What do you want your Server do?
Partially as a learning exercise, and partially because I’m a money grubbing greedy bastard, I’m trying to come up with a clever extension to Microsoft Windows Home Server.
Unfortunately, I already had pretty much everything I needed on the base installation; I had originally installed it purely to have a system I could hook up my parallel printer to. It already supports remote desktop to systems within your local network, as well as remote access to files on the server via secured login. Heck, it even provides dynamic DNS service, complete with chained certificates for secured access. Nice, huh?
I figure most people out there do NOT have WHS installed. Probably have no need for it. So, why don’t you let me know what would make you want a Windows Home Server? If you have one, what feature do you wish it had? If you could have your own personal secured web server, what do you really wish you could do on it?
I’m much less familiar with WHS than I could be. I don’t actually know what it does that a regular server doesn’t. Something tells me I should learn that.
I’ve been considering getting a home server of some variety, though, because my wife and I both have laptops that are relatively resource-poor (mine’s old, and hers was inexpensive). It’d be nice to have a place to hook up the printer, store photos/media, and the like. Right now, my laptop is doing the job okay–the only problem is that its FireWire external disk likes to disconnect itself at random. 🙂
Given that I installed WHS on a desktop solely because I didn’t have a parallel port on any of my “real” computers, I can assure you that there’s no shame in using a WHS as a print server. 🙂
It does a good job as a file server as well, especially as anything on it can be securely accessed from the web. It’s also reportedly a great way to complete full backups of any system — I don’t have the storage on the old box I repurposed to make use of that feature.
WHS is a Windows Server 2003 R2 release, minus Active Directory and a few other features. It even sports IIS! No Exchange, but… I don’t really want that at home.
Oh, and it comes with a built-in Dynamic DNS system. Pretty cool, eh?
See why I feel lacking in ideas? All the stuff I needed was already done! Maybe partial backups?