Everything, Everything

After a few people on Dave's forum started talking about which versions of Vista support domains (and "media center" features), I came across references to Quattro, which it seems is the codename for Windows Home Server, which was recently announced and has been (mostly) unveiled today. It's a lot more limited than a proper Windows Server 2003 domain controller, as it limits you to 10 user accounts, and it doesn't do all the cool things you get with Small Business Server, but it will handle backups, let you know when anything is wrong on other PCs, lets you add data to a storage pool that any device can access (and place restrictions based on the user). It's meant to be headless, and HP are meant to release a 1TB version at some point (WHS is meant to go RTM on June 22nd), but I'll probably build myself another PC and give it a try. I've got less than 500GB left on my fileserver, so I'll probably build another Core 2 Duo based system and try out Windows Home Server - although I am a little concerned by its apparent lack of redundancy (at least Windows Server 2003 lets you do software RAID 5), although if I stick with hardware RAID it should be fairly painless to add one or two RAID 5 arrays to the storage pool. I want to get away from hardware RAID though, if possible, due to the problems I've had. My disks have been fairly resilient over the last few years, I may just risk it and stick with Windows Home Server.

Anyway, for a cheesy doctor talking about digital amnesia, check out Microsoft's little micro site: http://www.stopdigitalamnesia.com/

I promise that's my first and last geeky post of the day.