Author: Rick Hallihan

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft’s General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is the last post of a 4 part series. (Links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Technology

RH: It is interesting that you opted for a Rich Client vs. Web Interface for the admin panel.  How was this decision made?  Was the connector built using the .Net Framework?  What version?  What language (C#, C++, VB.Net?)  Are there any particular technologies that really shined?

CEK: When building a configuration/admin user experience (Ux) for a network node, one has to consider the following:

– How important is “reach”; that is, how important is it that you have broad multi-platform support?  Windows Home Server is designed to improve the experience in households with multiple PCs. And, especially in v1, our solution is very focused on PCs that are running a modern version of Windows. Therefore the requirement for “reach” does not bubble high up on our list of priorities.

– How important is a “great UI”?  Certainly one can easily build “good” UIs in DHTML, but building “great” UIs is hard. It is even harder to build great UIs in Ajax.  We felt it was super important to create a great UI.

– Designing protocols is hard. Assuming one was to build an admin UI with a rich UI framework (e.g. WinForms/Win32) and run it on the client, what would the protocol back to the server look like? For the Ux to be great it has to be bi-directional and performant. The RDP protocol already exists and is very robust.

– Is 3^rd party extensibility important? If so, how do you build your extensibility model?

These, factors, and many others led us to implement the Windows Home Server Console as a rich Win32 application (using .NET and WinForms) that runs on the server, but is remoted to the client using the RDP protocol. This allows us to provide a very rich Ux without inventing new Ux remoting protocols, while being able to provide a great 3^rd party extensibility story.

RH: Is there any email story other than file-level backup?

CEK: Nope.

Further Discussion:

Charlie and I talked a bit about how Windows Home Server can be extended by developers. They are planning on releasing an API that will let developers plug into “Peter’s” experience (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Peter persona). Basically they want to let people build into the user-friendly interface to solve different problems like home automation, media, etc.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft’s General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is part 3 of a 4 part series. (Links to Part 1, Part 2)

Business / Marketing

RH: Why did you decide to keep it under wraps?  Other than some comments by Bob Muglia and Paul Thurrott, this was extremely stealthy compared to most other Microsoft projects.  How did you pull it off?

CEK: From the very beginning we knew the concept was a “big idea”. We felt it was important that our initial disclosure had “pop” and the only way to achieve that was through keeping it a secret as long as possible and then having a significant announcement event. 

The fact that literally thousands of Microsoft employees have known about “Q” for more than 2 years, and the fact that have an internal Beta program with hundreds of participants is a testament to the integrity and spirit of Microsoft employees. We were very open with them about our plans, and simply (frequently) requested that they honor what we were trying to accomplish and keep the secret. They did.  I’ve been at Microsoft over 16 years and I pretty much love this company. I’m proud of many things we’ve accomplished as a company, but one of the things I am now most proud of is the way our employees dealt with the “secret of Q”. I especially love the fact that this is in stark contrast to how other companies work to keep secrets.

RH: How did Home Server get started?  Was it a top-down strategic push, or was there a lower level champion for the idea?

CEK: Egads. This is a long story that I am working on writing up for a blog post on my blog.  The short story is:  It started from the bottom up back in 1999 when I was running the Consumer Windows home networking team.  Windows Home Server is my fourth attempt to get it done at Microsoft (Quattro means 4 in Italian). Those 8 years of effort created both a groundswell of grass roots interest as well as an understanding of the strategic and visionary importance from the top.

RH: We’ve heard about HP.  I know you probably can’t name specific OEMs, but can you give an estimate as to the number of OEMs that will be on board when this launches? Are we going to see something from the likes of Dell or Gateway?

CEK: We are not prepared to say anything more than we said in our announcement at CES at this time.

RH: Have you thought about developing a certification program for certifying installers to set this up for people who are still intimidated?

CEK: Yes.

Further Discussion:

I tried to get some more details out of Charlie regarding future plans and features. Charlie indicated that while they have a lot of ideas that they would like to address beyond version one of Windows Home Server, they are really trying to wait to see how the market reacts to the product, and get feedback from real customers before they make decisions. Beyond that they are very focused on getting V1 out the door.

I also asked if they might be looking at a different SKU for the SOHO market that would make use of the technology they have developed for Home Server. Charlie explained that the Home Office market is one of the areas they are trying to serve with WHS. Basically if a business is being run out of the home, it can take advantage of all of the features of WHS.

Mary Jo covered some of these same topics today here and here.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft’s General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is part 2 of a 4 part series. (Link to Part 1)

User Management

RH: I’m kinda disappointed that there isn’t a centralized user store in this edition.  You mentioned somewhere (C9 I think) that this was considered early on, but abandoned because of complexity. Is this something that might come along in a future release, or perhaps released out-of-band so that the Sam’s of the world (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Sam persona) can have a mini AD at home?

CEK: Shipping is a feature too. 🙂  There are tons of technical issues which make delivering an Active Directory based solution in the home hard. But the biggest issue is the fact that the Windows client SKUs for the home are limited in this regard.  Remember, that we have a philolsophy that says “If we can’t do it right, we shouldn’t do it in a particular release”.  It is absolutely on our roadmap to climb this mountain in the future.

RH: Is there any support for centralized parental controls, specifically web use monitoring, content filtering, and usage restrictions?

CEK: We believe this is an important scenario and will enable it in the future. Again, there is ample opportunity for 3^rd parties to add value here.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft’s General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. 

RH: Can I password protect files on the Server? Basically, I’m wondering if there are any provisions for maintaining the privacy of data on the Server.  Not all families want to share everything that they have on their PCs with the whole family.

CEK: Yes, each shared folder can have per-user permissions set. By default, Windows Home Server provides shared folders for Photos, Music, Videos, Software, and Public. For each user account you create, Windows Home Server also creates a shared folder for that user. By default only that user has permissions to his/her shared folder.

RH: Can I exclude data from being backed up by the connector (tricky considering the whole-pc backup)?  

CEK: Yes. This is one of the very innovative capabilities we provide, and really enables the scenario to work well.  By default we automatically exclude the hibernation file, pagefile, temp directories, and offline file caches.

RH: What protections are there for theft of data? Can I encrypt sections of the server disks so that if the Home Server is stolen, the data would be protected?

CEK: This is a capability that is on our roadmap for the future.

RH: Are there provisions for Off-site storage of backups?

CEK: We are not discussing the details of this at this point in time, and Beta 2 will not include this capability, but addressing this is very high on our list of priorities.  Regardless of what we do in ourselves in the first release of the product, there is a great opportunity for 3^rd parties to provide value added services in this area.

Way behind on things that I’d like to blog, so I figured I’d hit a few real quick.

Apple iPhone:  Cool.  I’m a big fan of my Motorola Q, but there are many things about the iPhone that made my geek sense go all tingly.  The full touchscreen is awesome.  I share the same concerns as others about the lack of tactile feedback, but I’ve never been able to use my Q’s keyboard without looking, so this probably wouldn’t be too bad.  Other than that, the thing is just pretty.  Now I’m not sure I’d ever want to fork over the money that Apple wants for the iPhone, but the innovation that this is going to drive into the smartphone market will be welcome, considering the most innovation we’ve seen lately is new hinge designs and endless Treo clones.  For those who seem to be down on the iPhone as a mobile web platform, consider yourself outside the target market.  I browse the web on my Q, and want the UX for this mode to get better, not go away.

Apple TV: Maybe cool.  I’m not sure on this one yet.  Really all I want is a generic way to push PC-based content to my TV.  Yes, a really lond S-Video cable would do this, but I like the idea of a simle browsable interface that has a remote control.  Not sure if it’s worth $299, especially when the functionality is a subset of most new game consoles.  If the price came down by a third, and it had a totally open interface, then it might be compelling.

Windows Home Server:  Anyone who is a longtime reader of my blog knows that this is one of my favorite ideas.  I’m not sure how much it will live up to my original hopes, but it’s a good step in the right direction.  My main questions right now are about how much it integrates user and security management, and how good of a job they have done managing data, and if they have included email, im, and other user data that is typically profile dependent (in anything other than a backup scenario).

Now for some really old stuff:

Mac OS X to feature portable user accounts: In my mind, the nirvana for any OS is for all of my user data to be able to be saved to a thumb drive, or to online storage, and for me to be able to take it with me wherever I go.  Music, email, contacts, favorites, RSS subs & read status, wallpaper, program settings.  Everything.  The current mode where my “data” is spread accross multiple directories, registry hives, config file, etc. is unacceptable.  While I’d hate to be on the comittee, it’d almost be worth taking a couple of swipes at developing an XML schema that would encompass the generics of “user data”, with extensions for different OS’s and programs.  Then the challenge of coming up with a Sync implementation would seem more managable.

New Media is going to kick the mainstream media’s ass (or perhaps it already is)

Hotmail Is Not Push Mail – Why?: I think this is coming with the new G2 client.  Can anyone confirm?