Weekend Project: Building a Windows Home Server (Part 1)

Many homes these days have more than PC and also have amassed quite a lot of media in the form of photos and videos. One of the small duties most people forget about with their home machines is to do regular backups – and yeah it is quite tedious, especially with more than one computer. While many methods exist to automate these backups, many of them are not particularly easy to use and stable. Microsoft has had a product called Windows Home Server available for a couple of years, and yes it is relatively unknown. But for multiple PC households, it is truly a great solution. So over the next few weeks I will document my experiences with this software and also the hardware I will use.

I recently got hold of a new low end tower server machine, a HP ML110 G5 (you can find it here)  and decided how best to use it. Seeing as it is a server machine, it has a terrible integrated graphics card and some strange proprietary PCI Express slots, so using it as a desktop machine was out of the question. In fact I tried installing Windows 7, but the machine refused to even play a h264 SD video. You can order the machine with Windows Server 2003, but I decided to rather go for Windows Home Server (which is also built on Windows Server 2003). WHS runs as a “headless” server, so you only need a screen and desktop set for the initial setup. Thereafter, you log into the server with other machines in your home.

Windows Home Server can run on quite old hardware, in fact using it on some retired old desktop machine would work fine. Microsoft says a minimum of a 1GHz Pentium 3 and 512MB RAM would work – but I would recommend a bit more. The machine I am using is a Pentium Dual Core 1.8GHz, with 4 Gig of error correcting RAM with a smallish 250gig SATA drive. Having some quad core Xeon processor Xeon processor will be an absolute waste – unless you plan on doing things like real time transcoding and streaming, and even then such a high end processor might be excessive.

I would recommend more than one drive, bigger the better. Also, since it is a server that is on 24/7, you might want to take note of the number of components in the machine which will save electricity in the long run. So if you using an old overclocked gaming machine you might want to first remove some of the excessive fans and components. The more bare bones, the better.

Microsoft however recommends using new components, seeing as they will probably last longer than some tired old component. Seeing as it is a server which will probably house some valuable data such as your old photos, it might be smart to take note of their advice.

When looking at storage, enterprise grade hard drives will probably last longer, but “green” hard drives that consume less electricity might be an even better idea seeing as redundancy can be catered for by the operating system. So far I only have the one drive in the machine, but I will soon start adding some additional drives I have laying around. Every time you add a new drive, the OS will simply remind you that its contents will be erased and then adds it to the storage pool. A system partition holds the OS, while all the storage is pooled into a D: partition, which caters for redundancy as well.

In terms of memory, MS says 512MB would be fine, but memory is so cheap these days it might be a good idea to get more memory. In fact pre-built HP Home servers these days ship with 2GB RAM, so I decided to get 4GB memory. The server machine I am using can use error correcting RAM, so I decided to stick with that, which cant hurt. I was quite surprised to see that ECC RAM does not go for much more than normal RAM.

So far I think I have hardware covered, but I need to create some more storage – my WHS will primarily serve as a backup device for all my machin,e but also as storage for all the media I play on my Xbox 360. WHS can stream movies, videos and photos to the Xbox, so having enough storage will be very important. So I will probably increase the storage with two additional 1TB drives, keeping in mind that the more hard drives you add, the more electricity the box will use, but using additional drives will also increase data redundancy.

What I will look into in the next few days is the actual setup, the backup functionality, media streaming and also mac compatibility. Seeing as I use Mac OSX on my main machine these days, I really want to see how I can do Time Machine backups to my server. Also, support for Windows 7′s connector software is currently still in Beta, so I look forward to see how well Windows 7 plays with it.

Wish me luck…

You can find part 2 here: details on setup of WHS and getting started.

Windows Home Server is $99, so you can find it in SA for around a R1000. Most places dont seem to carry stock of it, so you have to order it in most cases.

TVersity

I just found this great app for anyone who uses some device to stream movies from a windows machine. Using a Xbox 360 with a normal Windows (non media center) machine is very limited, and the range of codecs and formats are basically only Microsoft’s own (supposedly the May 2007 update will fix this, but too little too late…). TVersity is a server side software that encodes files on the fly into something that the Xbox (or Wii or PS3 or whatever) will understand in its own format. Using a FFShow codec (or whichever codec pack you might prefer), it means that any file you are to play on your normal machine through Windows Media Player, can now be streamed to your device. The streaming is quick and can easily be customized based on your type of network connection, wired or wireless. No stuttering, no problems.

The software is really useful – it also does photos and music, and much better than the normal Microsoft alternatives. Music in weird file formats are also converted on the fly.

Setup is rather simple, but the software can be a little fussy. Most problems can be fixed by just restarting the app. Ive been using it on a XP and Vista machine, no real problems. I am running it on a Centrino laptop and a new dual core Centrino as well. The app is still free and in beta, lets hope they keep it free. On the other hand, I might pay for it if they can get it very stable…

Check it out at www.tversity.com

XBox 360 elite out…

It sure is pretty…. Microsoft Corp. today announced the upcoming availability of Xbox 360™ Elite, a new model of the video game and entertainment system that will include a 120GB hard drive, a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) port, a high-definition cable, and a premium black finish for the console, wireless controller and Xbox LIVE® headset. Xbox 360 Elite has enough space for a library of Xbox LIVE Arcade games and thousands of songs, as well as downloadable high-definition TV shows and movies available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. The new 120GB hard drive also will be sold as a stand-alone accessory to give current Xbox 360 owners greater choice and flexibility in their games and entertainment experience. Additional Xbox 360 Elite accessories, such as the black Xbox 360 Wireless Controller, Xbox 360 Play & Charge kit and the Xbox 360 rechargeable battery, will be available separately. The Xbox 360 Elite and its accessories are expected to begin arriving in U.S. stores on April 29.