Windows Home Server

[Fushigi]

I thought I'd run a thread about setting up & using Windows Home Server.

First, as noted in another thread, I built my home server using a 1.5TB Seagate drive. Upon installation, it automatically set up a 16GB OS and a rest-of-drive data partition. Installation was almost painless. It asked a couple of questions, confirmed the drive could be wiped, and went off on it's own. I'm not sure how long it took to install; it said it could take hours but the estimator came up with 51 minutes. I left to run some errands so it wouldn't take any of my time.

The rest of the machine was what once was my Ubuntu Folding setup: MSI X48c Platinum with a C2Q9450 and 2GB of low latency DDR3. Corsair 650W PSU. Right now it has a Radeon X1950 leftover video card which I may upgrade later for GPU Folding. And an el-cheapo Philips DVD drive.

So, the 'almost' in the installation was networking. It explicitly does not support a wireless connection & says 100Mb wired is the minimum (shows some age there .. 'n' wireless could be faster). Not a problem for me but I thought I'd mention it if someone was considering a remote, unwired location for their server. Anyway, it did not support the motherboard's Realtek Ethernet controller out of the box. I wound up using the XP driver from the MSI utility CD. IMO a fast connection should be strongly recommended for the workstation backup capability but should hardly be a flat-out requirement; some people may be fine with slow backups, especially if their workstations are 802.11b/g attached.

Installation also failed to detect the graphics card as anything but a generic. But it read the VESA modes right so it did auto-set 1024x768x24bit - what my old monitor can do. So I haven't bothered to load the Catalyst drivers.

WHS states it is designed to run headless. You manage the basic functions via a console/connector app that you install on each workstation. The app was easy to install on all but one machine where the AVG firewall had to first be disabled. The MS troubleshooter could do a better job of mentioning this potential issue.

Alerts generated by any machine int he group are populated to all machines. Could be annoying, I suppose, but it immediately flagged one workstation as not having AV software. That decision is intentional as the machine is a full-time Folder and isn't used to surf or do anything else that would attract malware. Luckily, you can set it to ignore a message.

The console is not like RDP. It presents basic panels that most PC-literate folks should be able to handle. The main categories are Computers & Backups, User Accounts, Shared Folders, Server Storage, and an icon/category for Network (messages).

I have to read about the media sharing; you can move your media to the server & let it be shared, but until/unless I set up redundant storage I would rather not have it stored in just one place. The main reason for getting WHS was, afterall, for a centralized backup solution.

There were four discs in the installation package: WHS, the Connector piece, a Workstation Recovery CD (nice that they supply it), and another (I forget what it holds). There was also a small getting started guide and installation sheet. While I definitely will want more documentation, it was enough to get it set up & running and backing up workstations without having to hit the MS site or dive into some PDFs (exception being the networking issue; it could have mentioned that XP drivers work for NICs that don't auto-detect).

It is currently running the SMP Folding console client.

Backups appear to be single-threaded. My wife's PC is backing up now and if I try to start a backup of another machine it doesn't. I'll have to wait until my wife's backup finishes to see if they queue up or if requests are ignored while it's busy. I don't know if it is because it is the first backup or what, but it sure is taking a while.

 

[Mercutio]

I've thought about doing WHS as a class for my students, but I don't think I could get anyone to actually buy a copy of the software.

Beyond the automated backup, is it doing anything that you can't do with any other Windows PC with network shares set up?

 

[Fushigi]

Lets you get your feet wet in understanding a server without having the overhead of an AD environment and all that. You can do users if you want or just enable Guest for global sharing. I'm starting with Guest but will graduate to user accounts when I have time to play with it.

It costs basically the same as the desktop OS - $140 from NewEgg.

Built-in sharing setups for multimedia files and documents. And any other folders you choose to create. Not sure if it does printers.

Console installed on all workstations for managing the server. Password-protected. Good to get people used to the idea of using an app to administer v. using RDP. The console is focused and simple. Not powerful per se, but seems to be just about everything the home environment would require.

If you add a second drive to WHS (internal, USB, etc.), you can tell it to replicate backups or other files to the second drive so you gain redundancy without dealing with actual RAID. Also the drives can be different sizes.

Automated restore to go with the backup - comes with a restore boot CD. Compare it to 4 or 5 copies of TrueImage or similar and it pays for itself. The backup settings include retention periods so storage management is built-in.

Very easy to install (my network driver issue aside).

Remote Access to let you look at WHS from the 'net.

It isn't Vista.

 

[Mercutio]

Vista's backup and restore aren't sector-based like ATI, but it is a really nice for an included freebie. I presume WHS is built on the same software. I tell people I would rather have ATI.

Home Server is one of the very few things from Microsoft that's not included with either MSDN or Action Pack subscriptions. I worry more than a little bit about the value proposition of that software at that price, and I can't see myself actually buying it, even though I wouldn't mind playing with it. I actually think it might be a better option for some small businesses than moronically expensive SBS setup.

 

[MaxBurn]

I think media center extenders and xbox360 can connect to it to play content on tv or stereo. That really opens up some uses for home environments that could potentially really use a lot of storage space.

 

[Fushigi]

You can also buy pre-built WHS systems from HP and others. Combine it with a media appliance like this and I'd think a reasonable number of people would jump on it. Sure, not the millions who buy notebooks or desktops, but few machines have RAID and once someone gets burned by a failed drive, they might be tempted to pick up something like this, especially if they find the media sharing capabilities. And find they can access their WHS media from anywhere with a 'net connection.

The WHS backup has some intelligence and does data de-duplication. Once a file is backed up from any PC, if the same file exists on any other PC it does not create another copy of it on the server. That minimizes server storage consumption. My farm: Vista Ultimate: 431GB used, VU #2: 248GB used, Vista Basic: Minimal; maybe 14GB, XP Pro: 15GB used, XP Pro: 70GB used. Total used: 778GB. Total used on WHS to back them all up: 455GB. I didn't realize I had that much redundancy.

BTW, 4 of the 5 PCs are 'WORKGROUP' and the 5th is in my company's AD domain. No issues backing up the domain-based machine. So this is also nice for the worker with a laptop as many companies don't back up workstations or if they do, they do it overnight when the laptop is not at the office.

I was at a professional association meeting yesterday. The speaker was a CTO from McAfee. After the session, while enjoying the open bar and the hors d'oeuvres we were chatting (my employer is trialing the product group the speaker represents). The subject somehow came up and it turns out he had purchased the HP solution and added a couple of TB drives to it. He loves it.

He mentioned that when you need to grow the storage you can just add a drive or migrate data off an existing drive to replace it with a larger capacity unit. No arrays, JBOD, or anything else to think about. And with 3+ drives, WHS will automatically favor storing data on the non-OS drives and will use the OS drive only as overflow. The HP he bought even uses sleds for the drives and they're hot-swappable (see Newegg pics in the link).

I understand your reservation and admit the product is not for every situation, but for a backup & media sharing solution that basically anyone semi-PC literate can set up in minutes (packaged solution), it's a nice option. While it is Windows on the colsole, you don't really use it. If you can operate a DVR you can use this.

 

[Clocker]

I've been trying out WHS for about a year (since the betas were available).

One nice thing...even after the trial expires... it will just keep going and going as a basic file server. I can't login to the console or perform automated backups or even remote desktop into the machine but I can still copy files to and from it when I run my SynchToy backups. So, you still get the quasi-raid functionality and a file server for free. I will eventually buy a copy but I'd rather keep cash in my wallet for the time being with economic times being the way they are.