One of Home Server community’s very active add-in developers, Microsoft MVP Sam Wood, has been developing a new add-in called Blackbox for Windows Home Server (v1). A lot of us have found Sam’s previous add-in for WHS called Disk Management for Windows Home Server extremely useful, and if you feel that Sam didn’t let you down in the past then return the favor and be a beta tester for his new add-in.
Tentacle Software is a software development company based in Auckland, New Zealand that makes cool stuff for Windows Home Server and other Microsoft platforms. Currently, Sam is looking for some open minded testers who would be willing to try out Blackbox and provide him feedback on general usability, features, UI, and other suggestions.
Blackbox requires the following platform:
- Windows Home Server v1 operating system (“Vail” isn’t supported in this release)
- Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 (installed automatically by Windows Update)
- .NET Framework v3.5 SP1 (installed automatically by Windows Update)
- A motherboard with supported hardware sensors (most ITE* chips, CPU thermal sensors, hard drive SMART sensors, and UPS battery sensors are supported)
According to Sam, “Blackbox is a hardware monitoring add-in that looks at voltage/temperature/PWM sensors on the motherboard, and can fire actions in response to configurable thresholds.”
Blackbox for Windows Home Server provides in-depth real-time monitoring of motherboard, disk, UPS, and graphics card hardware sensors. Administrators can define alerting rules to take actions when a sensor exceeds a specified threshold.
Features
- Customizable logging (file, event log, email)
- Real-time monitoring of supported hardware sensors
- Custom defined rules to perform actions
- Adjust fan speed
- Create Windows Home Server Health Notification
- System Power State (shutdown, suspend, hibernate, or restart)
- PWM fan control
The Blackbox add-in looks promissing and for now Sam is looking for a small group of active participants to beta test the add-in. If you want to be a part of this exciting new add-in please visit http://www.tentaclesoftware.com/contact/ and make a request.