With the release of Windows Home Server to manufacturers in July, many new home server products will be coming to market. Home servers are nothing new: Sony put a 1-TB home server on the market in 2004, and enthusiasts and home users have been building customized "home servers" for years.

Windows Home Server, however, represents the first effort Microsoft has made to cater to the home networking crowd with a turn-key server product. The software product features support for services that most home users want, including file storage and sharing among PCs on the home network, and remote access.

It's key feature is its simplicity. The product was in development for 2-1/2 years and Microsoft's target audience are those 60 million home users who also have a broadband or other high speed connection. The data storage and backup capacities are designed to support photos, videos, as well as digital media files, personal files, and financial data.

The user interface is far less complex than one would expect from a standard Microsoft server offering. The server is actually designed for the non-technical user, but promises to satisfy even the most technologically savvy enthusiasts.

Microsoft expects that one significant use of the home server will be backup services for other computers on the home network, recognizing both the importance and the infrequency with which backups are normally conducted, data backup features prominently in the Windows Home Server product. Macintosh and Linux computers can also be backed up on the WHS product, although backups from these platforms are not automated. Microsoft has offered backup solutions for years, however the solution is designed only for a single computer - the computer on which Windows is installed. In the case of WHS, the server can perform restorations for any computer on the network.

Remote access is another primary function of the server. More people want to store and retrieve data remotely, and Windows Home Server makes that possible, via the Internet.

An additional feature of WHS is storage. Microsoft has made the addition of hard disk storage easy, and hot-swappable. Data are mirrored and stored on two physically different disks, which protects data and supports the hot-swappable disk feature. Unlike professional server setups, the data are not striped. Losing one hard disk does not mean that the entire storage scheme is jeopardized.

Windows Home Server has already been released to manufacturing and is expected to be available later in 2007. Eight hardware manufacturers have signed on to make home server hardware. No information on hardware cost has been released.