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To aspiring Windows Home Server (WHS) developers out there, ASoft (makers of AdminiMe and AutoExit) has released their WHS DevKit 2 Version 1.1. This version has more complete documentation including how to create an installer and support for Windows Home Server build 7659.

You can check out the new release here.

One of the slickest things that one can do with a Windows Home Server machine is run it virtualized in a Hyper-V Virtual Machine. Windows Home Server frankly uses very little power itself leaving CPU cycles sitting idle. Of the CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs of companies with more than 10,000 employees I have talked to recently, all of them are looking at application virtualization to keep costs in the data center versus on user desktops. Perhaps I have heard the words “thin client” more times in the past six months from these folks than I have since the 1990′s. For Windows Home Server users, there is a really practical, and important thing that they can do to increase security at home, and that is use a dedicated, disposable, virtual machine for things such as banking (and for the more conservative online shopping). Continue Reading

Installing EON ZFS Storage, an OpenSolaris derivative for testing purposes in an Oracle VirtualBox VM is an easy task. This installation how to assumes that one has already installed VirtualBox, setup an OpenSolaris virtual machine, and booted from the EON ZFS Storage live CD.

The two relevant guides if you have not done so are:

1. How to Install Oracle VirtualBox (for a test ZFS Storage virtualization platform) on Windows 7 x64
2. How to Install EON ZFS Storage in Oracle VirtualBox on Windows 7 64 bit

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As was mentioned in my previous article, I am a big fan of using VirtualBox virtualization on my Windows 7 x64 desktop to sandbox different storage configurations, especially with ZFS capable operating systems like FreeNAS and OpenSolaris. While Microsoft’s Virtual PC works well to virtualize Windows XP instances on the desktop, it lacks the feature set of a more robust virtualization tool like Oracle’s VirtualBox.

In this article, I am going to show how one can install EON ZFS Storage, an OpenSolaris based operating system in VirtualBox to allow one to test ZFS storage solutions out before implementation. For the uninitiated user (to ZFS), I would strongly urge them to experiment with both FreeBSD and OpenSolaris based ZFS implementations before committing to build a full storage solution based on either. Also, I am using my previous article regarding installing VirtualBox on Windows 7 x64 as a basis for this article.

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Although I use Hyper-V virtualization for all of my current Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, and other test environments, Hyper-V still does a poor job at virtualizing other environments like FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, and Linux (to some degree). Testing new Windows instances is very simple with Hyper-V, however for those wanting to test out ZFS prior to building a dedicated network attached storage (NAS) server, VirtualBox is a very strong virtualization platform. Coincidentally, VirtualBox is an Oracle/Sun product, as is OpenSolaris so the compatibility is akin to running Windows based Hyper-V guest operating systems. Perhaps the best feature of VirtualBox is the ability to run multiple operating systems within a 64-bit Windows 7 environment. Core i7′s with 8GB+ of memory can usually handle a few VirtualBox virtual machines making it a great desktop application obviating the need to use a KVM when setting up the test environment. This guide will show how easy it is to get started with virtualization using Oracle’s VirtualBox.

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This video tutorial will show you how to install the Windows Home Server Connector Software without using the CD/DVD. As netbooks, usually without optical drives, flood the market, this is often the easiest way to install the connector software. For those using a motherboard such as the Supermicro X8SIL-F  or Supermicro X8ST3-F, with remote ISO image mounting at the motherboard level through IPMI 2.0.Also, for those that have lost the disk, this is much easier than searching Microsoft’s site for the download as the connector software already sits on your network!

Again, please thank my colleague new to WHS for reminding me about this video.

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Sometimes you may want to uninstall a drive that you have connected to your Windows Home Server. WHS makes this easy and this guide and video tutorial will take you through the necessary steps to remove a drive without losing data. I had a colleague ask me how to do this so I figured that I would update the guide for others seeking help.

Please note: If you are passing disks through to a Hyper-V virtual machine or a RAID controller, this guide only covers the WHS portion, not extracting the drive from the virtual machine or RAID array.

The video:

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As a quick update to the previous AdminiMe 2010 review, ASoft released an update to its popular AdminiMe 2010 Add-in.

It appears as though ASoft does take feedback very seriously as a bug/ quirky feature noted in the initial AdminiMe review, where drives were not displayed in completely sequential order if more than 10 drives are present has been corrected.

AdminiMe Storage Tab displaying disks out of order in old version

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Windows Home Server v1 (WHS) was limited to using 2TB Master Boot Record (MBR) partitions in its storage pool, but the public preview of Windows Home Server V2 codename VAIL is not. This guide will show one how to use GPT Raid volumes passed through Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V into WHS V2 Codename VAIL. (That sounded way more complex than it actually is).

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