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PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:00 pm 
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The only 2011 Add-In I have installed is for my CloudBerry backup. This will not do. :x

Where's a great AV add-in? :?
I want a proper Squeezebox Server add-in. (Filled out a survey they sent me telling them so.) :lol:
These Drive-Extender add-ins seem to be the only ones in development. :-k

/rant :crazy:

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:08 pm 
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With no OEM hardware available I expect there is little motivation to develop Add-Ins for WHS 2011, at least that's been my position. I've had a bunch of requests for Remote Notification but am not convinced the market is big enough to warrant the effort.

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:56 pm 
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SBS, Alex...SBS users would love Remote Notification!

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:52 pm 
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Some would, I've been contacted by some SBS MVPs and IT service providers that indicate they miss the reporting features from SBS, but I'm not convinced they are willing to make a purchase to get it.

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:48 pm 
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yakuza wrote:
Some would, I've been contacted by some SBS MVPs and IT service providers that indicate they miss the reporting features from SBS, but I'm not convinced they are willing to make a purchase to get it.

If you build it, they will come. Now that I've got a WHS 2011 box, I'd love to see Remote Notification! Besides, if I'm going to build a Home Server SMART 2011 version, I need Remote Notification...otherwise I'd have to code in my own notification system.

For the WHS v1 version my documentation tells them if they want remote notification in HSS they need to come see you.

You've got RN priced right, so I can't imagine SBS users wouldn't pony up the dough to buy it. It's not like you're asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars. I vote in favor of RN 2011!

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 5:43 pm 
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msawyer91 wrote:
yakuza wrote:
Some would, I've been contacted by some SBS MVPs and IT service providers that indicate they miss the reporting features from SBS, but I'm not convinced they are willing to make a purchase to get it.

If you build it, they will come. Now that I've got a WHS 2011 box, I'd love to see Remote Notification! Besides, if I'm going to build a Home Server SMART 2011 version, I need Remote Notification...otherwise I'd have to code in my own notification system.

For the WHS v1 version my documentation tells them if they want remote notification in HSS they need to come see you.

You've got RN priced right, so I can't imagine SBS users wouldn't pony up the dough to buy it. It's not like you're asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars. I vote in favor of RN 2011!


OK Alex that is two licenses pre-sold! RN 4 SBS!

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:47 pm 
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I'm in the very preliminary stages of building Home Server SMART for WHS 2011, although it will likely wind up renamed since it will theoretically work for SBS as well. Although SBS systems are likely to have a lot more hardware RAID, which HSS does not support.

A big stumbling block is a radically revamped object model (API) for WHS 2011.

The push for WHS 2011 is away from traditional "Windows forms" programming in .NET, which relies pretty heavily on GDI. This is done in favor of WPF, the Windows Presentation Foundation, a XAML based API. Long story short, I really need to get my learn on just to learn WPF, and then I can delve into the the WSS (Windows Server Solutions) SDK, a radically over-engineered API.

The WHS v1 API was very straightforward and fairly small; the WSS SDK is monstrous and my first impressions say it is extremely complex (and complicated).

I've got my work cut out for me. :(

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 7:35 pm 
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msawyer91 wrote:
I'm in the very preliminary stages of building Home Server SMART for WHS 2011, although it will likely wind up renamed since it will theoretically work for SBS as well. Although SBS systems are likely to have a lot more hardware RAID, which HSS does not support.

A big stumbling block is a radically revamped object model (API) for WHS 2011.

The push for WHS 2011 is away from traditional "Windows forms" programming in .NET, which relies pretty heavily on GDI. This is done in favor of WPF, the Windows Presentation Foundation, a XAML based API. Long story short, I really need to get my learn on just to learn WPF, and then I can delve into the the WSS (Windows Server Solutions) SDK, a radically over-engineered API.

The WHS v1 API was very straightforward and fairly small; the WSS SDK is monstrous and my first impressions say it is extremely complex (and complicated).

I've got my work cut out for me. :(
So how was the learning curve? I've just installed WHS 2011 and will be looking into porting my Add-In to it.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 11:17 pm 
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Well, I decided not to worry about WPF. WHS 2011 allows developers the choice of using WPF or Windows Forms. Developing against WHS v1 is something I think could be compared to a 4 credit hour course at a community college, whereas WPF on WHS 2011 is more along the lines of an advanced Ph.D. program at Harvard.

Instead I plucked out the components from WHS v1 that I liked (see this post: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=11518), and use them in my add-in now. Another application I built was Taryn BitLocker Manager, and since WHS 2011 supports BitLocker Drive Encryption, I decided to integrate TBM into Home Server SMART 2011. My testing was going along just fine until I ran into a little snag...well, a big snag, actually. Also, I haven't figured out WHS 2011's alert object model yet, so I cannot set, edit or clear server alerts (but the add-in supports emailing of alerts).

I was testing StableBit DrivePool, and noticed it was periodically logging errors about a disk missing. Neither my add-in nor HD Sentinel reported any problems on any disk, so I tended to ignore the problem. When I uninstalled SBDP in favor of giving Drive Bender a test drive, the problem became much more readily apparent, and DB presented me some new issues.

The BitLocker issue of the "missing" disk has to do with BitLocker's "automatic unlocking" feature, which unlocks the drives at boot time. Fixed disks (IDE/PATA/SATA/SCSI) are auto-unlocked, but USB/FireWire are not, until the user who configured auto unlock logs on. And so both SBDP and Drive Bender reported my 3 TB USB disk as "missing" because it didn't auto-unlock when the pool started. This was a big setback for me, since I wanted to use my add-in as a soapbox to promote Security (it's everyone's responsibility) through use of BitLocker, but it seemed BitLocker doesn't play nicely with pooling software.

Also, due to the way DB creates the pool, it creates a bunch of virtual drives and "hides" the physical drives (removes their letters and reassigns them to virtual drives) -- Home Server SMART threw a bunch of unhandled exceptions and required extensive analysis on how to properly handle these cases. And of course my BitLocker code has a hard time too, mainly because I use Win32_DiskDrive for a lot of the work, which doesn't mesh well with DB changing my BitLocker-encrypted volumes into letterless volumes, forcing me to use Win32_Volume instead.

I set about writing a "helper service" that would make either Drive Bender or SBDP dependent on the helper, and the helper service unlocks USB/FireWire volumes at boot time. Since the pool wouldn't start until after the helper service, this solved the "missing" disk problem. I've since shared my code with the folks from Drive Bender and SBDP, both of whom have expressed thanks and interest in incorporating that type of functionality into their native code so their applications will properly handle BitLocker, rather than relying on my "helper" to do it.

Unfortunately this put me at least 3, maybe 4, weeks behind where I'd like to be now. :( :( :(

On the other hand, if it helps make Drive Bender and SBDP better products, then I've done a good deed. :) And I wound up scoring a free license key from the kind folks at Drive Bender. :beerme:

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