Microsoft Home Server

Microsoft Home Server is in excellent solution for Small Offices, and now with home computing getting more complex, setting up a home network is a good idea as well. Allowing you to support up to 10 computers, Microsoft Home Server is an easy to set up, easy to run solution for your networking needs.

Why should I network my Computers? Why a Server?

As we've written in a previous article, backing up your data is crucial. Home Server allows you to do backups automatically and it can be configured to back up each networked PC and laptop on your network (including Macs) automatically every night - set it and forget it. Should you lose data or a hard-drive, you can recover all of your data and restore it in a matter of minutes.

Networking also provides other benefits - it allows a place to centrally store your business files (with the option to limit who gets to see what files, of course) for shared access to improve the workflow of your team or share your media like movies or itunes downloads so the media can be watched or listened to on any one of the computers or any other device, on the network no matter where it was originally loaded and stored.

Home Server also allows you to access your Home Server files remotely from the road - a useful tool if you're in a hotel room and you've forgotten a necessary document back at the office.

How to Set up Home Server
Networking doesn't have to be difficult. Home Server can be purchased setup on a new Home Server Computer specifically designed as a Server (HP have some nice ones with some nice features), or you can just buy the software and re-purpose an older unused PC for the task (as long as it has the hard drive capacity or USB connection to add other hard drives) as it doesn't need a lot of processing power or fast graphics as a user PC would benefit from.

Configuration of the software is relatively easy to implement and Fix IT can assist you with this if you need the help.

• Install a Microsoft Home Server on your network.
• Set it up to backup all your computers every night, share your files and remotely access your data and network to access your data away from the office.

PC Backups don't have to be a burden and with the advent of Cloud Computing the impact of a disaster - a stolen laptop, a crashed hard drive, a destroyed machine - is less and less.

Harddrive space is getting cheaper and cheaper so buying an External Hard drive is cheap insurance and will usually come with Backup Software which you can set up to do automatic backups making the whole task even easier. Using an external hard drive rather than installing a separate drive in your PC has another advantage - portability. Another option is to back up to Flashdrives but the cost/Gb doesn't compare to harddrives yet.

Sure you can use CDs or DVDs to back up your data but I've got media that is corrupted and unreadable that I wrote data to only  a year ago and I wouldn't trust my invaluable data to that.

There are other options now available, backing up your data to the Cloud but so far I don't think its ready for primetime. Though internet download speeds are fast, upload speeds are slow so expect Cloud backups to take a while, particularly the first time. The other consideration is backup size, uploading a few Gb will take a long time but what about the potentially 100s of Gb of software and data you have on your PC you want to protect. Lastly security from the cloud provider is a concern and will have to be addressed on a case by case basis - you don't want confidential files accessible by anyone not authorized by you.

External Hard Drives manufacturers are plenty, including those from the manufacturers of the hard drives in your PC.

• I use a Maxtor OneTouch, though mine is a few years old now. They provide different software now, but mine came with Retrospect Backup Software for Simple backups of my entire hard drive.
• Another Home option is the Seagate Go which is a compact size and from another name brand company.

Flash Drives are ubiqutous these days and they are almost giving away 8Gb Versions. The largest size at the moment is 128Gb but simply cost too much buck for the bang at this time.

For online Backups, Mozy is a leading player in this new field. They offer 2Gb backup space for Free so you might like to try out their services. Their unlimited back up service costs $4.95 per computer per month.

If you have more than one PC in the home or small office, you might like to look at a Windows Home Server which we recommend for a small office setup. It can be configured to back up all the computers on your network every night. If you have an unused PC lying around you can install the software on this, or else buy a Home Office server specifically for the task. A Home Server network offers more advantages than just back ups, but this is a priority feature.

Back in the day, I used to travel a lot for business. Emailing important files to my old hotmail address meant I would always cover my bases if I lost my laptop whilst traveling so wouldn't be completely stranded, be that in Los Angeles or London.

With Cloud Computing this backup method has gotten a little more sophisticated. I utilize Google Apps so I have all my mail and attachments with me whereever I log into a Computer. I also have documents (Word, Excel) saved in GoogleDocs and my Calendar is Google Calendar which can Sync to Outlook, Smartphones and other devices. Also I have built address books in Google Contacts allowing me to carry important phone numbers and email addresses with me, no matter what happens.

Though I haven't done it myself you can configure your extra space in gmail (currently each account as > 7Gb) to be an online depository for your documents - a Gdrive if you will.

Its easy to back up small amounts of data via these quick and dirty methods and highly convenience.

• Get an external drive for the biggest bang for the buck and set up automated scheduling.
• Go to the cloud for convenience.