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Microsoft Windows Home Server Beta 2
Testing - Remote Access
One method that is specifically not recommended by Microsoft to manage the server is to use Microsoft Terminal Services client to remote desktop into the computer from your LAN and manage it from there. If you're not familiar with remote desktop, it basically provides remote access to the desktop of a PC over the network. I use it all the time combined with a VPN to get to my computer on my desk at work from my computer at home. There is a good reason for the warnings from Microsoft: using remote desktop and playing around with settings in the control panel or adding files manually to where you think they should go on the local hard drives can mess up your server. Though there is one good use for remote desktop, and I'll get to that in the next section.    The other way to access the server is over the web. This functionality did not work for me in the Beta 2 release, however in the CTP release the remote access from over the web worked almost perfectly. See the section "Upgrading to CTP - Remote Access" for more details on how well it worked. Testing - Running Other Applications As I mentioned on the last page, there is one good reason for having access to remote desktop, and that is running applications that don't have an equivalent Windows Service. One program like this is Apple's iTunes.  My main purpose of running iTunes on my WHS box was so that I could access my music all the time from other iTunes installations around the house by turning on sharing inside iTunes. There is an alternate solution, and that is to change your local iTunes library to the server's share, but that has its downsides - particularly not being able to access the music on the server from my AppleTV device (it requires iTunes to be running on a PC somewhere in order to sync as well as stream any music or movies from it). A problem with running applications as Windows applications and not services is that if the computer were to reboot due to a patch, the application would no longer be running once the computer booted back up. There are ways around this - you can go into the registry in a particular part and enter your login and password and have the system automatically log in that user every time it boots up, and then place a shortcut to the application inside the Startup folder in the Programs area of the start menu, but that's a little advanced for the typical user.
Page 1: Introduction & Hardware Configuration
Page 2: Setup - Installing Server and Client Software Page 3: Testing - Client Console & Restore CD Page 4: Testing - File Sharing and Backup & Windows Media Connect Page 5: Testing - Remote Access & Running Other Applications Page 6: Upgrading to CTP & Upgraded Remote Access Page 7: Conclusion 
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