Windows Home Server Remote Web Access

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
I'd heard about this awhile ago and it peaked my interest. Now can this puppy take some tuner cards and allow access to Media Center Extenders? I'm assuming it works like Media Center.

No for media centre type functions use ermmm.... media centre

WHS is storage and backup, like a NAS on steroids So what you can do is bang all your content, videos movies etc on there, and pull them using Media Centre and/or your xbox 360 to be displayed on a big screen. Here is my setup (roughly)

WHS (1TB Storage) ----> Vista (Ultimate thus with Media Centre) ---> Xbox360 ----> 42" TV

The WHS provides the storage, but also backs up every machine on the network nightly (as disk images which can be used to reinstall the whole machine from a formatted disk to just how it was yesterday, or to retrieve individual files if needed), duplicates the imortant shares across several disks (e.g. the 5 years of digital photos) so should one disk go kaput the files are safe on another disk, and finally provides security alerts for all machines (i.e. reports to me should one of the kids turn off the firewall, uninstall the AV etc etc)

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: Spike
thanks for all the info. I got my invite about a month ago but did not have a box to install it on so I have not tried it yet. I think I am going to spend the $40 required to get a Socket A setup running (1.4ghz, 768mb, 160GB) so if the requirements are correct that should run it just fine. I look forward to trying it out!

The final frankenstein box I have thrown together for WHS is a Athlon XP 1.2ghz with 768mb ram and it runs great.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
I'd heard about this awhile ago and it peaked my interest. Now can this puppy take some tuner cards and allow access to Media Center Extenders? I'm assuming it works like Media Center.

No for media centre type functions use ermmm.... media centre

WHS is storage and backup, like a NAS on steroids So what you can do is bang all your content, videos movies etc on there, and pull them using Media Centre and/or your xbox 360 to be displayed on a big screen. Here is my setup (roughly)

WHS (1TB Storage) ----> Vista (Ultimate thus with Media Centre) ---> Xbox360 ----> 42" TV

The WHS provides the storage, but also backs up every machine on the network nightly (as disk images which can be used to reinstall the whole machine from a formatted disk to just how it was yesterday, or to retrieve individual files if needed), duplicates the imortant shares across several disks (e.g. the 5 years of digital photos) so should one disk go kaput the files are safe on another disk, and finally provides security alerts for all machines (i.e. reports to me should one of the kids turn off the firewall, uninstall the AV etc etc)

Ah well there you have it, the automatic backup is nice, does the machine back itself up? Or is RAID the best safeguard there?

 

[stash]

The machine does not back itself up, but you should be able to do a robocopy of the data to an external drive. I'm not sure if that will work for the backup database that contains the backups of all the clients on your network.

Using RAID with Home Server is not recommended because of the way the built in redundancy works.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: stash
The machine does not back itself up, but you should be able to do a robocopy of the data to an external drive. I'm not sure if that will work for the backup database that contains the backups of all the clients on your network.

Using RAID with Home Server is not recommended because of the way the built in redundancy works.

The backup databases shouldn't be a problem, unless 2 machines fail in a short period of time.

 

[SolMiester]

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: SolMiester
Just got a new router Linksys WAG54GP2, but have no idea how to use dyndns, or the config req'd to setup the remote access, instructions gratefullt rec'd

Sign up at dyndns for a free static domain address to use Here.

pop the details in the router (usually under setup > DDNS on linksys routers) and the router will then report any change of your dynamic IP to dyndns. You can then use just your dyndns address to get to your home IP no matter how many times the actual IP address changes

Yes done now and after forwarding a few port it's working really great, now to teach the wife....LOL

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
I'd heard about this awhile ago and it peaked my interest. Now can this puppy take some tuner cards and allow access to Media Center Extenders? I'm assuming it works like Media Center.

No for media centre type functions use ermmm.... media centre

WHS is storage and backup, like a NAS on steroids So what you can do is bang all your content, videos movies etc on there, and pull them using Media Centre and/or your xbox 360 to be displayed on a big screen. Here is my setup (roughly)

WHS (1TB Storage) ----> Vista (Ultimate thus with Media Centre) ---> Xbox360 ----> 42" TV

The WHS provides the storage, but also backs up every machine on the network nightly (as disk images which can be used to reinstall the whole machine from a formatted disk to just how it was yesterday, or to retrieve individual files if needed), duplicates the imortant shares across several disks (e.g. the 5 years of digital photos) so should one disk go kaput the files are safe on another disk, and finally provides security alerts for all machines (i.e. reports to me should one of the kids turn off the firewall, uninstall the AV etc etc)

Ah well there you have it, the automatic backup is nice, does the machine back itself up? Or is RAID the best safeguard there?

No the machine doesnt back it self up... for a relatively simple reason (though I too would like the extra security of a self backup).

It doesnt matter how many hard drives you put in... you always have the same setup:

1 x 15GB system partition where the OS is installed ..... every other mb of disk space across all disks is lumped into one large volume!

So .... should things screw up.... you simply do an upgrade install which detects the volume, leaves it untouched and then reinstalls itself to the 15GB primary partition. I have actually done it to test and it worked a treat with no issues.

So I have 4 HD's, 1 x 80GB, 1 x250GB, 1 x 300GB and 1 x 400gb. I made sure the 80 was the primary master so as its the only SATA disk and thus the OS goes on there for perfomance. Everything else becomes one ~1TB volume and the OS itself manages space, duplication etc automatically. Its great as you really dont have to worry about juggling space around.

You can setup a raid... but really there is no point. Anything important you set to be duplicated, and benefit from not reducing you space like in a fully mirrored RAID.

 

[SolMiester]

Okay, I have remote console working, however havent been able to get the RDP client or remote control of other pc's working. I have checked the user has remote desktop rights etc and for RDP put a fwd port on 3389. It works on the LAN, but not on WAN.

Ideas?

 

[SolMiester]

Okay, got it all right fine now, couple of gotcha's there...The firewall exceptions lists for Remote desktop, windows backup service and transport service all need to have scope select any pc, not just your network..

 

[Raduque]

Hmmm, I've had the beta of this for a while now, but I haven't even burned the DVD to install it yet.

It sounds impressive for a home/small network-oriented server OS.

 

[erwos]

Does anyone have any performance benchmarks for file transfer rates over a gigabit network? That's really my primary concern at this point with regards to WHS - how well does it scale with the number of drives, the number of hard drive sizes (eg, 160+250 vs 250+250), and with bandwidth?

Another bunch of weird questions: how does it handle data redundancy to survive a drive failure? How is it visible to the user? Has anyone actually tested it?

I am really excited about WHS, but want to know more about how it does some of the specific things it does...

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: SolMiester
Just got a new router Linksys WAG54GP2, but have no idea how to use dyndns, or the config req'd to setup the remote access, instructions gratefullt rec'd

Sign up at dyndns for a free static domain address to use Here.

pop the details in the router (usually under setup > DDNS on linksys routers) and the router will then report any change of your dynamic IP to dyndns. You can then use just your dyndns address to get to your home IP no matter how many times the actual IP address changes

I believe MS is going to offer some out-of-the box dynamic hostnames for you when it releases. Domain will probably be something off of live.com I'm guessing. It should still work with any other type of dynamic dns too (dyndns etc).


Hey FYI on that backup: The more machines you backup the more efficient the storage will become. It uses cluster-level single instance storage. So duplicate clusters on different machines won't take additional space. Since you're likely running Windows on many boxes this will mean lots of duplicates (ntoskrnl.exe, notepad, etc..)

The backup system is designed to make multiple copies. Some can be external drives or removable media (DVDs yuck!) that you can take offsite if you wish.

Also keep in mind this is your backup server so even if it catches on fire and you use your backup external disk to beat the fire out you'll still have the original home PCs running. It would take lots and lots of simultaneous failures to really lose everything. So if you need to backup anything short of the new york stock exchange daily data this should work fine.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
I'd heard about this awhile ago and it peaked my interest. Now can this puppy take some tuner cards and allow access to Media Center Extenders? I'm assuming it works like Media Center.

No for media centre type functions use ermmm.... media centre

WHS is storage and backup, like a NAS on steroids So what you can do is bang all your content, videos movies etc on there, and pull them using Media Centre and/or your xbox 360 to be displayed on a big screen. Here is my setup (roughly)

WHS (1TB Storage) ----> Vista (Ultimate thus with Media Centre) ---> Xbox360 ----> 42" TV

The WHS provides the storage, but also backs up every machine on the network nightly (as disk images which can be used to reinstall the whole machine from a formatted disk to just how it was yesterday, or to retrieve individual files if needed), duplicates the imortant shares across several disks (e.g. the 5 years of digital photos) so should one disk go kaput the files are safe on another disk, and finally provides security alerts for all machines (i.e. reports to me should one of the kids turn off the firewall, uninstall the AV etc etc)

Ah well there you have it, the automatic backup is nice, does the machine back itself up? Or is RAID the best safeguard there?

No the machine doesnt back it self up... for a relatively simple reason (though I too would like the extra security of a self backup).

It doesnt matter how many hard drives you put in... you always have the same setup:

1 x 15GB system partition where the OS is installed ..... every other mb of disk space across all disks is lumped into one large volume!

So .... should things screw up.... you simply do an upgrade install which detects the volume, leaves it untouched and then reinstalls itself to the 15GB primary partition. I have actually done it to test and it worked a treat with no issues.

So I have 4 HD's, 1 x 80GB, 1 x250GB, 1 x 300GB and 1 x 400gb. I made sure the 80 was the primary master so as its the only SATA disk and thus the OS goes on there for perfomance. Everything else becomes one ~1TB volume and the OS itself manages space, duplication etc automatically. Its great as you really dont have to worry about juggling space around.

You can setup a raid... but really there is no point. Anything important you set to be duplicated, and benefit from not reducing you space like in a fully mirrored RAID.

If one disc in that large volume would fail, do you lose the entire volume?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
If one disc in that large volume would fail, do you lose the entire volume?

I could be wrong but I don't believe it's doing any sort of raid/jbod/spanning that would reduce reliability. It just presents the space as one large volume and will put multiple copies on multiple drives if you have them. I'm not super familiar with the product yet so I could be way off here.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
If one disc in that large volume would fail, do you lose the entire volume?

I could be wrong but I don't believe it's doing any sort of raid/jbod/spanning that would reduce reliability. It just presents the space as one large volume and will put multiple copies on multiple drives if you have them. I'm not super familiar with the product yet so I could be way off here.

So your saying the program has its own form of data redundancy. I was under the impression it was doing a form of jbod.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
If one disc in that large volume would fail, do you lose the entire volume?

I could be wrong but I don't believe it's doing any sort of raid/jbod/spanning that would reduce reliability. It just presents the space as one large volume and will put multiple copies on multiple drives if you have them. I'm not super familiar with the product yet so I could be way off here.

So your saying the program has its own form of data redundancy. I was under the impression it was doing a form of jbod.

not in the way that would cause a single drive failure to kill the whole array.

 

[Seeruk]

It is designed to handle drive failure from the outset. We are lead to believe that failure of a single (or multiple) drives would not lead to a volume failure. Of course data stored on that disk, and that disk alone would be lost.... but thats why there is one click enabling of duplication for the important shares.

e.g. I dont care about losing videos and tv that I could download again, but i do care if I lose my family photos, so i duplicate the Photos share.

It's of course tough to prove such a thing realistically until an actual drive fails in a dramatic way. I have pulled out a SATA drive whilst plugged in to the power and the OS running, and I was told of the event, but plugging it back in there was no problem.

Incidentally adding a drive to the volume is easy too, two clicks formats the drive and adds it to the volume (warning! you will lose all data added on the drive you are adding as it will be formatted)

And yes I agree (and the WHS team have in the past) that RAID would overcomplicate matters and actually be less reliable.

The system backup is fantastic spacewise due to the clustering... I back up 4 machines onto it and the 1st box uses 25GB (the size used on the client machine)... whereas additional machines are using only a few hundred MB and take only 6-8 minutes to backup as the stored clusters are identical to the 1st box.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
It is designed to handle drive failure from the outset. We are lead to believe that failure of a single (or multiple) drives would not lead to a volume failure. Of course data stored on that disk, and that disk alone would be lost.... but thats why there is one click enabling of duplication for the important shares.

e.g. I dont care about losing videos and tv that I could download again, but i do care if I lose my family photos, so i duplicate the Photos share.

It's of course tough to prove such a thing realistically until an actual drive fails in a dramatic way. I have pulled out a SATA drive whilst plugged in to the power and the OS running, and I was told of the event, but plugging it back in there was no problem.

Incidentally adding a drive to the volume is easy too, two clicks formats the drive and adds it to the volume (warning! you will lose all data added on the drive you are adding as it will be formatted)

SATA drives are made to be plug and play, although I'm sure having the OS on there and not "safely removing hardware" doesn't help.

I'd really like to try this out, lets just hope I get accepted into the Beta.

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

Originally posted by: Seeruk
It is designed to handle drive failure from the outset. We are lead to believe that failure of a single (or multiple) drives would not lead to a volume failure. Of course data stored on that disk, and that disk alone would be lost.... but thats why there is one click enabling of duplication for the important shares.

e.g. I dont care about losing videos and tv that I could download again, but i do care if I lose my family photos, so i duplicate the Photos share.

It's of course tough to prove such a thing realistically until an actual drive fails in a dramatic way. I have pulled out a SATA drive whilst plugged in to the power and the OS running, and I was told of the event, but plugging it back in there was no problem.

Incidentally adding a drive to the volume is easy too, two clicks formats the drive and adds it to the volume (warning! you will lose all data added on the drive you are adding as it will be formatted)

SATA drives are made to be plug and play, although I'm sure having the OS on there and not "safely removing hardware" doesn't help.

I'd really like to try this out, lets just hope I get accepted into the Beta.

I thought the beta was open now? Thats the impression i get from the new Official site for WHS here

 

[tatteredpotato]

It's limited, you have to fill out a little application.

 

[dclive]

Anyone figured out how to remove machines that no longer exist (and have since been removed) from the WHS backups?

Imagine machine #1. It's backed up daily. Everything's great.

Machine1 gets removed - sold, stolen, whatever. No way to bring it back.

It still fills up one of the 10 "slots" that WHS can use (WHS supports up to 10 machines for backups).

Can it be removed? Trying to remove it from the console results in WHS trying to connect to the machine to remove the client software and failing (because...the machine is stolen/gone/etc...) ---

Any thoughts?

 

[timswim78]

Originally posted by: dclive
Anyone figured out how to remove machines that no longer exist (and have since been removed) from the WHS backups?

Imagine machine #1. It's backed up daily. Everything's great.

Machine1 gets removed - sold, stolen, whatever. No way to bring it back.

It still fills up one of the 10 "slots" that WHS can use (WHS supports up to 10 machines for backups).

Can it be removed? Trying to remove it from the console results in WHS trying to connect to the machine to remove the client software and failing (because...the machine is stolen/gone/etc...) ---

Any thoughts?

http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHome...ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1388399&SiteID=50

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: dclive
Anyone figured out how to remove machines that no longer exist (and have since been removed) from the WHS backups?

Imagine machine #1. It's backed up daily. Everything's great.

Machine1 gets removed - sold, stolen, whatever. No way to bring it back.

It still fills up one of the 10 "slots" that WHS can use (WHS supports up to 10 machines for backups).

Can it be removed? Trying to remove it from the console results in WHS trying to connect to the machine to remove the client software and failing (because...the machine is stolen/gone/etc...) ---

Any thoughts?

I submitted a feature request for this to be a click operation and apparently it will be implemented before release

 

[dclive]

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I've made this change and it appears to have worked, although I wonder how the SIS database will be updated.

 

[Spike]

Random questions here... I just got WHS installed and running on some older hardware I had sitting around (AXP 1800+, 768mb, 120GB, 40GB, 250GB) and it seems to be running well. I set it to backup my main computer which contains ~110 GB of music and pictures. I noticed the backup schedule has things like "keep first copy of every month, week, day" or something to that effect. I have less than 400GB of space to backup to so if I leave those with the default values, won't that space get eaten up real quick as a single back would take 110GB?

I also noticed you guys talking about duplicating important backups. Like most that would be my pictures, how do I do that? I have that folder included in my backup from the main machine, is there a way to do another duplication of that onto two seperate physical disks in the machine? two of the hdd's are 6+ years old so I expect failure to occure sometime in the not to distant future. Are you guys talking about using the shared pictures folder or is there a way to duplicate part of the backup file?

thanks and I hope those questions made sense.