In just a few days, Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2012 after over 11 years on the market. Ironically, the launch of the server OS in 2012 was also the official end for another server product from Microsoft that had first gone on sale on October 10, 2007, nearly 16 years ago. It was called Windows Home Server, and it was an effort to expand Microsoft’s home operating systems beyond just PCs.
Windows Home Server was, in my opinion, a genius product that didn’t have an audience. The idea of a very simple to set up and effectively forgettable PC with lots of storage somewhere down in the basement or the attic where the entire family backs up their important data and stores less important data is simply an excellent idea – but an idea that nobody wants. It’s boring, people just opt for cloud storage instead, and it’s yet another bag of money you have to spend on technology.
I still like the idea, though. Even in the era of cloud storage, I would love to be able to buy a relatively simple PC with tons of storage that I can store my files and back-ups on. However, you can take it a step further – if friends and family you trust also have such a device, you can build a private network of “cloud” storage devices to duplicate each other’s back-ups for improved resilience and on-the-go accessibility. Everything would have to be encrypted, of course, but in such a way people could build their own little private clouds – away from the prying eyes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others.
Now, all the technologies exist to build something like that, but it would require quite a bit of technical knowledge and active maintenance, and is anything but easy. If plug-and-play boxes existed that did this – I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a few and set them up at our home and those of my parents and parents-in-law.
The problem with Windows Home Server is that it requires a PC that’s powered on 24/7 to be useful, which can’t be good for a household’s electricity usage, and it was released in a time people started caring about such things (both financially and for “carbon footprint” reasons).
You’d be much better off with a NAS. And the kind of person who wants a full PC running 24/7 as a home server is probably running some kind of Linux on it.
Wouldn’t that be solved with wake on LAN?
In theory yes, in practice I’m not so sure since special driver support is needed.
Also, the app using the service needs to be able to send the magic packet and even then you have to wait for the server to wake up, killing much of the utility of a home server.
I believe most NICs that support WOL can be set to wake on any packet directed to the mac address (magic packets arent the only option). But IIRC users need to set static arp on the router, otherwise nothing is going to know how to connect to the IP address once the ARP entry times out. In theory a purpose built nic could respond to ARP requests itself while the computer is off, but I am not aware of any that have this feature.
An x86 pc is probably the wrong choice here. iIt should be an ARM SBC with low idle power and ideally flawless sleep/wakeup. Alas ARM SBCs often require vendor support and aren’t in mainline, which is a whole other problem.
Windows Home Server was available only for x86 and x8-64, which essentially means a full PC, so a NAS (likely running on some kind of low-power ARM SoC) is a much more power-efficient choice.
Agreed, I would not consider windows home server anyway., but in terms of the article I’m not sure what would be the best hardware to run it…?
Windows Home Server was an awesome product. it did a shit ton of stuff in addition to being a backup. People loved it and wanted it. Like for instance it was a media server. It was killed by Microsoft.
WHS also provided remote file access and remote desktop access. That was pretty cool.