OT - WHS is awesome!

Has anyone played with Windows Home Server? For lack of a more eloquent description - it's the bomb! Not quite what I expected, but sweet! I just got my setup in. I'll write a more in depth review and post it on my blog once I have time to test more.

The system I bought is HP's precanned media server, which doesn't even have a monitor. It's a relatively small box with fancy LEDs that actually convey status and a switching power supply that plugged right into my Korean outlet. I upgraded it to almost 2 Tb - yep, 2000 Gigs, and the whole system came easily under $1000.

Home server is a stripped down version of Windows 2003 Server - you may have beta tested it as early as about a year ago. The main cool features are:
1. Very manageable through a simple remote interface.
2. Magical disk storage that allows you to easily add/remove drives that all go to the same logical volume "pool", I guess...You can enable "Folder Duplication" (based on Volume Shadow Copy), which ensures 2 copies of each file at twice the disk space. I assume it stripes data across drives for performace like RAID. So, don't duplicate your "downloads" share, and duplicate your useful data. Who cares with this much space.
3. Workable automatic backup scheme. How hard has this been in the past? Entire client computers are backed up with an initial snapshot and some sort of differential/incremental backups. It's smart enough to avoid swap files, windows temp, etc. The default setting does 3 rotating: daily, weekly, and monthly backups. You can grab files from any backup or restore entire computers from snapshots. Sweet! Not that this is nearly as important as it was because I now store all data on shares on the network. Take a cue from work!
4. Remote access - I haven't played with this yet, but all descriptions point to greatness. You register a Dynamic DNS address that becomes yours. So, regardless of your ISP you get, https://joebloggs.homeserver.com, or whatever. The built in web page allows secure file transfers including browsing your pictures, etc. You can then remote control the server or any of your workstations. You can also get plugins to fire up your workstations with wake up on lan, etc. It sounds like gotomypc but better and free.
5. Some multimedia functions - photo webshare, iTunes server, works with media center to stream videos, etc, etc.

That's about it. Too cool...What do you guys think?

Sounds great. Look forward to the fuller review!

Yeah - I'll get screenshots, post quirks, and describe my experience "hacking" the memory (still yet to do). So far it's like an NAS on crack, but in a good way...

I bought 4 gigs of RAM for it and was hoping to do more "server-y" things (run VMWare Server and other "server" services). It does what it was designed at so well I'll probably leave those things alone.

edit - Oh yeah, and phase 2 is getting a stand alone media player and streaming video on demand across the network to my TV. I don't have one yet, but having a nice appliance with a remote should work better than my failed computer based DVR implementation. And with a couple terabytes free and a 100 Meg Internet connection...

timbo_uk said:

Sounds great. Look forward to the fuller review!

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surferb said:

...What do you guys think?

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...that someone has a new toy?

Yep, it's pretty sad. I think I'm more excited about this than when I got my Ducati.

I think a lot of what prompted this was my recent computer crash. I didn't lose any valuable data, but it was such a pain! Knowing how you should have had it set up just rubbed it in.

I have to go to bed, though. All the progress I described was from about midnight into the night on Wednesday.

krk said:

...that someone has a new toy?

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I think I'm more excited about this than when I got my Ducati.

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Nothing can be that good!

It's not! Once I get it configured it'll be "just part of the network" that I ignore. But I have spent way too much time thinking about it - and I am still excited! Not that I haven't been dreaming about riding my Supersport 999 again - left it with my brother back in the states. I'd kill myself on it here.

RMA said:

Nothing can be that good!

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I have been using it since the beginning of the beta and bought it once it became available. I love it!!

I am using it on an old machine. Nothing special, Pentium 4 1GB RAM, 1.2TB of HD storage. My WHS runs headless (no monitor). I access the server from a slick interface on each of my PCs. The utility also warns me if a backup has failed or if any other problems are detected. I got a warning on my laptop because my wife's desktop PC virus definitions were out of date. Nice!

I love the backup function. I bring my laptop home from work and attach to my home network and if I leave it on overnight then the next morning it is all backed up or I can force a manual backup that usually completes in anywhere from 10-60 minutes depending on how long it's been since I ran the backup. I have already used a backup to restore my laptop to a new HD and it worked beautifully. So my laptop, my wife's laptop and our two desktops are all backed up automatically.

I really like the shadow copy function which keeps the backup size small and the speed fast!

I have also replaced a failed drive on the server. Very easy to do and the storage "pool" Folder duplication worked perfectly as my failed drive did not cause me to lose any data.

I have used the remote access to take control of a computer at home and to download my music files!

I use my server to store all of my music and video files. I can easily access these files from my Xbox360 to stream to my television.

WHS also has a nice function called Add-Ons. Many people have developed Add-Ons to extend the capabilities of the server. I have used the TiVo Add-On to allow me to transfer my videos to my TiVo box. Or I can stream music or view photos on my TiVo. I prefer the Xbox though as I can stream video instead of transferring.

So I am glad to see someone else feeling the WHS love!

OG

Oh yeah! FYI, the HP solution doesn't even have a port for a monitor. It comes with 512 megs of RAM that "isn't expandable" and has a (ballpark) AMD Duron 1.7 Ghz CPU, which is overkill. The thing is an appliance. It works well! It even shows different colored LCDs for when the drives are rebuilding/unrecognized, versus part of the array - very cool! Add-ons are the main reason I want to upgrade my memory, although there are only a couple of interest.

I'm told that a moded Xbox (<$100 on craigslist) is an even better approach than a 360 as a media player because of the additional format support. My sys admin friend who recommened it uses his 360, but has an automated process to convert files to Windows Media. (The guy also has a 10 drive rack mounted NAS, other servers, and rediculous infastructure for a single man's house). I will probably still buy a D-Link one because of the HDMI connection and "appliance-like" aspect of it. I'd use a 360 for this if I had one.

They deliver SO MUCH value for your money. Compare it to retail versions of Vista. A nice side effect due to the market that they're trying to get into.

Operaghost said:

I have been using it since the beginning of the beta and bought it once it became available. I love it!!

I am using it on an old machine. Nothing special, Pentium 4 1GB RAM, 1.2TB of HD storage. My WHS runs headless (no monitor). I access the server from a slick interface on each of my PCs. The utility also warns me if a backup has failed or if any other problems are detected. I got a warning on my laptop because my wife's desktop PC virus definitions were out of date. Nice!

I love the backup function. I bring my laptop home from work and attach to my home network and if I leave it on overnight then the next morning it is all backed up or I can force a manual backup that usually completes in anywhere from 10-60 minutes depending on how long it's been since I ran the backup. I have already used a backup to restore my laptop to a new HD and it worked beautifully. So my laptop, my wife's laptop and our two desktops are all backed up automatically.

I really like the shadow copy function which keeps the backup size small and the speed fast!

I have also replaced a failed drive on the server. Very easy to do and the storage "pool" Folder duplication worked perfectly as my failed drive did not cause me to lose any data.

I have used the remote access to take control of a computer at home and to download my music files!

I use my server to store all of my music and video files. I can easily access these files from my Xbox360 to stream to my television.

WHS also has a nice function called Add-Ons. Many people have developed Add-Ons to extend the capabilities of the server. I have used the TiVo Add-On to allow me to transfer my videos to my TiVo box. Or I can stream music or view photos on my TiVo. I prefer the Xbox though as I can stream video instead of transferring.

So I am glad to see someone else feeling the WHS love!

OG

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Yeah, even my system is overkill. The Duron is all that's needed. It's all about hard drives and a good solid ethernet connection! I have three hard drives right now and want to add another big drive.

The Xbox360 just got DIVx support in the Fall Update so I can play almost all video files now. Before you always had to convert to .WMV which was a PITA.

The one thing I really am not happy with is the absence of a Windows Media Center support. For a while I was streaming Internet TV from my desktop running Vista MCE to play on my Xbox360. Why isn't that part of WHS? Or a Media Center Extender.

I've heard about the features coming in the next rev but still no MCE functionality.

Don't get me wrong, even without MCE they'll have to pry WHS from me!

OG

My buddy ended up ordering a special case and mobo to faciliate 7 SATA drives on board. I'd like to use it as a "server" for other things, but it works so well I don't want to install anything and I damned sure don't want to need to rebuild it for any reason. FYI, the RDC interface is more like Server 2003, but the intended interface is the friendly custom one.

I can only imagine that the lack of MCE support was due to when it came out...or maybe they're saving a feaure for the 2008 based version . That's the biggest (and only common) complaint I hear about it. I have Korean cable TV, with a lot of HD channels, but don't watch it much.

The HP Media Center does support GigE too, just looked it up. Guess it worked out for me because I just upgraded to a QoS (gaming) router that has a 4 port GigE switch. QoS is amazing, btw, if you use a VoIP or gaming service. It's usually hard to fathom, but some newer NAS arrays are catching a lot of flack for supporting "only" 10/100. Do that math and it will actually slow down your hard drive file transfers.

Operaghost said:

Yeah, even my system is overkill. The Duron is all that's needed. It's all about hard drives and a good solid ethernet connection! I have three hard drives right now and want to add another big drive.

The Xbox360 just got DIVx support in the Fall Update so I can play almost all video files now. Before you always had to convert to .WMV which was a PITA.

The one thing I really am not happy with is the absence of a Windows Media Center support. For a while I was streaming Internet TV from my desktop running Vista MCE to play on my Xbox360. Why isn't that part of WHS? Or a Media Center Extender.

I've heard about the features coming in the next rev but still no MCE functionality.

Don't get me wrong, even without MCE they'll have to pry WHS from me!

OG

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I am almost sold - one feature that I would like to to copy all my DVD's (ok, well kids DVD's) and be able to stream them to different TV's in the house. I'm tired of DVD's all over the house and getting scratched up.



If I could do that, then I would probably spring for the WHS and as much HD as I could do.

You can do that - it just doesn't work with Microsofts Windows Media Center (hence the XBox 360 complaint). I don't think Windows Home Server really helps you out any. In that case you're just using it to host and share files (glorified NAS), which it is really good at.

This is a pretty powerful capability, but isn't trivial to set up. You'll probably want to buy a media center extender for each TV (I'd recommend wired if possible) - I'll order a D-Link one at some point. Their new one (DSM-750) still seems to be on hold. You have to "rip" and encode each of your movies. Getting the right software and settings the first time is a pain(recommend H.264 encoding). It's not so bad after that, but still time consuming. I haven't done that setup before, but went through a similar process to get movies on my ipod in an efficient format. You really have to dedicate a few good blocks of time to blow.

Oakley said:

I am almost sold - one feature that I would like to to copy all my DVD's (ok, well kids DVD's) and be able to stream them to different TV's in the house. I'm tired of DVD's all over the house and getting scratched up.

If I could do that, then I would probably spring for the WHS and as much HD as I could do.

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surferb said:

- I'll order a D-Link one at some point.

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I have the DSM-520 if you have any questions. I really don't watch too much video on it. Only home movies.

I may hit you up on a few questions.

For those who care, I'm a bit delayed. I took the box apart, but still need to figure out how to remove one last screw to get to the motherboard and upgrade the memory (yeah, feel free to laugh). It's absolutely killing me - the box was built as an appliance and is a total pain to take apart. I'll get a review up after I upgrade the memory and put the thing back together.

Rick Densing said:

I have the DSM-520 if you have any questions. I really don't watch too much video on it. Only home movies.

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