When I first heard about Windows Home S
erver (WHS) – I was pretty reluctant to bother. I was happily running Server 2003 with a 1.5TB software RAID 5 array and am not a fan of NAS, so didn’t get the point.
With the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1), and support for external USB backups, I decided to take another look. I have not looked back.
OK – at it’s simplest WHS does three things
- It backs up all your home PC’s using what has to be one of the most innovative and useful backup solutions I have ever seen.
- It’s a file server
- It’s a Terminal Services & Web Gateway – you can get access to your desktop PC’s and Files from the Web
WHS is managed by a really easy to use interface – it’s not a web interface, it’s actually a Terminal Services Published App. Anyone with a modicum of IT knowledge can drive this thing.
The hardware can be any old PC with more than 512MB of RAM. I run 4GB so I can use VMWare are well for testing. It will need a few HDD’s, either internal or external, USB, PATA, SATA, eSata, it doesn’t matter. They can be any size and speed, it will sort out the storage. Ideally there are four HDD’s, one for Boot / Temp, two for storage with duplication between them, and an external USB/eSATA for backup. I’m using a WD 1TB Mybook Essential for backup as unlike many enclosures, it will spin down saving power, and has no fans making noise. I’m running 1 x 80Gb, 4 x 500Gb, 1 x 1TB USB.
Install
Installing and setting up the WHS is pretty simple. I had one weird error that caused it to fail due to it not liking the PATA setup on my M/B. Changing the DVD to it’s own controller solved that.
There is one strange requirement, that is the server must be plugged into an Ethernet interface, not wireless. It’s something to do with the compression algorithm and streaming of the backups. It’s documented, but I haven’t found the solid reason yet. The clients can be wireless, but not the server.
Next step is to configure any storage. Plenty of guides on that around. The very interesting technical brief / whitepaper on WHS Storage is here. It must be noted that WHS does NOT support RAID. You can run hardware RAID, but it’s not recommended. Please read the whitepaper to gain a better understanding. Basically any of the file shares can have “duplication” enabled. Initially to me this sounded like a mirror (RAID1), and as I was running RAID5, I wasn’t particularly interested. After reading the whitepaper, it is fundamentally different. Not better or worse, just different. I would kinda still prefer RAID5 – it’s more efficient, and protects the whole system, not just the file stores, but this is much easier to expand and configure. I’m neutral on this feature vs RAID5, but would be very happy to give it to a non IT person to run. I think that’s the main point, anyone could drive this and have their data protected. It does NOT protect the WHS OS in any way. It does not duplicate the PC Backups unless you hack it.
Once the server is setup and configured with storage you install the WHS connector on each PC in your house. There is a tray icon that will run on each PC in your house – it alerts you to any problems, provides shortcuts to the file shares, manages backups and allows you to manage the WHS. It makes it much easier to trust the status of the server than having to remember and check Event Logs every so often.
Backups
The backup function is split into two components. PC backup and File Server backup. The technical brief for the PC Backup is here
PC Backups
The PC backup runs once a day, waking the computers from sleep, and putting them back to sleep when complete. The backups are particularly clever, tracking each NTFS sector backed up. If any sectors are the same, either across backups of the same machine, or between machines, the sector is only stored once. This is all transparent to the user. The space saving is dramatic. My three computers at home are using 168GB backup space, and that is with plenty of data on each, and nightly backups for a month. The backups are cleaned up to manage space on a schedule you can define.
Restoring of PC Backup’s can be done in one of two ways. You can browse the backups to restore individual files, or you restore the whole machine like an image. The restore is particularly clever. You boot the PC from a generic “Restore CD” that comes with WHS. All the drivers for that PC are sitting in a folder on the WHS ready to go – it has automatically found them on the PC when it was backed up and prepared them for this purpose. They go onto a USB thumb drive. With the drivers available, the PC can get onto the local network, connect to the server and retrieve the backup. It will put all the files back, OS and all – presto – rebuilt client PC from backup. That is much easier than the usual “restore the OS first”. Unlike most Bare Metal or Image restores, there is no need to keep regular updated images, meaning less maintenance and less space consumed. It’s very elegant really.
Server Backups
The server backup can backup any of the file shares (not the Server OS or the PC backups) to any HDD in the “Backup Storage” list. The server backup must be triggered manually, it cannot be scheduled or automated (A glaring oversight). It uses NTFS Hard Links to make sure that any file is only stored once, even though it may appear to be copied up each time. This saves huge amounts of space, and can be read on any machine. Again – this is transparent to the user. The external backups must be cleaned up manually when you run out of space. It would be ideal in future versions if these external backups could be duplicated somehow, to allow for an offsite copy. The current solution would be to perform the backup twice. This is not a significant overhead, as the backup only copies any changed data using a very efficient algorithm.
Storage / Shares
The other function for a WHS box by default is as a local file server. It is very easy for anyone to configure this, and can be controlled with easy to manage user accounts and permissions.
The interesting feature in this area is “Duplication”. Each share can optionally have “Duplication” enabled. This will then have the server transparently copy each file to a separate drive. The process is described in the storage whitepaper. This is all hidden from the user by using NTFS links and other NTFS trickery. The advantage is that in the event of a disaster of some kind, the drives are fully readable on any machine. It also is dynamic enough that the drives can be any type and size, it will share the data round and balance the storage as required.
Web Gateway
I haven’t played much in this area yet – I’ll update when I do. It uses UPNP to publish a site to the internet through your router. The domain homeserver.com lets you register a free subdomain to get to your data. You can access your files from anywhere. There is a Terminal Services Gateway function to allow remote access to your home PC’s – I haven’t investigated this yet. It probably depends on your desktop OS version, user account configuration and if the computer is asleep.
Add In’s
There are a reasonable and expanding number of AddIns that can be installed. These offer increased functionality through the WHS interface.
Notes
It is worth checking the Power Settings on the WHS, as mine was set not to spin the drives down. This wastes a lot of power and will reduce their life. I tend to set mine to 5 minute spin down, as this is longer than any streaming period. The machine isn’t user interactive – so spin up time is not a concern.
Non-WHS Apps
WHS is actually Windows Server 2003 (possibly with some SBS stuff – I have noted). It will run nearly anything W2K3 Svr will. BUT, you need to be particularly careful with your drive management. Use of Disk Manager can kill the special WHS stores. Whatever apps you install needs some careful thought as to where the data will be stored.
Conclusion
I’m very impressed with the data storage and backup solution used in WHS. It can be driven by anyone with a modicum of computer experience and meets it’s goals very well. It is more limited than a full W2K3 server, but offers some brilliant functions that are difficult to find elsewhere. It’s simplicity is wonderful, and with some care, offers a wonderful solution.
The Future
What should have been included that wasn’t? Hmm, well. I have a list, as do many others on the Connect forum. If I had to narrow it down it would be.
- WHS + Media Centre in one – so you can just run extenders around your house.
- Scheduled External Server Backups
- OS Backups
- A 2W Atom CPU / MB & 95% efficient CPU – drop the consumption from the 30w idle of my Home Server
- Better power options. It would be good to have the box sleep for much of the day, waking only to do what was needed when we were home.
Good Resources
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/
http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/
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