Porting Advanced Admin Console to Windows Home Server Version 2 (Codename “VAIL”)
April 27th, 2010
As of yesterday, the next version of Windows Home Server (Codename “VAIL”) is now in public beta. The new version brings a lot of improvements and feature enhancements. One area that has completely been overhauled in VAIL is the home server console, which is now known as the Dashboard. The extensibility model of Windows Home Server has been completely redesigned in “VAIL” so that all AddIns need to be ported to the new platform.
I have already begun porting the Advanced Admin Console AddIn to Windows Home Server “VAIL”:
There’s still a lot of work to do, but I hope that by mid-may I can put up a public beta version for download.
Categories: Windows Server Codename "VAIL"
How do you get the API Reference ? Do you develope with the Windows Server 2008 SDK on a client Machine or directly on the Vail Home Server?
Go to http://connect.microsoft.com, login and then follow this link to download the VAIL SDK: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=28277
I installed VAIL as a virtual machine and installed Visual Studio 2010 directly on the server. You can also work with Visual Studio on your workstation and deploy your addin to the server for testing. Get more directions from the Getting Started section from the SDK documentation.
Great Andreas!
Can’t wait to try the public beta….
Andreas, how is this going? I would love to test this on the current Vail build.
Yes, please — I’d very-much like to try a beta of your Advanced Admin Console for Vail!
How is the development going?
Thanks, Mark.
I would like to test your beta for Vail Advanced Admin Console!
Thanks,
Walt
Did you maybe try to create a Addin with the Target Framework 4.0?
With 3.5 everything works fine, but with 4.0 the Addin does not appear in the Dashboard.
@Chris
In this video https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Windows-Home-Server-SDK/ posted on Channel 9 on June 18th, Fabian Uhse explains that the VAIL development team is shifting from .NET Framework 3.5 to 4.0 (at 12:00 exactly). This is why I almost completely halted my development efforts until a new public build of VAIL is available where the Dashboard runs on .NET 4. I think you should do the same, i.e., target .NET 4 with your addin and wait for Microsoft to make a new VAIL build available.
Please see this post if you want to beta test the Advanced Admin Console vNext for Windows Server codename ‘Vail’ and ‘Aurora’: http://www.home-server-addins.com/archives/423