Wiley Windows Home Server For Dummies
Contents
1. 1 Stick the Windows Home Server Connector CD into any computer on the network and run the Connector setup program see Figure 1 6 The Connector setup program searches your network to see if it can find a Windows Home Server 2 If the setup program determines that it s never been run before on this particular network it steps you through the seven steps necessary to get the WHS server box going see Chapter 3 for details You have to enter a product key unless the WHS software came pre installed and pre validated give the server a name create a super password help WHS phone home and update itself and generally bring WHS up to snuff 3 Once the Connector setup program has the WHS box s seatbelt fastened it puts all the networking goodies on the PC gets the backup software going and then installs the Windows Home Server Console see Figure 1 7 F Windows Home Server Connector ss ti awd Welcome to the Windows Home Server Connector Windows Home Server Connector does the following J e 2 Connects your computer to your home server Windows Backs up your home computer daily ome server Monitors the health of your home computer Enables you to manage your home server Y Cancel Although it s true that Windows Home Server works with Macs and various flavors of Unix Linux PCs you have to interact with the server manually Microsoft doesn t supply anything like a Connector CD or t2. can stick it on your desk Especially if you get one that looks like ET s glowing hockey puck Otherwise you ll have to drag all your friends and neighbors over to the closet to look at the dern thing a time honored recipe for disaster Google Fibber Magee s closet for appropriate warnings
3. dotPhoto or Webshots you simply stick the pics in a shared folder on your own Windows Home Server and give all your family and friends the Web address and password that ll let em in Keeping the home fires burning Windows Home Server constantly monitors all the computers on your network and gives you a concise centralized health report see Figure 1 5 Windows Vista computers on your home or small office network keep WHS abreast of the current status of patches and virus signature file updates Vista computers also notify the WHS server if they re running out of disk space Windows XP and Vista machines both keep WHS apprised of their backup status For a thorough look at the warnings on offer and what to do about them see Chapters 16 and 20 Home Network Health x Status Healthy 7 Your home network is healthy Windows Home Server has not detected any health issues Learn more about the health of your home network 16 Part Getting Windows Home Server to Serve Streaming media Windows Home Server doesn t provide the media streaming capabilities that you find in Windows Media Center Edition or Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate However if you treat your server nicely and discover how to say please see Part IID it will hold your media collection and feed the collec tion to a Media Center or Home Premium PC If you have an Xbox 360 you can connect it to your Media Ce
4. hard drive controllers you find on any PC these days It s all done with smoke and mirrors and some smokin good programming No fancy hardware Nothing to break down The following list takes a closer look at what you don t have to worry about 1 In the WHS world disk drive volumes and folders get extended as needed and you don t have to fuss with the details Individual folders can and do reside on two or more disks You needn t deal with any of it 1 When the WHS machine starts running out of disk space it tells you Install another drive see Chapter 18 and the drive is absorbed into the collective Borg style more space becomes available and you don t need to care about any of the details Okay you do have to do one thing When you run out of space you have to add more But disks are cheap and easy to install 14 Part l Getting Windows Home Server to Serve Figure 1 4 Log on to any of your home computers from Atchafalaya to Timbuktu Accessing your network from far afield If you so desire Windows Home server can open up your entire home or small office network so you can log on to any computer on your network from any browser anywhere in the world see Figure 1 4 Remote Access Computers Windows Intemet Explorer Sier G E hittps stapmesittywaly tivenodecom Remot r X Wl Live Sean A ir de Remote access Computers Mi BD ae cy Page v G Tools Welcome to Wood
5. on a computer running Windows XP When WHS reports on computers attached to the network it only shows the backup status of Windows XP machines there s no attempt to show the status of updates or other indicators from the Windows Security Center By contrast Windows Vista machines report whether the firewall is enabled whether the antivirus software is up to date and working and whether Windows Update is set to update Windows automatically Remote access to a computer doesn t work with certain versions of Windows If you want to run WHS s Remote Access to reach into your net work from the Internet and run one of the computers on your home or small office network the computer that s being suborned the one that Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 2 acts like a puppet while you pull the strings from afar must be running Windows XP Professional Windows Vista Ultimate Vista Business or Vista Enterprise Alas XP Home Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium aren t sufficiently endowed In other words XP Pro Vista Ultimate Vista Business and Vista Enterprise PCs can play Pinocchio to your puppeteer All the other operating systems don t have strings that can be pulled Tapping into previous versions of a file Windows Home Server supports previous versions but the feature probably doesn t work the way you think it does If you have Windows Vista Business Enterprise or Ultimate yo
6. pardon me if I snore But if you commonly stream videos on your WHS server you should consider picking up faster hard drives There are several arcane and confusing variations but if you first choose the technology most likely Serial ATA inside your computer and either external SATA or IDE if you want to hang the drive out the back and then briefly consider rotation speed 10 000 rpm runs faster than 7 500 rpm but built in caching can and does make a huge difference you should be able to make a good decision If you want the latest unbiased reviews consult Tom s Hardware at tomshardware com 26 Part I Getting Windows Home Server to Serve Y A cool looking case No joke If your WHS box looks cool you re more likely to keep it somewhere that you can see it so you re more likely to notice weird disk activity with the concomitant blinking lights Besides the top of your desk is cooler than your closet eh Note that I didn t say anything about processor speed or memory or PCI slots SCSI drives SD card readers cache fingerprint readers webcams sound cards video cards or any of a million other hardware niceties than can make a difference with Windows XP or Vista machines WHS doesn t use em doesn t know doesn t care If you re going to use your server for something more than WHS you may need more oomph hey it takes a lot of cycles to control a gig watt Christmas light display but f
7. Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life In This Chapter Making great things happen with Windows Home Server Dealing with WHS s limitations Controlling Windows Home Server with a headless horseman console Choosing a fabulous Windows Home Server cheap Sticking the Home Server box in your home or small office Installing the shrink wrapped version of Windows Home server A s a first approximation you should think of your Windows Home Server as a washing machine Okay okay It s a washing machine with a LAN cable and a gaggle of hard drives Picky picky I m pushing the analogy a bit But in many ways your Windows Home Server box just sits there No keyboard to soak up spilled coffee No mouse accumulating gunk on its slick little feet No 27 inch widescreen LCD monitor with Dolby 7 1 surround sound and an independently powered subwoofer that pushes more air than a Lear Jet Naw if just sits there Once you get the hang of it and customize the software in a couple of ways your Windows Home Server sort of fades into the background Then you needn t lift a finger You can completely forget about it Until the day the hard drive on one of your PC dies or you discover that one bit in your magnum opus flipped and Word can t read it anymore or you re vacationing on Mt Denali and the boss calls to say she needs that report you left back at the house right now or the kids invite a friendly little rootkit to tak
8. e a difference if you re streaming high definition TV shows or movies to say an Xbox and it most certainly will make a difference if you stream more than one video at a time If you re into the little things you can also add the following bits and pieces but you probably won t notice much difference Y More USB 2 controllers Here s one they don t teach in Windows school At times WHS handles massive amounts of data particularly when per forming its daily backups streaming multimedia or copying big bunches of files If you have two or more hard drives attached to your computer with USB cables see the preceding and they re both connected to the same USB controller inside the computer the controller itself can present a significant bottleneck The solution Get more controllers One con troller per USB connection isn t a bad idea at all Alternatively if techie language doesn t intimidate you consider using external SATA hard drives External SATA hard drives are just like regular internal SATA hard drives except the hard drive s connectors and elec trical thingies dangle out of your computer External SATA doesn t bog down as badly as USB 1 Faster drives For most people most of the time most WHS disk activity takes place at night If your WHS server runs from 3 00 to 3 12 a m back ing up the computers on your network but a faster hard drive would cut the job down so it completed at 3 10 a m well
9. e method and the relative ease of access differ depending on what version of Windows XP or Vista your computer is running If you run Windows XP Service Pack 2 either Home or Pro you can use this Windows Home Server previous versions capability to easily bring back one of the snapshots using a Previous Versions See Chapter 14 22 Part l Getting Windows Home Server to Serve Y If you run Vista Business Enterprise or Ultimate you can get at the previous versions of files on the server using the same technique If you have Windows Vista Home Basic or Premium and you proba bly do you can still get at the snapshots of server files but retrieving them is cumbersome and error prone again see Chapter 14 gener While WHS does technically support previous versions the previous version snapshots get taken twice a day on a fixed schedule They only cover files on the server there s no independent previous versions sup port for files on the rest of the network s PCs even if they re backed up every night Retrieving the previous versions of files on the server is easy with Vista Business Enterprise or Ultimate or for that matter with Windows XP Paradoxically it s considerably more difficult with Vista Home Basic or Premium What Hardware Do Vou Need Microsoft publishes a set of minimum hardware requirements for Windows Home Server As is the case with most Microsoft minimum
10. e up residence on the family computer That s when you ll thank your lucky stars that Windows Home Server s sittin in the background doin its thing 10 Part Getting Windows Home Server to Serve I can t recall any Microsoft product except for Notepad maybe that works so well so easily with so little fuss right out of the box If you have two or more computers networked together doesn t matter if you only use them to send email and surf the Web or print cross stitch patterns and play Gears of War some day in some way Windows Home Server will save your bacon What Can Vou Do with Windows Home Server FCS Figure 1 1 Windows Home Server backups are a breeze PC For a little box that just sits there Windows Home Server covers some very important bases But it doesn t try to cover all the bases That s part of the genius of Windows Home Server Its designers didn t try to solve every problem didn t cater to every wish list didn t let the ugly Windows Server 2003 genie the guy inside WHS with Robin Williams s voice and Hannibal Lecter s soul out of the bottle From my point of view Windows Home Server does just six things and each one rates its own section Backing up and restoring At the top of the feature heap Windows Home Server backs up all the data on all your computers see Figure 1 1 Automatically No setup wizards other than a very simple hook up pr
11. h your one button backup hard drive 1 The backup program itself packs lots of smarts For example if you have the same file on two different drives or even on two different computers WHS only maintains one backup In fact if pieces of files are duplicated across multiple machines only one copy of each piece each Lego block if you will gets stored WHS maintains a table that keeps track of which piece goes where on what machine Very slick Shaving folders Any server worth its salt lets you store folders on the server and get at those folders from other computers on the network That s the premise behind shared folders If you ve struggled with shared folders in Windows XP or Vista or even Windows 98 or Windows for Workgroups 3 11 for that matter you have no doubt become conversant with really convoluted folder names Heaven help ya if you want to look at the photos of your summer vacation three years ago and can t remember if they re sitting on the TV room com puter s D drive or the bedroom s C Documents and Settings Bill Desktop Vacation Pics folder Windows Home Server creates a small set of pre defined folders for you and you can readily add more People using your network can easily find the folders and if you give them permission stick stuff in the folders and take stuff out The great saving grace about WHS shared folders they sport simple names like oh Photos or Music see Figu
12. he Home Server Console for Macs or Unix Linux PCs 18 Part Getting Windows Home Server to Serve et Figure 1 7 The WHS Console controls the server remotely Windows Home Server Console Se Mug User Accounts Hep Te Windows Home Server Shared Folder for music Shared folder for photos Shared folder for miscellaneous fles Empty Shared folder for softwere nstalsiion programe 318 21 MB Sharad folder for videos Engty Fig erage Belarced an 8715 297 4 19 PM What happens behind the scenes The installer program on the Windows Home Connector CD accomplishes much much more than doing the initial setup of the Windows Home Server uh server and cranking up the Windows Home Server Console Behind the scenes when you run the CD on your Windows XP or Vista computer the Connector installs and configures dozens of programs that tie deep into the guts of Windows XP or Vista So while you may believe that you re controlling Windows Home Server in fact its minions latch onto your PC and every PC you add to the WHS net work tying it all together That isn t necessarily bad But it does mean that your PCs will pick up a bunch of software they ve never had to run before Perhaps most notably the Windows Home Connector CD installs a gigantic program on Windows XP computers called the NET Framework NET Framework is baked into Windows Vista so the Connector doesn t have to in
13. k remember The Brady Bunch I was trying to forget it too they ll have to start sharing user names i Windows Home Server only supports ten PCs on the network Perhaps surprisingly you can put two WHS servers on the same network and you can even stick a WHS server on a Small Business Server network But you can t have more than ten PCs connected simultaneously to a single WHS server You can t use a laptop as a Windows Home Server That s a real pity because all other things being equal a laptop with a dead screen would be an ideal candidate for a server Only NTFS formatted drives get backed up Chances are good that all of your network s hard drives use the newer NTFS file system instead of the old Windows 98 and earlier FAT Windows Home Server won t even try to back up a non NTFS drive so if you have a USB thumb drive that s formatted with FAT it won t make the cut You have to format your thumb drive with NTFS first For details consult your thumb drive manufacturer s Web site Windows Home Server won t back up laptops running on battery power Windows Home Server s automatic backup will back up any Windows XP or Vista computer but it won t back up a laptop unless the laptop s plugged into the wall That makes sense Backups can draw a lot of power and the last thing you need is to have your laptop s battery die in the middle of a backup WHS won t give the full health report
14. much at all You may be equally surprised to find that spending a few extra zlotys on some unexpected pieces of hardware can make a big difference in how well your system works From my admittedly jaded experience these bits and pieces make a real difference in how well WHS works now and will work in the future 1 Cooling Really WHS servers typically pack a lot of hot components inside a small box and you need to keep them cool With WHS up 24 7 and many WHS servers stuck inside stuffy closets heat can rapidly become enemy 1 Recent studies show that hard drives aren t as sensi tive to heat as once thought see Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population at labs google com papers disk_failures pdf but other parts of your computer will wear out faster if they don t melt down literally when they run hot The solution Fans Lots of them You might even consider putting a high quality desk fan next to the box to keep cool air flowing Multiple hard drives Given a choice between one big hard drive and two small ones go for two or better three smaller drives WHS works better when it has two drives to mirror data stored on the server and it works best with the system itself stuck on a third drive You can always add more hard drives later but you ll get maximum protection from the get go if you start with two or more drives If you stick USB hard drives on your WHS server don t attach them
15. nter or Vista Home Premium or Ultimate PC and that PC in turn can pull the media off the server How Do Vou Control Windows Home Server MBER KO amp Windows Home Server was designed from the ground up to run on a head less computer That means quite simply that a fully functional WHS server can survive with a LAN cable a power cord and absolutely nothing else sticking out of the machine Many WHS servers don t have a CD drive Some don t even have a rudimentary video card If you buy Windows Home Server in a shrink wrapped package you ll need to connect a CD drive keyboard mouse and monitor to the server box long enough to get the WHS software loaded See Chapter 2 for details But once WHS comes up for air the first time you can unplug all that accoutrement and strip the machine down to its LAN cable power cord and nothing else WHS won t mind a bit Welcome to the Console You control Windows Home Server through a program that doesn t run on the WHS server Windows Home Server Console runs on one of the computers on your network In fact you can run the Console from any Windows XP or Windows Vista computer on your network As soon as you have your Windows Home Server set up and plugged into the network the Console setup goes something like this Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 7 Figure 1 6 Run the Connector setup program on every PC on your network ANG
16. nto the Internet You may think of such people as Luddites I think of them as deluded They pull hair out of their heads in massive clumps If you buy WHS pre installed on a computer skip the rest of this section entirely every recent computer is capable of running Windows Home Server and the one you bought will no doubt work well sE On the other hand if you re going to install WHS on your own computer you g need to pay attention to a small handful of specific details Many of us woosh goons that s what I call WHS aficionados stick WHS on an old PC one that was destined to accumulate dust anyway Re using old hardware is good for the environment and for the pocketbook Most old nay ancient computers can run WHS quite well if you keep these few things in mind YY Make sure all your WHS hardware has Windows 2003 drivers Some people report success installing Windows XP drivers on a Windows Home Server box but others find themselves in the seventh ring of Server Hell If you have an old PC with an obscure network card hop over to the card manufacturer s Web site and download the Windows 2003 driver Can t find a Win2K3 driver Then replace the hardware Life s too short YY Get 512 MB of memory If you already have more than 512 MB of memory on your designated WHS server think about scalping it and using it on another computer Bone stock WHS doesn t need more than 512 MB you ll never notice the difference if yo
17. ogram No weird jargon Windows Home Server Console amp V 88 Windows Home Server User Accounts s Q settings Hp _ m Yew Backups E aadu Now Name Descripten Operating System 7 200 Windows Viste Home Premium Edition Backup in progress 51 A SARUK Windows Mista Utimate Edition set borkedup wA SATELUTE Windows XP Professional Backed up A SAWADEE Windows P Professional Backed up 7 THINKPAD Windows P Professional kt backedup Here s what you can expect if you use WHS as your backup central MBER KO amp If you need to retrieve an old copy of a file WHS makes it easy talk about the ins and outs in Part V 1 WHS Backup lets you restore an entire hard drive This ain t your father s backup program if one of the PCs on your network suddenly loses its C drive or you get clobbered by a virus or a rogue Windows automatic update freezes your Windows XP machine tighter than a penguin s tail feathers WHS s computer restore feature Chapter 13 lets you bring back an earlier version of the entire hard drive with very little fuss If you shell out the shekels and put two or more hard drives in your WHS computer Windows Home Server mirrors backup data Separate individually recoverable copies of the backup reside on more than one hard drive That way if one of the WHS computer s hard drives fail you can resurrect everything Try doing that wit
18. or standard WHS stuff the processor and memory you have are good enough Positioning the Server in Vour Home or Office You should take these factors into consideration when you pick a place to stick your Windows Home Server server Plan on plugging the server into a router If you have only one router typically the one connected to your cable or DSL line that limits locations but not as much as you might think You can run a LAN cable up to 300 feet or so say 90 meters with no ill effect providing you don t bend the cable too abruptly Heat is your enemy Dust too If dust bunnies live next to your WHS box they ll move inside in fairly short order And they ll uh procreate in accordance with their essential bunny nature Put the server someplace where it ll stay clean and cool You never need to touch the server If you bought your server with WHS pre installed you only need to plug it into an electrical outlet and your router That s it Yeah you should vacuum out the box every few months but that s the extent of it If you install WHS on your own hardware you need to touch it just long enough to install the software but that s all she wrote v But you do need a UPS It s an unfortunate fact of life You can t plan on balancing your Windows Home Server on a 2 x 4 unless you reserve a spot nearby for an uninterruptible power source Remember that UPSs generate a substantial amount of heat If you
19. re 1 2 None of this computername drive folder subfolder garbage Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 11 12 DE Figure 1 2 The pre defined folders Simple Easy Part Getting Windows Home Server to Serve File Edt wew Favorites Qa a S adders W YServer Tools Heb Search Network Tasks y Photes lt b sj Software gt Y whos gt As the Reverend C A Goodrich famously wrote in 1827 There is as much mean ing in the old adage and the observance of which let me urge you as a remedy for every degree of evil I advert to Have a place for every thing and keep every thing in its proper place Maintaining one shared location for everything and keeping everything in its place can simplify your life tremendously whether you advert to degrees of evil or not Could somebody please tell me how to advert to a degree Sounds like fun When your Great Aunt Martha wants to look at your family photos she can sit down at any computer on the network and she can see this folder called Photos Mirabile dictu that s where the photos reside Auntie Martha doesn t have to know the name of the computer that contains the photos the drive they re on or any other computer arcana They re just there As you get more adept at using WHS you ll discover that you can create new shared folders grant access permissions and the like see Chapter 5 But straight out of the bo
20. requirements you can stretch things a bit and still run the product reasonably well NING Don t even think about installing Windows Home Server in your home or RY office unless you have a functioning network If you re going to try to reach into your home network from afar using WHS s Remote Access capability you also need a reasonably fast Internet connection ADSL cable satellite whatever Specifically 1 WHS won t help you set up a network You need to have one working before you can install WHS If you need help setting up a network see my Windows Vista All In One Desk Reference For Dummies or Windows XP All In One Desk Reference For Dummies Microsoft designed WHS to go on an existing network with two or more PCs but you really need to have only one PC on the network in order to get WHS to work 1 I hate to burst any bubbles here but running a crossover cable between two PCs doesn t count as a functioning network Sorry Charlie The network s router you can call it a hub or a switch must have at least one available jack on the back so you can plug in your WHS server Although it may be physically possible to configure a WHS server using a wireless network connection you could go insane trying Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 23 1 I know people who have tried to put a WHS server on a network that uses a dial up Internet connection They use Windows Internet Connection Sharing to get o
21. rised of the computer s sine condition R et amp Once you ve finished running the Connector CD on a specific PC it s your responsibility to 1 Tell the WHS server about users on the PC at least if you want to allow the users to work with the WHS server see Chapter 4 1 Set up shared folders on the server for users on the PC Chapter 5 v Add printers to the server Chapter 17 If you have Windows XP Media Center or Vista Home Premium or Ultimate unlock shared media folders and enable the Guest account so other computers on your network can get to them via the WHS server Chapter 6 Knowing Windows Home Server s Limitations Have you ever bought a new product and discovered an hour or a day or a week down the road that it can t do what you need it to do Hey I sympa thize Been there Done that I wanted to carve out a small part of this book to explain what Windows Home Server doesn t 20 Part I Getting Windows Home Server to Serve What Windows Home Server won t do By and large WHS can do anything you would expect a server to do and much more But there are a few shortcomings that you should understand before you knock yourself silly trying to accomplish the impossible 1 Windows Home Server only supports ten users plus the Guest account You can have ten different user names on your network and that s all she wrote If you need to allow more than ten people to use your networ
22. stall it NET Framework has a reputation for being big slow and buggy although it s been getting better Buggy you ask Well yes Take a look at Microsoft s Security Bulletin MS07 040 if you re looking for examples Whether you like it or not when you connect a Windows XP computer to a Windows Home Server network you get NET Framework Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 9 In addition to installing new software the Connector CD is responsible for establishing hundreds of default settings In my experience it performs the job admirably well Behind the scene activities include these 1 Defining backup locations Unless you change the settings see Chapter 12 the Windows Home Server Connector backs up most of the data files on all the hard drives inside your PC It does not back up system files although it does back up USB attached external drives Surprisingly it does not back up recorded television programs 1 Linking to initial shared folders These include basics such as Photos and Music Your Windows XP or Vista machine suddenly acquires new shortcuts on the desktop that point to the shared folders on the server YY Turning off remote access You have to go into WHS and quite deliberately give it permission to grant access to your network from the Internet see Chapter 10 The Connector CD also installs the programs necessary to monitor your system s health and keep the WHS server app
23. to USB hubs you know those cheap little gizmos that let you turn one USB port into four or eight USB hubs work fine for mice and electric coffee warmers but they re really slow when two or more attached pieces of equipment are vying for attention One USB hub controlling two overworked drives performs about as well as one guy playing both parts in Dueling Banjos UPS Nope we re not talking big brown trucks here No matter where you live no matter how reliable your power supply you need an uninterrupted power supply UPS both to keep the WHS server running in the event of a power hiccup and to minimize weird power disruptions Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 25 1 Fast Ethernet You can run WHS on a plain Jane 100Mbps Ethernet net work connection also called 100Base T or confusingly fast Ethernet But if you start streaming videos you re going to want the fastest Ethernet you can find which usually means 1 Gbps which also goes by the names Gigabit Ethernet and 1000Base T Buying a 1Gbps Ethernet card for your WHS server isn t enough your network s router hub switch has to support a 1 gigabyte per second speed too If you stick a 1Gbps card in your server it won t do much good unless the other PCs on your network can run at 1 Gbps too From what I ve seen moving up to 1 Gbps doesn t make much difference with backups they take all night anyway But it can mak
24. u already have a shadow copy feature and it works on all files and folders on your Vista computer Once a day usually around midnight these versions of Vista take a snapshot of all the files on your computer that you ve changed during the previous day and store the snapshots creating what is commonly called a shadow copy Anytime you mess up a file that s located on your Business Enterprise or Ultimate computer you can right click the file choose Properties then click the Previous Versions tab and bring back any earlier snapshot of the file That s a very powerful capability which I discuss at length in Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies Wiley Publishing Inc Installing WHS doesn t turn off the feature you ve already paid for but the Vista Business Enterprise and Ultimate shadow copy feature works only on files located on the Vista PC Files stored on your Windows Home Server uh server don t inherit the shadow copying capability from Vista Business Enterprise or Ultimate Here s where things get complicated Windows Home Server keeps shadow copies but only for files stored in shared folders on the server WHS doesn t reach into your Windows XP or Vista com puter to make shadow copies but it does make shadow copies of your data files on the server It automatically takes snapshots of all the altered shared files and folders on the server twice a day at noon and midnight every day But th
25. u get more so why get it Of course if you intend to add new programs to your server something to monitor the quantity of milk curdling in the fridge turn on the fog lights in the bathroom and bring the Jacuzzi to a slow boil simultaneously you might need more memory Ru v You need to boot from a DVD once A WHS server needs a DVD drive O like a surfer needs a Great White After you have WHS installed on an old PC the DVD drive just takes up space But if you use a removable say USB DVD drive to install WHS you need to make sure that your old computer can boot from the DVD drive D oh Just like points on Whose Line Is It Anyway the graphics card keyboard mouse and monitor don t matter You use them once to get the PC set up and then so far as the server is concerned you can throw them away 24 Part l Getting Windows Home Server to Serve The other official minimal requirements are truly minimal Every PC made in the last five maybe ten years should be able to handle the load a Pentium 3 running at 1 GHz an 80GB hard drive a network adapter and the motherboard has to follow the ACPI power saving spec Choosing a Great Windows Home Server ANG P If you re in the market for a new Windows Home Server computer or if you re going to cobble something together with the Frankenstein pieces sitting around your house you may be pleasantly surprised to find that WHS doesn t need
26. x the folders suddenly appear out of thin air and they make sense Managing disks Windows Home Server takes care of disk management behind the scenes so you don t have to You ll never know or care which drive on the WHS computer holds what folders or which files Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 13 D Figure 1 3 The Vogon International Web site has a thorough description of RAID i o I d About Vogon Contact Us Literature Press Releases Sitemap part of the ibes Group y Home Data Recovery MOEERESNER I Tape Recovery Data Conversion Corporate other services What are the RAID levels RAID 0 Striped drives without parity a non redundant group RAID Data Recovery Links RAID 0 RAID Data Recovery Home RAID Levels RAID Array Controller ed tor 4K Striping Configured tor 4 Emergency Quot One 16K White Four Separate 4K Writes If you have more than one hard drive on your WHS computer backups get mir rored automatically Computer geeks tend to think of that as a RAID feature Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks see Figure 1 3 but WHS doesn t use RAID technology RAID s too complicated for most home users to maintain and it s married to specific kinds of hardware The Windows Home Server approach to highly reliable data storage works with plain everyday hard drives and the kinds of
27. y s Wacky Slap Me Silly Willy Site Remote Access Welcome Woody Name rates h J eu Done P internet Protected Mode On R100 That sounds scary but at least at this point the security looks mighty good WHS s Remote Access feature takes a little while to set up see Chapters 10 and 11 but once it s in place you can 1 Log on to your server 1 Upload or download files from a specific folder 1 Use any pre ordained PC on your network as if you were sitting right in front of it Give or take a little time for a slow connection anyway 1 Let other people log on to your home network and retrieve files in spe cially designated folders If you re clever and set restrictions properly that is Geeks might be reminded of something called an FTP server which performs a similar function allowing people to get into a folder from the Internet and send files to the folder or retrieve files from it Part of Remote Access acts like FTP but it employs an entirely different technology Windows Home Server doesn t use FTP Chapter 1 Bringing Windows Home Server to Life 15 ar FCS Figure 1 5 The Windows Home Server network health report E Having your own Internet accessible repository can be really handy and keep casual surfers from leafing through your private pics Instead of posting pics of your new toddler uh toddling on photo sharing sites such as Flickr or
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search