Windows Home Server Review

Article by Tony Scarpelli of CFI Computer Repair:
Windows Home Server – can it be a solution to some micro and small business networks that we support? I will detail requirements, time it takes to install the steps, time commitment and evaluate it as to its effectiveness to meet modest networking needs of micro and small businesses.

The Who

This article is targeted to those who have a modest network server requirement, clients with modest server needs and computer repair individuals wanting to break into server networking.

The Why

– In over 21+ years of operating my company “Computer Fix It” and supporting all forms of networks, many clients have requested an affordable total cost of ownership server setup. Of course this is subjective to the size of the organization however; I am specifically talking about the MICRO businesses of fewer than 10 employees.

I would talk to these micro business owners before going through the time to spec out such a network. I hate to take the time to bid such a system only to have them decide that a server is not for their company due to the complications and costs. After all, you have consider server software starting at about $500, a server hardware platform starting at about $1200 for even the most modest hardware, time to setup and install the server and configure it with the users and permissions.

Then there is always a bit of time to train the employees how to access programs and files on this new system. Even with the most modest bid server implementation plan, complete can work out to many thousands of dollars when all is said and done. This price point often scares away micro business clients. Often these clients are 6-10 users in a service or retail industry but need to share an accounting file, payroll system, database, internet and other proprietary systems managing invoicing or inventory and have very tight budgetary requirements.

The What

Microsoft Windows Home Server. When I first heard that Microsoft Windows Home Server was intended for home user, was built on the Microsoft NT line of server software, particularly the 2003/2008 Small Business Server package with its NT security, the same security that the US Department of Defense uses, I knew there was plenty of oomph under the hood on this seemingly modest offering.

Microsoft Small Business Server is really a package suite of server products that most small businesses commonly use. This package sells for $2500 for the software alone (or bit less). So I knew the blood line of the WHS was pretty good. WHS software retails for $100 but can be purchased for $45 online. It allows up to 10 simultaneous users with Windows Server Security and it is designed to be installed on workstation hardware which can easily save half of the cost of a normal small server install. No need for error correcting code RAM, no need for SAS or other expensive hard drives and no need for a server motherboard and power supply.

So with a thoroughbred pedigree, a pittance of price to buy and with very low cost hardware requirements, I see the recipe for an elegant and cost effective solution for micro businesses. For these reasons I decided to evaluate Microsofts “Quattro” code named version of Windows Home Server to see if it is up to the task for my own modest network and therefor also meet the needs of many micro/small businesses and networks which I support.

The test machine would be any working system from my used computer bone pile. I purposely wanted to find a slower machine to see how it operates on what is specced out by Microsoft. The chosen test machine is a 7 year old Dell Precision 210L desktop system with a Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz CPU, 1 Gig of RAM and a 1.5 TB Hard drive.

Windows Home Server installed in under 1 hour to my complete amazement. It was a simple, straight forward installation as easy as 123. I used just the laymen’s default setup as Microsoft intended it to be installed with nothing fancy requiring any of my MCSE knowledge. Once installed WHS quickly guided me through setting up all the functionality. It took 2 minutes each or about 10 minutes to go to each of four computers, run the connection software from the install CD, log them onto the server, and setup nightly automated backups to the server for each. It setup automatic downloads of Windows updates, not only for the server but for each client as well if I put a check mark in that box to select that option.

WHS backs up the operating systems of each computer, the drivers and the data. It has an intelligence so that it only backups up each file once, even if that files shows up on many separate computers. This feature saves space on the hard drive as many files are common to more than one system.

I chose to add my users next which took literally less than 1 minute to add 5 users. It put a private folder for each user similar to what it does with individual profiles in Windows Desktop OS’s. It has by default a public folder, music folder, videos folder, pictures folder and software folders already setup. While I was there I took an extra minute and added my own folder, I setup an Intuit Quickbooks company data file sub-folder in the public folder so all users could access it.

Next I walked through the 3 or 4 wizards which completely configured the server.

The user settings offer to:

• Turn on automatic updates
• Push those updates to the client computers on the network so you only need download each update once and share it across your network
• Configure your router to allow port forwarding to the WHS which could then offer additional services from outside your network
• Provide a family.homeserver.com domain name for the server
• Provide remote access files on the server
• Allow me to remote tunnel into my own computer on the inside of the network

I allowed it to modify my Linksys router and it was faster and easier from the WHS wizard than if I had logged on to the router and went right to the port forwarding myself. I did not need to know the ports or services or understand port forwarding as it was automatic. It took 3 minutes.

With router ports forwarded now I could press one button to turn on remote access. I then ran through another 123 wizard which setup the dynamic DNS required for the local hosting of my own tscarpelli.homeserver.com site without needing a static ip address. All that was needed was a Hotmail or Live mail account. With this turned on I could now test to see if I had access from outside my network to both the files on the server and the files/programs on each of the computers in my network. It worked flawlessly.

WHS also streams media to a media center which I have not activated yet but will do so soon.

After it was completely set up and I still wanted to play, I plugged in a second hard drive to see what it would do. WHS instantly recognized the drive and asked me in layman terms if that drive was for duplication or to extend the size of the data drive. Wow, how intuitive could it be? I didn’t need more storage space and I wanted to see how the duplication wizard works so I selected duplication, now I have a raid mirror. It was that simple.

During installation with a single drive setup, WHS takes about 100 Gb of your first drive for the C:/ partition and puts the operating system on it. The remainder of the balance of the drive becomes D:/ for data drive but this barely matters as it is seamless to the users. If I elected to add the second drive for expansion, it simply would run both drives as ‘just a bunch of drives’, but without splitting files between two or more drives. If there were a failure, you still had some data on the non failed drives. By selecting to duplicate my files, it automatically sets up a RAID 1 mirror with only 2 drives.

The system selects a type of RAID by the number of drives and whether you put turn on duplication or not. It will take 3 or more drives set without duplication to ‘just a bunch of drives’ configuration giving you maximum storage space. However, if you setup duplication then it gives you a striped set with parity RAID 5 but it does not use any terms like RAID, redundancy, fault tolerant, striped sets, parity and the like. I found this very cool.

So 1 hour and 20 minutes into this installation, what do I have?

• I have a secure file server with 5 Users and Shares setup
• A personal webpage hosted with dynamic DNS service already setup and running
• A remote access point to all files on my home network to all the files I am authorized on the server
• Access to remote desktop on any computer on my network with those programs installed
• I have automated backups setup for every computer system and Blackberry on my network
• I have a shared printer(s) to all other network computers
• I have a mirror raid on the systems and data partitions

I can tell you that with traditional Microsoft server applications to get this far would easily have taken between close to 6-10 hrs. So this is amazing.

What else can I do? I installed Quickbooks Pro 2012 for my three companies and started doing all my accounting and bookkeeping from it as well. QB’s is a moderately heavy network usage program so this is a good test even with Gigabyte Ethernet.

I left the system switched on over night and when I checked the next morning it had backed up the computers on my network. I then moved additional data to the shared folders that I wanted centralized. Now I have the system setup completely, lets see what else I can load on this thing and see how it works.

I use the WHS to backup clients’ files from my computer work-bench. I store all my software tools so now when I forget my flash drive of tools onsite I can remote into my software folder and grab those tools right from my clients’ home or office without using the FTP protocol. I loaded 30 Gbs of Windows images, installation and other ISO’s in my software folder so I could burn CDs and DVDs as needed when my working discs gets scratched.

Although I purposely set WHS up on a 7 year old slow single core PC with just 1 gig of ram, a system that most of us would throw away, I can detect no deficiencies in operations as a server. I have only tested it with 3 users on Quickbooks and 1 remote access user and I see no degradation in speed or productivity in that configuration even though I am loading and pushing the uses beyond its intended and stated purpose. I have to say at this point I am pleasantly surprised by the bang for the buck that I am receiving.

We have been using this system for about 15 days. My wife Maria has 50 Gb of photography business client photos and she accesses her photos and uploads from her photo shoots to the server. We plan on our next out of town trip to access the files when we visit her folks in Florida, as well as upload up to 2 GB per batch to put our photos on the home server remotely from our laptop in the hotel.

The storage tool even uses IDE and SATA hard drives together and can use them seamlessly. So if you had 2 IDEs and a SATA drive you can still span them or duplicate them as it is all done in the software. For those clients who just want you to setup yesterday’s workstation you will find this sort of ease of use helpful when adding left over drives.

I see savings in the following ways:

First, you do not need server quality hardware which is a budget buster by itself with things like ECC RAM priced to kill, or SAS or SCSI drives priced at 2 or 3 times the cost of SATA drives, or server cases and power supplies costing as much as a typical modern stand-alone workstation.

Second, the software itself is $45 rather than $450 for server only software for 5 users. There is some freeware server software like Linux but then again very few people can support Linux.

Third, the system is designed with end user ease of setup and administration so the labor costs to completely set this up and manage it is on the same order of magnitude as the savings in software.

So here is the kicker. By saving your clients money, you could easily install it for many more clients who would not otherwise consider a server environment. You are raising the productivity and usefulness of client networks and with that they see the usefulness which leads to their logical willingness to add more information technology down the line as they both trust you and outgrow Windows Home Server. This savings will cement your relationship with the client which makes them willing to spend more money with you in the future as new technologies develop. They have seen the proof in the pudding so to speak. So I think this is a good long term strategy for tiny IT shops.

Not only can you bid and build new Windows Home Servers for clients at rock bottom budgets, but we all have business clients with excess older equipment but no real effective network or server. You do not need new server hardware or ECC RAM saving quite a bit of money but even more than that, this opens up the potential of using this technology to reuse old equipment.

I recommend anyone in the computer business to grab refurbished computer equipment and perhaps only adding a large new hard drive and use it in their own shop or office and test this system yourself. Obviously, if you are building a WHS for a client I would buy a simple new Duel Core or i3 system with modest memory and as many large drives as you can fit into a normal case. I would look for very low wattage systems to build WHS on new equipment such as IBX/ITX small 175 watt system that is small and can be put out of the way.

This system will use very little excess power and produce very little excess heat. This helps with another shortage in some SOHO businesses, shortage of space. Lower heat requirements you can even store it under desks in closets that are ventilated and other out of the way places. It is perfect for clients who do not have a server closet or room as it does not demand a server room. Clients may choose to shut it down nightly, accept backup nights, leave it on every night, or set it to turn off after backups are performed.

So In summary, Windows Home Server is an effective server network solution for 10 users or less and can be installed at a fraction of the cost of a typical business server. I am very impressed with this little software price for a big software program. If there is a drawback to WHS, it is that it scares me a little in that if MS made all their systems work this well and this simple I would soon have to find other work outside of the computer IT business.

There is a 2011 version with a free 2012 software update which allows it to perform remote connections with Windows 8 systems. Microsoft announced they will not continue it after 2011 but then they came out with a free 2012 update, probably to help sales of Windows 8 as the connection software on 2011 did not support Windows 8.

Again, this system easily beats hands down any peer server setup I have seen, it has NT security and it is more featured as well. Once setup you unplug the keyboard, mouse and monitor and it sits in the corner on an uninterruptible power supply and I manage it with remote desktop. This is a solution that Computer Fix It now recommends to our clients.

Article by Tony Scarpelli of CFI Computer Repair