Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

This Saturday, i received a mail from Microsoft Connect, telling me about my invite ID for the Windows Home Server Public Beta. I already had a spare Shuttle XPC lying around, onto which i installed WHS.

The setup routine of WHS still very much reminds you that this is a Beta version, and nothing completely ready for production. It looks more like an automated deployment of Windows Server 2003 than a new product based upon it. But since WHS is primarily an OEM product, these details don’t matter that much. The initial installer uses Windows PE 2.0, which makes it a lot easier to load custom storage drivers (something which was a real hassle with 2003 and XP, since most machines don’t come with a floppy drive anymore).

After the installer was done, i shut the machine down and placed it next to my TV, headless. I booted it again, and installed the WHS connector software to my workstation, running Windows Vista. The installer went without a hitch – and the Home Server console felt quite snappy, it’s also a bit sparse – there aren’t that many options you can choose from.

This brings me to my next point:

What is Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server is, more or less, a NAS appliance for Home users. You can save files on it, you can backup your PC’s automatically to it, and you can access your files remotely.

And that’s it. WHS is not a smaller version of Windows Small Business server – it doesn’t offer Exchange, Active Directory, etc. It is not meant to be used by IT professionals at home – it is meant for non-IT people which want a central file storage, fully integrated backup functionality, and remote access capability.

Using Windows Home Server

After installing, there were already several default shares for music, video, etc. Creating an new user also creates a share for that user. WHS forces users to use UNC names, instead of drive letters to access their shares. This is an improvement, since drive letters are evil. Especially in companies, where you should be using DFS anyway.

There’s a completely automated backup solution, which is the main selling and distinguishing point of WHS. The computers will wake up from sleep automatically at night, make a backup, and go back to sleep. It will be interesting how this is going to get handled in more common households, where PCs are usually switched off with a power strip (maybe not in the US, but definitively in most European households).

The other point is remote access. Remote access allows you to access all your stuff on your WHS through a web interface, which sucks. Really. It is slow, and it’s also cumbersome. There’s much room for improvement there, and with improvement i mean “rewrite”. You can also use your WHS as a RDP gateway to access your machines at home through RDP, which seems intelligent until you realise that XP Home, Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium don’t ship with RDP.

WHS also allows you to update your passwords on all computers at once, through a password updater utility. WHS isn’t a domain, but this somewhat resembles this feature.

My opinion

WHS is a product for my parents. Not a product for me. This is important to realize, i’ve heard many people moan that WHS doesn’t include a shared calendar, Exchange, Active Directory, etc. If you want all this (complicated) stuff at home, go for Windows Small Business server. WHS is an appliance, not a complete server solution. The main reason for this decision was probably to avoid stealing customers from Live.com’s online mail and calendaring service.

WHS itself offers a very unique storage management feature, which allows certain folders to be automatically duplicated on multiple hard drives. In my opinion, this is one of the two killer features (the other is backup). By allowing mirroring to be adjusted on a per share basis, you can choose to mirror all your important files, but not your extensive collection of completely legal DVD backups. WHS also allows easy replacement of hard drives (though not of the system drive).

The remote access seems to be very unfinished. A self signed SSL certificate is used to access your WHS, which will bring the consumers into the habit of accepting invalid certificates – which makes all this wonderful SSL verification stuff completely worthless. Maybe Microsoft will deliver a solution to this problem, though i really doubt that this is going to be easy, probably a complicated deal with one of the big certification companies is in order.

WHS will be an excellent alternative to all the SOHO NAS appliances on the market – of which most really suck. WHS doesn’t suck, it just seems unfinished (which makes sense, considering it’s in Beta). I hope Microsoft irons all those kinks out till the release. I will probably buy one for my parents when it’s released.