My experience with Windows Home Server
Thanks to Nick, I’ve been able to get my hands on the Windows Home Server (WHS) 120 day Trial, although unlike Nick, I’ve gone for the “roll your own” approach to it, rather than buying one off the shelf (his experience with that side is certainly encouraging, if not fuzzy).
The test hardware I have at the moment is:
- AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (“Barton” core)
- 512mb (2x256mb) DDR333
- ATI 256mb 9600 Pro
- Abit NF7-S
- 1x80gb, 2x60gb IDE seagate hdds
Initially I only had the 2x60gb HDDs, so WHS wouldn’t install as it requires 80gb minimum. If I had an IDE RAID card, that would have fixed the problem, but alas, I didn’t and I had to wait till I returned from Chickz0rs place with our spare 80gb HDD.
Installation was smooth after getting over the storage prerequisite, select location, keyboard layout, it goes about its business, reboots a few times, and then asks for server name and password. There was a bit of a hickup in that it didn’t have drivers for all the onboard components of the motherboard….including the NIC. Given how well Vista has been at detecting drivers – even on that hardware – I’d just forgotten about installing drivers to get online. No matter, nvidia had all the nForce 2 Unified drivers still available, and after that it updated nicely.
After I installed the client software (WHS Connector), that was it – it was up and running, ready for backups. Being a geek, I didn’t leave it at that, but I really appreciate the lack of hours of configuration needed to get the box secure, and ready for its listed operations.
So far I’ve been really impressed with WHS – setting up remote access (https) was a breeze (two clicks!) and the remote access was responsive; backup and duplication happens very easily, as does adding extra drives to the “pool”. The extensibility of WHS looks pretty cool too, with a fair few addins coming out already (I particularly like the remote backup ones – if I was to continue to use WHS, I’d look at one for my Dreamhost account).
The thing to note about WHS is that there isn’t much to it. I don’t mean that in the sense that “its not worth it”, I mean that once you have the Connector software installed, things just work. WHS boxes from the likes of TranquilPC, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Medion (and many more) won’t require the installation but some very basic configuration (that’s IF you want to configure it). I’d like to say something was wrong with it, but given the functionality/features and its target market, there doesn’t seem to be much to complain about. It works, expandable, extensible, and its easy.
The interesting thing is that between the many reboots during install, it goes into ‘Text Mode’ installer, with the label “Windows 2003 Small Business Server” (W2K3). It’s not just during installation that you see that WHS is in many ways “on top of” W2K3.
- The default screen saver is called ‘Windows 2003 server’
- There is the ‘Windows 2003′ background
- When you add certain Windows Components (through Control Panel -> Add/Remove Software), it asks for Service Pack 2 Disc
- You can install/run DHCP/DNS services
- IIS6 is installed, and you can use it to run other websites – great for those like me who want/need a local webserver for development
The upshot of it being based on Windows 2003 is that its pretty damn stable and secure, and that if any vulnerabilities are found with the operating system, they’re Win2K3 vulnerabilities and Win2k3 patches (through Windows Update), rather than waiting for the WHS team themselves to fix the insecurity (not that they’d do a bad job, just size of each team effects response times)
As much as I enjoyed my WHS experience, I won’t be using this iteration of it on a fulltime basis. Yes it was fast, yes it was stable, yes it was easy, but I want a single “always on” box – something to handle both HPTC duties and centralised storage. While there are many HTPC packages that will run under Win2K3, they don’t seem to have the same features, or lack a decent UI (or require waaay too much configuration) when compared against as Media Center (Vista or MCE2005). This problem may be solved in vNext of WHS, but I’m not holding my breath for it – I’d be better off waiting for virtualisation software which works with Direct X 9 :)
