Drive Bender is such an alternative. The program is currently available as a beta, and it is not clear yet if it will become a commercial product once released, or remain free of charge.

The good news is that it runs on both Windows Client and Server operating systems. The main feature of the application is the ability to create a drive pool, which one or multiple drives can be added to.

Each drive pool is then accessible via Windows Explorer and other programs like a single hard partition.

What’s the benefit of a program like Drive Bender? The main benefit is that the manageability and accessibility of data is improved. Imagine you want to play a video, and have videos on three different hard drives. If you are not really sure on which drive the video is stored, or if you just want to browse, you need to access the three hard drives separately. With Drive Bender you only need to access the single drive letter that the drive pool was assigned to to browse all videos at once.

Another benefit is that programs can utilize more hard drive space since they have access to free space of all drives of the drive pool. The configuration and creation of drive pools is very easy. It begins with a click on the add new pool button in the Drive Bender pool manager.

This opens a new window with a list of all connected hard drives. Users can now name the pool and select the drives (with a double-click) that they want to make accessibly in the drive pool. The free space of the selected hard drives becomes available under the new drive pool either as a network or local drive. The space changes dynamically, it increases if files are deleted on hard drives that are part of the drive pool and decreases if files are added to hard drives of the pool. Drives from different manufacturers and of different sizes and speeds can be merged to become a drive pool.

The second and last step is to mount the drive pool. This is done with a click on the new mount point button in the main interface.

Available for selection are network mount points which are then visible over the computer network, or drive letter mount points to make the drive pool accessible as local hard drives.

The new drive is from that moment on accessible via Windows Explorer and other programs.

New drives can be added to the drive pool at anytime, and it is also possible to remove drives again. Several buttons and features are currently disabled, with the likelihood that they will be enabled in a future version of the program.

Interested users need to follow this link that opens the “hidden” registration form. Registration is required before the software can be downloaded.

Drive Bender is an easy to use software program for Windows that can be used to merge the free space of multiple hard drives into a new hard drive that is then accessible via a local area network or the local computer.

Update You need to visit the main page of Drive Bender and click on the link in the right column.

This WHS RC is the first public release to include changes in the storage features, so let’s look at some of the changes you can expect. All existing technologies such as server and client backup, health monitoring, remote web access, streaming media, and simplified dashboard management are still included.

The release candidate comes with a new Move Folder Wizard which can be used to move date from one hard drive or partition to another.

You can see the Move Folder Wizard in action in the video below:

Additional features mentioned in the release candidate availability posting:

As Hard Drives are added to the Home Server, your health alerts will notify you that a new Hard Drive is available. From here, you can automatically format and configure the new drive for additional storage.

Data protection also includes daily Server and PC backup, Previous Versions via Shadow copy which lets you return prior versions of existing files (without needing to restore from backup), and a protection feature for pre-defined folders (such as Recorded TV, Videos, Photos) in case these are accidently deleted.

Drive Extender, a feature that has been available before, is not included in the release candidate release of Windows Home Server 2011 and will not be included in the final release of the product. The move has been very controversial.

Drive Extender basically allowed a user to combine hard drives to a storage pool which offered several benefits over comparable RAID solutions. This included for instance the option to combine hard drives of different sizes and that not special hardware or RAID controller was needed to set it up.

Users who want to download the Windows Home Server 2011 Release Candidate need to sign up for the Windows Home Server Connect program which requires a Windows Live ID. (via)

While that excludes the majority of desktop users, it may still affect some that run web servers on their desktop systems. Those users are asked to update immediately once the patch is released.

About the release: Microsoft will make the security patch available on Microsoft Download first, before it will be distributed via Windows Update. Dave Forstrom, Director, Trustworthy Computing said it will take approximately a few days before the update is released on Windows Update and Windows Server Update as well.

For now, Windows Server users and Windows client users running a web server should monitor Microsoft’s Download Center for the patch, which will be made available there later today.

Admins who want additional information can take a closer look at the Microsoft Security Bulletin, which lists the affected operating systems, the maximum security impact and additional information about the vulnerability.

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in ASP.NET. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could read data, such as the view state, which was encrypted by the server. This vulnerability can also be used for data tampering, which, if successfully exploited, could be used to decrypt and tamper with the data encrypted by the server. Microsoft .NET Framework versions prior to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 are not affected by the file content disclosure portion of this vulnerability.

This security update is rated Important for all supported editions of ASP.NET except Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.
The security update addresses the vulnerability by additionally signing all data that is encrypted by ASP.NET. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

Windows client users who are not running a web server are not affected by the vulnerability. Some may want to consider installing the update nevertheless.

Here is how it works. Weezo will run a configuration script on the first startup. The script will start the core services and perform connection checks to ensure that the server is accessible from a local network and the Internet.

weezo

A free Weezo account can be created during setup of the server. The account offers the advantage that a permanent url is associated with it which can be used to access the server. This is similar to a service that offers a permanent domain name for dynamic IPs. It is possible to use the program anonymously, but this means that users connected to the computer need the right IP address to do so.

The Weezo server interface is then started on the computer, providing the means to configure the the shared contents and users as well as core configuration options and an activity monitor that displays information about logged in users and server status changes.

All resorts around user groups and resources. Groups are used to allow or block access to resources. The administrator for instance has access to all resources by default while the public group does not.

Groups are protected with passwords and can be further protected by adding allowed IPs. Options to provide a distinct website theme, sounds and sticky notes are provided as well.

Resources are the core of the server. Here it is possible to enable file access and sharing, blog and websites, communication modules like chat or webcam, bookmarks, web TV, a web proxy routing traffic through the Weezo website and additional modules.

Some interesting resources are the following:

• Photos Album: Share photos with anyone connecting to the server.
• Music and Videos: Listen to music or watch videos remotely, great for sharing music and videos with friends.
• RSS Reader, bookmarks: Access and share RSS feeds and bookmarks easily wherever you are

music player

One click install / download options are provided for popular web scripts such as WordPress, Joomla or phpBB even though they are not always offered in the latest version. MySQL can be installed as well as it is a requirement for several of the scripts.

remote access server

Some modules were not completely translated into English, only offered in French. WordPress for instance was available in French. It was however no problem to change the configuration files on the local system to change the language to English. This is also the way to update scripts to their latest versions.

Admins have direct access to MySQL, phpMyAdmin, the Apache configuration and pretty much every other server configuration file. Helpful for instance to import a database or make modifications to the remote server.

Ports can be changed in the configuration, the default port is 80. It is furthermore possible to use a secure connection (SSL) to connect to the server.

Screenshots:

remote access server

remote desktop

remote file explorer

rss feed sharing

server login

Weezo offers a one-click installation server for web scripts, file sharing and remote file access. It provides rights management and an easy to understand admin interface that can be used to configure most, but not all, of the options of the server.

Some operations require manual configuration changes, which definitely will be a problem for inexperienced users. There is for instance no option to update WordPress to the latest version from within the admin interface.

Weezo is available for download at the developer’s website.

The free program is a limited version of the commercial software from the same developer. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2, the Microsoft Management Console and PowerShell. The interface of the application makes it less time consuming to configure password policies for specific user groups in Windows Server 2008. It basically centers around creating, configuring and managing password policies.

The following parameters can be defined for each password policy:

A Password Settings object (PSO) has attributes for all the settings that can be defined in the Default Domain Policy (except Kerberos settings). These settings include attributes for the following password settings:

• Enforce password history
• Maximum password age
• Minimum password age
• Minimum password length
• Passwords must meet complexity requirements
• Store passwords using reversible encryption
• Account lockout duration
• Account lockout threshold
• Reset account lockout after

User groups can be added to newly created policies. It has to be noted that user groups cannot be empty as empty user groups cannot be added to password policies. The program displays an overview of all password policies on the computer system. The order can be changed which is important if users are members of multiple user groups.

Specops Password Policy Basic can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage.

Home Web Server makes it possible to run websites on the local computer system. The web server supports a wide variety of options including php, cgi and isapi support next to SSL connections and private member directories. Not everything is preinstalled on the other hand. It is for example necessary to download PHP compiler from the official PHP website to add PHP support.

Basic HTML websites are on the other hand available by default. The root of the web server can be accessed locally by opening http://127.0.0.1/ in the web browser if the connection is established from the local computer. Users from the local network or remote networks need to use the local or Internet IP to connect to the web server.

Many aspects of the web server can be configured in the options including connection limits and timeouts, domain and root aliases, connection logging, supported mime types or redirects.

Home Web Server provides extensive options that should suite the needs of most users who want to install a web server on their computer. Alternatives are Quick PHP Web Server, XAMPP web server or the Portable Web Server.

A total of 11 different Windows Server 2003 editions have been released by Microsoft from Windows Home Server over Windows Small Business Server to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise or Windows Storage Server 2003.

Microsoft released many Windows 2003 software additions including multiple feature packs, service packs and tools many of which are recommended to install to increase system stability, performance, security and functionality.

Two Windows Server 2003 Service Packs have been released, one Windows Rights Management Services Service Pack and one Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack. All of those Windows 2003 downloads are available from the Microsoft website.

In addition to Service Pack downloads for the Windows 2003 software a total of 16 feature packs have been released throughout the years including important additions such as the Group Policy Management Console, Windows Services For UNIX or Identity Integration Feature Pack.

Additionally 19 Windows Server 2003 Tools have been released for download adding new features like the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack, Log Parser 2.2 Tool or Remote Desktop Web Connection.

The Microsoft websites contains lots of Windows 2003 software and should be the starting point for everyone who is setting up a new Windows 2003 Server environment.

Server Core is a bare bones installation of Windows Server 2008 without Windows Explorer which means that configuration is done through a command line interface or by remotely connecting to the Windows 2008 Server.

Server Cores can be configured for several basic rules like DNS Server, DHPC Server or Hyper-V virtual server. The Windows 2008 Server Core Configurator aids the system administrator in configuring certain tasks like activating the system, adding or removing drivers, setting user and group permissions or configuring networking features.

The Core Configurator comes as a cab file which has to be unpacked before the configurator can be run. To expand the cab archive run the following command:

expand CoreConfigurator.cab -f:*

The Windows 2008 Server Core Configurator can be run by executing Setup-Core.wsf afterwards.

Not everyone can just walk in though and grab the copies, you need to register to be able to attend an event and even then kits will only be given out as long as supplies last. Events will also take place in other countries. A quick check revealed one event in Germany where attendees have to pay a fee to be able to attend the event. They still get the software kit with the newest versions of the applications though.

You have to give a company name and job title during registration. It is unclear if Microsoft will reject applications if they do not meet certain criteria. The first event is on February 27th in Los Angeles, the last on May 22nd in Reston.

Five different versions of Windows Server 2008 can be downloaded in various languages those are the Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, Datacenter Edition, Windows Web Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems which are all designed for special purposes.

All releases are available in English, French, German, and Japanese. The Datacenter and Web Edition is also available in Spanish, while the Standard and Enterprise editions are available in the five languages previously mentioned plus Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional) and Korean.

The download size is always in a range between 1 and 5 Gigabytes, here are the direct download links:

Windows Server® 2008 RC0 Standard (x86 and x64)
Windows Server® 2008 RC0 Enterprise (x86 and x64)
Windows Server® 2008 RC0 Datacenter (x86 and x64)
Windows® Web Server 2008 RC0 (x86 and x64)
Windows Server® 2008 RC0 for Itanium-based Systems

Grab your Windows Server 2008 Product Key at Microsoft Technet.