WARNING! Windows Home Server Vail Preview is an early test build of the next version of Windows Home Server. As such, it is not in any way, shape, or form ready for you to MOVE any important data from your current Windows Home Server (or other machine) to a Vail powered machine. Doing so without proper backups elsewhere may put that data at great risk of being lost forever.
Where we used the Windows Home Server Console to manage the first release of WHS, Vail brings a very similar concept with a new name – forget the Console, meet the Windows Home Server Dashboard. Those of you familiar with the Windows Home Server Console will be very much at home with the new Dashboard. It’s been updated, redesigned and modernised, but retains the tabbed, big button approach that makes Windows Home Server so easy to use.
Installing the Dashboard
Once you’ve installed Vail, in order to access the Vail Dashboard, one needs to install the connector software on a client machine.
Open Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari (all are supported) and type http://<ServerName>/connect where <ServerName> is the name of your Vail server.
If all goes well, you will see the following.
Clicking on “Connect the computer to the server” will download a file from the server to your client.
Click Run and work through the installation screens. Enter the appropriate information where needed.
One change you’ll notice when you install the Dashboard is that you’re asked to enter or modify the description of each computer you connect. It’s a handy step to ensure you can easily identify each of your computers connected to the home server. Otherwise, the Dashboard installation is very similar to the installation of the Windows Home Server Console in v1, but is a little sleeker in the minimalist design of Windows Server 2008 R2, rather than the big blue, almost Media Center-esque design of the v1 installer.
You will end up with 3 icons on your desktop (Dashboard, Launchpad and a shortcut to your Shared Folders) and a Launchpad icon in the taskbar.
