For the small business backup is key.  You probably have file sharing set up on your local file server and nightly backups of that data, most likely to a removable hard drive or NAS device.  You may even have a dedicated backup application that backs up your file server and desktop PCs to some network storage or tape.  Let me explain why Windows Home Server (WHS) should be implemented.

WHS has three key items as part of it’s backup that make it a critical small business tool: lets go through them.  First and foremost it includes a software agent that backs up desktop PCs and Windows servers: that’s right, install the agent and it will back up Microsoft’s line of server products including SBS, Exchange, SharePoint, etc.  You just need a unique login for each server, not just administrator since that’s taken by WHS.  Second it has a unique method of saving files: once a copy of the file is on the WHS it places a pointer to that file for all other backups, so one backup of XP Professional or six will take the same amount of storage space for system files.  In big companies the IT team can re-image your PC and get the apps reinstalled, but for a small company it’s so much easier to boot from a CD and reload last night’s complete backup of your PC.  Third it shares files amongst it’s storage pool of hard drives in a software type of RAID that is very efficient: WHS duplicates files across multiple hard drives so in the event of a drive failure your data is safe.

The other key advantage of WHS is cost: about $140 gets you the software product that will accept up to ten clients.  Yes ten clients is a limitation for this option of backup server, but you can run multiple instances of Windows Home Server: they each need a unique name and you’d have to make sure the client software pointed to the right WHS system.  Back to cost: WHS is light on system requirements so you could repurpose older hardware to fit the bill, or for under $600 you could pick up a complete system with WHS already installed.

I have two partitions on my hard drive: one Windows XP Professional and one Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.  I hardly use the XP install anymore since Vista has worked out it’s kinks, or enough so it doesn’t bother me.

I hooked up the new drive and booted Drive Image from it’s two 3.5″ floppies: this program is ancient and works great, but not this time with my Vista 64 bit partition.  A trip to Download Squad provided a list of options: I tried XXClone and Shadow Copy but they were dead ends.  PING and Gparted weren’t able to work for me either.

Since both drives were Seagate models I downloaded Seagate DiscWizard and used that to copy: it’s actually from Acronis and it did copy the contents without any errors but I couldn’t boot either OS so now I was worse off then before I started.

Since I was running Windows Home Server I decided to do a system restore to my new hard drive.  I found the System Restore disk and booted from it (initial boot is agonizingly slow) but it didn’t like my Vista 64 bit partition either: I realized WHS didn’t support it until it’s Power Pack 1 release.  I went to another PC and burned a System Restore Power Pack 1 CD and then rebooted.

It got a little funny here.  WHS wouldn’t restore to a blank disk: it needs to have partitions already there so it provides the option to launch Disk Management which is nice and handy.  I launched Disk Management and my PC crashed to a Blue Screen Of Death with the irq_not_less_than_equal error.  Rebooting and trying again gave the same issue.

I booted from Gparted and created the two partitions I wanted: one 114 GB and one 356 GB (that pesky 1 GB=how many bytes).  Booting back to System Restore it saw both partitions and restored them.  I was then able to finally have my old system on the new hard drive.  And it only took five hours!

Lessons learned: Vista 64 bit is new and so I need to work with what supports it and not try and rely on old ways and old utilities.  Windows Home Server and it’s system restore worked very well once I worked around it’s problems.  I didn’t plan ahead and could have been caught in a real bind but I had an additional PC to burn CDs with and get what I needed to my ailing system.

First issue was the service failing to install.  It’s a simple batch file that adds an executable as a service and prompts you for a username and password (all through NET 2.0 and installutil).  It kept failing until under username I put “computername\username” and then it installed fine.

Second issue was actually getting the WMI info collected.  Disabling my Windows XP firewall allowed the info to be collected so it was blocked there.  A google search revealed the following command line to allow remote WMI requests:

netsh firewall set service RemoteAdmin enable

I re-enabled my firewall and the WMI info was being collected and displayed in my Windows Home Server client.

I’ve used every version of Small Business Server right up until the RC1 of SBS 2008: it was the only all around server product that Microsoft offered with wizards and hand holding that allowed you to have an active directory and Exchange for the small office environment.  I needed something that allowed email access from anywhere (OWA), easy remote connectivity and simple remote desktop connection, and basic file sharing.  SBS had these features from the get go and have added more wizards and simplification with each version, making it a must have product for my small office.

Unfortunately WHS turned that thinking on it’s ear with its outstanding backup, file sharing, remote access and easy storage handling.  It’s dirt cheap for what you get and I run the OEM version on decent server hardware.  I only ran the release candidate of SBS 2008 to see if they’d implemented the same outstanding backup from WHS, but they didn’t.

Windows Home Server did everything I needed except email serving.  Luckily I had solved that issue some time ago by using Gmail as my main email client through web or IMAP in Portable Thunderbird or Outlook.  I’ve had a domain for ten years now and have used 1&1 for web hosting most of that time.  Every email user should register a domain and at the very least use it for email: one ISP move and it’s paid for itself in lack of frustration.  I have my email account set up so it automatically forwards a copy to my Gmail account, which neatly filters out spam for me.  My ebabble domain email is set as the default address.  The only issue is in Outlook it shows my Gmail email address “on behalf of” my domain address, which really annoys me.  Gmail is accessible anywhere, even nicely implemented on my shiny new iPhone.

For those that need to run a mail server on WHS just use the built in POP and SMTP services built into Windows 2003: here’s an excellent walkthrough for Windows Server 2003 but if you remote desktop into WHS you can accomplish the same.

For those not in the know, Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS from now on) is just that: a small server operating system designed for the home. It’s meant to do three things really well: backup all your computers, share files on your network, give remote access to your home server and computers.

WHS is designed to be run headless, a nice server term meaning without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. As such Microsoft is heavily promoting users purchase a pre-built WHS server: you get this home, plug in the power and network cables and then connect to it from any computer. For the more technically inclined you can purchase just the software and install it on any computer you’d like: that’s the route I went with since I’m computer crazy and have systems and parts lying around my office.

Installation is straightforward and very simple. Boot from the DVD, put any additional drivers you need on a USB memory stick, new install or upgrade, pick a password, and that’s about it. It trudges along for a while and you have a working home server. From here Microsoft wants you to install the Home Connector software, which is a custom Remote Desktop connection that has two purposes: PC backup and access to WHS allowing you to manage your home server. As long as the PC is on at the time you set up backups the PC will be completely backed up to the WHS. I couldn’t get my Home Connector software to install properly until I assigned WHS a static IP address and added that address to each PCs’ HOSTS file: hopefully this isn’t a common problem as that requires quite a bit of PC know how.

Backup is the big sell for this product, in my oh so humble opinion. Every machine gets fully backed up to the WHS, but there’s not a lot of wasted space because single instance store is utilized. Basically a database is run on WHS that makes sure only one copy of a file is stored: if you have four PCs are home running Windows XP Professional that’s basically four copies of all the same files, so WHS only keeps on file but marks down what all the files are on each PC. This is a huge space saver and works very well. Shadow Volume Copy is also running on WHS, so you can restore up to three previous versions of a file you’ve saved by right clicking on the file and picking a previous version. To make the most of Volume Shadow Copy I redirect all users’ My Documents to their own folders on the WHS. In the event of a PC crash you can restore your PC by booting from an included restore CD. This is dead simple and so effective any home or business with ten machines or less needs to be running Windows Home Server. I’m really hoping this technology gets implemented in Windows Small Business Server, so businesses up to 75 machines can use it.

Once every machine has the Home Connector software installed you can set up the Home Server for user and folders access. Make an account for each user, giving the same name as what they log into their PC with: if you’re not using unique logins for each computer (every PC just starting with the Administrator user) you’ll need to go around and set each person up with a unique login, preferably with a password. From there give these users full, read only or no access to the shares set up on the WHS. While you’re at it set up some new shares if you don’t want to fit everything into the predefined shared folders of music, video, public, photos, software. You can also turn on access to your media folders for media streaming around the house: I use my X-Box 360 for music and photo access and it works very nicely.

Another new technology used in WHS is drive extender: all hard drives are added to one large storage pool, apart from a 20 GB boot partition. If you have one 40 GB drive or eight 1 TB drives, your WHS will have a 20 GB C: drive and the rest as a D: drive. The good part is when you enable folder duplication, which puts a copy of your data on at least two drives. On my WHS I have four 500 GB drives: my total used space for files is 480 GB, so each of the drives contains a copy of my data. I pulled one of the drives just to check and it was all there. When your data goes over the size of one the drives this isn’t the case, but it’s a very easy and expandable system for storage. No need for software or hardware RAID. When you want to add more storage just mount a new hard drive or plug in an external drive and in the WHS Console add it to your storage. Boom, more space, no hassle.

To get access from the outside work you need to go through the Settings options. WHS will automatically configure your router if it has uPNP turned on, or you can manually set up port forwarding. Every WHS install comes with a free domain name of *.homeserver.com, so sign in with a Windows Live ID and pick something easy to remember. When you’re away from home log into your site and you’ll have three options: remote connect to one of your PCs, access the files and folders on your WHS, or run the WHS console. Each is really easy to use and navigate and makes all your data accessible from anywhere.

At this point PCs have Home Connector running and are being backed up, users are set up and assigned access to the folders, and remote access is working from outside. With the year long beta there are lots of active users in the online community, and a lot of add-ins are being written to expand WHS capabilities, from OEMs and users. HP bundles a group of features with their MediaSmart models, and there are some gems available online as well. Check out the Microsoft WHS Blog for a slew of information, along with it’s product page.

If it isn’t obvious I love this product and heartily endorse if for any computing environment of up to ten PCs, especially small businesses that need to have an easy and stress free backup and remote access solution for a very low cost.

Last week Microsoft released the Windows Home Server Community Technology Preview (CTP).  This put a lot more fit and finish to the product.  I used the upgrade option to upgrade my existing WHS beta 2 installation.  Things went well, but I was still getting a failing service and couldn’t install the client software.  I had hoped the upgrade would resolve these two issues.

Around the same time I realized my home office needed to be cleaned up.  I had three servers in various states of assembly plus four PCs scattered around the room.  Everything needed to be organized and prepped.

Tiger Direct had a sale on AMD Athlon x2 3800+ socket 939 processors so I picked one up.  I have an eVGA Nforce4 SLI motherboard in an Antec SLK3700BQE case and an Antec Neo HE 550 power supply.  It just needed to be assembled to get things cooking.  When the CPU arrived I popped it in with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64Pro since it was an OEM model.  Added two 1 GB PC3200 DIMMs and an LG GSA-H22L DVD re-writer to the mix and it was almost ready.  Around this time I decided this machine would be the new WHS box, so I could just transfer the four 500 GB Maxtor drives from the current dual Xeon WHS machine.  The Nforce4 SLI motherboard had PCI-E slots for the graphics and I didn’t have anything to spare so I threw in an ATI 8 MB PCI card and it was working beautifully; thank goodness I keep boxes of old hardware for no particular reason.

I moved over the hard drives in the same order and booted from the WHS CTP DVD in the hopes of running the upgrade option again, but no dice.  Reordering the hard drives on the motherboard didn’t help and I started to feel a little panicky.  I pulled one of the four and hooked it to my main system: all my files were there.  WHS and it’s folder duplication function had just saved my bacon and vividly illustrated why not to use a RAID array for WHS.  I did a fresh installation of WHS on the three connected drives and copied my data over from the pulled drive.

Everything was going so well…until WHS client installation.  Failure again loomed over me, as it had the last three installs.  I hit the WHS forums, again, and looked around until I found someone talking about adding the WHS machine to the clients HOSTS file.  Brilliant!  Doing so got everything tickety boo.  I did change the IP of the box from a DHCP address (the default) to a static address so I could feel secure with port redirection on my router.

I skipped one little item to keep continuity: the Antec Neo HE 550 wouldn’t power up the new WHS machine.  I hit the power button, and the fans wouldn’t even start: the motherboard flashed “FF” at me.  Solid FF meant booting, but flashing wasn’t really mentioned.  I plugged the power supply into my Antec power supply tester and it showed as all green, thumbs up.  I unplugged everything except CPU, RAM and video card but still nothing.  Swapped the CPU with a Sempron 3000+ socket 939 CPU I had from another system and it was no luck.  Finally desperation sank in and I pulled an Antec TP2-550EPS12V from my dual Opteron server and hooked it up: success!  Swapped power supplies and put the Neo HE aside: this was my first failed Antec power supply.  With it’s five year warranty I’ll try and RMA.

Cleaned everything up and loaded the dual Xeon system with 4 GB PC2100 ECC RAM, four Maxtor 250 GB hard drives and a 3ware Escalade 9550SX.  I downloaded Windows Server 2003 x64 Standard edition from TechNet and am planning to install next week, along with Microsoft Virtual Server.  This will be my secondary test/backup platform as I like a belts and braces approach to my data, and until WHS is a final product I’ll need a secondary file depot.

I posted a review of the Promise SATA300 TX4 but needed a high quality pic.  There’s a tiny picture on the Promise website but when you click “Enlarge Image” you end up with a picture of a different model.  Contacted Promise tech support for a photo and to let them know of the problem but so far I’ve been ignored.  To be fair I’ve been emailing old Promise contacts I had from the RAID review days; who really knows if they’re still around?

Rethinking my whole home software setup. involving a hardware shuffle and software reload.  Currently my SBS 2003 install runs on a home built Athlon MP server.  With my TechNet subscription I wanted to update to SBS 2003 R2 anyways, so my big home built dual Opteron server will become the main home server.  Lots of work there.

Each day I use Windows Home Server beta 2 the more I appreciate it, and hope it’s main features will make it into a future SBS version.  Automated nightly backup with no file duplication is a fantastic feature, especially as it allows bare metal restore.  The beta team ask that RAID isn’t used, but with it’s folder duplication I feel too much space is being wasted.  I’ll rebuild this server as well with 500 MB hard drives and a RAID 5 adapter.

Finished Titan Quest Immortal Throne.  This is an expansion back, and is a Diablo-esque game with monster killing and weapon collecting.  The expansion added some much needed features such as auto sorting your loot storage and providing additional storage space in towns.  Look for a full review shortly.

For some reason I have a bunch of hard drives lying around at home for two purposes: to upgrade my Small Business Server ( SBS ) machine and to build a disk based backup machine.  I had a Xeon workstation sitting around so that was going to be repurposed to WHS, but it didn’t have SATA ports so I needed an add-in controller.  Looking around there seemed to be two choices, both 32 bit 66 MHz PCI capable of 266 MB/s: an endless array of no name SATA rev 1.0 boards with Silicon Image controllers for $40, or a Promise SATAII300 TX4 SATA rev1.0a controller for $80.  Since I wanted native command queuing ( NCQ, the ability for the controller to take requests for data and rearrange them to come off disk in the fastest manner possible ) I went with the Promise card.

Once up and running WHS doe two things: gives network access to shared files, and backs up computers on the network.  This is a home product designed for up to ten users, but borrows most of it’s smarts from various Microsoft servers, especially SBS.  WHS is designed to run headless, meaning once it’s running you interact with it via a client program ( and also means no keyboard, mouse or monitor required ).  Install the connector software and login to the server.  From there you control the four aspects of WHS: backup, folder sharing, user profiles and server storage.

Backup runs nightly and does a full backup of the PC, save any exceptions you add.  It’s based on Windows remote installation services ( RIS ) and maximizes space by only keeping one copy of each file.  Quick example: three PCs are running on the network using Windows XP Professional and Office 2003; almost all the files are the same for the operating system and application.  Therefore the backup puts one file on the backup server and a marker to that file for the other two backups.  Very nice.

Folder sharing is just what is says, but adds a wrinkle by allowing external access to the WHS server, much like remote access in SBS.  Go to your home server over the internet and you’ll hit a secure web page that allows you in the browser to access all the files.

User profiles are pretty simple, giving none, read or read and write access to the shared files.  Nuff said.

Server storage is handled oddly in my opinion, but I understand where they’re coming from.  WHS takes all your hard drives and creates two partitions: a 10 GB partition for the OS and one large partition that spans the rest of the storage devices.  Since this is one big partition backup or file safety is handled by duplicating folders on different storage devices.  This really cuts the available storage to half, but with anything less than three disks it’s really all you can you.   A software RAID system would work much better, but only on three or more disks.  WHS allows external storage to be added to the pool as well, mixing connections and providing the widest berth.

It’s a good product and at beta 2 performs well.  Being a regular SBS user I’d like to see the backup functionality added to SBS instead of relying on a separate home product like WHS.