Windows Home Server first came on the scene earlier this year at CES 2007 when Microsoft announced the new platform and various hardware manufacturers (one of which was HP) announced systems designed to utilize the OS. During the first six months of this year, WHS underwent several beta releases and recently reached its first release candidate. Targeting an August time frame release, Windows Home Server (WHS) is Microsoft’s first major attempt at providing a centralized server solution for the digital home. So, why did Microsoft finally decide to enter this market? It was pretty simple actually - Microsoft saw an opportunity to deliver a solution to a growing problem in the digital home. Consumers, more than ever, have a need to store information in a centralized manner at home. It’s as simple as that. Many more home users now have broadband connections, home networks, multiple computers, multiple devices, and much more digital content to deal with than ever before. The Windows Home Server platform was designed to support just such a home systems - providing a mechanism by which users could store and share data in a centralized manner as well as protect content on their individual PC’s by providing an automatic backup solution.

Windows Home Server can be seen as two parts. There’s the software (OS) side and the hardware platform that runs the OS. The original Microsoft plan called for various hardware manufacturers to sell complete WHS solutions directly to the consumer. It wasn’t clear whether the OS was going to be made available separately - either direct to consumers or direct to system builders.  However as the testing cycle continued throughout the first half of this year, it became increasingly clear to Microsoft that perhaps system builders should have access to the OS as well - and that’s exactly what happened.

What does this mean for all of us? You have the ability to create your own Windows Home Server system from scratch OR you can always purchase a complete system from a vendor like HP when the OS is finally introduced. The nice thing about building a system yourself is as follows

1. Reuse any existing hardware lying around

2. Define exactly what you want in your server - put  more where you think you need to

3. Have total control over the entire system building

Since I had a spare Shutle machine lying about, I decided to use that as a test bed for the release candidate edition of Windows Home Server. Thus, over the course of the next several weeks, I’ll be looking into Windows Home Server - everything from installation to usage of the OS to backing up systems onto the server to hopefully connecting to Xbox 360 consoles (I say hopefully because my Xbox 360s are in the shop now). Hopefully my experiences will provide a better understanding of the new server platform and help you decide whether it’s right for your own home.

Windows Home Server functionality

Before going any further, I want to quickly go over the functionality of Windows Home Server. According to Microsoft, there are three major functions to WHS:

• Provide automated backup and simple restore of networked computers
• Access and share everything from anywhere on the network - both inside and outside the home
• Provide a means to easily expand the storage as you need to

That’s really it folks. Those are the three main features. In fact you can boil them down to the Microsoft marketing terms of “Share”, “Store”, and “Protect”. That’s actually quite good when you think about it because it gives the development team at Microsoft a clear focused vision in terms of what they need to deliver. But does WHS deliver on these goals? That’s what we’ll see over the next several weeks.

First things first. We need to install the beast!

Step 1: Installing Windows Home Server

Hardware Requirements

Since I’m looking at WHS from a systems builder perspective, I’m keenly interested in what Microsoft thinks are minimum hardware requirements. Why? I’d love to reuse an existing system if possible.. or at the very least, I want to build a system at the lowest possible cost (while maintaining a good sense of reliability of course).

The one challenge in developing a system for the consumer market is price. You want people to see the need for centralized storage but you can’t frighten them off if the resulting system will cost over $2000 .. or even $1000. The real challenge for IHVs and system builders will be to design and manufacture systems for 500 dollars or less that can offer solid server performance for the home. I think it’s quite possible - especially when you consider WHS is designed to be run headless (without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse).

Here are Microsoft’s stated minimum requirements for WHS:

• 1GHz Pentium 3 or higher
• 512MB of RAM
• 70GB of storage space
• 100 Mbps Ethernet card

Now let’s run some reality checks - here is the actual recommended requirements for WHS:

• Pentium 4, AMD x64, or newer processor - prefer 64 bit processor even though WHS is 32 bit for now
• 512MB of RAM
• At least two internal hard drives with 300GB of primary (system) hard drive space
• 100 Mbps or faster Ethernet

Now that’s a bit better.

To install the OS, you’ll also need a display, keyboard, mouse, and DVD drive. After the installation is over, you actually can ditch the display, keyboard and mouse if need be because the platform is designed to be run in a headless environment.

My Hardware..

So now that you know what WHS’s hardware requirements are, let me quickly introduce to you the hardware I am using for this evaluation. I dug out my 3-4 year old Shuttle XPC system which has a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor inside. Other specs of the box include 512MB of RAM, integrated graphics, and a 120GB hard drive. To me - this system is ideal for a home server box. Unless you have a home network which is servicing many systems at the same time, you really don’t need the latest top of the line processor inside. What you do need is a good set of hard drives - preferably as new as possible. It’s not to say that you can’t use older hard drives. Just make sure you realize that hard drives will eventually fail and you really don’t want the drives to fail too quickly on a server box (But then again, WHS is designed to handle failures).

Supported OS’s

The following is the official list of operating systems that Windows Home Server will support:

• Windows Vista Operating Systems which include:
  • Windows Vista Home Basic
  • Windows Vista Home N (European Union only)
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • Windows Vista Business
  • Windows Vista Business N (European Union only)
  • Windows Vista Enterprise
  • Windows Vista Ultimate
• Windows XP Operating Systems which include:

• Windows XP Home with SP2
• Windows XP Professional with SP2
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with SP2 and Rollup 2
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with SP2
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 with SP2
• Windows XP Tablet Edition with SP2

What does WHS RC come with?

The RC edition of Windows Home Server came with three ISO images:

• Windows Home Server Installation DVD - use this to install WHS on your home server
• Windows Home Server Connector Software CD - use this CD to install WHS Connector software on your home computers
• Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore CD - use this CD to restore a home computer from a backup located on a WHS

The downloaded package also comes with several documents - the Windows Home Server Getting Started Guide, and the Windows Home Server Release Documentation.

Setting up the OS

Alright.. we’re all set here - let’s get this show on the road!

1. To start things off, place the Windows Home Server Installation DVD in the DVD drive and boot from the drive. This is a necessity. You can not install WHS from within a Windows OS. Once you boot from the DVD, the Windows Home Server Setup will begin.

 

2. This part of the installation is where you’ll answer most of the questions. According to the WHS setup program, there are five basic steps to installing WHS.

• Collecting Information
• Dynamic Update
• Preparing Installation
• Installing Windows
• Finalizing Installation

We’re at the “Collecting Information” stage at this point. When WHS Setup starts up, you’ll be asked to load additional storage drivers if your existing hard drives are NOT found by the setup program. Luckily, WHS Setup found all the lone hard drive installed in my system. I wasn’t too surprised since there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary with my hardware configuration.

 

3. You’re now asked to select an installation type. You only have one choice at this time and that’s a “New Installation”. Be aware - performing this new install will erase ALL of the data on the hard drives installed in your system. Make sure you have nothing valuable or that it’s backed up somewhere.

4. Select your Regional and Keyboard Settings.

 

5. Accept the EULA

 

6. Enter your product key

 

7. Setup now asks you to name your home server. The default name is “SERVER”. You can of course use that name if you wish - we decided to rename ours to something unique in the home network. Choose a name you can remember of course.

 

8. WHS Setup provides a warning that it’s about to format the drives in your system and then it asks that you acknowledge that all data will be lost.

 

9. We’re now ready to proceed with the install.. Click on “Start” and do the following:

• pray
• get some coffee
• read a book
• take a nap

Get my point? The setup WILL take some time.

 

The following are snapshots of the setup as it proceeds with the “Preparing installation” step.

 

 

10. Once the preparation step is finished, your server will reboot and you’ll enter the more typical Windows Setup blue screen.

 

11. It’s at this point WHS will copy files to their Windows Installation folders.

 

12. Another reboot… and we begin the actual installation phase of Windows.

 

 

 

Somewhere along the way, you’ll be asked to verify the time and date of your system.

 

13. Another reboot.. and this time you boot into the WHS server OS itself. This is the first indication that WHS is actually built off of Windows Server 2003. Notice the Windows Server 2003 splash screen? I wonder if Microsoft plans on removing this later on.

 

Once the OS starts up, you’re thrown back into the WHS setup program which proceeds towards the “Finalizing Installation” step. Unfortunately, I ran into this error message:

 

After poking around on the Internet, I came across several online threads from users who also ran into this problem with the RC build. We all did the same thing during the install - we removed the installation DVD once the setup reached this point. That’s apparently a no-no (and actually mentioned in the documentation. I know.. RTFM). So I rebooted the system with the DVD inside the drive and everything worked.

14. Once I got past the error message, the installer proceeded to install updates to the system.

 

15. One more reboot and yet again.. we’re installing updates (which include .NET framework).

 

16. Finally after over an hour of setting up, I get to the following splash screen welcoming me to Windows Home Server (and of course a message to activate the OS).

 

It is at this point you’ll be asked to create a password for logging into Windows Home Server. It must be a strong password which in Microsoft’s eyes means it must have at least 7 characters, and it must have three of following four criteria: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

 

17. WHS will ask you if you want the OS to update automatically. I always select “Yes” now.

 

18. Do you want to enroll within the Customer Experience Improvement Program? Sure why not.. hopefully Microsoft will listen to my feedback and fix any bugs I come across right? RIGHT?

 

19. And that’s it! WHS asks you to log off the box now. You’ll be administrating the server remotely from another machine. WHS even goes as far as saying you can remove your monitor keyboard or mouse - as long as your computer system itself is ok with that.

  

Should you close that window, you’ll be presented with this webpage warning you that you have not logged off yet.

 

Things to consider during setup

Windows Home Server setup was relatively painless for my particular hardware configuration. Aside from the error message that I ran into during the latter half of the setup routine (which I fixed by putting the installation DVD back into the DVD drive), I had nary an issue. However, YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY! Make sure you have equipment which will work for Windows 2003 since WHS is built off of that.

According to Microsoft, most of the major problems and issues will come from missing storage controller drivers. Although Windows Home Server comes with a number of storage controller drivers, it’s going to miss a few here and there. If you have a unique hardware controller - make sure to get that driver. As I said in the previous paragraph, make sure your hardware works for Windows Server 2003 - all you need to do is look for a 2003 driver. 

Another thing to look out for. Many of you have hardware based RAID built right into the storage controller/motherboard. Microsoft recommends that you turn that off. The OS implements its own method of storing and consolidating drive space - similar to how RAID works in functionality. It’s best to configure each hard drive as a separate device and let Windows Home Server deal with consolidating drive space.

The other final issue to watch out for is lack of network card drivers. Without the network in place, you won’t be able to remote configure nor attach to the Windows Home Server platform. Make sure to get a hold of your network card driver and install it for WHS if WHS hasn’t already installed the appropriate driver.

And that’s it! The OS is installed, the storage space is ready and now we’ll be moving on to the second part of this series - connecting Windows machines to WHS using the Connector CD. Here is part 2 of the series.

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