5. The Server Story

Microsoft was talking up two different server products at WinHEC; Windows Home Server is based on Windows Server 2003 and it comes out this fall (the plan is to have it "available for the holiday selling season") while the new Windows Server 2008 will release to manufacturing before the end of the year, quality permitting, but won't be generally available until 2008 (as usual, the clue is in the name).

Home Server will rationalize home storage, backing up multiple Windows XP and Vista desktops automatically and aggregating all the drives plugged into it into a single storage pool. According to Chris Grey of the Home Server team it's designed for "people like my parents who don't understand RAID. I say 'Mom, how much hard drive space are you going to need in two years' and she says 'what's a hard drive?".

Later this year, HP plans to deliver the HP MediaSmart Server, powered by Windows Home Server software.

At WinHEC Microsoft announced more hardware partners than just HP, starting with Gateway, La Cie and Medion; Windows Home Server will also be available through the system builder channel so OEMs can assemble systems. Gigabyte has already announced a Home Server motherboard and custom cases should be available soon. Because Home Server is designed to run without a monitor and to be configured from a client PC there are some specific requirements for the case; it has to have Gigabit Ethernet but not a WiFi connection, four USB ports but no video, keyboard, mouse, serial or parallel ports and no optical drive.

The system runs without a screen connected and to administer it you either run the client software (which OEMs can modify to add their own tools and controls) or log in via Terminal Server. Each Home Server includes a free domain name via Windows Live, so you can connect to it over the Web to retrieve files or steam content (using DNLA). The case also has to have room to add extra hard drives and for each drive bay there has to be an LED that tells you when there's a drive in the bay and whether it's healthy.

A sample Windows 2008 Server user interface screen. Click the image for a larger view.

Gates and Bill Laing, general manager of the server division, both reminded hardware manufacturers that the writing is on the wall for 32-bit systems; Gates claimed the transition to 64-bit is going "extremely well" and encouraged driver writers to get working, saying "although it's not a dramatic change to create a 64-bit driver, there's still work to be done. The industry I'd say is about halfway through getting all those pieces in place". Announcing that R2, the successor to Windows Server 2008 would ship in 2009, Laing was more forceful, stating that "Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit operating system that we'll produce". Service Pack 1 for Vista will be 32-bit as well, but nothing more.