AtomicInternet Archived News

I've been excited about Windows Home Server ever since the unveiling at ICES. I was recently accepted into the beta program and decided to install it on a stolen Morlock PC today. After entering the product key, I went to mow my yard and came back to the login screen with no other configuration required. A quick check of the control panel found everything you'd expect in a Windows 2003 Small Business server, including IIS. My ultimate goal is to make Home Server my primary webserver, file server and backup server, so I was glad to see IIS ready to go. The centralized backup is the biggest feature of WHS, so my next step was to setup all my computers with the WHS client. It was pretty clear I wouldn't be able to backup all my computers with the 40GB drive in the Morlock PC, so I added a spare 120GB and another stolen 20GB Morlock drive for kicks. WHS has a warning screen for silly people like me that prefer traditional RDP access to a server, so I decided to go along with it and used the RDP-ish "Home Server Console" to add the drives to the storage pool. After seeing the result, I checked the partitions and found nothing exciting. Some kind of redundant spanning takes place on the drives (supposedly if one drive fails home server alerts you and keeps on chugging). With my improved storage I backed up all my computers from the console interface. The advantage to this over the built-in microsoft backup (both use shadow copy) is I can now initiate and schedule backups from one place instead of making sure each computer has the proper access, setting up scheduled tasks, and making sure they are on (WHS wakes them out of standby for the 2am backup). A backup is only as good as it's restore options, so I decided to "fail" my laptop drive by wiping it clean. I then popped in the WHS restore CD and booted into a modified version of Vista. Instead of loading every driver that does (and will) exist in the world, each backup has a "Drivers" folder you copy to a USB drive for restores. After booting up, it scanned and found the drivers on the USB drive. I entered the WHS password, picked the machine, backup, and partition to restore and my laptop came back to life. You can also restore individual files from specific dates, but that's not as dramatic. File shares, users, and network status are also easily administered from the console, with enough detail to keep me satisfied that I'm not actually RDP'd into the box. If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I'm so excited about a centralized backup system. You'll find your answer the next time the RIAA SWAT team swoops in with localized EMP pulse rifles and zaps all your PC's. While you cry about the cavity search I'll be booting up restores happy in the knowledge my WHS is safe underground in a lead bunker.