Windows Home Server

[Greenstead]

Windows Home Server (WHS) is a new product from microsoft.
I have been beta testing it and using it since the beginning of this year. I am not a WHS expert but can offer my experience and opinions on it. I am using WHS on a home network of mixed wired/wireless PCs and laptops of various OS, with ~1 TB of storage. WHS is new, and like all new systems has some problems but is basically stable and great potential for the home.

Overall I would recommend it worth considering on a home network to provide backup of home PCs and centralised storage.

You can read more about WHS here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx

Anyone with their own experience / opinions please join in.

[Vbeal]

Microsoft Windows Home Server was also covered this week on the PracticallyNetworked Web site, here:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=694

We used it for about 3 weeks. Its unbelievable how EASY home server is to set-up and use, even if you know next to nothing about servers, networking and so on.

We're using Vista on the PCs and XP on the laptops. For the server we used a P4 3.1GB box with 3GB memory, 2 hard drives (an 80 and a 230 GB).

I think those who are concerned about back-ups and those who don't yet have a backup regime in place will be especially interested in WHS (which lets you backup ten PCs).

Vangie

[Sooner Al]

FYI...

The Microsoft Windows Home Server forums are at...

http://forums.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/default.aspx?siteid=50

[Sooner Al]

I just converted my old desktop into a WHS box this last Thursday. It really is a quite impressive, IMHO, piece of software. My WHS is a Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz box, 512 Meg RAM with a 160 Gig and a 20 Gig hard drive.

The WHS backups my wife's XP Pro machine and my Vista Ultimate laptop automatically on a daily basis, something I never had in the past. I also setup a remote access account and privileges for my brother (who lives in Florida) and myself. My brother has access to shared folders/files while I have access to shared folders/files and my own specifically owned folder. He also has a WHS running and I have similar privileges on his machine, ie. access to shared folders/files only. My wife only has access to shared folders/files and her specificlly owned folder on the WHS. She does not have remote access privileges.

Remote Desktop access is easy and fast to my wife's XP Pro machine if I need it.

All access to my WHS and shared folders/files or Remote Desktop to access my wife's XP Pro machine is via a web based interface that requires two ports to be opened on any firewall/router the WHS is behind, ie. TCP Port 443 and TCP Port 4125.

You can either get a free fully qualified domain name (FQDN) from Microsoft to remotely call your WHS or as in my case use an existing DynDNS FQDN. I use a DynDNS FQDN simply because my current Belkin F5D7230-4 broadband router has built-in support for DynDNS. My brother uses a MS supplied FQDN.

Some additional resources from MS...

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/7/2/272d14a7-eb96-4dde-a90e-3e5b4bc388af/WHS%20Technical%20Brief%20-%20Remote%20Access.pdf

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/A/9/3A97EE0D-A268-42E0-A20C-B8C88E27BF84/Windows_Home_Server_Media_Sharing.pdf

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/C/2FC09C20-587F-4F16-AA33-C6C4C75FB3DD/Windows_Home_Server_Drive_Extender.pdf

None MS resources...

http://mswhs.com/
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/windows-home-server-add-ins/
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/whs-how-to/

[Sooner Al]

If your running WHS and keep getting the nagging certificate warning messages when trying to access your WHS secure page from a remote location look at this page from Susan Bradley (MS-MVP SBS) for help installing the self signed root cert on your client.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/10/22/getting-rid-of-the-pink-aka-installing-a-self-signed-cert-in-vista.aspx

You can then export the root cert and import that on other clients by following the advice in the second post by DocGuy (a WHS Team member) in this thread from the MS WHS forums.

http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1699951&SiteID=50

FYI, I initially had an issue using the WHS self signed root cert on my Vista laptop client. I kept getting a cert warning message when I tried to access my WHS secure page from a remote location.

The problem was traced to my old domain name which I was using. I used a DynDNS domain name and had my router configured to sign on the DynDNS servers. So in this case the WHS machine had no knowledge of my domain name so the self signed cert was created without including the domain name.

To fix this issue I disabled DynDNS sign-on in my router and configured my WHS machine (via the WHS console) to use a MS supplied homeserver.com domain name. Subsequently this caused a new cert to be created. I could then install this new root cert and I can now access my WHS machine secure web page without getting the cert warning message.

My brother (in Florida) imported the .cer file I sent him and he can also access his account on my WHS machine with getting the cert waining message.

[Sooner Al]

From the WHS Team Blog...

Next week on Tuesday, Nov 27 we will release a new update for Windows Home Server software. This is a scheduled update - part of the ongoing process of continually enhancing the customer experience with Windows Home Server. The new functionality will be downloaded via Windows Update and made available to existing Windows Home Server customers.

Details are available here, but the main benefit of the update is that it will improve the remote access experience for Windows Home Server users by providing them with a “trusted SSL certificate” for their home servers. That means customers will be able to access their home server from outside the home more seamlessly, without any security warnings. The Windows Home Server team worked closely with Windows Live Domains and GoDaddy, a leading provider of Web domain addresses, to provide the certificate for the homeserver.com web pages customers use for remote access.

The WHS Team Blog...

http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2007/11/20/update-coming-soon.aspx

...and...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;941914&sd=rss&spid=12624

[Sooner Al]

The update was released yesterday. More information on the WHS team blog...

http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2007/11/26/the-windows-home-server-november-27th-update.aspx

In my experience and my brothers the update went well and worked as advertised...

[Vbeal]

There is a new article up on PracticallyNetworked today called "Expand Windows Home Server With Add-ins". It takes a look at three different add-ins (Whiist, PhotoSync, and AutoExit) and also has links to more add-ins you can download and try.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/howto/120307windows_home_server_addins.htm

Anyone using any add-ins they'd recommend?

I like autoexit - mainly because I can shut my eleven year old's computer off when his "five more minutes please!" turns into ten... it works great for that! :)

I also tried the Client Info add-in but had mixed results. Sometimes it displayed correct server stats, sometimes it didn't - and rarely were the client stats right.

~ Vangie

[Sooner Al]

A fellow named Scott, aka sedin26, posted a procedure on the MS WHS discussion forums to setup either a PPTP VPN or OpenVPN server on a WHS machine for remote client backup. Check it out. Some of you may find it of interest.

http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2506018&SiteID=50

[Sooner Al]

SYMPTOMS

When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server. Several people have reported issues after they have used the following programs to save files to their home servers:

• Windows Vista Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Money 2007
• SyncToy 2.0 Beta

Additionally, there have been customer reports of issues with Torrent applications, with Intuit Quicken, and with QuickBooks program files. Our support team is currently trying to reproduce these issues in our labs.

Make sure that you have a backup copy of any important program files before you store these files on a system that is running Windows Home Server.

More information...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946676/en-us?spid=12624

[Greenstead]

I am continuing to successfully use WHS to look after PC backups, and more importantly central storage of all my home data which is extensive and valuable to me.

One of the useful features is that remote access to its shares is via https which corporate firewalls allow and I can access my home data from the office, something I could never do before since corporate firewalls typically block remote desktop protocols like RDP and VNC.

I still recommend it worth considering for a home network. However I would emphasise WHS is a young product and inevitably prone to bugs. I would not trust my valuable home data entirely to WHS at this time (nor to any other data storage method), and I use an additional non-WHS USB drive to backup all my data to.

I note that regarding Synctoy. I am a great fan of this tool. Whilst Microsoft have warned of WHS/Synctoy V2 problems, I use Synctoy v1.4 to synchronise data to WHS every night. After more detailed checking I did find corruption of some files using Synctoy v1.4 and had to abandon use of synctoy on WHS.

In addition I have had a series of WHS database backup corruptions including another recently. This would be a serious failure for a home user who relied on WHS for backing up home PCs. So on reflection I have to advise you should consider this if choosing Microsoft WHS. I am sure WHS will be a valuable home tool when it is more mature and reliable.

[Greenstead]

After MS released their update for Home Server it seems to have stabilised and I find it a valuable asset to my home network.
Now is a good time to consider it.

[cszeto]

http://forums.practicallynetworked.com/showthread.php?t=9365