Category: Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server Re-install, part 2

~ rbonini ~ 4 Comments

Well, its been a week since I had to install the CTP of Windows Home Server.

The long and the short of it is that the Upgrade option in the setup simply does not work – no way, no how. It stopped after the first reboot. It was insane. So I capitualted and copied all my data off the two secodnary hard drives as it was impossible to access data stored on the primary hard disk ( the one with the OS partition). I even tried recovering the hard drive to no avail. Which wasted the entire afternoon, I might add. So thanks to Folder Duplication – I did not lose one shred (no pun intended) of data – THANKS GUYS!!

So I did a new install over the old one and it worked like a Swizz car. It was a total breeze ( it might be going a bit far to say my grand mother could have done it).

I do like what they have done with the Console UI. Its more Vista-ish. Everything is well layed out. There is a helpful label at the bottom of the connector that informs you when storage is balanced.

The settings tab is re-designed. I like the inclusion of the Shutdown button under the menu instead of in a submenu – it saves a click. There are now settings for the Remote Access and Add-in bits. You can register for a custom domain from Live Custom Domains service that actually works very well (the wizard is supurbly designed). You can also auto-configure your router from here. I tried and it didin’t work (Linksys router WAG54G if anyone wants to know).

The process that actually does the configuring is called portfwd.exe and it hogged my system for hours. This slowed down everything. There isn’t actually an option to cancel the config (why???) and simply ending the process buys you a few minutes since it will start up again. the solution is to go into Control panel and click on Services (Control Panel should be in the Start Menu – if it isin’t, customize the Start menu to show it). Find Portfwd.exe and disable it.

Besides that small hickup everything runs smoothly.

This release of WHS really is good. I just need to get my hands on an Add-on or two to test that functionality.

I’m wondering, though, if you can back-up programatically to WHS. This would/ could give finer-grained control over back-up shecedules than is currently possible. It might even allow a few people to write somthing to back-up Macs or PC’s without the Home Connector.

If anyone is interest the WHS team do have a blog.

Windows Home Server, part 5: The Re-Install

~ rbonini

So far so good. Setup is proceeding normally. I’ hitting the knees every five minutes praying that all goes to plan.

I’m told that installation will take approximately 51 minutes. And, if memory serves, that’s longer than for the Beta 2 install.

For the sake of convenience the server is not connected to the network as its easier to take the server to the screen and keyboard rather than the other way around ( yeah, I know!)

I’ll update this post after the “Finalizing Installation” box is ticked

Update: The Re-Install was a completel disaster. It stopped after rebooting once.There are no shared folders – nothing. I’m trying again. Hopefully its work this time.

Update 2: The install wizard only give the new installation option now. Hmm. The file and folders show up fine, but can’t be opened. I’ve remove the primary hd and hooked it up to my work machine and am running DiskInternals NTFS Recovery 1.5 on it. Its only my second time using it, and the fist time I’m really putting it though it throught its paces. If it recovers my data, I’m buying the full license. The funny thing is that this only happens one the primary HD. The duplicrtes onthe other two HD’s are fine. Very strange. So If i have to re-install, I’ll only be losing part of my data. I’ll let you know how recovery goes.

Oh, The Joy!!! – WHS CTP

~ rbonini

Just reading my feeds and was pleasantly surprised to find that a new Community Technology Preview was out for Windows Home Server. I’m downloading it now. Depending on the state of sanity of my Internet connection ( 🙂 ) it should take about 3 hours.

Can’t wait to get my hands on this. I just might be up late tonight…

This could not have come at a better time  as I just added a 400Gb hard drive.

And yes, I will copy everything off before the upgrade. I’m not in a the mood to burn 2000 tracks again.

I just wonder how close this CTP will be to the release version. Which leads me to ask: Will there be a Release Candidate? 

Windows Home Server and SQL Server

~ rbonini

I tried again today to install SQL Server 2005 on WHS. All the other components installed except for the actual Server, the Native Client and the Vss Writer ( what ever its actually called). To get this far you need to work around the SSL issue on WHS, which hopefully will be solved by the time it ships.

This KB article helped alot, even though its for SQL 2000.

To install SQL Server 2000 successfully, export the certificates to a file, and then delete the certificates from the Certificate MMC snap-in. After you successfully install SQL Server 2000:

1.Stop the SQL Server service.

2.Reinstall your certificates.

3.Start the SQL Server service.

There’s a KB article on exporting and installing certificates here.

With just a small caveat. WHS will automatically repopulate the Certificates in Personal/Certificates folder. You need to make sure that the imported certificate is the only one in there, which means you delete the new one. if you don’t do this the Remote Website will not work. I’ve no idea why.

So I’m going to hunt for the SQL Install log and see if I can find a workaround for what ever went wrong.

Using Windows Home Server, part 4

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

So after testing everything else, I got around to testing the remote access functionality.

Since I was on holiday away down  in the south of England, I decided to set things up. Got registered on dyndns.org and set my Linksys router up to ping their servers every time my external IP address changed. This side of things worked pretty well for the next day or so, before the IP changed and the router didn’t update dyndns.org with the change. Which is strange in and of itself.

The WHS remote access website works very well indeed. The downloads went smoothly, even when downloading an entire folder. I intentionally forgot to copy some files to my laptop so I was forced to test this out one way or the other. I want that zip code that the website uses to send your files (all files get included in a zip archive), could prove to be useful. But I digress.

So far, I’m very impressed with it. I was unable to test the uploading functionality because by the time I got round to that my router was suffering IP paralysis.

As a tip, download the automatic update software from dyndns.org and run it on the server as a service to back up the router functionality (if its there). The really strange thing is that my Linksys Router DDNS needs to be setup anyway to work with dyndns.org .I  tried turning it off after I installed the update software, but it refused to work and showed the Router setup page and not the WHS website. I turned it back on and viola – it worked!

Must try the uploading features some time.

The WHS SDK is out am I’m salivating like Pavlov’s dogs for their bell over what I could do with it. I haven’t come up with anything yet, I’m afraid. At least not something that I could do. But it struck me that what ever antivirus software you have running, it should have a Home Connector Tab and a Remote Access Tab. In fact you could extend the same idea to the Dyndns.org update software I wrote about above. Since the idea is for a headless server, the Home Connector and Remote Access Website are now the developers primary  interface and means of interacting with the user.

For example. If I had a SQL server running on WHS ( which I don’t – there were issues last time I tried the install) I could programmatically check the SQL server status and display the data in the Home Connector – kind of like what SQL Management Studio Express and the DotNetPanel do. Hey, come to think of it…DNP is free for up to 10 websites… (consider this a note to self). Now, if I could get SQL Server working…

But I digress. Back to the issue to Anti Virus software. Nortons 2007 Internet Security refused point blank to install. Which leads me ask what plans the WHS team have in this area. Is there going to be a OneCare license included with the release of WHS (this would be great from the point of view of Home Connector and Remote Access integration)? Is Microsoft going to do a deal with Nortons and McAffee over their Server Editions (possible but very unlikely in the light of Microsoft entering their market with OneCare). Or is WHS magically going to be security hole free ( possible, if the WHS team decide to port to OSX 🙂 ). Now I’m justifiably nervous with out AV software covering my back. I suppose I’ll just have to trust the windows firewall….

Using Windows Home Server, part 3

~ rbonini

I’ve been using WHS for three weeks or so now. The really surprising thing is that it simply melts into the background. Until you need to do a manual backup or Remote desktop in, it effectively drops from your radar.

I’ve been transferring more and more of my work files to the WHS and working with them directly from there ( things go slightly slower, but, hey 🙂 ). It allows me to work from any PC in the house with out first having to copy the files between machines. It really is great. The whole idea really works well.

WHS backup runs once a day over lunch and I never have to worry about it. I might just throw away my Norton Ghost disk…

Now as far a wish list goes…

  1. WHS screams like mad if the laptop is not backed up two days running ( some days its not used and kept off). It would be useful to tell WHS to cool off for while.
  2. WHS should keep an eye on what’s going on client PC’s and back them up if needed (I.e. when you install new software) and label the backups accordingly ( I.e. if its a program install it should be “[program name] Install”)
  3. The Health Monitoring tool could be greatly expanded up to drill, down to the status of each PC in real time. I’m probably wishing a bit to much to say that integration with Norton Internet Security to show status would be cool.
  4. It would be really good to schedule a startup/shutdown period. Putting the fact that servers a meant to be kept on 24/7 aside for a moment, people may actually want to switch them off after their nightly backups to save on electricity ( and thus feel even better about the environment). Currently I shutdown mine via the Console ( really cool feature 🙂 ).
  5. Not sure about how many people use Outlook, but being able to have a Shared Outlook Calendar would be really good ( Similar to Rick’s point 4 below).

The rest comes from Rick Hallihan over at the One Man Shouting blog:

  • Family Sharing – Basically, I’d like to select certain folders on the server, and designate them to be replicated to my extended family.  Hopefully they’ll all have Home Server machines as well, and now if I drop some home movies or photos into that bucket, they’d be automatically synced.  Likewise they could add stuff as well.  This can be set up today with Foldershare, but it needs to be simple and available through the WHS console.
  • Security Monitoring and Automation – This is one that I think will probably get addressed at least a couple different ways.  If I’m away from the house, I’d love to be able to remotely access my security system.  Maybe flip a couple lights on/off. Remotely access security cameras.  Turn the thermostat back up so the house isn’t too cold when I return.
  • Offsite backup – I’d like to see this addressed two different ways.  One would be a web-based service where I could pay for a certain amount of space on a monthly basis.  Another way that I think would be awesome is if I could designate a remote WHS machine (maybe at my brother’s house) as my remote backup point.  I could just buy a 500GB USB hard drive, he could plug it in to his machine and designate it for remote backups, or perhaps he could just have an easy way to set a quota for my remote backups, and it would make use of the storage pool that WHS manages.
  • Amazon UnBox or similar clients – Let me browse and buy from the server, either from the remote web interface or the console, and then let me watch the content on any media extenders in my home.  I could schedule the download remotely early in the day, and then it would be ready to watch on whatever TV was free in the evening (assuming it had a media extender attached.)
  • Family Schedule – This is getting into the email/pim realm a bit, and I know that story isn’t fully addressed, but a centralized shared calendar view would be cool.  Let me sync any type of calendar to the Home Server, Live Hotmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, whatever.  Somehow make the calendar viewable on media extenders, or on home PCs in an easy, quick way.

Also according to Rick, the SDK is coming out this month sometime.

I have tried the Remote Access functionality a bit ( albeit from this PC rather than a really remote one) and found it lacking in extra stuff. I’m away for the weekend, so might try it out  for real then.

Rick asks an interesting question: Do you actually need that Remote Access?

The “Access all your files from anywhere” model is pretty cool.  Right now I’ve got it set up using DynDNS (pretty easy but not very consumer friendly), but it looks like by release time there’s going to be some sort of integration with Live Domains, so that this will be a simple set up.  Even this functionality can fade into the background though.  Honestly, since I set this up, I used it a couple of times, just to play around with it, but I haven’t actually needed that remote access.

Given that a) there is an SDK and that b) Microsoft is releasing the Website as part of the SDK ( so people can add pages and functionality to it),  the Remote Access site really will turn into something more useful over and above what it can already do.

Using Windows Home Server, part 2

~ rbonini

I did say the last time that I’d download and install a Virtual Server image of  Exchange 2007. I did. And it was way too slow for comfort. So I went ahead and downloaded the normal install package for Evaluation (Microsoft give you amonth to try out the package) . I’m installing it now. By the way, Virtual Server works flawlessly on WHS, even with an image mounted and running – its just that my server didn’t have the Gigaherz to do the job.

WHS took an age and a half to get round to running the install. And is presently unzipping the files.

On to other stuff. I think that WHS really needs something akin to a scheduler for backups – even as an option. I say this because the times that it takes a back up are totally random. Sometimes its at the very beginning of the backup window on one pc, but it waits and backups the the pc 3 hours later. It can be totally erratic. It might be the fact that my backup window is 12 hours long.  I’m going to try cutting that to 3 hours over lunch ( I prefer all my to turn all my PCs off at night, including the server) and see if it makes any difference.

I think that the major gripe, if you could call it that, is that WHS spends most of its time doing nothing. And I’m talking about the time it dosn’t spend serving files and music. A stripped down version of Exchange in order to keep users emails in one central store is one idea. Someone suggested a central upgrade server for windows update on the forums. 

But all of the above are Microsoft add-ons.The big thing is that WHS will have an SDK. Imagine that. Need somthing? Build it. The question is how wide ranging the SDK will be in the first place.  The limits that are placed on using the server programatically will dictate in a big way how we can levegae the SDK in development ( i.e will we be able to access the backup engine? The Folder Duplication engine? will we be able to remote into client PC’s and perform tasks?). I can think of a few things I’d like the Server to do in its down time – like programatically checking that the server has actually backed up a client PC, or generating a XML representation of the Music Library and making sure all libraries are on the same page. Lots you can do.

As far as my Exchange 2007 Standard Evaluation install went, it didin’t go anywhere.  It resulted in a ton of errors when it carried out a bunch of tests and I’d ratehr deal with them when iIm not so busy. In any case at $699 a license, I’d rather spend the money on hard drives.

I was just poking around Outlook and came across Data File Management under the Files menu. It allows you to change the location of your .pst files. I’m wondering if I could copy them to WHS? That is, into a file the user has permissions to.And acess them from there. That means that, in theory, whatever changes you make are instantly replicated to your Outlook install that are configured to use that pst file. This raises all sorts of deconfliction and versioning issues – essentially hell. Or, there’s a Outlook add-on i downloaded some time ago ( don’t ask from where, please, but I think it was Microsoft) that backs up the files to a location that you choose. Thats another option.  

My adventures with WHS continue….

Using Windows Home Server, part 1

~ rbonini

Well, now I’ve got my trusty Windows home server working, I can tell you how it runs. And it runs pretty good, let me tell you.

This is the second full day that thats its been installed and it has thus taken two backups already of each computer ( A 30 and a 40 gig). The backups take up only 30 gigs at the moment. And I don’t expect it to rise very fast either as duplicate files (eg windows install files) are only copied once.

 The server has all my downloads, photos and music on it as well, leaving only essential stuff on the PC’s. The printer is installed as well and works fine.

Well, nearly works fine. The All-in-One bit is not working. I can’t scan from any other PC. Now this would be relitively simple to remedy by adding USB Port Sharing to the Home Connector software that needs to be installed on client PC’s ( this, in fact, has all sorts of ramifications for USB devices – how about shared ReadyBoost Drives in Vista?). I’ve submitted a suggstion on this and voted on every similar suggestion relating to getting All-in-One printers to work.

The Home Connector software is really, really well put together. Without having to drag your screen, keyboard and mouse over to the server, you can control nearly everything about it. With emphasis on nearly. Control freaks will be left with somthing to be desired. Till yesterday the Connector and the Console were out of sync with the Connector telling me my network health was affected and the console telling me it was fine. But that seems to have gone now.

Even though the server is next door in the office and shares a wall with my room, I can still hear the fan whirring in the dead of night. Blasted thing – serves me right for buying a Dell server 🙂 . So, to allow me to sleep and safe gurad my sanity, I’ve set it to take back up during the day  when I know that the server and the other PC’s will be on. By default its set to take back-ups between 12am and 6 am and changing this upsets the server a bit, its still works fine. Just make sure that the pc’s in question are fully switched on before the back windows opens. I switched my laptop on a bit to late this morning and a backup started the moment the Connector started talking with the server, slowing the startup process greatly.

I was browsing the fourms last night and discovered that people are building multi -terabyte Home Servers. The current record as last check was 2.06 Tb. Whoever that was must really have serious storage requirements a la Google. Or  the National Security Agency. At 220Gb, my home server is running smoothly. I still ahve 160 Gb’s left. Unless I get really pushed for space I’m not buying any more hard drives. I’ve turned off the folder duplication freature for the moment while I figure out what to do about it.

Now, WHS is based primarily on Windows Server 2003 meaning that any application designed to run on Windoes Server has the potential to run on WHS. So. I’m taking my chances and ahve install Windows Virtual Server. And I’m in the middle of mounting Exchange 2007 (Beta 2, I think) as a Virtual Hard Drive. It will be very interesting to see if it works. The idea of WHS is to keep stuff you use on multimple PC’s in the one place (which is why you can access your personel folder from any other PC where you are logged in with the same Username and Password), so why not extend that to email? More than once I’ve got into the bind of needing my  Desktop PC emails while I’m working on the Laptop, or vice versa. Since its running in a Virtual Machine, I doubt it’ll harm WHS’s processes. If this works, it follows to ask what else we can get away with running on Virtual Server? Buy one server, get one or two free – why not?

 Already, after a few short days of use I can see the appeal to WHS to people. We live increasingly busy lives and have less time to deal with things like backups. WHS automates the whole process. With Norton Ghost I had to keep fiddling around with it to get it to do what I wanted it to do. WHS just works. Oh and Ghost insisted on moving 10 Gig files around my network for each backup – WHS doesn’t.

I can already see my self buying a release copy of WHS.

Windows Home Server Install, Part 5

~ rbonini

Well, I got the server this afternoon and set it up. All that remains to be done is to install the printer, which I will leave to tommorrow. Once I disconnected the second hard drive I ‘d added the install went fine. I’ve no idea why. But then, again, thats why I’m beta testing.

The server install stopped temporarily when I forgot to return the install DVD to the drive after using my driver CD for the ethernet and bus devices. I simply restarted the server with the DVD in the drive and the install carried on fine. If you need to know, it stopped at the “installing WinFX” bit.

First impressions: very impressed.

Adding usernames and opassword could not be easier. I have the same username/password combinations on both of my PC’s and both were connected to the server without a hitch.

Adding a Hard drive was very easy as well. Straightfoward. My mother could do it, it was THAT easy. As far as physicaly adding the hard drive, I’m using Serial ATA hard drives next time; they are much easier to install in a Dell Poweredge Server.

Adding shared folers was easy as well. You just have to be careful of the read/write permissions. By default these are set to Read only. You need to set them t0 read write before you can move files in there. The permissions work seamlessly with Windows Explorer ( pardon me for being slightly ingorant, but I’m not sure whether this is a product of the Home Connector Software or it just is).

The Home Connector software is very easy to install and it finds the server automatically  as an added bonus. The Ui is slick, clean and uncluttered. There is no space wasted to extra config options ( which is why I’m going to have to drag the screen, keyboard and mouse over to the server tomorrow to install my printer). Its well thought out and very Vista-ish.   

At the moment I’m copying a 3.36Gb folder  full of Downloads to the server ( thats after deleting the .iso files for my Suse Solaris and Vista Beta 2 Discs) . This is very sad as its taking an age. When it comes to my +/- 10 GB music folder. I do not want these folders backed up so I’m copying them off first. The other thing I’m doing, given the sheer disc size of my PC is uninstaling pgograms that I don’t need/want.

Right now I want to review the core selling points of the server. That is the backup ( hopefully will not have to test  the restore bit 🙂 ) and the media sharing aspects of it. I have plans to install Virtual server and run an Exchange 2007 server  VM on it. But that is  a week if not more away.

I’ll have to start a “Windows Home Server” series now that the install is done.

Windows Server Install, Part 4 -Update

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

The server should be here before the 20th (i.e. next tuesday). I’m hoping it’ll be here sooner.

I was gettng a few funny looks this morning as I attempted to explain to non-geeks precicely why this was worth the expense. They never got it. I’m so excited by this that I would be buying Microsoft shares if I could. As I said the other day, I think that the whole idea is revolutionary and could will bode well for Microsoft.

Though, as an aside, I think that Microsoft are trying as many product lines as possible to se where they can find firm ground and graction for the business model and only then stick to it. Just look at the Live debacle that has Microsoft renaming services to MSN and/or canceling them. Once Microsoft find the proverbial silver bullet, they are all set for global domination (or a purchase of Google, whichever comes first 🙂 ).

So, I’m thinking that Windows Home Server is that silver bullet. More properly, its the silver bullet to shoot Google with.

As yet another aside, I wonder if the fact that your WHS will be accesible through a live.com domain will allow Google to index it? Probably not. But it would give geeks a few hoots if it did 🙂 .

So considering the full usefullness of WHS is best left to next week when I’m actually using the thing, but one thing strikes me: I wonder how many people will actually have the opportunity to use the Restore Cd? 🙂