Windows Home Server 2/2

Welcome to digitallifestyle.com video show. This is show number two, and this is part two of a two part series looking at Windows Home Server. In part one, we looked at Windows Home Server Console, a bit about the backups and shared files. And in part two, we’re going to be looking at how we can look at the backups and pick out an individual file from the backups or do a complete restore. Also, we’re going to look at web page user interface for basic browsing your Windows Home Server to your local network or for the internet. And then we’re going to look at remote desktop functions in little bit behind the scenes. So, first to, restoring a file. Using Windows Home Server Console, I can right click on the computer. In this case here, Alonso computer, and look into this backup now. Click the back up, pick the backup, open, pick the disk, and away it goes and now, it’s opening the backup. Okay, so now you see the backups and let’s put it in a folder view, so now you can see the backup sets. Here’s one I looked at earlier, and this one I just looked at now. So, I can see those backup sets. I can pick the file and it’s just file there. So, if I wanted to copy it, I can copy and paste it, restore it by dragging it back, whatever I want to do with it. And I can just navigate through the file structure as you would do normally. So, that’s really, really nice way of doing it, because clever thin about this as well is, I can close that now. I’m going to have a look at another machine’s backups and open that up too. Because the nice thing about that is that for example, on this one, the template PC, there may be file on that, the PC may not even be here, but I can remotely through back home server—through the backup, extract the single file out that backup set. So it could be that you’ve got an old machine that you decommissioned and you could do backup of it, then just leave that backup there, and you know you’ve got full access to all the files on that, a backup drive. And then we’re going straight into the template PC backups. And again, you see here’s my backup. So it’s added through that file structure there. So it’s a really handy way of getting to files. Because in a disaster, and say the hard disk on this media center or this hard disk on this machine went—I can put in a new hard disk and use the recovery CD that comes with Windows Home Server, and then give it some details, password details and actually bring the whole image back down to the machine to bring it back to what it was like when that backup was complete. So, and again, another really handy feature and just something that—yes, possible with different ways of doing it, the Windows backup and other backup tools, but it’s so easy with this that it’s easy just to leave and forget about. So, as you see Windows Home Server here is has a little of my backup needs, all the different machines, set schedules and I’ve got shared data as well. One of the neat features, it’s got a web browser, so I can go into Explorer, I can actually browse this machine. Okay, so let’s browse this machine now, web interface. Now, this is the web interface, now this is on my home network. If you set up your Firewall port settings, to share out the necessary ports, and there is a little instructions that this is a user interface, you can see on a remote machine. So, I could be at the office now, or say someone’s home. So, as well as being able to go here, look at share folders, you can see all the shares we saw on my local machine, all still accessible through the browser. And I’ve got my recorded TV programs there for example. And if I’ve got the bandwidth then it might onl be a picture cells. No problem with that, I can just download that. And I can group them together, and download the group of files. And if you download the group, it zips them up and sends it to you. So, if it’s a file that you left on your machine, you’re out and about at your work, you want to pull up file back, you can just use this browser through your home routers on IP address, sort of dynamic DNS address, and download data. So, it means that you’ve got access to all your files no matter where you are on the internet. Other things I really like using this, if I’m going to the computers tab, is you can see here, all the machines are on the network that are connected at the moment, and I can then remote desktop one of those. So, if I wanted to remote desktop on to that machine, I can click on it and I can then enable my desktop, or I could connect to the server. Enable to remote desktop. So, let’s connect to that now. So, here now I’ve connected via remote desktop onto the home server. Okay, so you can see that really, there is not anything to do on the actual home server itself. When you look at the drives, they split between the 10 gig partition for the operating system, which can—we don’t really need to touch, and then the rest of the—the first disk that was installed in the machine kind of splits up there for folder shares. And you can’t even see the extra hard disk, the file gave hard disk that was added in here. So that’s totally hidden. So, as far as being on the machine itself, there’s not really much you need to do to it. You can get through all these, your stuff, like even view a computer manager and you can look at shares and device manager and those kind of thing on the services. But really there’s very little you need to do here. If you’re a developer, you might want to get on ahead at services to the Home Serve. But really everything you need to do can be done directly from the console. And finally, just to pickup name, you’ve got manual backup, and away it goes. The backup is running. I can carry and use the machine and if it doesn’t throw me out then everything works as it should and you can click to view status and you can actually go and watch it from the console as well. I’ve been using the machine, it’s been doing backup with—now it’s used at home. So that’s really a quick roundup of Windows Home Server product. I think it’s got a lot of potential especially at the backups. I'm totally confident now that all the machines are network backed up and connected. I'm sharing things out like music, pictures, recorded TV. So, the recorded TV is different than the rest of the set up and that’s something that got to have a guide up on digitallifestyle.com on how to do that. But overall, it’s a great product, I’m really impressed with it, and I think, I’m sure there’s a bunch of potential. This is only a bit, what we’re looking at now. Thanks for watching the show and I’ll see you on thedigitallifestyle.com.