Windows Home Server Part 1 - Who/What/Why
With many people having several computers and other devices that share media a server could be a great and logical addition being overlooked. Ohc’mon now, I can just hear the pulpit breeding with “Yeah, if you’re a computer nerd” and the chants of “That sounds expensive.” Let’s not over look the usual question of “Why? Why do I need or want that?” To be honest, these are mostly fair questions and until recently it hasn’t been easy or cheap. Now, it is both and very powerful at that.
The Who
This article is for anyone savvy enough to install an operating system and has a basic understanding of computer storage and networking. If you have added a hard disk to your computer, formatted it, and shared a folder you are well within the scope of this. Even if you haven’t done these things but are interested in how a server for your home might make media more accessible and safer, keep reading. There are companies making pre-built boxes at reasonable prices that would be a perfect fit. The second best thing about Windows Home Server is how simple it is to use (the first is the easy expansion technique).
The What
Windows Home Server is a specialized version of Windows Server 2003 that makes data storage ridiculously simple. An OEM copy of this software is $100 and will turn out to be a great investment. If you were to buy a pre-built product like HP’s MediaSmart then you get the OS already installed. Okay, so it’s a “simple” file server but what exactly is it? In short, it’s a NAS environment. That is Network Attached Storage for anyone that might not know. It takes data and makes it accessible.
“So, why is Windows Home Server what I want?” This is the biggest question and something I did a lot of research on. For the last two years I have been running an Ubuntu server with software RAID 5. It has done well but I found I just wanted it to store and share files so there was better specialized software. Also, RAID 5 is great but not exactly flexible. If I wanted to add storage to my server there were quite a bit of hoops to jump through rather than just throwing in a hard drive. I was using RAID 5 for the combine convenience of decent speed, parity, and efficiency. Basically, three disks are needed but you will only get the storage value of 2 since one is essentially used for parity in case of failure (spread over the drives). For example, a 1 TB array over 4 250 GB HDD’s will actually yield 750GB usable.
I examined FreeNAS and OpenFiler. These projects basically take a computer and turn it into a NAS or a SAN. Honestly, you can look up those terms but you really just need to know it makes a computer a storage center accessible to the network. Both of these projects are great but neither, yet, support simple RAID expansion and I didn’t want to move all my data once just to do it again. High end SAN’s and NAS’s from NetAPP or anywhere else that provide these functions costs thousands of dollars and I wasn’t doing that either. I looked at Windows Home Server and found it was capable of “assimilating” any drive, any time, and still had a type of parity. No way? Unlimited, easy, expansion with parity for $100. Deal! There is more to this product but, to me, this is the primary reason it is an exciting and a worthwhile operating system.
The Why
Many people still don’t backup their data. Windows Home Server is capable of backing up desktops and laptops automatically every day. This feature takes an image of your computer and copies it onto the server. I’m not going to dive into the nitty gritty right now but Windows XP and Vista machines are supported. Even with this automated feature aside the server adds a spot to put your data that has fault tolerance. So, if a hard drive fails it can just be replaced and no data loss occurs. A lot of people have lost data on their desktops because of this. This is not a replacement for backup as you could still accidentally delete everything or some other failure but it’s a giant step forward.
Accessibility is another huge reason. A common problem is duplicate data (think MP3’s) between desktop machines, laptops, and other devices. Sure, get an external drive but then you are still swapping back and forth and external drives often fail quickly due to wear and tear (assuming they are moved around). Now, put a central server into the fold and Bobby can access his music from his laptop in the kitchen or desktop in the home office without any extra effort. Other devices can also access this server. That 360 you have hooked up to the big screen or even your PS3 can now stream your digital movies and pictures via your network. Away from the home? That’s okay, Windows Home Server can also supply you with easy to configure Internet based access to your files. Hmm, convenient.
Think long(er) term. Your main desktop machine is not going to remain that forever but you’re still going to want to retain your data. If you decide in two years that an upgrade is needed all of your data can just be put on your server. Run out of room? Just put in another hard drive and you have more space. If you run out of physical room for drives you can expand through USB and other external ports (eSata, FireWire, etc) or deactivate a drive and replace it with something else. I’m looking at a scenario where I am using 4 - 400 GB drives and I’m either going to add a 1 TB drive to that or slowly replace those drives with 1 TB drives. The point is, you will virtually never run out of space since it’s so easy to add more. 1 TB drives are going for about $90 right now and that is a ton of data.
NEXT PART - Getting Started - Server Build or Buy
That is going to wrap up this intro. Yes, it’s brief but there is more good stuff coming shortly. I wanted to keep this intro short just to really say what this is and why you need it. In the next segment I will show off my own personal server, give a brief spec list for building your own, introduce a couple ofpre-built boxes, and discuss proper LAN prep.
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2 Responses to “Windows Home Server Part 1 - Who/What/Why”
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April 12th, 2009 at 12:50 am
[...] This first part looks at who can install Windows Home Server, what it is and why you would need it, which you can read here. [...]
May 1st, 2009 at 8:54 pm
[...] in part 4 we have gone from learning about why we want a server, how we are going to go about getting a server, building a server, and are now setting up the [...]