gateway: Allows remote access to any connected PC on the network, including the server itself, over the Internet. Media streaming: Can stream media to an Xbox 360 or other devices supporting Windows Media Connect. Selective data redundancy: Guards against a single drive failure by duplicating selected data across multiple drives. Expandable storage: Provides a unified single and easily expandable storage space, removing the need for drive letters. Extensibility through add-ins: Add-ins allow third-party developers to extend the features and functionality of the server. Add-Ins can be developed using the Windows Home Server SDK, to provide additional services to the client computers or work with the data already on the server. Add-ins can also be ASP.NET applications, hosted in IIS 6 running on WHS. Server backup: Backs up files which are stored within shared folders on the server to an external hard drive. Technology Home Server Console The configuration interface was designed to be user-friendly enough that it could be set up without prior knowledge of server administration. The configuration interface, called the Home Server Console, was delivered as a Remote Desktop Protocol application to remote PCs while the application ran on the server itself, the GUI was rendered on the remote system. The Home Server Console client application could be accessed from any Windows PC. The server itself required no video card or peripherals; it was designed to require only an Ethernet card and at least one Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer. Drive Extender Windows Home Server Drive Extender was a file-based replication system that provided three key capabilities: Multi-disk redundancy so that if any given disk failed, data was not lost Arbitrary storage expansion by supporting any type of hard disk drive (e.g. Serial ATA, USB, FireWire) in any mixture and capacity, similar in concept to JBOD A single folder namespace (no drive letters) With Drive Extender, users could add larger capacity hard disk drives and then could offline lesser capacity drives to upgrade capacity online. For example, if the user was reaching capacity of the share with five terabytes of the six-terabyte capacity used with six one-terabyte drives then the user could offline one of the one-terabyte drives and physically replace it with a two-terabyte drive. The WHS automatically equalizes the redistribution of used space across all available drives on a regular basis. The offline process would compress the used data across the minimum amount