Datasheet

Streaming media

Windows Home Server doesn’t provide the media streaming capabilities that

you find in Windows Media Center Edition, or Windows Vista Home Premium

or Ultimate. However, if you treat your server nicely and discover how to say

“please” (see Part III), it will hold your media collection, and feed the collec-

tion to a Media Center or Home Premium PC. If you have an Xbox 360, you

can connect it to your Media Center or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate) PC,

and that PC, in turn, can pull the media off the server.

How Do You Control Windows

Home Server?

Windows Home Server was designed from the ground up to run on a “head-

less” computer. That means, quite simply, that a fully functional WHS server

can survive with a LAN cable, a power cord, and absolutely nothing else

sticking out of the machine.

Many WHS servers don’t have a CD drive. Some don’t even have a rudimentary

video card.

If you buy Windows Home Server in a shrink-wrapped package, you’ll need

to connect a CD drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor to the server box long

enough to get the WHS software loaded. (See Chapter 2 for details.) But once

WHS comes up for air the first time, you can unplug all that accoutrement, and

strip the machine down to its LAN cable, power cord, and nothing else. WHS

won’t mind a bit.

Welcome to the Console

You control Windows Home Server through a program that doesn’t run on the

WHS server

. Windows Home Server Console runs on one of the computers on

your network. In fact, you can run the Console from

any Windows XP or

Windows Vista computer on your network.

As soon as you have your Windows Home Server set up and plugged into

the network, the Console setup goes something like this:

Part I: Getting Windows Home Server to Serve

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