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.

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

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

Today sees the release of the public beta of Lights-Out Service Pack 2 – a major update to the popular power management add-in for Windows Home Server v1 and 2011. The list of changes in this release is extensive, so here are the release notes:

[WHS 2011 only] Changed IP and MAC address detection for WHS Client Computers
Problem: Lights-Out on WHS 2011 tried to resolve the client name into an IP address and then tried to get the MAC address via an ARP request. This was sometimes not working reliable. In SP2, this information is now transmitted from the Lights-Out client.
Advantage: Correct information
Disadvantage: Missing IP and MAC address if no client is installed/available. This affects currently Apple MAC OSX machines until a native Lights-Out OSX client is available (under development).

Changed handling of Gateways or Repeaters
Problem: Devices connected via a router (or a repeater or VPN gateway) are not visible to the Lights-Out network scanner because for each IP address we always get the same gateway MAC address. Manually added devices with fixed IP addresses sometimes lost the IP address because Lights-Out wrongly detected an IP address conflict and changed that fixed IP address to 0.0.0.0.
Service pack 2 addresses this problem with two changes: Manually added devices are marked with a “fixed IP flag” and are no longer changed to 0.0.0.0 on a conflict.
The second change is a new flag for routers (and repeaters or gateways). Setting this flag in the device properties (Lights-Out computers tab) allows Lights-Out to handle manually added devices with a fixed IP.
If you have a setup, where devices are connect via a repeater or router, assign a fixed IP address and add these devices manually in Lights-Out. Then run the network scanner and Lights-Out should automatically find and mark the router (or repeater/gateway).

User Action instead of Standby or Shutdown
Service pack 2 introduces a new user action. When you select “User Action” in Lights-Out settings, a new text box is displayed where you can enter a command file. The command or batch file can run several actions but must end with a standby or a shut down! You can use the internal shutdown.exe command or you can use psshutdown from the Sysinternals Suite. If you use psshutdown.exe then the first parameter has to be /accepteula, otherwise the command file blocks. Always use a zero time span to run the command immediately!

A standby looks like this:

psshutdown /accepteula /d /t 0

Other changes since 1.5.1 Build 1555

• Fixed MAC detection on server for bridged server NICs
• Fixed WHS v1 console crash after clicking on error link in monitored sources
• Fixed unwanted client standby when client was started from shut down for a backup
• Fixed problem with wake-up on client when no IPv4 route is available
• Fixed remote access detection after IIS reset
• Fixed handling of IP clients without a MAC
• Fixed problem with incomplete or damaged xml data files
• Changed internal structure of services (both server and client) to fix start-up problems
• Changed handling of IP and MAC detection for WHS clients
• Added new option for devices which act as router or repeater
• Added a user action to run a user defined command instead of standby
• Added handling of additional routers or gateways
• Added client command line application
• Added handling (starting) of dependent services on server resume

Download: Lights-Out SP2 (WHS v1) | Lights-Out SP2 (WHS 2011)

Windows Home Server iSCSI add-in, LDisk, continues to grow. The team at InteliSAN this week released v2.0.0.5 of the app, which delivers the following changes: Improvements in GUI:

• Progress bar for iSCSI Expansion tab
• Name changes: Snapspace management, Rescan Disks
• Added Max size to Volumes create popup
• More clear disk name, location, and status

Fixes:

• To correct disk Add when all disks were not initialized
• To correct mirror volume delete
• Better error handling after disk failures
• To correct GUI issues with no disks in the system

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

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automates the backup and restore processes to the Amazon S3 cloud storage.  The company just released their v2.6 update which introduces a Real-time backup feature, also known as Continuous Data Protection (CDP). When this feature is turned on, any changes to files will be captured automatically and you do not need to set up a separate schedule for backups. The software will automatically look for new and modified files and send the copies to the cloud storage in the background.

In addition to CDP, Cloudberry has added full support for the AWS South America (Sao Paolo) region.

PR8 stands for “Pre-release 8″, meaning it must be time for a new version of My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011. The add-in provides automated disc copying of Audio CD’s and movies from internal or USB attached optical drives, adding meta-data to copied discs, or movies and TV programmes  already stored on the server by monitoring your shared folders.

In the new version, you’ll find the following updates:

• Added: Support for conversion of Blu-ray ISO files with supported image mounting software. This means video converter can work with Blu-ray ISO if the user manually have installed Virtual CloneDrive on the server.
• Update: Report unidentified disc option is extended.
• Change: Services now ignores disc inserts of mounted drives.
• Fix: Better handling of databases in incorrect states.
• Fix: Sorting of columns that only contains integers
• Fix: Lists are loaded a lot faster now (no sorting while added nodes).
• Fix: Media Center MetaData Connector compiled in X64, it now compiles as AnyCPU for X86 also.