Wiley Windows Home Server: Protect and Simplify your Digital Life
Contents
1. but the basic process will include powering down the machine either adding an internal drive or plugging in an external USB 2 0 or FireWire drive and turning the server back on The user can then use a wizard in the Windows Home Server console to make the space on the new drive available for use All drives in a Windows Home Server are part of a storage pool and the server spreads files across them without the user having to think about which physical drive a par ticular file will be stored on As an added bonus if you have multiple hard drives attached to your Windows Home Server machine you can turn on duplication for specific shared folders When duplication is activated Windows Home Server makes sure to have copies of every file stored on at least two hard drives thus protecting your data in the event that one of your physical drives fails Network Health With multiple PCs in the house it becomes more difficult to keep track of how PCs are performing and how they are protected The addition of a Windows Home Server device might sound like it adds complexity to the network and most users already feel overburdened by the task of keeping their machines up to date with patches monitoring security settings and maintaining antivirus soft ware Instead of being an additional burden Windows Home Server adds integrated network health monitoring to the home users arsenal for keeping track of their network For Windows Vista com puters an2. a way that they will blend in with audio video equipment or they may be small boxes that can run quietly on your desk or on a shelf Your Windows Home Server will run 24 hours a day in order to back up your other machines and make other services available to them Windows Home Server is one part hardware and one part software used together to protect and serve your network Simple Backups Most people understand how important it is to back up their files Many of us can remember a time that we managed to delete an important file or suffered a hard drive crash that took with it impor tant files Those of us who like to tinker with computers probably even have more than our fair share My wife jokes that being married to a computer engineer means that most of the computers in the house will be partially broken at any given time The reality is that computers while generally reliable are not perfect machines Most of the com ponents of a PC are pretty resilient but unfortunately the hard drive is all at once the most important and the most fragile At the core of your hard drive is one or more thin platters spinning at some where between four thousand and ten thousand revolutions per minute RPM For comparison most p 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 2 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server car engines redline between five thousand and seven thousand RPM Ten thousand RPM is almost cer tain death for a car en
3. are extremely proactive with a backup solution you will lose data at some point In addition to the fallibility of the hardware we often cause our own loss of data Most people have experienced situations where they accidentally delete important files or overwrite an older file with changes and later wish they still had the original version Many computers come from the manufacturer with backup technology included Microsoft has even included fairly robust backup capabilities in Windows Vista although some functionality is removed from the less expensive Home editions Unfortunately even with this backup technology available most people wont use it Even when it is used correctly you have to make sure that the backups have enough disk space and that the files are being backed up properly The good news is that Windows Home Server makes backups simple and easy Its no longer necessary to understand information technology jargon like incremental differential and full back ups Windows Home Server presents backup and restore functionality in a manner that provides a sensible and usable default experience and also offers flexibility to handle varying user needs as shown in Figure 1 1 Your Files Anywhere The number of homes with multiple computers is on the rise and those that use more than one PC face unique challenges If you don t always use the same PC you often have to remember to copy files to removable media or my personal favorite
4. con trols for Internet usage Again the third party market for these types of tools is pretty expansive and its likely that some of these companies will integrate their systems with Windows Home Server to provide centralized management While Microsoft is providing pretty impressive solutions with Windows Home Server its impor tant to realize that Windows Home Server is also a platform and just like Windows third party developers are free to provide solutions that meet users needs 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server Why Doesn t Windows Home Server Do Foo When someone asks Why doesn t Windows Home Server do Foo a response of because goes just about as well as it does when my son asks Why can t just eat chocolate for dinner This post is an attempt to generically answer the why not questions by explaining the process my team used to plan Windows Home Server As is the case with most new product ideas we had a jewel of an idea that would serve as a cornerstone for everything we did The nucleus of our vision if you will Ahome server is an always available smart node on the home network dedicated to providing services to other nodes on the home network and the Internet This is an insanely broad definition Clearly you can t build a product around something so broad but you can develop a long term vision Early in the planning pro
5. e mail yourself the document as an attachment Depending on which computer you happen to be using you may not have the latest copy of a file or you may not have it available at all In multiuser homes you may not always be able to use the same computer and you can t always plan in advance where you might need files to be located Many people have learned that they can address this problem by using file shares but setting them up is a cumbersome process that home users usually don t want to deal with It can be difficult to set up usernames and permissions and when things don t work right it s easy to get frustrated and just go back to keeping your files on the local hard drive p 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server 3 Q View Backups Backups of CLIENTI Date Status Description 4 28 2007 1 46 AM lt A Complete Automatic G 4 27 2007 2 12 AM lt A Complete Automabe Ee 4 26 2007 1 37 AM lt A Complete Automabe Fe 4 25 2007 2 17 AM lt A Complete Automatic Ee 4 24 2007 2 27 AM lt A Complete Automatic 4 23 2007 1 22 AM lt A Comelete Automatic 4 22 2007 1 46 AM lt A Complete Automatic 4 16 2007 1 11 AM lt 4 Complete Automatic Q 4 15 2007 8 47 PM lt A Complete Manual Backup Manage Backup from 4 28 2007 XE Manage automaticaly Details Keep this backup od Delete at next Backup Cleanup Learn more about Backup Manage
6. 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 1 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server Wir Home Server was introduced by Microsoft in the second half of 2007 to fulfill unmet needs of home users Everyone knows that they should keep their important files backed up but home computer users are rarely vigilant about backups unless they have recently suf fered a loss People often use multiple computers in the home and keeping data accessible where you need it can be a challenge Microsoft realized that they could leverage their existing technologies and build an entirely new kind of device a server for the home The team set out with several well researched and ambitious goals all focused around providing simple backup to an appliance like device that would be inexpensive expandable and accessible A server is a computer that serves a special purpose It may not look like a typical desktop or lap top but it is built on the same technology A server serves other machines also known as clients by providing services to the network Windows Home Server is a server for your home network It pro vides backup services and file storage for the local network and remote access services over the Internet A Windows Home Server device may be an appliance which means it is simply a box with no display keyboard or mouse or it may look like a regular computer Appliance like machines described in Chapter 3 may be styled and designed in such
7. a log formats such as paper print photographs VHS or Hi8 videotapes slides audio tapes and mailed letters Each year sees more of our life digitized and that digitized life resides on our computers We re also entering a time where many industries are starting to cut out the middlemen Disintermediation is what they called it in business school With the advent of connected homes and digital media we can now purchase digital content and have it delivered directly to our home PCs Now it s not just the media we create the communications we participate in but also the digital media that we purchase that is stored on those rapidly spinning platters of our hard drives Everyone agrees that all of this data should be periodically backed up In many households one person is designated as the Computer Guy Gal and the duty of keeping all the family s computers running and data protected falls on his or her shoulders This individual may or may not have any training in computers but he or she is entrusted with these responsibilities I m the computer guy in my house and when something goes wrong I m supposed to be able to fix it I noted earlier that my wife and I lost several years of digital photos to a hard drive crash This was a considerable loss for us as the photos included much of our early married years The only saving grace was that we had uploaded many of our favorite pictures to a website so we were able to retrieve some of ou
8. a for many years before this but lost our archives to a hard drive crash in early 2003 we took 300 megabytes of digital pictures In 2004 this expanded to 929 megabytes Partway through 2005 we bought a newer digital camera and our photo storage requirement grew to 3 4 gigabytes for that year 2006 saw 4 2 gigabytes of pictures taken This example is just addressing still pictures When you start bringing in audio files home videos mp3s downloaded movies and television shows the storage horizon approaches very rapidly In the old days this meant adding a hard drive to your PC to make room for your growing storage needs After adding a new larger hard drive users would have to reorganize their files to make use of the new space This could mean moving a category of files to the new drive or possibly transferring everything from the old drive to the new one Computer cases are also limited in the number of physical drives that can be installed so adding more drives may not even be an option Furthermore many computer users simply aren t comfortable opening up their PCs Windows Home Servers unique storage engine makes adding storage simple Through a user friendly interface shown in Figure 1 4 you can get an overall view of the storage on your server When you need to add more space Windows Home Servers Drive Extender technology makes it easy Depending on the specifics or your Windows Home Servers manufacturer the exact method may change a bit
9. are also some other technical hurdles because Windows XP Home edition and the Home versions of Vista do not allow comput ers to utilize Active Directory Although centralized user management would have been a nice addi tion it s understandable that this was not feasible for version 1 Windows Home Server includes a Password Synchronization tool that provides most of the benefit of a central user store without all the complexity of Active Directory One piece that is obviously absent from Windows Home Servers backup strategy is the ability to ship backups to an off site location Businesses usually send backup tapes to another location or uti lize their networks to duplicate data to a remote location This is a good idea because it protects the data if something happens that affects the entire building such as a flood or fire This missing link in the backup strategy is being filled by third parties but it is not built in to Windows Home Server for this version You should consider making use of a third party off site backup solution one is high lighted in Chapter 14 or you should consider performing periodic manual backups of your most important data and shipping CDs or DVDs to an out of state family member so that you dont lose everything if your home suffers a catastrophe It is reasonable to make manual backups of this nature once or twice a year Another frequent request that has not yet been addressed is the ability to centralize parental
10. cess we used a combination of brainstorming secondary research and our prior experiences to create a taxonomy for categorizing all of the things a home server could do Because we are solution and scenario focused it makes sense for this taxonomy to start with Scenario Areas as the highest level bucket We identified 11 scenario areas where a home server would be valuable valuable to customers end users Microsoft third parties and so on PC and Network Management Home Network Infrastructure Storage Data Protection Publishing and Sharing Anywhere Access Communications Entertainment Family Applications Third Party Platform Enthusiast Playground Within each of these scenario areas we identified 10 20 end to end scenarios resulting in several hundred total scenarios We spent just enough time talking about each scenario to be able to have a succinct description one short paragraph max For example within the Anywhere Access scenario area we wrote down the following scenario When you are outside of the home you can search for specific files stored on your home server even if you can t remember the specific name s of the files Continued fp 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 10 10 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server Why Doesn t Windows Home Server Do Foo Continued To provide a solution for a given scenario one has to build software features and technologies So we also identi
11. d Windows XP machines with Service Pack 2 Windows Home Server interacts with the Windows System Security Center and provides alerts to any machine with the Windows Home p 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 6 6 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server Server console software This means that you won t miss important alerts that other computer users in your household may be inclined to ignore or that they may not understand Figure 1 5 shows an example of a problem viewed in Windows Home Servers Home Network Health view ver Console n T O Computers User Shared Server Network Health amp Backup Accounts Folders Storage Satus At Risk 8 Windows Home NE Windows Home Server Name Location Server Hard Drives Total Size 232 83 GB amp gt SAMSUNG SP2504C 252 83 GB Internal ATA Free Space 170 26 GB Bl Shared Fokiers 14 58 GB E PC Backups 37 98 G8 E Operating System 10 G3 Free Space 170 26 GB Figure 1 4 O Home Network Health x Status At Risk G f pl HALLHAN GW Backup Warning HALLHAN GW has not been successfully backed up since 4 21 2007 Ensure that HALLHAN GW is burned on and connected to the home network You cen manualy back t up at any time by using Backup Now Learn more about the health of your home network Figure 1 5 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server 7 Who Needs a Home S
12. erver Microsoft is obviously hoping that the answer to this question is everyone and the truth is not far off The typical target household for Windows Home Server is a home where two or more PCs are used for either business or personal computing To make the most of Windows Home Server the house should also have a broadband Internet connection The term server may tend to scare people away from Windows Home Server but potential cus tomers should realize that while the machine is a server in its functionality it is easier to set up administer and utilize than a normal Windows PC Users are not asked to answer questions that they may not understand Default settings are very reasonable and significant effort has gone into providing a simple user interface that gives users the exact information they need without excessive or confusing computer jargon Now its simple to say that everyone with multiple PCs needs a home server but the real question is Why should you want a home server At the core the backup functionality is important enough to earn Windows Home Server a prominent spot on my wish list Microsofts Windows Home Server team likes to use the term Divorceable Offense for any event where irreplaceable yet important data is lost through negligence This might include pictures of a newborn baby or your kid s first T ball game or perhaps a wedding video In the past our memories were generally scattered across a number of an
13. fied the features and technologies that would be required to provide a solution for each scenario This book of scenarios painted a pretty clear picture of just about everything anyone could imagine a home network doing It was a lot of fun creating it because we all got to basically dream up every cool idea possible It would take decades to build a product that delivered solutions for every scenario we documented Our ambitions were huge but to be successful we knew we had to get extremely focused To get the list of things to do down to a size that was believable we used a combination of the following Secondary research primary research industry trends available technologies available resources engineering competencies knowledge of other Microsoft product s strategies visions and plans business model schedule results of prototypes estimated costs people and time to develop and test features and technologies We spent about six months in this process going from several hundred scenarios a 360 view to a list of a few dozen scenarios a 30 view To do this we decided to completely ignore whole scenario areas and hundreds of scenarios we drew a line in the sand and said We have decided to climb these mountains in v1 and leave the others for another time These mountains are An easy to use consumer experience on top of the most powerful operating system on the planet Automatic multi PC backup and simple restore Ea
14. gine but for many modern hard drives this rotational speed is normal This means that the outer edge of a hard drive platter is probably traveling somewhere between 50 and 100 miles per hour While this is going on several tiny electromagnetic heads float over the surface of the hard drive on a microscopic cushion of air reading and writing data to specific locations on the disk with amazing precision The hard drive manufacturers do an excellent job of creating hard drives with very tight toler ances and hard drives are usually pretty reliable Occasionally something occurs that causes things to go awry In my house one of our older laptops suffered not one but two drops from a height of about five feet The first time this happened I picked up the laptop and was amazed and relieved that it was still working I opened a few files and programs and breathed a sigh of relief that we had narrowly escaped a major loss of data because we had not performed any backups for at least six months The next morning the laptop could not boot and was complaining loudly about the hard drive being inaccessible The second drop several months later actually left the new hard drive intact but the machine suffered a failed memory module and an unseated graphics module that required almost a complete disassembly of the laptop to correct The moral Bad things happen Computers are composed of electrical and mechanical devices that can and will fail and unless you
15. ment and Backup Cleanup Restore or View Files from 4 28 2007 oa Learn how to browse backups and restore files Figure 1 1 In addition to the problem of keeping files available when you are home as more and more of your important information becomes digital it is increasingly important to be able to access that informa tion when you are away from home Many businesses have recognized that providing easy access to information can make their workers more productive Likewise providing easy remote access to your home based digital lives can make you more productive with your personal information Windows Home Server attempts to address these needs by providing centralized reliable storage in the home and remote access to files and computers while away from home The centralized stor age is implemented as several default shares as shown in Figure 1 2 that are available to all con nected computers Users each get their own share for personal files and you can also set up customized shares to address specific needs Windows Home Server also makes files accessible from outside of the home network as shown in Figure 1 3 Again this is something that many tech savvy users have been able to set up on their own but Windows Home Server makes it easy enough that it is accessible to all home users Through a simple wizard users can set up a website that gives them access to all the file shares on their home server and that also lets them c
16. n an entirely new product category the Windows Home Server team faced a monumental challenge in defining the scope of their task They chose to focus on three key areas simple automatic backup reliable and expandable storage and remote access Many other obvious features could eventually find their way into future versions of Windows Home Server For more information about Microsoft s decision making process see the Why Doesnt Windows Home Server Do Foo sidebar Windows Home Server doesn t do e mail This is probably more of a disappointment to power users than anyone else While some people dream of running a Microsoft Exchange e mail server out of their home most people are very happy with the functionality that they get from online services like Hotmail or from their Internet Service Provider The limited appeal of a Windows Home Server e mail solution is likely the reason it was left off the list Windows Home Server does not do Active Directory Active Directory is the computer and user management engine that Microsofts main line of server products uses to manage accounts comput ers and settings in the business environment Although it would be advantageous to be able to cen trally manage users and computer settings in the home Active Directory is considerable overkill for this purpose and would have required a great deal of modification to make it work in the simple manner that Windows Home Servers end users would require There
17. net com homeserver archive 2007 02 13 why doesn t windows home server do foo aspx 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as TI Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server 11 Summary In this chapter you learned that Windows Home Server is basically a new category of computer a server that is designed to fill several needs in your home network You now understand that having a Windows Home Server on your network will automate the task of backing up all of your computers on a daily basis so that you no longer have to worry about losing data because of hardware failure or accidental deletion You also learned that Windows Home Server can make your data available to all of the computers in your home and that it can also make files available when you are away from your home network The last major area that Windows Home Server will assist with is keeping track of the health of all of the computers on your home network You reviewed the target market for Windows Home Server so that you can better understand what it can do for you and you saw some things that Windows Home Server doesn t do now so that you know what to expect With this understanding you re ready to start thinking about how Windows Home Server can help you protect and simplify your digital life 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 12
18. onnect to PCs that are running Windows Vista Business Enterprise or Ultimate edition These features mean that you no longer have to worry about making copies of any file you might possibly need when you travel or go on vacation As long as you can get to an Internet connection you will have access to the files you need or want This will also cut down on the problem of having multiple copies of files scattered across your many computers memory sticks and e mail accounts 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM e 4 4 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server 3 Windows Home Server Console D 0 Computers Network Health Accounts Status Ak Risk Description Used Space Business Protected Folders for Business Fies 9 bytes Music Shared folder for music Empty Photos Shared folder for photos 3 5 GB Public Shared folder for miscellaneous files 404 76 KB Rick Personal folder for Rick 2 64 GB Software Shared folder for software Installation programs 2 02 GB Tammy Personal folder for Tammy 440 87 MB Personal folder for User Empty Used Space History 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 Used Space MB 0 Windows Home Server 0 1391 0 Oy Duplication Status Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled o n 3 29 2007 4 8 2007 4 18 2007 4 28 2007 4532007 432007 4 23 2007 Date Figure 1 2 Remote Access Shared Folders Wind
19. ows Internet Explorer SEA gO 7 le https server Remote filesRoot aspx v 4 x Live S P w de amp Remote Access Shared Folders gt Mor dd i Page v G Tools v i Windows Home S T Windows Home Server Shared Folders Computers Now browsing Search Remote Access Shared Folders Access your files at home from any computer Download individual files multiple files or entire folders as t remote access to files and folders al fi Reo Personal folder for Rick i p Folders for Business Fies shared folder for musi a i ware installation pr Shared folder for i Tar ideo H Personal folder for Tammy H Shared folder for videos 7 i Server Website Remote Acc Welcome Rick sr ess in Intemet Protected Mode On Figure 1 3 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM se Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server 5 Seamless Expansion The use of PCs in the home for storage of all kinds of data means that we all face a space crunch Newer cameras capture sharper pictures but these picture files take up significant space on your hard drive A typical image from a modest digital camera can take up 2 megabytes of space and photo aficionados that use the raw format on their cameras might be using upwards of 25 megabytes per picture As an example my wife and I are casual digital camera users Starting in 2003 we had a digital camer
20. r digital memories although the pictures had been scaled down for the web so they aren t suitable for creating prints Before the hard drive crash I knew that I should be backing up our files and even had backups of many of our documents about three months old at the time of the crash but I had not backed up the photos for more than a year Following the crash I wish I could say that I had learned my lesson but it wasn t until three years later that I finally implemented a daily backup program I tried to be vigilant for a while but remembering to manually back up files is battle that is seldom won As my family s Computer Guy I am excited about Windows Home Server because it allows me to protect my family s files the way I know they should be protected Some of the other features of Windows Home Server are interesting and I m particularly intrigued by the fact that Microsoft has released an Applications Programming Interface API that allows third party developers to extend Windows Home Server to cover almost any task including home security and automation I was sold on the idea when I read about the backup functionality and everything else is icing on the cake p 86251c01 qxd ModifiedPCMagazine 11 27 07 10 01 AM as 8 8 Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Home Server Understanding What WHS sn t At this point it is important to begin to understand some of the limitations of Windows Home Server As a version product i
21. sy to expand reliable centralized storage Anywhere access The common theme for these are reflected in our mission for v1 he ping families with multiple PCs connect their digital experiences providing a familiar and reliable way to store access share and automatically protect what is most important It was at this point in time that we could start to really formulate an actual product plan But even that 30 field of view is too great for a single release So as we finalized our multiyear multirelease product roadmap we made even more cuts Comparing the literally hundreds of possible scenarios we could have focused on with the few we will actually deliver in v1 I d say our field of view is around 15 And given the amount of passion hard work and dedication all members of the team have poured into the product and our progress so far l m confident that we ve found just about the right balance started this post with the question Why doesn t Windows Home Server do foo Hopefully if you ve read this far was able to show you the process we used to decide what Windows Home Server will do in the first version And as a corollary this explains why certain capabilities will have to wait for subsequent versions cek Charlie Kindel Microsoft s General Manager for Windows Home Server Excerpted with permission Originally posted to the Windows Home Server Blog by Charlie Kindel To read the entire post see http blogs tech
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