A life of servitude : Windows Home Server 2011

I was recently given a copy of Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS2011). I have read on line that WHS2011 is getting quite a slating, but given that I didn’t pay a penny for it, I thought it would be worth at least trying out to see what its like. This article is a record of my experience so far.

Installation

Installing WHS2011 was an absolute doddle, just like you would expect with any Windows package, the installation feels much like Windows 7. I found that the initial step of loading the installation data from disc took a very long time in comparison to the normal Windows 7 installation, it took about 30 minutes just to progress from the “Press any key to boot from CD / DVD” to actually getting control of the installation. This is hardly a major issue really.

Once you have put in the initial settings - just let the installer do its thing, it again takes quite a while, a good hour I’d say. Again, this isn't a big issue.

First Start

Once WHS2011 is installed, you will eventually arrive at a log-on screen. When you do, just enter your log-on details. From the very first moment I logged on, I got the impression that having a desktop is an extra service that runs – from this point I start feeling like the server should really be running headless. I found that the first log on took a long time and felt very clumsy. But subsequent logins are far faster.

Updating

I am always in the habit of when I do a fresh install of Windows, I jump on Windows Update and start it getting its rafts of updates. I had 106 updates consisting of about 570 MB of data to be downloaded and installed. Unfortunately, I had to run to work at this point, so I had the what I thought was a brilliant idea of just letting the PC run while I was at work – it would clearly take a few hours and it can do all its restarts etc and then I would come home to a nicely updated machine. So later that day I came home and turned on the monitor to see the updater stuck at update 12 of 106 because it was installing Internet Explorer 9 and the IE9 installer has manual prompts – oh well, 12 hours of electricity completely wasted then …

Configuring the server

The Router

Setting up the server truly is a doddle! Setting up involved a few basic settings such as shares and even setting up your router to allow remote control (via RDP and the Dashboard) from other PCs. Now its at this point I had my first issue – I am using a BT Home Hub 3. Which claims to support UPnP (universal plug and play), all the settings in the configuration of the home hub say it does, but WHS2011 couldn't automatically configure it, so I had to manually set up port forwarding. This was slightly frustrating because I had to consult three different WHS2011 support pages for the ports that needed forward. No one of the support pages listed all the ports, so I found the first page and forwarded on the first port. Tested it, didn't work, did some more googling, got another port, got that forwarded, still wouldn't work, guess what I did next, MORE googling, got a new port to forward, got that forwarded and then it finally worked!! I had to tell the wizard that I would manually sort out my router. But I then used part 2 of the wizard to set up my domain. With a windows live account using home server you can choose a domain with the .homeserver.com domain host.

Hard Drives

In my server I have one drive that I use for the operating system (OS) and four more that I use for “data”. My dream has been to get these four drives in to a RAID-5 array. Why RAID-5? I feel it offers the best balance of redundancy (I can have a single drive fail out of four and the array will still continue to work – although in a degraded state), and cost (I've got four drives, I effectively lose one to redundancy, so my array is 75% efficient).

Windows makes this really easy to set up, first you need four drives ideally of all the same capacity (well you can use different capacities, but the array configures itself based on the smallest drive), and get them fully formatted and clean. So in your Computer Management window you should see your OS drive, plus four blank “unallocated” drives.

Right click on the unallocated region of any of the “to be RAID-ed” drives, right click “New RAID-5 Volume”.

You then get a window appear which is basically listing all the available drives on the left, and wants you to move the drives to the right that you want to be a part of the RAID-5 array. Just pick the ones you want, move them over and click next.

The next screen then asks you what size you want the array to be. It will default to 3 times the smallest drive capacity. If you had a 20 GB, 40 GB, 60 GB and 80 GB drive, your array capacity would have a maximum limit of just 60 GB. You might for some reason what to use less than the full RAID-5 capacity (maybe you want a “backup” partition that is logically separate for instance). Make your choice and click continue …

Eventually you will get to the end of the wizard and it will congratulate you on building the array. Now a boring step – you need to wait while windows “configures” the array. This involves Windows running the RAID-5 algorithm to get the drives set up to receive data. My array consisted of 4 500 GB drives, quite small by 2013 standards, but the array still took the majority of two days to build, while this is happening, the Computer Management tool will say that the drives are “syncing”.


In the wonderful world of the Internet, you experience time different, and after glancing at the above picture, you have transported yourself forward two days (don’t worry, only two days forward in my life!) and you have a fully configured array! Windows will report that the array is healthy.

One thing I did, that probably slowed down the syncing process was I started moving my data onto the array. I put about 500 GB of data (videos, pictures etc.), I am convinced this slowed down the process because despite plugging the USB2 external drive straight into the server PC, I was writing to the array at a blazing 3.7 MB/s ! If you were to just abandon your PC I'm sure it would take far less time (using the same capacity).

Conclusion

Setting up the RAID array and getting the shares set up is about 90% of the short-term functionality of my server, so by this point I was extremely pleased with my progress! I will write up more about my server for those that are interested.
Take care!

The Future is E!

In my very first blog post, I announced that one of my hobbies is anything related to technology (computer technology). I am very much a lover of the idea of integrating computer technology into the home. It has been talked about for years about homes becoming more digitised and “e” but it is taking off very slowly, I think there are a couple of main drivers behind this. The main one I believe is infrastructure.

For an e-home to function, there needs to be a good infrastructure to support it. What do I mean by this, well my idea is that homes basically need a smaller version of the technology that enterprises have in their corporate networks. Looking at your average (my) home. I can see bits and pieces of technology making advances, for instance, mobile devices such as laptops, phones, e-readers, tablets and consoles to name just a few are all getting more and more hungry for information, almost universally in the form of internet access. And all this data is supposed to be piped through your BT home hub? Aye right that will work well! It might be for me living on my own, but when you start getting to your average family – mum, dad, two, three or four kids and each person has their own set of electronic devices – you are really starting to hit a data flow problem.

So my first point is that the physical infrastructure needs to exist. So my idea is an effective network consisting of a core spine of ultra-high data-rate networking with branches to allow connectivity into that spine.

On the same theme as enterprise infrastructure, the infrastructure needs to support the actual management of data. One problem that I have in my house is that all my devices (I have a laptop and two desktops represent 90% of my work) have different “scraps” of data across them and it can be frustrating when I can’t remember which PC has a piece of data on it that I need. So what I want, and what I believe homes need is a data management system. In my mind, even a small family home needs a centralised data archive that anyone, anywhere in the home and ideally anywhere in the world can access.

As an example, if you look at Windows 7 onwards, you can set up what is known as a HomeGroup. It is basically a limited file sharing system between PCs. You can read data from very specific directories (My Documents for instance), and have access to some of the other PCs facilities too, such as printers. Which is very good. But the limitations of it are quickly apparent.

Further building on the management of data, there are two sub-themes in this. Data redundancy and data backup. These are subtly different problems to be solved and I will do this after I first try to define them:

• Data Redundancy, in the event of a limited amount of failure of equipment and / or problems I am still able to access my data
• Data Backup, in the event that my data is corrupted, I am able to restore the data from historical archives.

I believe that the e-home needs to have data stored centrally that has a direct link into the infrastructure for easy and rapid data access. But even more important is to address the two bullet points above: you need to have some resistance to failures / problems so that data isn't lost easily. But you also need to address the situation that if you do lose data, you can recover it (mostly typically).
One way I've seen this kind of addressed is the use of Cloud Storage solutions by providers such as Dropbox and SkyDrive. They look after most of the above mentioned issues to some degree or another.

In a very round-a-bout type way I've tried to introduce some of the areas that appeal to me and that I will talk about more in the future.

That's all for now folks. Ciao for now!