Computers & Backup
Within Computers & Backup you can see the status of all PCs that have the WHS Connector software installed.
The online status of each PC is displayed on the summary page, as well as whether an up-to-date backup has been completed. Users can configure how long the monthly, weekly and daily backups are kept for and whether each machine is backed up manually or automatically.
The backup service works very well and once the main backup has been done, the daily updates take around a minute to run. The way that backups are conducted is very smart so that common files within backups are only backed up once to save space e.g. backing up 3 of my PCs only takes up 11GB of storage in total.
User Accounts
The user account tab allows you to create accounts for friends, family and guests. Configuring the accounts to control what folders on the server can be accessed and whether or not the user can access the server remotely, is very easy. If remote access is added to an account then a strong password is required by WHS.
The remote access facility within WHS is excellent. Once remote access is enabled, WHS automatically keeps the server available over the web via a xxxx.homeserver.com domain that the user selects. I was lucky enough to get in early enough to get a fantastic domain which is now tied to my Windows Live ID. Via remote access the server be configured and all the shared folders accessed all via a browser, and all PCs that are connected can also be controlled.
