Several weeks ago, I took advantage of a free software program through Microsoft which allowed for users to install and use Windows Home Server for a 120 day trial period. I had been contemplating trying out Windows Home Server, and planned on pirating it in order to see what it was like, but much to my surprise Microsoft offered a legal way to do it.For the past year, I have had a media server with about 1.5 Tb of capacity on which I keep all of my music, photos, documents, and music. Up until now, it was just a XP Pro box, using simple shared folders for general access and VNC for headless control. Sure this was crude as servers go, but it got the job done.
Compared to this previous setup, Windows Home Server is a major upgrade. The main draw to WHS is in its utter simplicity to set up and use. The package comes with three disks, an OS installation disk to put WHS on the server itself, a disc containing WHS connector software for all the other computers on the network, and a recovery disc to use when one wants to revert a computer to a previously backed-up image.
Within 15 minutes of installing the software, the server is up and running, sharing media, and backing up all the computers on the network.
Several key features set WHS apart from a run of the mill XP based box.
First, all hard disks which are flagged to be part of WHS storage, despite being physically separate, are viewed by the server as one large drive. For example, I have 3x300 GB hard drives and two 250 GB hard drives, all which show up as one large 1.27 TB drive. Within this volume are pre-made shares (music, photos, software, videos, etc.) which are accessible to anyone with the permission to do so. A check box allows for certain folders to be duplicated across several drives in order to provide further backup and data security.
Whenever one wishes to add more storage space, all they have to do is install the hardware (internal or external drives) and click the add button, WHS will perform the necessary steps to incorporate it seamlessly into the current storage system.
Each computer that is to be connected to the WHS must have the connector software installed on it. This allows the server access to the machine in order to perform remote backups of any files one wishes to add to the list. It also allows for remote monitoring of the firewall, virus, spyware, and Windows update status of each computer on the network, a handy tool for families with multiple computers. WHS is designed to be used on a headless machine, and built into the WHS connector software is a fairly robust WHS console which allows the user to control all aspects of the OS.
WHS also allows for access to its files remotely over the internet. As long as the user knows the IP address of the server and a has a valid username and password, they can access all the files and perform all the tasks one could if physically attached to the machine through a network.
The only negative aspect that I can find about WHS is that if you do not have a speedy network at home, backups (especially the initial one) can be very, very slow. This can be worked around by setting backups to occur during the night, when both network and processing activity will be at a minimum.
At the end of my 120 day trial, I do intend to purchase the full version - it does everything I expected and more and is the perfect tool for those with large media collections or large home networks to service.
