Cloudberry Backup allows you to back-up the data on your home or small business server to the cloud. Powered by a variety of online storage providers, the add-in integrates neatly with the Dashboard to allow backup scheduling, data encryption and many more features to protect your data.

• Easy installation and configuration
• Seemlesly integrates with the Dashboard
• Default backup plan is designed to quickly start data backup
• Scheduling capabilities
• Data encryption
• Data retention schedule
• Secure online storage
• Data versioning
• Differential backup
• The ability to restore to a particular date
• Backup verification
• Backup Window

The add-in, available for Windows Home Server v1, Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, has just received an update. v2.6.2 has the following improvements:

1. Force schedule full backup.

A refresh of Lights-Out Service Pack 2 Beta was released this week for Windows Home Server v1 and WHS 2011. The power management add-in allows you to place your server in sleep or hibernation mode at scheduled times.

New in this release:

New option for client action after backup
Service Pack 2 Beta refresh introduces a new client option called “Force end action”. This option is enabled by default to ensure the previous behavior. If you disable this option, the action after backup is only executed if a start-up or wake-up for a scheduled backup has been detected AND if there has been no user activity in the last 10 minutes or during backup.

This new features prevents a standby or shutdown (after backup) if a user is already working on the machine. It also prevents a standby or shutdown (after backup) if the machine is already running before the backup has been started.

Other changes:

• Fixed end of DST problem with WHS v1 connector
• Fixed wrong date formatting in calendar for some regions like Japanese
• Fixed wrong backup date when client backup is disabled
• Fixed problem with deleted tasklist (delete was not handled, tasks were not removed)
• Fixed bug in edit properties dialog
• Changed action after backup: runs only if started for backup with no user activity

Download: Lights-Out (WHS 2011) | (WHS v1)

AWIECO WakeOnLAN is an add-in which enables the Home Server to start up every computer attached to your network.

The add-in shows a list of all available and connected computers within your network and allows you to start them up from any location on network or over the internet.

Version 1.2 has just been released by the developer. The new release brings support for Windows Phone 7 via a Windows Marketplace app which allows you to monitor and manage power status of your computers via your handset.

Download: AWIECO Wake on LAN

Andreas M today announced the availability of the full production release of his popular Advanced Admin Console add-in for Window Home Server 2011.  This add-in is also applicable to Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.

For those who may not know what Advanced Admin Console 2011 can do, this add-in allows you to extend access to various parts of your server’s administration controls from within the Dashboard, including:

• Computers
• Search,
• Recycle Bin
• Server Manager
• Administrative Tools
• Services
• Control Panel
• Performance monitoring resources.
• Command Prompt,
• Windows PowerShell
• Task Manager Registry Editor

This is another add-in that has transitioned from a free WHS v1 add-in to a commercial licensed version.  Once past the 30-day trial period, you will still be able to use the add-in with some reduced functionality.  The add-in will cost $19.95.

Experience Level: Standard

iHomeServer is an add-in for Windows Home Server v1 and Windows Home Server 2011 which allows you to manage Apple’s iTunes media player directly from the WHS Console/Dashboard.  iHomeServer starts iTunes automatically when the computer starts, keeps it running and allows you to manage iTunes without having to physically access the computer. It also makes it easy to add new media to your iTunes Media Server.

Features:

Automatically start iTunes on boot-up

iHomeServer runs an instance of iTunes within its own Windows Service that automatically starts when your computer/server does. Therefore iTunes is always available, even when nobody has logged into the computer.

Runs iTunes on systems with no sound cards

iTunes is meant to be run on a normal desktop. However, today’s microservers are ideal to run as a headless iTunes media server, but most do not come with sound cards. This would normally prevent you from automatically starting iTunes when the computer boots, because iTunes will present a message indicating there is a problem with your audio/video configuration. iHomeServer actively watches the iTunes process for these messages and dismisses them transparently in the background to ensure iTunes starts successfully. You can view any messages that iTunes has presented using the iHomeServer ‘Messages’ window

Manage iTunes from the Windows Home Server Console

iHomeServer supports starting and stopping iTunes from the WHS Dashboard / Console. You can also view and manage all your iTunes media libraries and playlists, directly from the WHS Dashboard – creating and managing iTunes playlists, adding, removing and playing tracks – most of your day to day tasks can be performed remotely from your laptop, but controlling your WHS server’s instance of iTunes.

Create multiple “Watch Folders” to synchronise your iTunes library with your existing media folder structure

One of the issues people face when running iTunes on servers is how to add new media to the server. The last thing you want to do is have to open iTunes manually on the server whenever you need to add a new CD or track downloaded from Amazon.

iHomeServer makes this easy. Create ‘Watch Folders’ that watch areas of your file system (such as the WHS Music and Video shares). Any content already in these folders will automatically be added to your iTunes library. iHomeServer actively monitors these folders so if new media is added, or existing media is modified (eg due to a modification of metadata), iHomeServer will update the track in iTunes transparently. You can even watch network locations or remote storage if your keep your media on another server or NAS.

Edit your iTunes server’s metadata and Cover Art remotely

iHomeServer allows you to view and edit the metadata of tracks stored within the iTunes library running on your server. This can also be done remotely via the Windows Home Server console.

You can even set track Cover Data within your Server iTunes library by copying and pasting from your local PC.

Perform batch metadata and cover art updates

Not only can you update the metadata of individual tracks, you can also use an existing track’s metadata as a template to set a collection of related tracks, just like the iTunes ‘Get Info’ interface, but via the WHS Console.

Automatically delete orphaned tracks

If you delete files directly on your file system, iTunes will keep the track in its library, but when you attempt to play the file, you will get an error indicating that the file no longer exists. iHomeServer can automatically remove deleted tracks from Watch Folder locations so that you have confidence that all your tracks in iTunes exist. You can also ask iHomeServer to perform a complete sweep of an iTunes library to look for orphaned tracks and automatically delete them. These functions are ideal if you reorganise your media folders in order to avoid duplicate files appearing.

iTunes Process Monitoring

In addition to handling iTunes for any pop up dialog boxes that might disrupt your iTunes streaming or prevent iTunes starting up successfully, iHomeServer also monitors the iTunes process and restarts iTunes automatically if it crashes.

Supports all iTunes native functionality – AirPlay, Remote, Wifi Sync, iCloud and Home Sharing

Take advantage of all the major functions within iTunes but benefit from them being ‘always there’ and not having to turn your desktop on first. Wifi Sync, AirPlay, iCloud sync and Home Sharing all work with iHomeServer.

Use the Apple Remote app (for iOS) to remote control your iHomeServer’s iTunes instance and AirPlay your media library to all your favourite devices!

The Apple Remote app for iOS devices is a fantastic partner with an iHomeServer/iTunes microstation allowing you to remote control your server’s iTunes instance and direct media streams to other devices such as Airport Expresses, Apple TV (1 and 2), iPhones, iPads and other AirPlay compatible hardware devices.

Developer: Ed Steward

Download: iHomeServer (WHS v1) | (WHS 2011)

Release History

v2.0.28 (28th January 2012)

• First release for Windows Home Server

I missed this back in October, but the Tinkertry site has an excellent walkthrough on installing Microsoft’s free Forefront Client Security Antivirus on Windows Home Server 2011. As you’ll know, Microsoft currently blocks the installation of their Security Essentials application on WHS, so Forefront Client Security is the next best thing.

You’ll need an MSDN or Technet subscription to get hold of the software, but from there, you can follow the instructions and you’re good to go.

Microsoft Forefront Client Security runs on Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, and Windows Home Server v1, no MOM required!

If you already have a Microsoft MSDN or TechNet (paid) subscription, you can try Microsoft Forefront Client Security on your Windows Home Server, and it seems to work well. What’s the catch? There are several, but none are really show-stoppers:

1)  as always, you are responsible for following the EULA in your Microsoft TechNet or MSDN subscription.

2)  Microsoft does not list these Home Server variants in the Client Computer section of Microsoft Forefront Client Security.
Microsoft doesn’t list Home Servers among the supported OSs here, so it seems likely that you are totally unsupported.

3)  Microsoft does not list these Home Server variants in the Client Computer section of Microsoft Forefront Client Security 2010.
Microsoft not only doesn’t list Home Servers among the supported OSs here, but the installer FEPInstall.exe won’t even run, so using the older version (but updating with latest signatures) might just be a dead-end or stop-gap measure, I’m not claiming this is an ideal long-term solution:

More: Tinkertry

]]> http://www.wegotserved.com/2012/01/23/install-microsoft-forefront-client-security-antivirus-windows-home-server-2011/feed/ 10 http://www.wegotserved.com/2012/01/23/home-server-smart-2012/ http://www.wegotserved.com/2012/01/23/home-server-smart-2012/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:10:04 +0000 Terry Walsh http://www.wegotserved.com/?p=54728

Expertise Level: Standard

Home Server Smart 2012 is a disk health reporting add-in for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. The add-in monitors your server’s hard disks at user-defined intervals for errors and issues, raising alerts and issuing email notifications when problems are detected.

Features:

• Continuous disk health monitoring by an always-on service.
  • Monitors health of attributes and will generate alerts when a failure condition (threshold is met or exceeded) is detected.
  • Monitors disk temperature and airflow temperature, and generates alerts when unacceptable temperatures are detected (airflow temperature is flagged in HSS 2012 only).
• Customizeable temperature thresholds for Warm, Hot, Overheated and Critical.
• Temperature display can be shown in Celsius (default), Fahrenheit and Kelvin.
• Proactive alerting when changes occur on certain “super critical” attributes such as bad sectors, spin retries and end-to-end errors, even if they have not actually “failed.”
• List of physical disks shows status icons for an “at-a-glance” view of disk health.
• Each attribute shows a colored icon in addition to a status message relative to its health.
• Double-click any SMART attribute to learn more about that attribute on the selected disk.
• Supports most IDE/PATA and SATA controllers that expose SMART data via standard Win32 IOCTL calls or WMI.
• Supports most USB and FireWire enclosures that expose SMART data via standard Win32 IOCTL calls.
• Allows you to clean up data from “stale” disks — disks you’ve removed from the server.
• Allows you to perform a manual polling of the disks for the latest data, rather than waiting for the service to poll them again
• Works with disk pooling software Drive Bender and StableBit DrivePool.
• Default setting not only ignores virtual disks, but hides them from the UI (since they have no SMART data anyway).
• BitLocker Drive Encryption integration – encrypt, decrypt and manage all of your volumes, whether or not those volumes have a drive letter – you can even enable the BitLocker server role from within the add-in!
• Allows you to encrypt drives that participate in drive pools.
• Allows you to hide disks that cannot be encrypted, decluttering the UI.
• Allows you to make use of an HSS helper service to unlock BitLocker-encrypted USB volumes at boot time when those disks participate in disk pools. This can help ensure the disks are ready for use when the pool is started.
• You could ignore individual problems on disks in HSS for WHS v1, but now you can un-ignore (resume) them, either on an individual basis or for all problems on all disks.
• You can now ignore entire disks (and resume them as well) – useful for hiding flash drives and media card readers, as well as disks that you know are showing incorrect information (rare, but it’s been reported).
• Improved the ability to stop, start and restart the HSS service.
• Shut down or reboot your server from within the add-in.
• Send alerts via email.
• Bug Report Helper – runs a small self-test to detect installation problems and provide details to help in troubleshooting.
• Don’t use, and don’t plan to use BitLocker? You can hide the BitLocker tab completely.

Developer: DojoNorth Software

Download: Home Server SMART 2012

Release History

v2.2.1.21 (21st January 2012)

• Beta release

InteliSAN have announced the release of the LDisk Release Candidate. v2.0.0.6 of the add-in, which brings iSCSI support to Windows Home Server v1, WHS 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. It ships with the following improvements and fixes:

• Improved error recovery for Failed Disks
• Automatic detection of new disks
• VMWare/ESX iSCSI support
• Online Help updates
• Corrections in pie chart % calculations

Download: LDisk

Serviio for Windows Home Server is a free DLNA/UPnP Media Server for streaming content to networked PCs, TVs, Blu-Ray Players, Game Consoles and more. It allows you to serve up a wide range of media file formats (videos, music, pictures) to an ever wider range of devices.

Features include:

• DLNA/UPnP Media Server for streaming content to networked PCs, TVs, Blu-Ray Players, Game Consoles, etc.
• Stream your networked media files (music, video or images)
• Stream online media sources (online feeds, live streams or web resources)
• Transcodes and formats media as required (and ONLY as required) for your specific device

New in v0.6.1 this week:

• WHS 2011 support
• Support for online content
• Significantly improved support for specific DLNA/UPnP devices
• Stability and performance improvements

You can check out the full release notes for more on this release.

Download: Serviio for Windows Home Server (WHS v1) | (WHS 2011)

As soon as Windows Home Server 2011 was released last year, one of the first applications requested by the community was a dedicated anti-virus client. Vendors who had previously supported WHS v1 have not upgraded their software to support the newer release, but the good news is that G Data InternetSecurity for HomeServer is here to protect you, your home server and a few of your PCs.

The software is priced at £99.00/$99.00 and offers centrally controlled anti-virus protection for the home server as well as up to 5 PCs on the network. There’s full integration into the Windows Home Server Dashboard, with automatic distribution of virus updates across the network.

Full specs from G-Data as follows:

Award-winning technology

• Award-winning virus detection thanks to two virus scanner modules
• Secure protection against viruses, worms, rootkits, spyware, diallers, Trojans, adware and other riskware
• Instant protection against new viruses: email and web-based CloudSecurity blocks infected emails or websites in real time
• Integrated rootkit blocker / special module for discovering rootkits

G Data ManagementServer

• Easy setup: installation, virus scan, updates, settings and reports are remotely controlled using the home server
• Seamless integration into the Microsoft HomeServer 2011 console
• Automatic distribution of updates in the network
• Also central administration of clients that are not always connected to the home server (notebooks, netbooks, tablet PCs)

G Data AntiVirus and AntiSpam client

• „Invisible“ client protection in the background, including for computers that are not permanently connected to the home server.
• Mail protection for Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla and POP3 / IMAP mail clients
• CloudSecurity: Instant protection against new viruses and spam
• Fully functional when working offline
• If desired, independent settings and virus scans on the client are possible

G Data Firewall client

• Remotely controlled installation and configuration
• Simple administration using individual learnable access rules on the client
• Monitors all incoming and outgoing connections
• Blocks and reports DoS attacks, port scans and much more.
• Four security levels or expert mode
• Invisible stealth mode

For more on G Data InternetSecurity for HomeServer, check out the company’s website. Thanks to Garry for the tip!

More: G Data InternetSecurity for HomeServer

Back in November, Jim reviewed ISO Mounter - it’s an add-in for Windows Home Server v1 and 2011 which allows you to mount ISO files (DVD and CD images) stored on your server so they can be viewed directly through the server’s folder share on all of your PC’s and laptops. A brand new version of the add-in has just hit the streets – here’s what you can expect:

New Features:

• Burn ISO images to removable USB devices
• New “Unmount all” button to simplify unmounting of multiple images from the server Dashboard
• New “Rescan watch folder” to allow mounting of all pre-existing ISO image files in a watch folder

Enhancements:

• Cleaned up the user interface.  Moved some tasks from the main view into a separate “More Settings” dialog view
• Fixed crash when browsing for ISO files on Servers with a non-standard Share layout (e.g. server Shares are not stored in D:\ServerFolders)

Installation tips for WHS/SBS 2011:

• Uninstall the previous version of the add-in.  From the Server Dashboard select Add-ins | ISO Mounter | Remove the Add-in and then close the Dashboard
• Download the new version of the add-in, via the link above, to your server or a PC with Home Server Connector installed
• Double-click the isomounter.wssx file to begin the installation process
• Wait for the installation process to complete.  You’re done!
• All existing settings and registration information will be saved from the previous version.

Installation tips for WHS V1:

• From the WHS Console select Settings | Add-ins | Installed then Uninstall the previous version of ISO Mounter
• Download the new version of the software, via the link above, to your \\server\software\add-ins folder
• From the WHS Console select Settings | Add-ins | Available then Install the new version
• The WHS Console will restart
• All existing settings and registration information will be saved from the previous version. You’re done!

ISO Mounter is priced at $14.99/£10.26.

Download: ISO Mounter