Well, I'm back and just this much smarter on Essentials. It's quite granular (as a Server OS should be) but stuff just isn't where you expect it to be or is labeled like you may be used to.
Word to the wise: Do NOT manually delete backups of client PCs, even if they screw up somehow. You will cause yourself a whole world of hurt...assuming your goal is to correctly setup your client PCs for Server Management. Hopefully, this thread will help others in the future.
Manually deleting Client Backups, screws up the HD you designate for those backups, which causes cascading errors in the OS. Not the old-school BSODs you're used to, but the new, fancy-web-interface "This thing isn't running so there" type error messages. You CAN select "Repair Backups"...asssuming that HD still exists. Yeah. I went one step further in my attempt to "clean" the original failed client backups and reformatted that HD. SO THEN, the Windows Server Client Backup Service would Start and immediately stop.
Without that Service running you cannot have ANY client backups. Does't matter if you try and initiate them from the client end or the server end, they will fail. The fix action the OS tells you (it's built in and shows in Server Management) to "Restore Backups." What a nice feature! But that doesn't work if you've already deleted that backup drive. :\ IIRC, I clicked something in the Client Backup screen and selected "Recreate Drive." CAVEAT for that! You MUST have a HD installed, with the SAME drive letter as before. In my case, it was "D" before and after I deleted it, I reformatted/assinged it to "D" just by habit. So, it found the HD, installed about 1GB of "WTF-is-this-crap?" files on there and magically, that Service would start and stay started. Whoa.
Moving along.
Now I still have a W7 Ult PC that used to be joined to the SERVER but NOT the Domain, but now it isn't. OK. Run that client connect wizard again. ARGH. My webcam still has some file that needs a reboot...whatever. Deleted that reg key and ran the connection wizard and...
Congratulations, Mike! Your main/gaming PC is now a Domain Member! 😱 Um, wait...WUT? Remember I said that I ran the "No join the domain script" blah blah? That was the first time. The SECOND time, after I screwed up the backups, and I had to remove the Win7 box from the server, I didn't run that "no join" script again b/c I figured it would be resident...or something.
Ah, no. I wound up joined to the domain. I was mightily pissed off but Essentials is WAY cool. It doesn't screw you up, providing you take the time to READ all the text before clicking "NEXT."
Now, I'm used to joining a Server 2003 Domain, where after joining a pre existing box to the domain, you wind up with an all new Desktop, drive mappings, everything reset etc. Luckily, I checked the box for "Migrate Users/Settings." I got 99% of everything back including my Desktop, Wallpaper, all icons and even CoreTemp, which I have running at Startup. I even got back ALL mapppings to locally-installed HDs and their shares. 😎
Interestingly, I had to re-enter passwords for all my e-mail accounts for Outlook 2003. Don't really get this, but after entering some passwords everything works great.
I ran a BACKUP (the original cause of this issue) and 30 mins later all is well. I even restarted both the server and the client several times just to be sure "everything is sticking." It's all good.
No doubt in my mind I will be buying a license for Essentials. Even this RTM (RC?) is that good.
ps
After all this, my file "download from server" transfer speeds still suck. Over Gigabit Ethernet, all I get is 10MB/s where I used to get 60+MB/s w/a shared folder under Server 2003. Maybe this is some kind of "proxy issue?" I don't know as I am not a programmer. But MS needs to fix this! A Gigabit ethernet connection attached to a Gibabit SMB Gigabit switch with a whole 6 feet of machine-made Cat5E patch cables CAN BE a whole lot faster than this, as I know for sure b/c it WAS a whole lot faster under Win2K3.
