Windows Home Server in a Small Business Environment

Date: 2010.08.31 | Category: Home Networking, Windows Servers | Response: 0

With our focus on small business IT support, many of our clients don’t use a server. Most of them run their business from a few computers on a small network. Sometimes your business just isn’t big enough to justify the expense of installing Windows Small Business server.

This approach, besides being a headache for your IT guy also put your company’s data at risk. While a group of PCs configured in a peer-to-peer environment will get the basics done they don’t provide much security or file management. This results in usability issues, reliability issues and sometimes even data loss.

Why don’t all businesses use them? Traditionally servers are expensive and often require someone with technical skills greater than your typical small business owner to setup and maintain.

Recently, Microsoft introduced Windows Home Server (WHS). This server was designed to make it very easy for users to set up and maintain. WHS consolidates all of the complex administration utilities used on a typical server — such as the capability to manage disks and create users — into a single, simplified interface. Numerous wizards walk you through most of the tasks you might need to perform, such as backing up your data, creating and sharing folders for storing and streaming your digital content, and securing your data through restricted user accounts. Windows Home Server  provides small and home businesses with many of the same features found in high-end network servers, but at about a quarter of the cost. And since it was designed for people without extensive technical knowledge, it’s very easy to setup, administer and maintain.

I am beginning to suggest this as an entry level server for home and small office users. Here are the most important features that apply to small business owners.

Scheduled Image Backups

As a small business IT consultant one of my biggest challenges is backups. A failed hard drive or accidentally deleted file can be disastrous. With WHS, this is no longer a problem. After you have installed the Windows Home Server Connector on each PC, You are one wizard away from creating an automated backup schedule. Just make sure that your computer is switched on and connected to your network when the backup time arrives, and your backups will be performed automatically.

You can use these backups to restore individual files, folders and even for entire systems. WHS performs an image-based backup of your PC, just like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage would. So in the event of a hard drive failure or unrecoverable Windows error, instead of having to reinstall Windows and all your applications and devices, all you need do is start the PC using the Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore CD and select the backup image you’d like to restore.

Remote Access

With minimal setup and a supported copy of Windows you can remotely connect to your office PC using the WHS Remote Desktop feature. This will allow you to work on your computer as if you were sitting directly in front of it. This lets you access e-mail, files, applications and printers from just about anywhere with an internet connection.

Centralized Storage and Management

With Windows Home Server you can add and remove users, grant them specific privileges and configure individual user accounts to access only the shared folders that they need access to.

One of the most flexible and economical features about WHS is the way it handles storage. Using a technology known as Drive Extender, WHS makes it incredibly easy to increase your storage capacity. Simply plug in additional drives, whether they are internal or external, and the server will automatically allocate the new space. You don’t need to partition or format the drive. They are all seen as one large storage space, regardless of whether you’re using one drive or six drives. The same is true if you want to remove a hard drive from the system. WHS handles everything automatically — including moving any data that may be stored on that drive to another drive. To help protect your data, you can duplicate folders across multiple drives. This way if one of your servers hard drives fail, your data will still be safe and accessible.

This is not a solution for everyone Windows Home Server supports a maximum of 10 users. I look at it as an easy way to start transitioning your systems to a server based platform at a fraction of the cost of implementing a full blown server. If you have more than 10 systems and no server you really need Microsoft Small Business Server.

Windows Home Server is available from several vendors including IBM, Acer and Hewlett Packard.  They are small, use very little power, don’t require a keyboard, monitor or mouse and are very quiet and unobtrusive. The only thing the server requires is power, good ventilation and an Ethernet connection.

If you are interested in an entry level server and have only a handful of users, contact us about adding a Windows Home Server to your network. It could be one of the best business investments you make.

How to Clear Your Browser Cache

Date: 2010.08.24 | Category: Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8, Uncategorized | Response: 0

What is our favorite antivirus program?

Date: 2010.08.24 | Category: Computer Security, Malware, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Response: 0

We get asked this question all the time and the answer is Microsoft Security Essentials. Why do we like it? First of all it’s easy, lightweight, integrates into windows update and it’s free. While Microsoft has had it’s ups and downs in producing quality anti virus software, this one changes the game. The main reason that we recommend it is that it works. Anti-malware testing group AV-Comparatives.org not only gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal, but now they’ve given it their best ranking in their performance test as well.

AV-Comparatives.org ran a series of tests like downloading, extracting, copying, and encoding files, installing and launching applications, and they also ran through an automated testing suite as well. When it was all over, Microsoft Security Essentials was one of only three products that both blocks and removes malware well, but it’s also very light on system resources.

Out of all the products tested, Microsoft Security Essentials was the best-performing free antivirus solution, and one of only two that received “very fast” on each of the real-world tests, earning it their top award: an “advanced+” ranking.

I have been recommending this application to friends, family and clients for some time now and was very pleased to see MSE ranked alongside the top paid apps in both malware removal and performance.

Here is the article from PC Mag
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/12/av-comparatives_rates_anti-mal.php

Here is the report from AV-Comparatives
http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/performance-tests

Here is where you can download Microsoft Security Essentials
https://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/