Windows Home Server is King
I have had Windows Home Server (WHS) installed for about four months now. This is an amazing piece of software. I can’t believe it hasn’t caught on with more people. WHS handles all of my home networking needs. It does daily backups of both my laptop and my wife’s laptop. It stores all of our pictures and music on redundant storage. It provides a free dynamic DNS service, so I can connect to my home network and establish a remote desktop connection to my home machine from anywhere. It doubles as a media server accessible from both the XBox 360 and any computer in the house. I understand each of these features may be available independently via open source options, but WHS makes everything simple, it works and it was inexpensive $90. I admit the UI is ‘clunky’ and overall feels pieced together, but that’s because it is. WHS is a stripped down version of Windows 2003 Server with a few WHS services running. For more info see: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx
For my configuration, I converted my old desktop to a WHS machine. I have an old Dell with an AMD Dual Core something or other processor. I added two new 1.5TB Seagate drives at ($129 a piece), added an extra couple GB of RAM (memory usage seldomly rises above 1GB) and I upgraded to a gigabit NIC and Router. Then I threw the machine in the basement without a monitor or keyboard or anything and never have to touch it. I can’t express enough how easy and powerful this thing is. It solves numerous problems and does so for a reasonable cost. All together it cost about $500 to get the whole system up and running.
I use the following WHS Add-Ins:
FirePlay – http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3999
Disk Management – http://www.tentaclesoftware.com/WHSDiskManagement/
Advanced Admin Console – http://mswhs.com/2008/01/22/add-in-advanced-admin-console/
FileZilla FTP Server – http://computingondemand.com/?p=961