One of the promises of Windows Home Server 2011 was the ability to backup your Mac to WHS 2011. Unfortunately that functionality wasn’t provided out of the box. There were hacks and workarounds to get it running, but Orbital Technologies have produced an add-in to get it to work. We previewed the add-in back in May, now it’s available.
Here is what was posted today:
Up until now, Mac users connecting to a Windows server had to either forego remote Time Machine backup altogether, or else resort to complicated set-up involving disk utilities and “sparsebundles”.
Not any more.
Orbital Technologies, which has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft, has created an add-in to ease the configuration burden of setting up an Apple Mac computer’s Time Machine to use a backup location on the server.
This free ‘Orbital Backup Configuration’ add-in can be used to quickly and effortlessly set up Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials as a target disk for Mac OS X Time Machine Backups.
The add-in is available as a .wssx file ready to be installed directly on the server. Simply double click the file and follow the installation instructions.
Once it’s installed an entry will appear in the Dashboard on the server.
The next time that Launchpad is run on the Mac, an alert will be displayed that an updated version is available. If the user chooses to accept this, Launchpad will re-open to reveal the new add-in.
Clicking on the add-in will launch the ‘Orbital’s Backup Configuration Utility’ screen (shown below).
The add-in will automatically detect the name of the server, however the backup location on the server needs to exist before running this utility.
To use the utility, enter:
- A Username
- A Password (both valid on the server)
- A valid backup location on the server
That’s all that’s needed for the backup configuration to work.
The Time Machine configuration screen opens up by default after the initial configuration is done. The user also has the option to choose to start a backup operation immediately or set up automatic backups using the Time Machine configuration screen.
Actual backups will be managed by Time Machine and the configuration utility does not need to be re-run unless any changes are required.Help and Support:
Help is available for the add-in by clicking the “?” help button at the bottom of the screen.
Supported Versions:
The Orbital Backup Configuration Add-In runs on Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It is not supported on Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) or earlier versions.
At this time there are some issues outside of Orbital’s control related to the naming of the Launchpad in Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) and the Windows Operating systems that may prevent the Microsoft Launchpad from running on Lion. If you had the Microsoft Launchpad installed on Snow Leopard and upgraded your Mac to Lion, the Microsoft Launchpad will still be present, the Mac Launchpad will not be installed and therefore the Orbital Backup Configuration Add-In will run. If you have a fresh install of Lion or did not have the Microsoft Launchpad installed before upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion, the Microsoft Launchpad will not install and therefore the Add-In will not run.
Once the Launchpad naming issue is resolved we expect the Add-In will function on all Lion installations.
We are also very proud to announce that Using Windows Home Server was selected as one of two sites to host both the download site and the support forums.
Download the Orbital Backup Configurtion Add-in from here Visit the official support forums hereLet us know what you think of the add-in.
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