tinkererguy

How are others doing with this Update Rollup released today. Any issues?

 

Posted my initial findings here:

http://tinkertry.com...2012-essentials

 

Protecting user files with File History

Steven Sinofsky Tuesday, July 10, 2012 12:00 PM Comments
http://blogs.msdn.co...le-history.aspx

Here's an excerpt:

Backing up your critical files is something we all know we should do. Even with everything in SkyDrive, it is still something we need to do. With Windows 8, we took a new look at the way backup can work and set out to solve the perennial problem of not just restoring all your files but restoring a previous version of a critical file you have been editing through the course of a day. To achieve this, we're introducing a new feature in Windows 8, File History. Bohdan Raciborski, a program manager on the Storage team authored this post. --Steven
Note: Comments have been off topic. Please maintain community standards and focus on the topic at hand.

I've been trying it with my Windows 8 RTM client, with my Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Essentials server network shares serving as the File History location. And I'm watching over how it performs and behaves. I went with configuring it to use no more than 2% of my available storage space (the lowest % you can choose). Easiest way to find "File History" is Win+W, then type "File History" and then click it in the second column.

Here's some other related articles:

A step back in time with Windows 8's File History
http://arstechnica.c...p?f=2&t=1178151


Protect your data in Windows 8 with the File History tool By Greg Shultz August 9, 2012, 9:12 AM PDT
http://www.techrepub...t;siu-container

Curious about others experiences/thoughts.

Have you noticed that the new client connector automatically creates a VPN connection for you, making remote PCs see just your server (and no other IPs on your network). Good for remote backups (do the initial one on your local network, subsequent daily backups take only about 20% longer over VPN than if the system was actually on your local network). This is good, if you don't have bandwidth caps.

I haven't yet gotten it to auto-connect and auto-reconnect yet, but I haven't tried too hard either, since I already have LogMeIn Hamachi VPN Gateway working fine on a Windows 7 VM, and Windows 8 Hamachi clients (even though Hamachi doesn't "support" Windows 8 yet).

Anyhow, back to the native capabilties,here's how a Windows client connection looks (it's not automatically connected), when you click on the Network icon in the Taskbar Tray area of a client PC that has the connector installed and has been granted VPN remote access from the Dashboard (use super duper passwords!):

If you find a PC has trouble connecting to the Internet after you've installed the connector, here's the likely reason why (it changes your DNS to point to your server, and a service makes that change over and over again). So here's the fix:
http://tinkertry.com/whs2012e-dns-fix

Curious about others thoughts on this?

So, interesting story about this Windows 8 companion app. Perhaps it'll help relieve our disappointment over Launchpad/Dashboard, eh?

Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Essentials available now

http://blogs.technet...ilable-now.aspx


In addition, in the next few weeks we are going to release some additional software that works with our RC release:

• Windows 8 companion app. Customers will be able to access Windows Server 2012 Essentials through a number of different client apps: a Remote Web Access web browser, our Windows Phone 7 app, and the brand new Windows 8 companion app. We are especially excited about the Windows 8 app because it not only makes it easy to access files and folders on the server, but also supports offline access.
• Windows Phone app. We have updated our existing Windows Phone app to work with Windows Server 2012 Essentials. The phone app now allows customers to access files and folders on the server.