Tuesday, October 23, 2012
change you default search engine in IE
To change you default search engine in IE just go to http://iegallery.com
Monday, October 22, 2012
How to Remove Amazon Ads from Ubuntu 12.10
Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" is out, and while it has a few cool features, it also has one very annoying addition: the Dash now includes useless Amazon results in your searches. Here's how to disable them.
We mentioned one way to turn the ads off in Ubuntu's settings, but unfortunately that requires turning off web search entirely—meaning you can't search Google Docs, Flickr, and other services from the Dash. Instead of doing that, reader KatsumeBlisk says you can remove just the Amazon portion with a simple command.
Open a Terminal and run:
sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
Type in your password when prompted, and when it's finished, log out. When you log back in, you should find that the Amazon ads no longer show up, but you can still search other web services right from the Dash.
(Source)
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Turn Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch into a Webcam for Your Computer
iOS, OS X, and Windows: Whether your webcam is broken or you just don't have one, you can still video chat with the aid of your iDevice. A clever app called iWebcam repurposes your mobile's camera for the job.
Getting iWebcam set up is pretty straightforward. Just follow these steps:
- Download the app from the iTunes App Store. (It'll cost you $5.)
- Visit the iWebcam site and download/install the drivers for your operating system (Windows or OS X).
- Launch the iWebcam app on your iDevice and open up a webcam-enabled program on your computer (e.g. Skype).
- Select your iDevice as the webcam source and you're good to go!
Want to do this on Android? Check out IP Webcam.
(Source)
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Migrate to Essentials
Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Migrate to Essentials
Having transitioned from Windows Home Server 2011 to Windows Server 2012
Essentials RC, and then from that to the final version of Essentials
2012, I thought I’d provide a few notes about my experience doing so.
Note that this is not a complete guide to migrating to Windows Server 2012 Essentials. These are instead some notes and observations, based on my own experiences, about the process of moving from previous home office/small business server—in my case, Windows Home Server 2011, to Essentials.
Up front, however, a few warnings.
These products, WHS 2011 and Essentials 2012, and also related releases like WHS v1, and Small Business Server Essentials 2011, were designed primarily as first server/single server solutions. They’re basically plug and play appliances that exist outside of the normal Windows Server/Windows client way of doing things, and while that brings with it many ramifications, the big one for purposes of this article regards upgrading: There isn’t any traditional upgrade path from previous servers (WHS/SBSE 2011) to Essentials 2012.
Second, remember that there may be no huge reason to move to Essentials from whatever home/small business server you’re currently using. If the server is sitting there working, doing PC backups, and serving up your stuff, why mess with something good?
Finally, this you’re data we’re talking about here. If you’re really using one of these products as the center of your own environment, and storing your important personal and/or professional data on it, you very specifically want to be careful about backing up that data first. Just because something worked for me, as noted below, doesn’t mean you should do it without backing up first. Be careful.
OK, here’s what I’ve done.
WHS 2011 worked just fine and the only reason I’m moving forward to Essentials 2012 now is that I need to keep up on the latest technologies. The key word in that sentence, however, is “now”, in that I could have simply kept using WHS 2011. But Essentials 2012 is absolutely a no compromises Windows Server versions, as noted in my recent review of the product, with lots of very interesting functionality that’s not present in WHS. (That said, I did briefly flirt with using Windows 8 as a replacement for Windows Home Server: See Replace Windows Home Server ... With Windows 8? for the rundown on that choice.)
If you’ve been following along with my evolving use of various servers, you may recall that my WHS 2011 was a repurposed PC tower that had several terabytes of internal storage attached to it. I was using a single 3 TB USB 3.0-based external hard drive with Server Backup for onsite data replication (everything but videos) and Crashplan for offsite backup of everything.
Because I wanted to maintain the WHS 2011 install alongside a test Essentials 2012 server running first the Beta and then the Release Candidate (RC) version of that latter system, I installed Essentials on an excellent and highly recommended HP MicroServer that I had upgraded over time with 8 GB of RAM (up from 2 GB). Like the original HP home servers, this neat little box features four SATA drive bays (non-hot-swappable, not that such a thing matters in a home office/SMB scenario) and even a couple of expansion ports.
I don’t recall the exact process, but over a period of time I experimented with Windows Server 2012 Beta/RC and Storage Spaces on this box, using two 3 TB hard disks, and trying to figure out whether there was any point in using ReFS over NTFS. After not seeing a real world difference on this box, I decided on the known—NTFS—and when Essentials Beta hit, that became the test box. By the time the RC arrived, I had decked out the server with a third 3 TB drive, in addition to the other two and the 250 GB boot disk.
For the Beta version of Essentials 2012, I simply wanted to test the server and make sure it worked as expected, copying over some subset of the data on my WHS 2011 server. This was a simple and manual network copy, something that ran once overnight, and it let me test client and external connectivity.
By the time the RC version of Essentials 2012 arrived, I figured I’d be able to do a simple migration to the RTM version later, so I started the process of moving completely to Essentials. This involved a wipe and reload of the OS (using the RC version this time), and configuring the storage exactly how I wanted it. And that’s a story in its own right.
Like its predecessors, Essentials 2012 requires a boot disk that’s at least 160 GB in size. By default, the server creates a set series of server folders, which are essentially (ahem) shares that clients can access on the local network. By default, there are five—Client Computer Backups, Company, File History Backups, Folder Redirection and Users—and if you enable media sharing, you’ll see four others: Music, Pictures, Recorded TV and Videos. So this boot disk will include the whole shebang: The hidden system reserved partition plus the C: drive with Windows and all those server folders.
Essentials doesn’t like a single disk configuration and the Best Practices Analyzer will quickly start bothering you via Alert Viewer that “one or more server folders are located on the system hard drive.”
Of course, I didn’t need BPA to tell me that a single disk configuration is not just bad but unacceptable. And my plan all along was to use that 9 TB of space, spread out over three 3 TB disks, as efficiently as possible. That way, my data would be separated from the OS, physically. And my most important data would be replicated on two different physical hard drives. Both of these changes, combined with offsite cloud backup, give me the peace of mind I need.
And while there are different ways to handle this, I created a storage pool and storage space using two of those disks in a mirrored configuration. That is, while the two disks combined provide about 6 TB of space, the storage space actually looks like 3 TB of space to the system. It’s just that everything in there is duplicated across both drives. This space, which I inventively call “Storage Space” and assigned to drive letter S:, contains all of the server folders except for Videos. The third 3 TB drive, which is not replicated, was assigned drive letter V: (go figure) and is used solely for videos.
Once these configuration changes were made, I added a single 3 TB external hard drive, as with the WHS box, for use with Server Backup. The new disk layout resembles the following:
From here, it was a simple matter of copying over the data from the WHS 2011-based server—which took quite a while, as I used a combination of network file copy and a portable hard disk to make it happen—and setting up Server Backup to use the external drive.
Once the file copy was done and I checked the file counts and sizes to ensure I’d copied everything successfully, I switched over to the new server, MICRO, while leaving the old one, VAIL, online for the time being. My use of WHS and now Essentials 2012 may differ a bit from yours, but for me it’s mostly a data store, and then for data that I’m not accessing regularly anymore. This includes both work-based data and personal photos, home videos, and other files dating back over 15 years. For my daily workflow, I use SkyDrive to replicate files between PCs and as articles or article series are completed or retired, they get moved up to the server. So it was a simple matter to start using MICRO rather than VAIL.
Between Essentials 2012 RC and RTM, two things changed. First, I started backing up MICRO to Crashplan as I had been doing with VAIL. And after ensuring that MICRO worked as expected and could be accessed when I was away (via LogMeIn Hamachi in my case, though others can of course use the product’s built-in remote access functionality) from home, I eventually just switched off VAIL, but left it set up just in case. Worse case, if MICRO failed, I’d be able to restart VAIL and have lost very little if any data.
And then Microsoft RTM’d Essentials 2012.
(Actually, it was the final version of the software with an evaluation product key. So I figured I could eventually use the Windows Activation software to apply a full RTM product key and remove the evaluation timeout. This assumption proved correct.)
How do you make such a migration?
Pretty easily, as it turns out. Not as easily as I had bet, but easily enough.
Since I had offloaded all my important data to S: (a storage space) and my videos to V: (a single hard disk), I knew I’d be able to simply wipe out the primary disk, install the RTM version of Essentials 2012, and then re-configure the server folders to the appropriate locations.
I knew too, from previous experience, that storage spaces are incredibly malleable. You can remove one disk or all of the disks from a space, plug it (or them) into another Windows 8 PC or Windows Server 2012 server, and the contents will be immediately and seamlessly available. Even better, the storage space survives the move intact. This meant that the S: drive I created, with all its data, would simply be there after installing the RTM version of Essentials 2012. I’d just have to connect everything up again through the Dashboard.
This worked almost exactly as expected. There was just one wrinkle.
The install went fine, and as with previous installs, Essentials 2012 had all of the server folders configured on the C: drive. So the first order of business was getting S: and V: online and moving the appropriate server folders to the appropriate drives. The next stop was Disk Management (WINKEY + X, Disk Management), where I changed the drive letters on the storage space and videos drive to be S: and V:, respectively. The next step was to use the Dashboard’s Storage/Server Folders interface to manually move each server folder to the right location.
I figured this would be as simple as selecting the folder (say, Users), choosing the right location in the wizard (S:) and then clicking OK. And it was, except for that one wrinkle. Detecting that a folder of the same name already existed on the destination drive, the Move a Folder wizard inexplicably wouldn’t allow me to merge the contents of the two folders (the source, which was empty, and the destination, which had all my data). So I had to go through a dumb but simple enough process where I renamed the folders on the storage space and videos folders (to Users2, Videos2, and so on), moved each server folder location from the Dashboard, moved the contents between the old locations (Users2, etc.) to the new locations (Users, etc.) and then deleted the old locations. Yes, really.
At least it was simple. And sure enough, once it was done, everything was up and running as before. Even Crashplan had a nice surprise for me: Reinstalling the software, it noted a feature by which you can associate a new backup with a previous one. So it examined the current backup set (basically C: and S:), compared it to what was previously backed up, and just started backing up the new stuff. Nice!
Ideally, you’ll be using a different server, and while I understand that’s not always possible you will want, at the very least, to have everything on that server—including the PC backups—backed up to external drives per my original warnings. The data on PCs is important, sure. But backups are only sort of important, and can and should be redone if you’ve re-made your infrastructure with Essentials 2012.
Aside from the actual migration of data, I of course have configured other aspects of the server, including media sharing, domain connectivity, centralized File History backups for my Windows 8 clients, and so on. I’ve written about these features in other articles in my ongoing series about Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and of course there’s a lot more to discuss. But moving from a previous home office/small business server like WHS 2011 to Essentials 2012 probably has to be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be hard. But in my own experience, what I’ve arrived at is a superset of what I started with: A home office infrastructure based on Essentials 2012 instead of WHS 2011. Much of what I do is identical to before—file sharing, media sharing and remote access—but there are new, very interesting features that come along courtesy of the Windows Server 2012 base in Essentials, including Storage Spaces and File History integration, and of course the domain stuff which was absent in WHS.
Depending on your needs, this article may have raised more questions than answers. But again, this is an ongoing conversation. Let me know what I didn’t cover, or what you still have questions about, and I’ll see if I can’t answer any questions in future articles in this series.
(Source)
Note that this is not a complete guide to migrating to Windows Server 2012 Essentials. These are instead some notes and observations, based on my own experiences, about the process of moving from previous home office/small business server—in my case, Windows Home Server 2011, to Essentials.
Up front, however, a few warnings.
These products, WHS 2011 and Essentials 2012, and also related releases like WHS v1, and Small Business Server Essentials 2011, were designed primarily as first server/single server solutions. They’re basically plug and play appliances that exist outside of the normal Windows Server/Windows client way of doing things, and while that brings with it many ramifications, the big one for purposes of this article regards upgrading: There isn’t any traditional upgrade path from previous servers (WHS/SBSE 2011) to Essentials 2012.
Second, remember that there may be no huge reason to move to Essentials from whatever home/small business server you’re currently using. If the server is sitting there working, doing PC backups, and serving up your stuff, why mess with something good?
Finally, this you’re data we’re talking about here. If you’re really using one of these products as the center of your own environment, and storing your important personal and/or professional data on it, you very specifically want to be careful about backing up that data first. Just because something worked for me, as noted below, doesn’t mean you should do it without backing up first. Be careful.
OK, here’s what I’ve done.
Migration 1: WHS 2011 to Essentials 2012 Beta/RC
For about 18 months or so, I based my own environment around Windows Home Server 2011. I wrote about that transition in I'm Betting on Windows Home Server 2011, and about that product, generally, in Windows Home Server 2011.WHS 2011 worked just fine and the only reason I’m moving forward to Essentials 2012 now is that I need to keep up on the latest technologies. The key word in that sentence, however, is “now”, in that I could have simply kept using WHS 2011. But Essentials 2012 is absolutely a no compromises Windows Server versions, as noted in my recent review of the product, with lots of very interesting functionality that’s not present in WHS. (That said, I did briefly flirt with using Windows 8 as a replacement for Windows Home Server: See Replace Windows Home Server ... With Windows 8? for the rundown on that choice.)
If you’ve been following along with my evolving use of various servers, you may recall that my WHS 2011 was a repurposed PC tower that had several terabytes of internal storage attached to it. I was using a single 3 TB USB 3.0-based external hard drive with Server Backup for onsite data replication (everything but videos) and Crashplan for offsite backup of everything.
Because I wanted to maintain the WHS 2011 install alongside a test Essentials 2012 server running first the Beta and then the Release Candidate (RC) version of that latter system, I installed Essentials on an excellent and highly recommended HP MicroServer that I had upgraded over time with 8 GB of RAM (up from 2 GB). Like the original HP home servers, this neat little box features four SATA drive bays (non-hot-swappable, not that such a thing matters in a home office/SMB scenario) and even a couple of expansion ports.
I don’t recall the exact process, but over a period of time I experimented with Windows Server 2012 Beta/RC and Storage Spaces on this box, using two 3 TB hard disks, and trying to figure out whether there was any point in using ReFS over NTFS. After not seeing a real world difference on this box, I decided on the known—NTFS—and when Essentials Beta hit, that became the test box. By the time the RC arrived, I had decked out the server with a third 3 TB drive, in addition to the other two and the 250 GB boot disk.
For the Beta version of Essentials 2012, I simply wanted to test the server and make sure it worked as expected, copying over some subset of the data on my WHS 2011 server. This was a simple and manual network copy, something that ran once overnight, and it let me test client and external connectivity.
By the time the RC version of Essentials 2012 arrived, I figured I’d be able to do a simple migration to the RTM version later, so I started the process of moving completely to Essentials. This involved a wipe and reload of the OS (using the RC version this time), and configuring the storage exactly how I wanted it. And that’s a story in its own right.
Like its predecessors, Essentials 2012 requires a boot disk that’s at least 160 GB in size. By default, the server creates a set series of server folders, which are essentially (ahem) shares that clients can access on the local network. By default, there are five—Client Computer Backups, Company, File History Backups, Folder Redirection and Users—and if you enable media sharing, you’ll see four others: Music, Pictures, Recorded TV and Videos. So this boot disk will include the whole shebang: The hidden system reserved partition plus the C: drive with Windows and all those server folders.
Essentials doesn’t like a single disk configuration and the Best Practices Analyzer will quickly start bothering you via Alert Viewer that “one or more server folders are located on the system hard drive.”
Of course, I didn’t need BPA to tell me that a single disk configuration is not just bad but unacceptable. And my plan all along was to use that 9 TB of space, spread out over three 3 TB disks, as efficiently as possible. That way, my data would be separated from the OS, physically. And my most important data would be replicated on two different physical hard drives. Both of these changes, combined with offsite cloud backup, give me the peace of mind I need.
And while there are different ways to handle this, I created a storage pool and storage space using two of those disks in a mirrored configuration. That is, while the two disks combined provide about 6 TB of space, the storage space actually looks like 3 TB of space to the system. It’s just that everything in there is duplicated across both drives. This space, which I inventively call “Storage Space” and assigned to drive letter S:, contains all of the server folders except for Videos. The third 3 TB drive, which is not replicated, was assigned drive letter V: (go figure) and is used solely for videos.
Once these configuration changes were made, I added a single 3 TB external hard drive, as with the WHS box, for use with Server Backup. The new disk layout resembles the following:
From here, it was a simple matter of copying over the data from the WHS 2011-based server—which took quite a while, as I used a combination of network file copy and a portable hard disk to make it happen—and setting up Server Backup to use the external drive.
Once the file copy was done and I checked the file counts and sizes to ensure I’d copied everything successfully, I switched over to the new server, MICRO, while leaving the old one, VAIL, online for the time being. My use of WHS and now Essentials 2012 may differ a bit from yours, but for me it’s mostly a data store, and then for data that I’m not accessing regularly anymore. This includes both work-based data and personal photos, home videos, and other files dating back over 15 years. For my daily workflow, I use SkyDrive to replicate files between PCs and as articles or article series are completed or retired, they get moved up to the server. So it was a simple matter to start using MICRO rather than VAIL.
Between Essentials 2012 RC and RTM, two things changed. First, I started backing up MICRO to Crashplan as I had been doing with VAIL. And after ensuring that MICRO worked as expected and could be accessed when I was away (via LogMeIn Hamachi in my case, though others can of course use the product’s built-in remote access functionality) from home, I eventually just switched off VAIL, but left it set up just in case. Worse case, if MICRO failed, I’d be able to restart VAIL and have lost very little if any data.
And then Microsoft RTM’d Essentials 2012.
Migration 2: Essentials 2012 RC to Essentials 2012 RTM Eval/GA
As noted previously, I’d migrated to the RC version of Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Crashplan was partway through backing up my non-video data (i.e. the important stuff). VAIL was offline. And then Essentials 2012 was finalized, and Microsoft provided me with an evaluation version of the software so I could write a review.(Actually, it was the final version of the software with an evaluation product key. So I figured I could eventually use the Windows Activation software to apply a full RTM product key and remove the evaluation timeout. This assumption proved correct.)
How do you make such a migration?
Pretty easily, as it turns out. Not as easily as I had bet, but easily enough.
Since I had offloaded all my important data to S: (a storage space) and my videos to V: (a single hard disk), I knew I’d be able to simply wipe out the primary disk, install the RTM version of Essentials 2012, and then re-configure the server folders to the appropriate locations.
I knew too, from previous experience, that storage spaces are incredibly malleable. You can remove one disk or all of the disks from a space, plug it (or them) into another Windows 8 PC or Windows Server 2012 server, and the contents will be immediately and seamlessly available. Even better, the storage space survives the move intact. This meant that the S: drive I created, with all its data, would simply be there after installing the RTM version of Essentials 2012. I’d just have to connect everything up again through the Dashboard.
This worked almost exactly as expected. There was just one wrinkle.
The install went fine, and as with previous installs, Essentials 2012 had all of the server folders configured on the C: drive. So the first order of business was getting S: and V: online and moving the appropriate server folders to the appropriate drives. The next stop was Disk Management (WINKEY + X, Disk Management), where I changed the drive letters on the storage space and videos drive to be S: and V:, respectively. The next step was to use the Dashboard’s Storage/Server Folders interface to manually move each server folder to the right location.
I figured this would be as simple as selecting the folder (say, Users), choosing the right location in the wizard (S:) and then clicking OK. And it was, except for that one wrinkle. Detecting that a folder of the same name already existed on the destination drive, the Move a Folder wizard inexplicably wouldn’t allow me to merge the contents of the two folders (the source, which was empty, and the destination, which had all my data). So I had to go through a dumb but simple enough process where I renamed the folders on the storage space and videos folders (to Users2, Videos2, and so on), moved each server folder location from the Dashboard, moved the contents between the old locations (Users2, etc.) to the new locations (Users, etc.) and then deleted the old locations. Yes, really.
At least it was simple. And sure enough, once it was done, everything was up and running as before. Even Crashplan had a nice surprise for me: Reinstalling the software, it noted a feature by which you can associate a new backup with a previous one. So it examined the current backup set (basically C: and S:), compared it to what was previously backed up, and just started backing up the new stuff. Nice!
A few more notes
Now, if you’re using Windows Home Server today, you may have noticed that this migration of mine involved only data, the files and folders I’m storing on the server and sharing via server folders. That is, I didn’t migrate PC backups, which is a concern for many of you, based on my email. While I don’t personally use the centralized PC backup feature in Essentials (or, previously, in WHS), my advice on this count: Start over when it comes to PC backups.Ideally, you’ll be using a different server, and while I understand that’s not always possible you will want, at the very least, to have everything on that server—including the PC backups—backed up to external drives per my original warnings. The data on PCs is important, sure. But backups are only sort of important, and can and should be redone if you’ve re-made your infrastructure with Essentials 2012.
Aside from the actual migration of data, I of course have configured other aspects of the server, including media sharing, domain connectivity, centralized File History backups for my Windows 8 clients, and so on. I’ve written about these features in other articles in my ongoing series about Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and of course there’s a lot more to discuss. But moving from a previous home office/small business server like WHS 2011 to Essentials 2012 probably has to be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be hard. But in my own experience, what I’ve arrived at is a superset of what I started with: A home office infrastructure based on Essentials 2012 instead of WHS 2011. Much of what I do is identical to before—file sharing, media sharing and remote access—but there are new, very interesting features that come along courtesy of the Windows Server 2012 base in Essentials, including Storage Spaces and File History integration, and of course the domain stuff which was absent in WHS.
Depending on your needs, this article may have raised more questions than answers. But again, this is an ongoing conversation. Let me know what I didn’t cover, or what you still have questions about, and I’ll see if I can’t answer any questions in future articles in this series.
(Source)
Monday, October 8, 2012
Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Connecting Windows 7 and 8 Home Versions
Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Connecting Windows 7 and 8 Home Versions
I suppose you’ve heard what happens when you assume. When I wrote Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Connect Client PCs without Using a Domain, I was working under the assumption that Essentials 2012, as a domain-based Windows Server set up, would require a business-oriented version of Windows 7 (Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate) or Windows 8 (Pro or Enterprise). Put another way, I assumed that Essentials 2012 was not compatible with home versions of either OS (Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium, or Windows 8 Core).
This assumption was incorrect.
If you do have a business-oriented version of Windows 7 or Windows 8, the Essentials 2012 Connection wizard will connect that machine to the domain and you’ll be signing in as a domain user going forward. If that’s not what you want, the instructions in Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Connect Client PCs without Using a Domain still apply, and you can use them to connect using your normal, local PC account.
If, however, you are running a home version of Windows 7 or Windows 8, there’s no way for the Connection wizard to add a domain account to the machine. So it will instead let you continue using your local PC account instead. There’s just one catch, and I’m guessing this will not be an issue for many of those of you who are looking to use Essentials 2012 as a Windows Home Server replacement: You must sign in with a domain admin account once in order to get the Connector software installed on the PC.
If this is not a problem, here’s how it works. It’s really simple.
As with any other Windows 7- or 8-based PC, simply navigate to the Essentials 2012 server through your web browser by navigating to http://server-name/connect (where of course “server-name” is replaced by the simple name of your server; mine is named micro).
Then, run the Connection wizard as you would normally. You’ll be asked to provide the user name and password for an administrator account on the server in order to continue.
From there, the steps are just like with a domain connection: You provide a computer description, the Connector software (Launchpad, plus the Dashboard RemoteApp) are downloaded and installed, and you’re connected to the server. You’re just not connected to the domain.
From there, the PC works normally. You can run the Dashboard and Launchpad software as needed. Centralized PC backups occur in the background, as expected. The server shared folders and media sharing all work normally. (What you can’t do is implement group policy—that requires a domain—which means you can’t redirect common users folders to the server or automatically ensure that certain security policies are adhered to.)
In short, this is pretty much the Windows Home Server replacement many were expecting. It’s a bit easier to set up with home-based versions of Windows 7 and 8, as I’ve belatedly realized. But using the instructions I provided earlier, you should be able to safely ignore the domain features—if that’s what you want—on business-class versions of Windows 7 and 8 as well. Hey, at least you have the option.
I’m just sorry I didn’t realize this earlier. My mistake.
(Source)
Friday, October 5, 2012
Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Access the Server Remotely
While Windows Server 2012
Essentials provides excellent connectivity to your content and other
server resources from within the local network, many users will be
disconnected from that network much of the time too. How can you access
your home office or small business network from the road?
The key to this functionality is a set of Essentials 2012 features that are collectively named Anywhere Access. This compromises a web front end to the PCs and server, your shared folders, and media collection, as well as VPN functionality which lets you remotely access your office network as if you were physically there.
Either way, you’re presented with a wizard that walks you through the steps required to configure the Anywhere Access features. Depending on your needs, this may be more complex than expected.
That’s because you need to connect your server to a publicly-available Internet domain name (like microsoft.com, though of course that one’s taken) for Anywhere Access to work. You can choose a domain name that you already own, or you can set up a new domain name: If you choose the latter, you can choose a xxxx.remotewebaccess.com address that will work fine for home office users but be unacceptable for anyone with an actual Internet presence.
Once the (Internet) domain name is set up, you configure Anywhere Access. This involves choosing which of the two Anywhere Access features you wish to enable, VPN (virtual private network) and/or Remote Web Access.
I’ll discuss those two features in a moment. After you’ve chosen, you determine whether permissions for Anywhere Access are applicable to all current and future users, though as the wizard notes you can always toggle these permissions at any time through the Users tab in Dashboard. (At least for standard users: Administrators always have Anywhere Access privileges.) Just right-click the user in question and choose View the account properties; then, navigate to the Anywhere Access tab in the resulting window.
After that, the wizard will set up the Anywhere Access features you enabled, including the VPN and the web site. It will then configure your router to forward external requests for these services to the Essentials 2012. That way, when you attempt to access your office network remotely (via VPN) or the Remote Web Access web site (from a web browser), everything will work as expected. This last part of the wizard requires you to have a fairly modern router, which is to say one that can be programmatically controlled via UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). If your router is not compatible, you’ll see the following error message and will need to manually configure port forwarding for this usage through the router’s administration web site. How you do that of course varies wildly from router to router, but Microsoft supplies some decent web-based instructions. (They’re from Windows Small Business Server Essentials 2011, but still work for our purposes here.)
I had to go through this with the lousy Actiontec router that FIOS supplied, if you’re curious. If you can’t get this working with your own router, you can use LogMeIn Hamachi, which is a free VPN, and LogMeIn Free or LogMeIn Pro for other remote access features.
VPN allows you to access network resources when you’re away from the office. The theory here is that your office’s local network is what’s called a “private” network, whereas the Internet is a public network. With VPN, you can tunnel into your private network from the Internet. That way you can do things like access Essentials 2012’s server folders (or shared folders on connected PCs) through Network Explorer, or access the server through Remote Desktop Connection or the Dashboard, just a bit more slowly than if you were really there on the same network. VPN is the next best thing to being there.
VPN is available in all Windows Server 2012 versions, but it’s set up and configuration is automated for you in Essentials 2012, making it a heck of a lot easier to use.
Remote Web Access is unique to Essentials 2012, and a friendlier, web-based way of presenting network resources to users who are away from the network.
Available services from this interface include: Remote desktop access to the server and any correctly configured PCs. You can click the Connect button next to the server or any connected (and awake) PC to access it via Remote Desktop Connection.
Shared folders. You can access any server folder shares using an FTP-like web interface that lets you upload and download files from the road.
Media Library. If your media library is being shared as I documented in Windows Server 2012 Essentials Tip: Enable and Configure Media Sharing, you can access your shared pictures, music, and videos from outside your network, and do such things as play photo slideshows, music, or videos, all from within a web browser.
Windows Server 2012’s remote access features are pretty complete, assuming you can get through that Set up Anywhere Access wizard successfully. That shouldn’t be an issue for most people, but I’ve struggled for years with similar wizards in predecessor products, and have never successful configured the FIOS router for this purpose. Clearly it’s time for an upgrade.
(Source)
The key to this functionality is a set of Essentials 2012 features that are collectively named Anywhere Access. This compromises a web front end to the PCs and server, your shared folders, and media collection, as well as VPN functionality which lets you remotely access your office network as if you were physically there.
Enabling Anywhere Access
Like many Essentials 2012 features, Anywhere Access needs to be enabled before it is available. You can do this from the Setup area of the Home tab in Dashboard. Or, also from Dashboard, just navigate to Settings, Anywhere Access.Either way, you’re presented with a wizard that walks you through the steps required to configure the Anywhere Access features. Depending on your needs, this may be more complex than expected.
That’s because you need to connect your server to a publicly-available Internet domain name (like microsoft.com, though of course that one’s taken) for Anywhere Access to work. You can choose a domain name that you already own, or you can set up a new domain name: If you choose the latter, you can choose a xxxx.remotewebaccess.com address that will work fine for home office users but be unacceptable for anyone with an actual Internet presence.
Once the (Internet) domain name is set up, you configure Anywhere Access. This involves choosing which of the two Anywhere Access features you wish to enable, VPN (virtual private network) and/or Remote Web Access.
I’ll discuss those two features in a moment. After you’ve chosen, you determine whether permissions for Anywhere Access are applicable to all current and future users, though as the wizard notes you can always toggle these permissions at any time through the Users tab in Dashboard. (At least for standard users: Administrators always have Anywhere Access privileges.) Just right-click the user in question and choose View the account properties; then, navigate to the Anywhere Access tab in the resulting window.
After that, the wizard will set up the Anywhere Access features you enabled, including the VPN and the web site. It will then configure your router to forward external requests for these services to the Essentials 2012. That way, when you attempt to access your office network remotely (via VPN) or the Remote Web Access web site (from a web browser), everything will work as expected. This last part of the wizard requires you to have a fairly modern router, which is to say one that can be programmatically controlled via UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). If your router is not compatible, you’ll see the following error message and will need to manually configure port forwarding for this usage through the router’s administration web site. How you do that of course varies wildly from router to router, but Microsoft supplies some decent web-based instructions. (They’re from Windows Small Business Server Essentials 2011, but still work for our purposes here.)
I had to go through this with the lousy Actiontec router that FIOS supplied, if you’re curious. If you can’t get this working with your own router, you can use LogMeIn Hamachi, which is a free VPN, and LogMeIn Free or LogMeIn Pro for other remote access features.
Accessing Anywhere Access features
As noted earlier, Anywhere Access includes two components, VPN and Remote Web Access.VPN allows you to access network resources when you’re away from the office. The theory here is that your office’s local network is what’s called a “private” network, whereas the Internet is a public network. With VPN, you can tunnel into your private network from the Internet. That way you can do things like access Essentials 2012’s server folders (or shared folders on connected PCs) through Network Explorer, or access the server through Remote Desktop Connection or the Dashboard, just a bit more slowly than if you were really there on the same network. VPN is the next best thing to being there.
VPN is available in all Windows Server 2012 versions, but it’s set up and configuration is automated for you in Essentials 2012, making it a heck of a lot easier to use.
Remote Web Access is unique to Essentials 2012, and a friendlier, web-based way of presenting network resources to users who are away from the network.
Available services from this interface include: Remote desktop access to the server and any correctly configured PCs. You can click the Connect button next to the server or any connected (and awake) PC to access it via Remote Desktop Connection.
Shared folders. You can access any server folder shares using an FTP-like web interface that lets you upload and download files from the road.
Media Library. If your media library is being shared as I documented in Windows Server 2012 Essentials Tip: Enable and Configure Media Sharing, you can access your shared pictures, music, and videos from outside your network, and do such things as play photo slideshows, music, or videos, all from within a web browser.
Windows Server 2012’s remote access features are pretty complete, assuming you can get through that Set up Anywhere Access wizard successfully. That shouldn’t be an issue for most people, but I’ve struggled for years with similar wizards in predecessor products, and have never successful configured the FIOS router for this purpose. Clearly it’s time for an upgrade.
(Source)
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