Is Windows Home Server compelling enough over free NAS OS's?

Has anyone out there run Windows Home Server for a while? I'm building a NAS box and I'm wondering if its features are compelling enough to warrant purchasing rather than the open source alternatives (ie, FreeNAS, OpenFiler)

Also share if you have any issues accessing from non-NTFS sources, Mac, Linux, etc.

Solution 1:

I've been using WHS for over a year now, having first built a WHS server for my parents, before building one for myself.

The first benefit of WHS for me has been the automated backup of PCs joined to the server. Shortly after I built my server, the hard drive in my old Vista x64 box gave up the ghost completely. All it took to get it back was putting in a new hard drive, booting off the WHS recovery disk, supplying credentials to the WHS and then waiting for it to restore over the network.

As mentioned by David Frautnick, there is a growing community of developers creating new add-ins for WHS, for a good listing of the wide range of add-ins and other WHS related topics, have a look at We Got Served

Another benefit I completely forgot about is that any music/photos/videos you put in the shared folders are accessible from DLNA clients, i.e. networked AV receivers - means you don't need a computer in the living room to listen to your music stored on your server.

And another thing, with a WHS server, you can also sign up for a .homeserver.com subdomain via which you can remotely access your home server and remotely control any PCs connected to the WHS server (if they're on of course).

Solution 2:

I have been using WHS for over a year now and I really like this product. I use it as a media server to store all of my movies, music, and pictures. I have several Xbox 360s that I connect to my WHS to view and listen to all of my media content. The built-in backup feature of WHS is also quite handy as I've had to restore files on several computers. I also run my home automation software (HomeSeer) from my WHS. It really has become the hub of my house. Another compelling feature is the plug-in capability for WHS. There is a growing community of developers for WHS plug-ins that do numerous things, such as cataloging your media, performing offsite backups, and a plugin to allow you to view WHS content on your Tivo. I would argue that this product is one of the bright spots in the Microsoft catalog.

Solution 3:

I'm running WHS specifically for the automatic backup. I haven't seen another solution that is smart enough to back up files once that exist on multiple machines. I have a 1TB drive backing up six computers, which is pretty near capacity so I'm not able to do much in the way of shared files, but it's easier to remember that shared documents are on the server instead of trying to remember which shared docs folder on which computer has the file I need.

I've restored computers using WHS twice now. The first time was not fun (had to isolate the workstation and server on their own dedicated network with a spare router), but the second time worked like a charm. In one hour I was back up and running.