Backup your Mac to Windows Home Server 2011 with Orbital Backup

I have never been able to workout the point of Windows Home Server’s Mac features, you can’t do a backup so there doesn’t seem much point but that is going to change thanks to a new addin. Orbital Backup Configuration addin for Windows Home Server adds the ability to backup your Mac without needing an hacks. The best thing about the addin is that its free and can by downloaded from Andrew’s UsingWindowsHomeServer.com

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.