Home Server

For the past few weeks, since its launch, I’ve been contemplating the purchase of a Microsoft Windows Home Server. The reason I’m on the verge of purchasing a Home Server is due to my laptop’s hard disk breaking down on me about five months ago and not having a backup (the ultimate sin for an IT engineer who’s forever preaching the art of backup!).

The Home Server is a “network attached storage” like device which comes with Windows Server software and a client that you install onto your other devices, such as your laptop and PC. The Home Server then schedules backup jobs to take copies of your data without user intervention. Absolutely perfect for someone who doesn’t schedule backups. That’s not where the benefits end however; Home Server also provides a secure method to connect into the server and your files from anywhere in world (very similar to SkyDrive, only without the limitations).

The HP HomeServer I’ve been considering allows for up to three hard disks to be inserted, so the data can be striped across multiple drives for resilience. It also has a pair of USB ports to add in additional storage devices such as storage or even a printer, the software even lets you share the printer across the network from the Home Server apparently! The power consumption of these Home Server solutions is low power, which is something else that worried me, having to leave ‘server’ running all day.

All sounds good so far right? Yeah, but what Home Server doesn’t do, which I was rather hoping for, was act as a Media Centre too (perhaps features that can be added to the next version?), even if I would need slightly increased hardware. Will I buy a Home Server? I would, but maybe not just yet.