Trigger Finger

Following up on the previous Windows Home Server article where I analysed the state of WHS to date, this shorter piece focuses on one of the key features that I am sure many are eager to use, remote access.

By remote access I don’t mean Remote Desktop (though of course you can use it), I mean remotely accessing your files (and we are promised the desktops of any of your home PC’s) (see addendum at bottom of this article for remote desktop over the web) via a web browser. What follows is a brief rundown of what the system looks like so far.

First thing to mention is that this feature took ZERO configuration. This is out of the box web enabled server browsing from any browser on any PC on the web… nifty!

First you bring up your browser and type in https://www.whateverdomainorip.com/remote which will bring you to a simple login page

Once you enter you login name and password you arrive at the welcome screen. Many of the promised features have not been implemented yet, so the options are simple…. file browse or logoff!

By choosing the file browser you now have access (at what level is of course determined by your account permissions in WHS) to all the shares of the server.

Selecting for example music (wanting some decent stuff to listen to at work perhaps) you can then browse the directory structure, download files, upload files, delete them, create new folders …. just about anything you want!

When you find something to download you can either download the whole folder nicely zipped up by WHS for you…

Or select multiple individual files which will also be nicely zipped up for you.

Likewise you can upload either files or diretories to your server (handy way to send some work home perhaps?).

That’s it. They say the simple things are best and in this case things are very simple, but also at this stage working flawlessly. The pages are a bit slow to load until they get cached, but otherwise the only limit is your connection at home. I’m looking forward to some of the more advanced features and I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Addendum  

Remote desktops over the web are in beta 2, I didn’t notice because I always use firefox and this feature only displays when using Internet Explorer! So here is a brief rundown of what that looks like.

When using IE, on the welcome screen you will see a ‘Computers’ tab where you can see all the computers that you can connect to.

There are a few caveats, IE is one The usual remote desktop necessities such as a password on the account and appropriate ports forwarded, and of course the user must be enabled for remote desktops in the WHS user admin (a simple tick-box). WHS is unable to connect to sleeping PC’s or of course those that are switched off.

On selecting a computer a couple of warnings pop up about the full screen mode and the local clipboard, but then you are taken straight to a standard (Vista in this case) logon screen which I couldn’t get a screen-grab of. Enter the local user-name/password and voila…. control your home PC’s from anywhere!

Related posts:

1. When Home Servers Go Tits-up!