Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

ben2004uk — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:31:23 GMT

I can't wait for this, something I have been waiting for, for ages.

Home automation would be cool, but I would like to see more websites/home hosting service.

My first use is going to be as a project server and source control for my personal projects :) Team Foundation would be great to have on top of this.

But, isn't Live going to be providing the DynDNS service as part of the package?

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Oskar Austegard — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:52:53 GMT

Can this run WSS3/MOSS?

If so, would it make sense to use this as a developer platform for the above, rather than Win2K3, e.g. on laptops?

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

ben2004uk — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:03:25 GMT

I heard (on the channel 9 video) that anything which runs on 2003, runs on this as its the same code base.

Not sure if its a good developer platform over 2003, as why would you want too? But i'm really looking forward to (as a developer) having a server in the house to run MOSS/TF/Trac together with my data.

But, what happens if the OS dies as has been known. Do you lose all of your data?

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

danielfe — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:16:45 GMT

The big pain for Windows 2003 Server is the price, at least for a full retail version, which I'm sure you all paid full price and that you're not using your MSDN Subscription version of Windows Server on a production machine, right? right? :)

Sharepoint is a bit overkill and I've personally never been a fan of 2003. If you want to run Sharepoint, why not use Office Live instead?

For me, it's the custom apps and access to all of my home data that make me salivate.

To Ben2004UK's point about data reliability, WHS key features are reliability/data backup as described at http://www.stopdigitalamnesia.com/

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Kris — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 07:44:45 GMT

TAPI for me please! I feel TAPI has taken a back seat (the COM model didn't help much) and I would like to see a couple of nice TAPI samples.

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Oskar Austegard — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:42:39 GMT

danielfe wrote: "Sharepoint is a bit overkill and I've personally never been a fan of 2003. If you want to run Sharepoint, why not use Office Live instead?"

I was merely looking for an alternative to Windows 2003 (either native or in a vpc) for sharepoint development...

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Romukas — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:18:27 GMT

I would be interested in all except TAPI samples

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Romukas — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:19:29 GMT

It looks like that Virtual Server should run on HS, or?

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Mark Garner — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:32:17 GMT

I think it would be great to have a family calendar application. From any computer in the house you could view and update it. Maybe someday someone will write/make an appliance that is just a touch screen that will let you interface with it. It could be built into the fridge or on the wall by the phone where the calendar is right now.

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Steve — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:08:35 GMT

Fax Server - my wife works from home and as a HR recruiter, she is deluged with penny stock faxes and other blast faxes - I know we can receive faxes with the built-in fax software - but it would be nice to have a server handle this.... (p.s., just try to find a fax-to-email program for when we are away from home - you would think HP would include this with their software, but no...)

Second, BillG said that there are web content controls in Vista - maybe a good template would be to allow hobbyists to write their own content inspection plug-ins.

Windows Home Server for developers

Ian Dixon's Blog — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:14:47 GMT

One of the Microsoft products I saw at CES that I am really excited about is Windows Home Server . It

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Shawn Oster — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:11:49 GMT

Any type of MCE integration would rock. I currently run my MCE headless and extend everything down to my 360, so any type of media/MCE integration would be of great interest, as in how can I take advantage of all the storage I'd hook up to WHS from my MCE machine? Either direct recording to WHS shares or a WHS service that pulls all dvr-ms content off the MCE box to make room for more recordings.

Even things like automatic background transcoding, for example the Zune doesn't play dvr-ms so having WHS automatically convert everything to the correct resolution and format for my Zune and automatically add converted media to a playlist for auto-syncing.

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Andrew Tobin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:19:11 GMT

Hey Dan,

I've already blogged a little about where I see WHS:

http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/crucible/archive/2007/01/12/Where-I-think-Windows-Home-Server-could-lead_2E002E002E00_.aspx

http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/crucible/archive/2007/01/12/XBox-360-Notification-API.aspx

What I'd really love to see is opening up the XNA framework enough to talk to web services on a local subnet - I haven't played in XNA so I don't know if this is possible, but I very much doubt it is from a XBox at the moment.

What I'd like to see happen is something akin to WHS hosting a service that controls something such as Home Automation and build the interface to run on XNA so I could run it from any PC or my Xbox.

That's my little dream of where the hobbyist end up in the future.

That said I would Love if the messenger team extended capabilities to a VOIP server - so I could host a VOIP machine on my WHS and have a cordless handset that I could hand to anyone in my family and they'd have their own number keyed to their Windows Live Account.

Even better - down the line a 3G wireless mobile that if it was in range of my wireless network, or my work one and I had a WEP key, etc, then it would talk VOIP - but then when I left home talked to my cell provider.

Same number, same everything.

That's my idea of a phone for the future - I have the same number for work, home and travel.

Anyway, I can't wait to see the possibilities open up for this.

(I've seen other people ask for VOIP from an XBox but I think that's completely unreasonable from a game you'd want to be pushing for better graphics, etc... but from a home server? VOIP would be my number one ask).

Windows Home Server and the Xbox 360 again

crucible's melting pot — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:38:21 GMT

So over the past week or so I've been glancing through the kinds of requests that Ozymandias and Major

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Mark — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:20:30 GMT

Email? Anyone? Buellor? I am sure it has been thought about. Just in case it hasn't...

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, EMAIL/CAL SERVICE PLEASE!!!!

Even if you make it an "You need to be an expert to make this work" kind of thing, I would be sooo happy to backup and control the email for the house. I saw somewhere how people were happy with web mail from the Big 4. I say that they have gotten used to that being the only semi-permanent solution to, "Where did my email go?!?!?! What do you mean it is gone forever!?!?!?!" Even better, tie it in with Live Mail. I like my Hotmail account but to have it on my own server and be able to make changes without the AJAX bringing it to its knees......(control yourself Mark)

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Chuck — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:04:03 GMT

As I run an aging Win 2k domain at home (yes, I bought it retail as I wasn't getting an MSDN sub at the time) I'm really looking forward to WHS! However, I do hope that the security model maintains support for controlling access to directories, workstations and times. I use account restrictions to limit the hours my children can be online at home, which PCs they may use and what shares they can access for reading/writing.

Unfortunately for me, I'm again in a job role where I no longer get MSDN ... so I'll be waiting until a public beta is available. However, I'll be reading all I can about it in the meantime!

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Terry — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:29:16 GMT

I think it would be a better idea for WHS to include IIS7 instead.

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Kevin C. — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:48:49 GMT

Has anyone seen this Microsoft Web page that says that Sharepoint is NOT SUPPORTED on WHS? -- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940882

re: Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers

Faye — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:44:42 GMT

WHS File Corruption Issue - Serious!!!

mswhs.com/2007/12/28/whs-file-corruption-issue-more-info/#comment-5431