Terracode - Windows Home Server RC1 reviewt

Windows Home Server RC1 on the Book Server - Page 2

Windows Home Server - Advanced Settings

WHS Remote Management Console has an advanced settings button that will take you to a new window that provides more control over certain feature. It also allows one to remotely shutdown or restart the server.

1. The General settings button is shown below and is pretty much standard stuff.

2. The Backup setting button allows one to configure the backup scheduling.

3. The Passwords setting allows you to change the Administrator password for WHS and also to modify the password policy.

4. Media Sharing sharing turns on and off media sharing. When this is turned on, it allows one to stream audio and video to any DNLA compliant device such as Broadband Media Receivers (BMR), PS3, Wii, XBox360, etc.

I will be reviewing the media streaming capabilities in a later section.

5. Remote Access

The remote access button on the settings window allow one to turn on and off the web-site connectivity for remote access, configure the router for remote access and setup a domain name that will be used for remote access to the WHS web-page.

The Web-Site connectivity is turned off by default. Once turned on, the Router and Domain name configuration become active.

My Linksys Wireless router (WRT54GX rev1) does have uPNP which is required for automated setup of the router. Unfortunately my router didn't comply to some degree with the uPNP spec. The WRT54GX rev2 does comply. In order to test this the remote access functionality I had to setup the port forwarding manually on my router.

In order to manually setup port forwarding, the following TCP ports need to be activated and point to the IP address of the computer running WHS:

Both 435 and 443 were added because I read differing opinions on which should be added.

Setting up the Domain Name is an easy task. A wizard guides you through setup and allows you to choose a name for the site. The final web site address will be https://<your_domain_name>.livenode.com.

Bringing up the details tab for the my domain name shows a red X for the web site access. This was due to my needing to manually configure my router rather than having WHS do it.

Remotely accessing the Web site brings up the WHS server web site

Logging into the Web site will bring up the main portal:

Clicking on the Computers panel or the Computers tab will bring up the computers window to allow one to remotely access their PCs from anywhere they have an internet connection.

The Shared Folders tab will display the users and shared folders:

Continue Page 3 - Remote file transfer and video streaming performance

Please e-mail info@terracode.com with any comments or questions.