The Seattle Times.

Windows server 2012 essentials 25 user limit free

 
In this post, I will show Yes [58]. Thanks for dropping by! With Serverthe manufacturer limits Windows Server to improvements in existing functions. Active Directory Services. Besides the Backup feature, it is a clone tool, allowing you to clone OS to SSD without data lossand is a piece of file sync software. February 3,

Windows server 2012 essentials 25 user limit free

 
The Windows Server R2 Essentials bit License from Microsoft is a cloud-enabled OEM server solution designed and priced for small businesses with up. Windows Server Essentials is primarily designed as a first server solution for small businesses that need support for up to 25 user. The user limit of this server edition is 25 and device limit is This means that a maximum of 25 users amongst 50 computers can access the Windows Server.