We Got Served

This is the third in a series of articles detailing how one network went from dilapidated junker to media hero with the help of WMC and WHS.  For an overview of the scope and purpose of this project, I would encourage you to review Part 1 and Part 2.

A Fresh Start

Last week I described some of the initial steps I took in rebooting my home network.  This was not a project lightly undertaken, but there were several specific factors that made me decide the time was right.  My router was failing and I had been itching for a reason to upgrade my router and switches with gigabit equipment.  I had also decided it was time to engage in some major expansions.  At the start of this project, there were four computers on my network.  I had given each of my little boys their own computers for their birthdays last year, my wife and I shared a laptop, and I had a laptop from work where I did most of my computing.  My oldest son had inherited my old desktop and household media center for his birthday.  The plan had been to build a new desktop and household media center for myself.  A year later, I still had not followed through on this plan because I can be a bit of a cheapskate, but my son was starting to talk about upgrading to play some of the new games coming out.  Pleased that my geek-in-training was also following in my PC gaming footsteps, I was obliged to comply. 

Or so I told him.  A dad can never pass up an opportunity to score some brownie points.  The reality was that I had decided that it was finally time to add a WHS machine to the network and bring a full fledged WMC machine back into the living room for reasons that I will expand upon in a future article.  I built a new machine for my older son, passed his machine onto his less demanding little brother, and took little brother’s relatively old Athlon 64 3000+ desktop to turn into a WHS.  I know that in time I will want replace this machine with something quieter and more power-efficient, but this system has been a work horse for years, has plenty of SATA and IDE connections, and I see little reason to let it go just yet.  Besides, I wanted to save the budget to build the WMC which, taking up station in the living room, I wanted to make as cool and quiet as possible.

This was to be my first WHS installation, but I had been living the WHS lifestyle vicariously through WGS, so I already knew there were two things I wanted to do to the computers on my network before adding the new server.  First, as I reset every computer’s OS, I prepared the system user accounts.  I described the value of a well planned network naming scheme last week, and the same principle applies to user accounts.  I wanted every member of my family to be able to personalize their computing experience and, particularly for my kids’ computers, ensure that I have complete access and control over the systems as the network administrator.  I set up every system with a single administrator account with the same name.  It is possible to simply rely on the “Administrator” account built into Windows, but I like to reserve it for last resort troubleshooting access.  After every system had an administrator account, I added limited user accounts for every person that required access to each computer.  Of course, the key to all of these user accounts was making sure that each had a password that would meet the Windows requirements for a strong password.  Once I installed WHS and started adding users, I could coordinate the passwords on the client user accounts and on the server user accounts.  By using the same password on both sides, your family members will immediately gain access to the shared folders on the server without having to go through a logon prompt.  This configuration requires at least medium level passwords by default, but enabling remote access will require strong passwords.  The second thing I did was install SyncToy.

Finally, Windows Home Server

Basic System Specs:

Ati Radeon xPress 200 motherboard

Athlon 64 3000+

1gb DDR memory

2 x 500gb 7200.10 hard drives

Lite-on DVD/RW optical drive

I had anticipated this moment for many months.  I have dragged you, the reader, through 2 1/2 long-winded articles to reach this point.  Now, prepare yourself, for the anti-climax.  Installing Windows Home Server was the most uninteresting and least challenging OS install I have performed in years.

It had been a while since I installed Windows XP, but the WHS installation GUI brought immediate flashbacks.  I followed the prompts and cruised the Internet on my laptop while I waited.  The two hard drives in the system were the same size, so it did not matter which one I installed on.  Had they been different sizes, I would have installed the OS on the larger drive.  One thing to keep in mind about WHS is that any data you send to the server lands on the primary hard drive first.  Only after it is cached to the primary drive does it then get distributed out across the disks by the Drive Extender technology that WHS uses in lieu of traditional RAID systems, so you should always install WHS on the largest drive in your system.  I had to change the name of the workgroup and the server to match my network naming scheme, set the time and date, and set the administrator password.  I was left looking at the WHS console.

I fiddled around with the console for a while, checking out the settings that I had only read about and just generally getting a feel for where everything lay.  I set up the user accounts and permissions for remote access and share access.  Setting share access is probably the trickiest part when preparing WHS for a family.  It can be difficult to try to explain the concept of permissions to an experienced user, so I wanted to try to avoid this discussion with my family.  On the other hand, it only takes one unexpected failed access attempt for some people to assume that the whole system is too complicated and that it might be better just to ignore it in the future.  My wife often takes the ugly middle path.  If something computer-related fails to work the first time, she will personally ask me to help her with it every time thereafter, no matter how many years it might have been since I resolved the issue, all on the grounds that it did not always work for her.  Consider carefully what kind of access each user will need for any given folder.

I then set about installing the WHS connector software on my laptop.  Unaware that I could access the connector software as a download from the server, I installed the connector software from the CD that came in the package.  A reboot later I was taken to the intranet page the server provides and was tipped off on how to install the most recent connector software remotely for the rest of the PCs.  As long as you set up WHS to automatically download and install updates, one thing it will always keep up to date in its shared software folder is the most recent copy of the connector software.  You can access this directly by opening your server through the network workgroup and exploring the software folder.  Alternatively, if your router is set up to utilize UPnP, WHS will show up in your network neighborhood as a UPnP device.  Opening WHS this way will bring you to the WHS intranet homepage where you can download the connector software from the server.  And so I did, making the rounds through the house, installing the connector software on each PC and setting up the backups for each computer as part of the connector software installation.  I knew I could simply run a manual backup, but it was late, so I left every system on that first night to complete their first backups automatically.

The next morning, I again made the rounds.  It was almost time to introduce my wife to the new server, but there were a few last preparations to make.  First, I made certain to save that first backup permanently.  WHS will try to back up your systems every night, keeping one every week for a set number of weeks and one every month for a set number of months.  You can control the schedule in the settings tab of the WHS console, but WHS backups will slowly replace one another over time.  This means you can only restore your system to the same condition as your oldest backup.  I wanted one backup to preserve the original, fairly pristine conditions of the freshly installed OS, just in case.  Under normal conditions I would have made a backup image of each system, but I wanted to try my hand at relying exclusively on WHS.  In this matter, the most I had to lose was an initial system configuration.  You should be guided by your own experiences, but either way, having a clean restore on hand is always nice.  To permanently save a WHS backup, you need only open the Computers & Backup tab on the WHS console, select the computer you want to work with, and select View Backups.  You will be presented with a list of all of the saved backups for that computer.  In my case, I only had the one.  I clicked the Keep this backup radio button, clicked OK to close the dialog and repeated for each computer.

I also set up SyncToy on every system.  WHS backups do offer the option of restoring individual files, but it is a painfully slow and tedious process that can really only be undertaken by you, the network administrator.  Every user has their own space on WHS to save files, but WHS does not offer any built-in folder synch process.  If your family members do not diligently save all of their documents to the server, or work on a document while away from the network and cannot access the server, someone has to manually synch the document to the server.  This is where SyncToy comes in.  SyncToy is a free PowerToy from Microsoft that works on Windows XP and Vista and is designed specifically to automate the synching of two folders, wherever those two folders exist.  The best part, besides being free, is that SyncToy can be set up as a scheduled task to run automatically at any time one wants.

I mapped a network drive for every user, connected to their share on the server, but I knew that realistically most documents would be saved to the local drive in the default documents folder.  For each user account on each computer, I set up SyncToy to synch the entire documents folder with the user share on the server.  The desktops were set to go to sleep rather than shut down.  I already have the family trained to turn off their monitors, speakers, and whatever other accessories at the end of their session.  Shutting the computers down completely would save a few watts, but as long as the computer goes into a full S3 standby mode, the difference should only be several watts an hour.  I then set up SyncToy as a scheduled task to run every night before the system’s backup time with the server.  Laptops are a bit trickier and it will probably fall to you, again as network administrator, to play an active role in managing their power state at night to ensure that backups and file synchs occur on a regular basis.  Personally, I leave our two laptops on together on Saturday night, connected to power and a hardwired network connection to avoid any network dropouts and speed up the backup process.  It is, of course, possible to leave these concerns to the laptop owner, but it would still be advisable to monitor the back up status of any family laptops through WHS and step in as necessary.

I was now ready to introduce the server to my wife.  I cornered my wife with my laptop in hand, proudly demonstrating to her how I could connect to the server through the WHS console, could access all of the shared content through the shared folders shortcut on the desktop, store backups for every computer in the house, and save documents directly to the server or use SyncToy to synch the two folders.  I explained that SynchToy would also complete the synchronization automatically as long as documents were saved in the documents folder.  I also pointed out how Media Center would be available on every computer and would access everything from the server.  I explained that the best part was that she would never have to do anything to make all of this work properly.  She then asked me how this was better than what we had before.

Next week I will delve into the topic of building the new WMC machine for the living room and how I went about tying WHS and WMC together throughout the house.