Living with Windows Home Server, Day 0.

Soon after I posted this mini-review of my Mirra home backup solution, Charlie Kindel sent me mail describing a new product he was working on code named "Q".

I was darned impressed with the idea, and was briefly tempted to jump ship from the audio team and help out (obviously I didn't). 

Fast forward to the beginning of January this year.  Charlie stopped by my office on his way to the lead PM in my group.  We chatted for about 15 minutes about what Q was, and I got really excited.

Charlie took pity on me and offered me a chance to beta test the WHS software when it finally hit beta.

Well, yesterday WHS Beta 2 went live and today a nifty new box showed up in my office (thanks Charlie!).

Being the geek that I am, I immediately ran home and set it up, and I've got to say, the WHS guys really outdid themselves.

Installation was totally smooth, one UAC elevation and it was done.  I've currently installed the client on 2 of the 6 machines we own, and it's worked very well. 

The WHS management console is simple to use, scheduling a manual backup was trivial.  One limitation I noticed is that you can't backup up multiple machines at the same time, that may be an issue if you have a large number of machines in your house (I've not hit it yet, so I can't say).

One thing that surprised me was the speed of the backup process.  It started slowly, analyzing the hard disk, but once it started, it SCREAMED (it maximized the 100Mbs ethernet link I have between the two machines).  That, almost more than anything else impressed the heck out of me.

Next step: Loading up my music and photos onto the server.

If my first impression holds, it's going to be hard to give this one back once the beta's done :).