Going forward with the Home Server...

As mentioned several times before, I upgraded from Windows Home Server Version 1 to WHS 2011 some time ago. Since then I have experienced absolutely no critical problems, and generally it runs solidly for months on end. It's fair to say that the server doesn't come under much load, but even so I'm very happy with it.

The biggest issue I have had is with the server backup drive (the drive to which the server itself backs up to) filling up. This seems to be a bit of an oversight as the clean-up process seemed flaky, but even this has settled down now I've tweaked a few settings, although it's anyones guess if I now have a below par server back-up running, but I think it's fine for my use case.

Overall WHS2011 works well for me, and since the latest roll-up pack appears to have addressed compatibility with the forthcoming Windows 8 machines, I have no urgent requirement to upgrade to the WHS2011 replacements for the moment, but it's always worth keeping one ear to the ground.

Recently Paul Thurrott has comment on the transition to the next wave of servers on his A Tale Of Two Home Office Servers post, and his thinking is similar to mine, although he does come from a slightly different perspective.

Essentially the choice appears to be purchasing Windows Server 2012 Essentials at around $450, or running a Windows 8 client.

The current price of Windows Server 2012 Essentials removes this from my choices for the moment, at least until it drops to $150, possibly less. WHS2011 dropped to a very good price, but then this was a more specialised product. Windows Server 2012 Essentials is a higher end product, so I don't expect a similar price drop will happen.

Similarly using Windows 8 Pro, whilst it could offer advantages such as providing that always on media center so many of us had been hoping would be in WHS2011, will fall down on the vital area of remote access and automated PC Backups (the killer WHS feature for me) as far as I am aware. This will make it a step back in ways that are important to me.

Since I splashed out for the marvelous DrivePool, I'm not overly concerned about Storage Spaces at the moment so that's not a driver to an update either.

So I guess it's going to be a case of sitting tight and waiting to see what happens. As long as Windows 8 machines work with the current system I'm in no particular hurry. I guess it's going to be a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". I guess my backup server is a rare case where I don't actually feel the need to have the latest shiny...

Still, I know what I'm like, so that will probably change soon.

WHS 2011: So How Did It Go?

Further to my previous post, I took receipt of four 2 terabyte drives and two 2 gigabyte memory sticks on Thursday 28th July, then the server arrived on Friday 29th. Needless to say I rushed home and started to put the new machine together.

First things first, I unpacked the server, plugged in the relevant leads and powered up to ensure everything was working correctly (or at least appeared to be), and took a note of the BIOS revision number. I then went onto the HP web site, downloaded the latest BIOS, run the executable to create the update files on a USB stick, and proceeded to update the server BIOS. All good.

Next step was to replace the memory and hard drives with my larger capacity components. All good. I jumped into the BIOS, changed the drive type to RAID, then entered the RAID set-up, and created two logical arrays of two striped drives. Splendid!

Now I was ready to install Windows Home Server 2011 itself. My USB stick with the files on refused to boot, so I grabbed my external USB DVD drive and fired things off... and the install went smoothly, recognising my two 4TB logical disks and installing to the first without issue.......... right up until the closing stages. Arses!

No matter what I tried the installer kept throwing a problem accessing the X: drive.

I used the Microsoft tool to create Windows 7 bootable USB key, but even attempting to install this way failed with the same error.

A search on the internet revealed people had found solutions to this issue blaming things such as broken hard drives, damaged media, and interestingly a timing issue using external drives. I hadn't even bothered installing an internal optical drive, I've got spares but they were all IDE, the new machine only supports SATA. Still, it was worth a punt so a trip to PC World resulted with me returning with a Blu-Ray writer (another £80, but at least it would be useful as I didn't already have one).

So with Blu-Ray drive attached I tried again.... with the same results. I know other people had got this running, but apparently not me (I subsequently wonder if the others that have done this were using stripes of 2 terabytes or less, an issue for WHS2011, apparently it can't handle partitons larger than this and mine were twice the maximum size).

That left only one thing to do, delete the RAID array and have the four drives visible individually (in my haste I forgot to consider having 2 drives mirrored, D'oh!) and use something like DriveBender of StableBit Disk Pool for duplication when they arrive. Not the end of the world.

So with the new drive configuration (and incidentally using the newly installed internal optical drive - well it was already in there) I started the install once again and... Success!!!!

I'm currently in the process of configuring, installing add-ins and copying over data, but so far I'm fairly impressed, especially with the remote access. One of my biggest issues is that the old WHS box takes so long to remote desktop into that by the time I attach it's shut itself down thinking it's the middle of the night and nobody is using it (a side effect of having Lights-Out running and incorrectly configured - unfortunately since I can't log in I don't get a chance to disable Lights-out!). I'll possibly just have to pull the drives out and attach them directly to the server to get to the data, awkward but hardly the end of the world.

The only other issue thus far is the fact that I removed the Blu-Ray drive... forgetting to eject the WHS 2011 install DVD. D'oh!

I'm yet to investigate how much juice the machine currently draws, and I expect with the drives not in use so powered down most of the time it's going to be an estimate anyway, however the drives are supposed to be "green" so I'm not expecting a terrible max power draw.

No doubt there will be another update soon.

Windows Home Server 2011

Well, it's about that time of year again to think about backups.

My initial posts on this blog were raving about Windows Home Server and detailing the creation and installation of my Windows Home Server version 1 machine. After a particularly painful experience with my previous server running Ubuntu, I was wowed with Windows Home Server and how it made so many things so much easier to achieve, at least in an environment where all my other machines were running Windows. As far as media serving duties and performing automated backups, it was like a breath of fresh air, at least initially.

I had plans to take it further moving the server hardware into the garage (there's no point keeping a back-up in the house if the house gets burgled or burns down in a fire!) and already have a hold drilled in the wall of the house that just needed to be widened to feed an RJ-45 cable through. Also by the power of the excellent Drive Extender technology in WHS v1 I planned on adding an obscene amount of extra storage over time and have the box work as a media hub too.

Then a change of job and finances put hold to these plans. The WHS box stopped playing nicely, essentially I would switch on the box and the hard drive activity would never subside, resulting in the box working but becoming incredibly slow. As a result of this I found I could back-up my laptop, but the desktop with its larger quantity of data would never complete a backup.

I tried for a while to solve this issue, but alas with no luck.

Then WHS 2011 was announced with better audio streaming, but shock horror without the awesome Drive Extender!

I, like many others, was unhappy about this (and I still am), but overall the update looked like one to get... when I had the money.

The upshot is that I lost interest in fixing my WHS v1, it literally seemed like more trouble than it was worth,  especially considering that in the meantime I started working in London again so had less time to tinker.

Worryingly as a result I've not had a complete backup of my primary desktop machine for some time now. Dangerous, and less than ideal.

Then I became single, so although I had fewer hours in the evenings to tinker after my commute home, I did have some free time... but still apparently not enough motivation to fix the WHS v1 box.

A few days ago I stumbled across a piece of news saying how the WHS 2011 software could now be had for a few pennies over £37. This seemed like a bargain too good to be true and re-kindled my interest in sorting out my backups, so I ordered myself a copy which has now duly arrived.

Now I needed to start thinking about hardware to run Windows Home Server 2011 on. My original WHS v1 box was an old shuttle micro ATX machine I had recyceld from desktop duties. I had to become quite creative with this form factor to get my hard drive array in, it's short on memory, the processor is old and only 32 bit (unsuitable for WHS 2011) and the network interface was only 100 base-t... Oh, and even by removing the redundant graphics card it still eats 90 watts of power.

Lo and behold I stumbled upon the HP ProLiant Micro Server is selling for £250... and until the end of the July 2011 has a £100 mail-in rebate!

The server only comes with 1 gigabyte of memory and a 250GB hard drive, so I'll be taking them out (The HDD may find its way into my desktop machine) and putting in 4 gigabytes of ram, and either 2 or (more likely) 4 two terabyte eco green drives,  hopefully in a 0+1 raid array (which will be just mirrored if the motherboard can't handle that).

I figure this configuration SHOULD be quite safe, so I'll then move all my media to the new server ready for DLNA access from the rest of the network (other windows machines, the XBox 360 and the TV itself) and remotely.

The server should draw less than 30 watts fully loaded and has a 1000 base-t network port, which should offer faster backups and general access.

After this machine is up and running it will be time for stage 2: my hifi has just stopped playing CDs so I'm planning on getting a dedicated surround system for the TV, along with some additional kit (possibly a Sonos system) for the kitchen, bedroom and lounge itself. That's a long way off just yet, but should be possible in the not too distant future, and now with WHS serving the local media.

The server box is ordered, I'll order the additional drives and memory later, and I'll update on how it goes in a later post.

WHS: The Big Install (Part 3)

After my earlier entry WHS: The Big Install (Part 1) I received a comment from tolonensan noting that they solved a similar problem to mine, namely that my 1TB SATA 300 drive was not being recognised by my nForce2 motherboard. T

olonensan wrote that by setting a jumper on their drive they were able to force it to SATA150. I figured this would be worth a go and set about finding a document that would show which of the jumpers on the back of my drive would allow me to do this, since the label on the drive contained no information.

As it turns out the changes for a Samsung F1 1TB drive is set via a utility called ESTools (downloadable from the Samsung web site), which is both a step forward and a step back. I can see it makes some sense to add this functionality in with the general tool set, however it does rely on you having a machine available that can read the unaltered disc in order to make the changes. Fortunately this was not a problem for me, however some people may not be so fortunate (although I suspect these people also wouldn't know the difference between a SATA 150 and 300 drive anyway). So a catch 22 that could have been avoided by jumpers, but then these bring their own problems too.

Anyway, after making the change on my desktop PC I plugged the drive back into the WHS shuttle box and it was instantly recognised. Unfortunately there wasn't enough physical space for this drive in the machine alongside the others, so I merely added it to the array, then removed the old low capacity SATA drive from the array and waited about half an hour for the data to be moved from the old drive and re-balanced on the new configuration.

It was then just a simple case of unplugging the old drive and powering the machine back on and waiting for the moment of truth... and... it worked flawlessly.

So the machine is now in the configuration I first intended, well almost. I wanted:

• Primary (OS) Drive: SATA 1Tb (An old SATA 300 Samsung F1 from my desktop machine)
• Additional Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
• Additional Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box) 

What I've actually got is:

• Primary (OS) Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
• Additional Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
• Additional Drive: SATA 1Tb (An old SATA 300 Samsung F1 from my desktop machine)

which I'm perfectly happy with. Should I need more space I can either add a USB external drive (or possibly FireWire?) or simply replace the 300Gb PATA drive with a larger SATA drive by following the same process as removing to other SATA drive. I have no idea how difficult it is to remove the drive with the OS on it, but I imagine this is a no-no. It doesn't really matter as by the time that happens either the next version of WHS will be out and I'll have re-installed anyway, and.or more likely I'll be running on other hardware.

And the old SATA 150 drive? Well that's gone into my desktop machine as a scratch drive, but to be honest I'm not really using it at the moment. The grand plan is to have it as a local backup to replace the external 300Gb USB drive I currently have attached, and have one less power drain in the house. I would copy the data from this onto the WHS, but even with duplication I'm a little nervous about this, and as I've discovered to my cost with the Ubuntu box: You may call it a back-up copy on a back-up device, but if that device contains the only copy of your data then it's actually the primary and only copy and it's not backed up at all.

I also took the chance a week ago to take the graphics card out of my WHS box, so it is effectively running headless and hopefully saving about 10W (it's an old card). This didn't worry the installation at all (my trial installation restarted 3 times before it settled down) and a single re-boot had the machine back on the network and running fine.

What has stumped me (and I wonder if this is connected) is that I also updated the LightsOut plugin at about the same time, and this no longer wakes from sleep mode. I didn't change any BIOS settings, but to check I need to plug the graphics card back in and look at the BIOS settings, which isn't ideal.

If, and it's a long shot, LightsOut requires the graphics card to work properly (and I've no idea why it should), then it will be staying in as it's a good add-on, and will likely save me more than the 10W drop in power when the machine is on.

Although if anyone has any ideas what settings I should be using...

WHS: The Big Install (Part 2)

Well, I've got the remote access running now by manually configuring the ports on my router, including opening the required port for WebGuide to stream media.

Now that this is working I'm able to upload files to the home server via drag and drop in Internet Explorer, which will be useful, but not as useful as it was in the days prior to SkyDrive and Mesh. It's nice to know the only limits I'll have are my own disc space though.

And whilst I'm able to connect to the server via remote desktop, I'm not yet able to connect to any client machines. This is probably because I need to re-start, but unfortunately I didn't have time to test the laptop this morning, and the desktop machine is still less that 70% through its first backup at the time of writing (about 10:25), despite having kicked this off at about 20:30 last night (hopefully subsequent backups will be tiny, that's what you'd expect, if that's not the case I'm in trouble for disc space anyway).

One of the things I need to see after the desktop backup completes is if the media files get put into the media directories automatically. If not I'll be copying these with SyncToy periodically, but at least then I'll be able to remove them from the backup cycle, which to be fair is where most of the backup file size comes from.

The other feature I've made use of today is remote desktop via the Mesh client, which is really useful, but also incredibly slow (I guess the backup isn't helping). I've since opened up the required ports, but again I need to restart before these changes take place.

No doubt I'll elaborate in my next post.

WHS: The Big Install (Part 1)

As per my last entry, I gave up trying to recover the (many years worth of) data on my Linux HDD pair that was destroyed in the upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, and have started the install of the new Windows Home Server machine.

I wanted to set the machine up as follows:
Primary Drive: SATA 1Tb (An old SATA 300 Samsung F1 from my desktop machine)
Second Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Third Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box)

This was where I fell at the first hurdle however. I know the 1Tb SATA drive is working; however try as I may the BIOS could not detect it (the motherboard is a fairly old nForce 2 model in a Shuttle SN45 V3). After some time trying to work out what was going wrong, I substituted the 1Tb drive for an old 200Gb SATA 150 drive. This was recognised instantly and at a total of 1Tb unformatted storage, I decided to cut my losses and go with it, albeit with an already heavy heart.

So now my machine configuration is:
Primary Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Second Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Third Drive: SATA 200Gb (SATA 150)

All good, albeit not optimal, but then I can add more USB drives later, with an additional power cost.

The next step went relatively easily, if slowly, that was to install the Windows Home Server OS onto the machine. I left this running after I'd entered as much information as it required, and went to bed.

The following morning I went through the remainder of the configuration (setting Administrator password, etc.) and after eventually finding the drivers, installed the network card and connected to the network, then stepped through the Windows Update cycle via remote desktop until all updates were downloaded.

After this I hit the second hurdle; although I could connect via remote desktop, the WHS connector application kept telling me the password I was supplying was incorrect, which I knew for sure wasn't the case.

Later that day I Googled the answer which was that the server date and time was incorrect (I was even in the wrong Time Zone despite telling the installation to choose "English (United Kingdom)") and after adjusting these, the connector software did (connect, that is).

So I've now started to install some Add-ins which I'll probably continue doing over the coming weeks.

I also performed the first back-up of my (now only working) laptop, which I left running overnight and was reported as completed this morning.

I've now got to back-up the main desktop machine upstairs, which I'm worried may fill the HDD (so I've done some pruning and will be using that failed 1Tb Samsung F1 drive as a local backup store), and work out the best way of storing my media on the server so that it acts as a mini media hub.

The other task high on my list is to get the machine accessible from the outside world. I'll be referring to my book tonight and will probably be manually configuring the router to do this.

Naturally, I'll let you know how I get on here, but so far it's going fairly well.

Fingers crossed it stays that way.

All Gone

It's final and official. The upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 killed all the data on both my drives.

I have now officially given up trying to retrieve anything.

Let the Windows Home Server installation trials begin.

Watch this space.

On With The Plunge.

There’s not been a whole lot of progress with my Windows Home Server experiments recently. The trial installation would have well and truly expired by now, but it was bought to a crashing halt when I added a third HDD to the machine – suddenly it all stopped booting and this time I couldn’t find a solution.

That wasn’t the main problem though, as a back-up server this would be inconvenient, but not fatal as long as everything else is safely stored elsewhere. What is really still getting me is the 500Gb of data still locked away on the old Ubuntu HDD, and the fact I have decided to run the server with the 1Tb drive currently powering my main desktop PC (in addition to the 500Gb drive and another I already have knocking around.

I decided to go for a couple of Samsung Spinpoint F3 (ordered yesterday to hopefully be delivered tomorrow) drives in the end, putting them in a striped RAID 0 configuration. I was looking at doing a RAID 5 config on 3 drives, but this would use 1Tb for parity data, and I can’t afford a 4 drive RAID 5 array (which interestingly would still only use 1Tb of parity). Besides which, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I don’t even fill 1Tb locally (although I could) so 3Tb would be massive overkill.

I figure RAID 0 with a scheduled backup to WHS should see me OK. If a drive fails it will be a pain, but not the end of the world. Hopefully I’ll get some performance increase in with the newer faster drives and striping as I believe this is what generally holds back my PC, however I'm lead to believe that boot times and application start-up are largely unaffected in RAID 0.

So when these drives arrive, Windows 7 Ultimate will be installed on the new array, I’ll copy off any remaining data from my old drive, then it’s back to getting the WHS box running. I should also have room for a nice collection of VMWare machine images, and I'll have a go attaching some old XP only hardware in XP Mode.

Lets just hope neither of the drives arrive dead, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Windows Home Server – Part IV

Well, I’m down to 10 days before my Windows Home Server trial installation expires, and as promised I’ve had a go at running the box with the graphics card removed. Actually, I also removed the TV tuner card that was still in there from when the box used to perform its Media Center duties.

The box booted, however the HDD was still spinning a few minutes later, then the box rebooted itself. Then the same thing happened again, then on the third (or possibly fourth) reboot everything settled down and now seems to be running normally.

So what’s the power draw with the two cards removed?

Prior to taking the cards out the machine was running at 102 watts (whilst the lower specified Biostar box was running around 90 watts).

The Shuttle box now also runs at about 90 watts, so a decent saving of about 10 watts (or 10%) so I’d get an extra couple of hours a day for free on the electricity bill, or about 3 days a month. Worthwhile.

As a matter of interest, unplugging the power from the DVD re-writer drive drops this to 89 watts, but to be honest the meter I’m using isn’t likely to be that accurate.

The other point to note is that there is only room for 3 HDD inside the box, and this will up the power requirements a little. I’ll investigate this more later, but I reckon that if I install the OS on the 500Gb drive from the Ubuntu machine, then use a 25oGb for the second drive and either another 25oGb or 160Gb drive for the third (depending what I can salvage) then I should be good to go. This also depends somewhat on me getting the stuff off the old Ubuntu installation first. It’s on the to-do list.

Hmmmm, I wonder if I can force another drive in somehow.

(I’ve just had a look and possibly if I mount the drives vertically. Or have one outside the case – risky considering its intended location. We’ll see – perhaps the BIOS won’t allow it….)

Stay tuned.

Disappearing Code (WHS Update 3)

In my previous post I talked about Mesh and mentioned the pitfalls of the current implementation, specifically the fact that if a file ‘goes bad’ in one location, it will quickly go bad in all synchronized locations, with no option (that I can see) to revert to an earlier version or undelete.

One of the folders I synchronize on Mesh contains code for a personal project I’ve been working on for a few years. Fortunately, most of the work I’ve been doing is getting my head around what I wanted to achieve, and devising the core of a design and an implementation approach to achieve this, meanwhile I’ve cut very little code.

About a year ago I created a few of the basic objects and tests in Java, and have recently been in the process of converting this Java code to C# with the intention that not only would I be able to use this project to aid in my C# education, but that also by the fact that the app would be better solved (at least initially) by a Windows desktop application (and possibly a Windows Mobile incarnation), rather than a generic Java Swing application. My ultimate goal is to make a Java Servlet web based implementation followed by a generic Java client; what better way to show off your skills to prospective employers than a solution implemented in two languages targeting multiple different clients?

Anyway, I’ve strayed a little, the key is that the Java and C# code is kept in folders replicated by Mesh. One evening late last week before setting off home from the office I decided to load the C# version to see what suggestions ReSharper would have to clean things up (ReSharper is an excellent tool – take a look if you work in any of the .NET languages, it’s good enough that it’s changed my style of programming in a few areas due to its suggestions). So I navigated my way to my replicated C# folder and… well you can probably guess: My source files were missing!!!

Bugger.

There’s only a couple of hours work there, but it’s a pain to write such things a second time. I don’t know who deleted (or hopefully moved the files) yet – me or the Mesh. Hopefully it’s me who has moved them (although the fact that some files still exist in the directory makes me wonder), but it does highlight the fragility of the system for longer term work.

So then I set to thinking about this less than ideal situation. I’ve been using Subversion for a couple of years now, and this is exactly what that system is for – source control of code. I did spend several hours trying to set up a subversion server on my (still currently dead) Ubuntu box, but failed, however after a quick search on Google I see several people are running subversion on Windows Home Server with it externally accessible from other locations. This down side of this is that it does open the machine up to the outside world, but I was intending to do this for such things as music streaming anyway, so it looks like the way I’m going to go.

I’m taking a risk here in as much as I haven’t done a test install on my trial version of WHS (which only has a few days of trial time remaining), but there’s enough going for Windows Home Server now that I know I’ll be buying a licence soon (especially since the 120 day activation key has been withdrawn from the Microsoft site – thanks guys!). You can do all this stuff for free in Ubuntu, but frankly it’s not worth the hassle to me, at least for the moment.

I also did some quick investigations into the power requirements of running the old Ubuntu box (Biostar iDeq 210) verses my old PC running the test WHS install (Shuttle SN45V3). Both machines have 2 HDD, but the Shuttle has a graphics card while the Biostar is using the internal graphics chipset (after all it was only running Linux in terminal mode). The Shuttle idles at about 102 Watts, while the BioStar was about 90 Watts. Aside from the fact they both have different processors, Hard Drives and probably memory, the extra power draw on the shuttle can probably be explained by the graphics card (and it has an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ as opposed to the BioStar 3000+). The Biostar would be of ample horsepower to run WHS, but it never properly managed to run XP without problems, it would periodically crash with a display driver warning on the BSOD, a problem I never managed to rectify either with re-installation of the OS and Drivers, or by installing an external graphics card, so I’m cautious of running WHS on this box.

Considering everything, and for the sake of an extra 10% power draw, it looks like the Shuttle box will get the WHS build. 100 Watts is more than the 35-50 Watts of the HP MediaSmart box I was looking at, and it won’t have the expandability of that box, but that machine costs over £400, so even factoring in the WHS operating system (at £66) it would still take several years to recoup the money, based on current energy prices.

The next steps are that I need to take the box apart next to see if it’s feasible to get 4 hard drives in there (3 should work as I’m going to remove the broken DVD drive, but 4 would be better if I can find the space).

The box is going to live in the garage, so I also need to drill a bigger hole in the wall to get a Cat6 cable out there (the box only has a 100 Base-T connection, but I don’t want to be running a cable twice). When I’ve done all that I’ll order the OS, a 10 meter Cat-6 cable and possibly a new bigger HDD and take it from there.

I wonder if WHS will run headless… a quick search suggests it will so I suppose that will probably be my next test (after a re-install of the trial I suppose), after all, if I can take the graphics card out the power draw may drop a little, and as they sat at Tesco “Every little helps!”. By headless I mean without a graphics card at all – not just without a monitor attached. That may sound odd, but I remember the early versions of Java would fail if certain operations were performed without any graphics card present (I think it was something to do with rendering AWT components even if they were to be served up remotely, but I’m probably wrong, this was a long time ago).

Oh, and now I see Power Pack 3 is out!

Stay tuned.

WHS Update

Further to my (la/fir)st posting yesterday, I now have Windows Home server installed on the old PC, but it looks like it may fail on one of my main aims - a centralised Windows Media Center base unit. I should probably list what are (currently) my main goals:

1. Backup of the various Windows machines I have running at home, especially things like Photos, etc. I currently use SyncToy, which is very good, but I’ve never managed to automate it satisfactorily.
2. A centralised back-up store of media files, with...
3. The ability to stream music from home over the internets, as was being provided by Jinzora on my old Ubuntu machine.
4. Stream media to the XBox 360... going forward possibly multiple Media Center Extender devices...
5. …which means it needs to run media center for extenders to connect to, along with other PCs, possibly with support for TV tuners (see comment on Windows Media Connect, below).
6. Still be able to host my own website... well if the hardware is on it's a waste not to.
7. Run a torrent client, although since this is mainly really being used to download Linux type stuff now, that's not so important.
8. Cut down on my enormous electricity bill.

So far, what I've looked at with Windows Home Server seems to be pretty impressive, although a few hours over one weekend is not quite enough time to part with serious cash yet.

I should add the caveat that I also haven’t actually run any backups yet, what with the box only running with 320Gb of total storage, spaced over two drives. I set up the laptop to backup, which to be honest was a pain in the arse – but to be fair this was only because, with such limited storage on the server, I had to go in excluding most of the hard disc (for example the “Program Files” directory).

I also like the fact you can do “Wake On Lan” to start the PCs when it’s time to backup, although I’m not sure if this is only available via wired connections, or I just need to set it in the BIOS, I suspect the former. There are also a range of functional add-ins, one of which allows you to shut down PCs, which I actually think could be remarkably useful.

WHS offers remote access, which will be nice, and remote desktop, so if I can manage to get a Cat6 cable through my wall, will allow me to stow it away in the garage, just like I used to do via HomePlug (anybody want to buy 4 200Mbs Homeplug devices off me?). Of course the network card in the machine is only 100Mbs, but it will save trouble on future upgrades.

So the only sticking point, so far, is the fact that WHS doesn’t run Media Center.

Then, this morning, I had a thought: How about running Vista or Windows 7 as a Virtual machine on within WHS as the host? Looking on the VMWare site a couple of people had tried and failed to do this, but I also see one guy had pretty much achieved it albeit with a few issues.

The thing is, to really get going I’ll need to get at least one new 1Tb hard drive (although frankly I think WHS should run on at least 2 drives to take advantage of duplication), then there’s the cost of the OS itself (66), and the fact the hardware is an old shuttle mini box, so limited expansion potential and I’ve not yet measured power consumption. Plus to get VMWare player running I’d need more than 1Gb of memory, and I’ll need to use one of my Windows 7 licenses to run in the VM. Plus the USB TV Tuners.

So I’m now wondering if it’s all going to be worth it. For most of the time the functionality provided by Windows Media Connect, which WHS does support will probably be fine, and those occasions I do want MCE functionality I can turn on the desktop machine upstairs. It’s not like I’ve got a stack of cash to throw around anymore.

The strange thing is, I’m now warming to the idea of getting an HP Homeserver machine and throwing another 1Tb HDD in there… but that would need to wait.

I may be uninstalling my 30 day Windows Home server trial and replacing it with a 120 day trial while I save up the cash for the HP box and do further testing, as I don’t think a month is going to be long enough.

As for Ubuntu… the chances are I’ll mount the drives on my desktop machine to copy off the contents, then put them back into the test WHS box (as it has a 500Gb and 250Gb drive) and see if I can squeeze an extra SATA drive in there too by removing the dead DVD drive and using my USB DVD drive instead. Then, if I can squeeze in some super cheap extra memory from eBay, I may just install Ubuntu as a Virtual Machine. We’ll see.

Now, I wonder what those power draw figures will be.

Welcome

“Ah” I hear you say, another new blog for me not to update, and you’re probably right, so let me attempt to explain:

Until recently I’ve been running (but not maintaining) my website on a Linux box sat at home under my TV which was working very nicely. Recently however, I upgraded it from Ubuntu 9.4 to 9.10, at which point it decided to not recognise my second HDD, effectively rendering the box useless without, possibly, rolling back. I then read that they estimate only 10% of users upgraded in-place without issue.

At the same time Windows 7 arrived on the scene, of which I had pre-ordered 3 copies. One of copy of Windows 7 was to update my old machine based around an Nvidia GeForce 2 chipset, which I now know isn’t supported by the new OS (or it seems, Vista before this). The result of this is that I now have the choice of either rolling back to Windows XP Media Center Edition, or buying new hardware.

I’ve been running XP MCE for years, at it streams nicely to the Xbox 360, hence why I had this in addition to the Linux box (yes, I had installed various media streaming solutions to the Ubuntu box, but none of these had the tight integration MCE offers.

Then, yesterday, I had a thought. Doing a little research it seems that Windows Home Server will also play nicely with the hardware, plus this will allow me to backup from my various boxes very easily. I had been looking at an HP solution for about £400, but I just don’t have that kind of money anymore, but if it works on the old hardware…

So I’ve downloaded the 30 day trial (and I now see there’s a 120 day trial available), installed it on the old XP MCE machine without too much trouble, and I’m now testing this.

The upshot of all of this is that, if it goes well, they’ll be a reduced need for the Ubuntu server, especially since running 2 machines 24-7 is going to use more electricity (which isn’t cheap nowadays) so I’ve decided to move my tech blog that was based on that machine to here, at least for the time being, we’ll see how it goes.

I’ll update all the URLs when there’s a few more entries on here, then just fix the old Ubuntu box when I get time, and use this as a test machine.

I hope that makes sense.

Stu.