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The situation: an Active Directory network with a few dozen machines. Most of the machines have the same vanilla image applied to them so if there was a hard drive failure getting the machine back up to the standard network image would be quick and easy. However, there are a handful of (eight) machines which have rather unique setups (accounting, developers, the "artist" with CS4 and such). For these machines we would like to use Windows Home Server since the backups are automatic and recovery from a machine failure is quite painless. The question though is whether or not WHS can be used on an A/D network. If not, what "set it and forget it" backup/imaging product is recommended for this scenario?

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    don't think that it can be domain joined but I also don't think it needs to be either in order to achieve your goals.
    – tony roth
    May 13, 2010 at 15:23

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Tony Roth has it right in his comment, so I'll mark myself "community wiki" and not rep-whore...

Have a look at the MSDN blog post Great way to automatically back up your SBS client computers and the Technet article Using Windows Home Server to Back Up Windows Small Business Client Computers.

Basically, you're not joining the Windows Home Server (WHS) machine to do the domain (which is a violation of the terms of the EULA as Jim B says), but not being joined to the domain doesn't prevent you from using the "set it and forget it" backup functionality to backup client computers that are domain members.

The block-level deduplicated store that WHS uses for client backups is really a pretty neat idea, and I'd love to see it in a business-oriented product offering from Microsoft.

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  • Heh heh... It's "community wiki" now. I've got enough rep, regardless. >smile< May 13, 2010 at 18:53
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According to this article it cannot readily join a Windows server domain.

I am not sure what backup you're looking for; I thought WHS was supposed to handle backup solutions? What is falling short, backing up the backup server?

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Joining Windows Home Server to another domain is unsupported, and not allowed under the product EULA. The licensing service will kick in after 24 hours and put the machine into a diminished mode until you unjoin it from a domain.

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