A couple of months ago, Terry pointed out the very generous work that Asoft’s Nick Asseloos had been doing with a Getting Started guide for Vail software development.

Coinciding with the recent Vail Beta update, Nick has released an updated version of his guide.

This new version has been updated to support the latest version of Windows Home Server: build 7659.

It contains a lot more information with regards to the first version of the kit; on the various aspects of developing an addin for Vail and now also has a section on how to build an installer too.

If you are interested in programming for Vail, this is one guide that will go a long way in getting you started.

More Info: Asoft’s Blog

Channel 9 has published an interview with Windows Home Server SDK Program Manager, Fabian Uhse, regarding the improvements made in Vail’s developer tools.

The Windows Home Server team have released and updated version of the Windows Home Server SDK. I stopped by SDK Program Manager Fabian Uhse’s office to talk about what has changed in this update, what a Windows dev needs to consider when working with a headless environment, what’s in the SDK, and where to go to learn more about developing for Windows Home Server.

More: Channel 9

Now that everyone (well, not everyone) has the Windows Home Server Vail Preview installed, you’re all waiting for those first add-ins to be released, I bet. As Vail requires the use of a brand new software development kit (SDK), all of those v1 add-ins you love simply will not work in Vail, so add-in developers will be spending time over the summer getting to grips with the new framework.

To help them out, Asoft’s Nick Asseloos, who developed AdminiMe and AutoExit for Windows Home Server, has published a first stage Getting Started guide for Vail development. The guide covers the new SDK framework, setting up Visual Studio, Creating a Project, Creating Tabs and Sub Tabs and more. The guide is accompanied by example code to help get you on your way.

More Info: Asoft’s Blog

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.

In addition, certain features you see may *not* be in the released version.  Certain features you do *not* see *may* be incorporated in the released version.

One of the big successes of the first Windows Home Server platform was the rapid growth in community developed add-ins for the platform. Whilst commercial software developers decided not to jump on the operating system (with a few notable exceptions), community development took off quickly, with over 120 add-ins created for Windows Home Server.

As with v1, Windows Home Server Vail is an extensible platform, and Microsoft have made a number of investments to take extensibility to the next level with a brand new SDK (available to download and try out during the beta period pre-launch), a new Online Catalog built into the dashboard for approved third-party applications, as well as extending the areas of the platform that can be developed and customised. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Add-in Changes

Unfortunately, all of those v1 add-ins you love are going to have to be re-coded by the developers, as v1 add-ins will not be compatible in Windows Home Server Vail. Indeed, Vail brings a brand new file extension for add-ins (.wssx) which you’ll come to know very well I’m sure over the coming years.

Looking at the SDK, Microsoft have made a number of additional improvements to add-in development, including the ability for users to be automatically notified when add-in updates are available.

New Extensibility

Many more areas of Windows Home Server can be modified by developers in Vail. including:

Dashboard:

• Add high level Dashboard Tab/tabs
• Your own high level tab can contain sub tabs
• Tabs / Sub tabs can be of the following different types:
• List View tabs/sub tabs: add-ins have the option not to use custom UI, but instead use the rendered common list view UI with many extensible parts. This allows users to enjoy a common look and feel regardless of who developed the add-in
• Custom control tabs/sub tabs: Custom control tabs can be Winforms based OR WPF ( Windows Presentation Foundation) based
• Default Tabs are extensible – the SDK will walk you through them
• Add your own sub tabs under these tabs
• Add more data to the existing tabs, such as task, columns, details
• Home page is extensible: Add common tasks and community links

Launchpad:

• Add categories and tasks to the Launchpad

Remote Website:

• You can add your own link in an online services section, create a new item in the menu bar, create a new gadget for the home page

The SDK & Provider Framework

A new framework called the “Provider Framework” is an architectural layer that performs all the business data processing and holds state for each feature. The SDK will help you build your own set of providers.

This time around, the SDK appears to be much more comprehensive then v1 providing:

• How-to documents that helps you understand how to build add-ins
• Templates that help you build the add-ins
• Samples that provide examples of complete add-ins
• API references that help you understand all the of the API elements that can be used to extend and manage “Vail”
• An end-to-end sample that helps you understand how all of the extensible parts of the “Vail” servers can be connected

With a more comprehensive set of tools available, we’ll look forward to more and even better quality add-ins hitting the community in the months to come.

If you have any questions or wish to discuss the SDK, be sure to visit our dedicated Vail Beta forums.

The add-in development community that’s sprung up around Windows Home Server has led to the creation of over 100 applications to extend the platform. The best of these add-ins are now essential downloads, recommended for all users. You can check out the full list of Windows Home Server add-ins over at WHSPlus.com

But if you’re a developer, how do you get started building your first add-in? There’s an SDK and various documents to help you through the basics, but they’re split all over the internet.

Or rather, they were! Asoft’s Nick Asseloos has collated tutorials and walkthroughs from leading add-in developers as well as technical documentation from Microsoft and has built the Newbie WHS Developer Kit – a 40Mb download chock full of developer goodness.

Nick writes:

What I tried to do is create 1 package with all kinds of tutorials by combining them and walking you through the different steps of setting up a development environment up until the release, but also by including on how to create help files, localize an add-in, test it, release it,…

With contributions from Nick, Sam Wood and Brendan Grant, the kit provides a comprehensive guide to creating cool apps for Windows Home Server.

More Info: Newbie WHS Developer Kit

The time has come. Alexander, Felix, Christoph and I had a lot of fun reading through the hundreds of ideas submitted by the Windows Home Server community for new add-ins and it’s time to let you know who made the final ten.

Starting Monday 15th June and running through until Tuesday 30th June, you will have the chance to judge the AIC ‘09 Finalists, and vote for the one which you want to be developed into an add-in and released before the end of the year.

Yesterday, we released details of the 20 runners-up, whose fantastic ideas will hopefully be picked up by eager community developers out there – well done to you guys for a great set of ideas.

The Finalists

I’m delighted to announce that the following ideas made the final shortlist. (Brief descriptions are provided here, and the attachment below provides a full description from each entrant). In alphabetical order:

I hope you agree, that’s a great set of finalists with ideas covering a wide range of enhanced features for Windows Home Server. I’d personally install every one of them on my home server if they were made available!

Full Add-in Descriptions

Each entrant has provided a detailed description of how their add-in would work, which you should read through to help you evaluate each idea. We haven’t altered these descriptions at all (except to translate them into German for our friends over at the Home Server Blog).

Download them here: AIC09 Finalists – Details

Voting Begins Tomorrow

We’ll publish details of how to vote here on the site tomorrow. Remember, every vote counts as not only are we deciding which add-in will get published, you’re also voting which idea is worthy of the prizes we have on offer from our supporters.

Remember too, that we’ll also be pulling out one vote at random, who will receive the following great prize pack:

Home Server Prize Pack including:

• HP MediaSmart Server LX195
• 500Gb Fujitsu Storagebird External Hard Drive
• Diskeeper for Windows Home Server
• My Movies for Windows Home Server

So, make sure you check back tomorrow for the final leg of the Windows Home Server Add-in Idea Challenge ‘09!

PS. A Very Big Thank You once again to this year’s competition supporters:

Nick from Asoft (developers of the excellent AutoExit add-in) continues his Windows Home Server development guide series with a look at undocumented classes in the platform. This time around, Nick details the QSMMgr class, located in HomeServerControls.dll.

This class is handy for retrieving all kinds of info about storage (Storage Manager).

The following functions are explained:
long GetAppFoldersSize()
long GetBackupSize()
Disk[] GetDisks()
string GetGlobalStatus()
long GetOperatingSystemSize()
void GetSharedFoldersSize(out long size, out long dupSize)
long GetStorageFreeSpace()
long GetStorageSize()
long GetStorageUsedSpace()
ShareConnection[] GetShareConnections()

If you’re a home server developer, Asoft’s blog is definitely one to bookmark.

More Info: Asoft

The entry period for the Windows Home Server Add-in Idea Competition ‘09 closes this Sunday, 31st May 2009. We’ve had hundreds of entries to date from the WHS Community, but I’m sure some of you out there would like a little extra incentive to get your ideas submitted.

Well, get ready as today, we announce the WHS AIC ‘09 Prizelist!

As indicated in our announcement post, 30 semi-finalists will be selected from the pool of entries, and from June 15th 2009, a 2 week public voting period will commence to select the Top 10 ideas for final evaluation by competition judges, before the winner is selected.

I’m delighted to announce that all 30 semi-finalists will receive a prize for their efforts, and the Top 5 will get a very special prize pack indeed! If you’re not in the Top 30, you’re still in with a shout, as one lucky community voter’s email address will be pulled out of the hat to win another great prize pack.

A big thank you to our supporters across the Windows Home Server community for their very kind donation of the prizes.

Okay, without further ado, here’s the prizelist!

Pretty cool swag, eh? But wait, there’s more – to encourage everyone to take part and vote for their favourite add-in idea in June, one lucky voter will be pulled out at random to win the following:

Wow – in total we estimate that’s around $8000 of kit we’re giving away in this competition (and no, you can’t have the cash instead, sorry!) kindly donated by some of our favourite Windows Home Server companies. And aside from all of the kit, remember the best prize of all – your creativity and imagination transformed into a kick-ass Windows Home Server add-in that we’ll all be enjoying by the end of the year!

So, as the saying goes, to win it, you have to be in it – so make sure you head over to the special competition site to enter the Windows Home Server Add-in Idea Competition ‘09.

More Info: Enter the Competition

Competition Rules of Participation

The WHS Add-in Idea Challenge 09 (AIC09) is being run in cooperation with home-server-blog.de (HSB), wegotserved.co.uk (WGS) and the HSB Add-in Team (HSBAT).

Contest Rules

Participants must be at least 16 years old, be in possession of a Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS), and must be registered on HSB by 30 June 2009. Registration will begin on 1 May 2009 at http://www.home-server-blog.de/limesurvey/index.php?sid=84227&lang=en

Suggestions are to be submitted to the abovementioned website. Each participant may submit up to two suggestions. All suggestions must be submitted by 31 May 2009. We reserve the right to deny any suggestion received after this deadline.

In the public voting phase, anyone in possession of a Microsoft Windows Home Server may comment on and rate the suggestions. This phase shall determine the most popular suggestions.

The selection of the finalists is not necessarily dependent upon the public voting. We reserve the right to make the final decision regarding the finalists, and this may or may not reflect the rankings from the public voting phase.

After the announcement of the finalists, an online questionnaire will give all Windows Home Server users the opportunity to comment on and judge the selected suggestions. The objective of this phase is to determine which suggestion has the most potential, both qualitative and quantitative, in the target market.

Members of HSB, WGS, and HSBAT are also eligible to participate.

What Happens Next?

The suggestion which wins the competition will be developed as an add-in for Windows Home Server. The participant with the winning suggestion will be named as co-author of the add-in and will be able to provide his link on the download page. The winner’s status will be equal to the other authors, i.e. all will be considered co-authors.

Participants have no legal claim to the implementation of their suggestions. We are all doing this as a hobby!

The HSBAT reserves the right to make all final decisions regarding implementation, licensing, naming, and the features which are taken from the suggestion. Should the add-in be used commercially, the winner, as a joint-author, will be awarded a one-time remuneration of an appropriate amount.

Great interview over at MediaSmartHome with HP’s Allen Buckner, who’s part of the team responsible for bringing you the HP MediaSmart Server.

I’ve been fortunate over the past year to see some of the processes HP use to identify new features for their home server line at first hand – really looking forward to seeing how their feature set continues to evolve.

If you want a behind the scenes peek at the thinking behind the MediaSmart’s past and future development, then head over and check it out.

More Info: MediaSmartHome

Windows Home Server is indeed now on MSDN and Technet and is currently running at a world record 4 hours uptime.

Go have some developer fun, download it and take a look – it’s free!

Thanks to Dean for the screenshot.

More Info: Team Announcement | MSDN | Technet

Over the past few months, I’ve heard increasing reports of Windows Home Server being utilised in small and home offices (SOHO), where a product like Microsoft’s Small Business Server would simply be overkill.

Canadian developer Level Platforms Inc have now announced that its Managed Workplace remote monitoring application will now be supported on Windows Home Server, allowing outsourced IT suppliers to remotely monitor and support Windows Home Server based networks.

This is the first application we’ve seen which directly supports the business market for Windows Home Server and is a really interesting extension of WHS’ proposition.

Are you using Windows Home Server in your business? Let us know how.

Here’s the press release:

Level Platforms’ Managed Workplace and Microsoft’s Windows Home Server deliver full managed services capabilities to peer-to-peer networks

January 29, 2009

Ottawa, ON, Canada – January 29, 2009 – LPI Level Platforms Inc, the global leader in remote monitoring and management software for solution providers and managed services providers today announced that the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market is now “open for business” with Microsoft’s Windows Home Server.

While the millions of SOHO businesses have the greatest need for outsourced IT, cost and technology limitations have made this an elusive target for managed services providers.  With Level Platforms award-winning Managed Workplace installed on a Windows Home Server, solution providers can now deliver end-to-end remote management of workgroup networks including monitoring of all devices (servers, PCs, network devices, printers, IP telephony, etc.), all applications running on Windows devices, alerting, full asset management, remote control, patch management, back up and security, extensive reporting, local storage and much more at a very low cost easily affordable to SOHO businesses.

Many small businesses aren’t yet ready to make the leap to Windows Small Business Server but need the added features, performance, flexibility and security that result from the deployment of a server on their networks.  Now solution providers can deploy Windows Home Server with Managed Workplace and deliver a high value fully managed solution for these businesses.

This addition further extends Managed Workplace’s deep integration with the entire family of Microsoft Servers that already includes Windows Server 2008 and 2003, Small Business Server 2008 and 2003 (SBS), Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS), and full support for Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor-based virtualization solution.

Built on the same codebase as Windows Server 2003, Windows Home Server represents a powerful solution for the SOHO market. While the backup and recovery features are limited to 10 workstations (including Macs), Managed Workplace running on Windows Home Server can monitor and manage any number of devices operating in a workgroup environment with 100% of the functionality of larger sites including the full management of the Windows Home Server itself as well as any other servers on the network. Solution providers can also deploy additional remote backup software, specialized applications and other server based applications on the Windows Home Server to extend their service offerings.

“The SOHO market represents a tremendous opportunity for solution providers looking to provide cost-effective best-in-class support to smaller businesses,” said Peter Sandiford, CEO Level Platforms.  “Most of our 3000 Partners worldwide provide managed services to the Windows Small Business Server market.  With this announcement we are radically expanding the size of their available market and bringing the benefits of managed services to millions of businesses that were not previously accessible to the service provider community.”

“This is great news,” said Aaron Booker, President of Hardlines, a Washington-based solution provider focused on the small business market. “By adding the Windows Home Server as a supported platform for Managed Workplace, Level Platforms has opened the doors to a hugely underserviced and important segment of the business market.”

David Schmidt, CEO of Fusix Corporation, based in Ontario, added, “Fusix focuses on smaller businesses that often struggle with the effective use of technology. Larger organizations already receive enhanced benefits through the deployment of servers. Now, with a flexible and cost-effective solution for smaller businesses, Level Platforms and Windows Home Server eliminates the difference between the haves and have-nots.”

“We are excited to work with Level Platforms to extend the value of Windows Home Server to the Small Office/Home Office market,” said Charlie Kindel, General Manager, Windows Server Solutions Group, Microsoft.  “This solution will help Microsoft Partners introduce the benefits of Windows Server technology to a large and important market segment establishing a solid foundation for improved performance and reliability today and growth for the future.”

More Info: Level Platforms

Kentdome Technlogies, developers of Grid Junction, Remote Alert and Vista Call-ID for Windows Home Server, are seeking a panel of beta testers to get involved with the development of new versions of those add-ins as well as brand new add-in releases.

If you’re interested, contact them over at http://www.kentdome.com/news/register-now.html