imroot.com

Microsoft called and asked me to take a look at the soon to be released Windows Home Server.  I had already done a bit of reading about them an understood the concept and figured it was worth a look.  Here is what I have found so far:

Installation:
Since the Home Server appliances haven’t been released yet, Microsoft gave me access to the DVD images for the product.  This means I had to come up with my own hardware.  My choice was a 5 year old system that was sitting on a shelf collecting dust.  The guys from the home server team had warned me that it didn’t work on all hardware because of lack of drivers for Windows Server 2003 (which home server is based on).  To my suprise however my clunky old 1Ghz AMD based system, with 512MB Ram, some kind of video card (I don’t even remember what it is), generic DVD burner, etc.  You get the point that the box is nothing special.  Anyway, after an hour or two the system installed and was running nicely.

First Thoughts:
I had installed with a monitor, keyboard, etc, but the real units will be headless, you will put them on your network and connect with the software.  So during the install I got to see just how much this is based on Window Server 2003.  Basically they just stripped it down.  I also noticed that it ran VERY well on this old PC.  It boots very quickly, and the system is very responsive.

Going Headless:
After messing around with it for a little bit, I decided to start using it as Microsoft envisioned, with no monitor, keyboard, etc hooked up.  I installed the “Connector” software on my home PC and fired it up, and connected up to the server flawlessly (1 point to MS).
Automatic Backups:
The connector automatically setup a backup task on my PC and started backing up my PC.  This is truly awesome, and solves a problem at my house.  Our backup to date has consisted of random backups to DVD’s.  So with the Home Server I don’t have to think about it anymore, woohoo (1 More Point to MS)!

Easy Sharing:
The other thing that the connector installer did was place a shortcut on my desktop to the server shares.  Now I have a pretty cluttered desktop, so I didn’t see it at first.  I feel like at the end of the install they should have guided a novice user to this better.  But when you click on the shortcut the folder view of the shares on the server pops up. (1 more point to MS)

User Configuration:
If you are keeping track MS has 3 points so far on this product, not bad.  But the user configuration is where they start to level out.  I had to add the user from my PC to the server.  Now I have had my PC for two years almost.  It is just me and my wife, we have a single account that logs in automatically.  So I don’t know what the user name and password is for this computer.  Luckily I know enough about user accounts on XP that I knew where to look to find the user name and reset my password so it would match the one on the server.  The server and computer account databases are separate and have not synchronization that I can tell.  So I have to manually add accounts to my server.  This gets even further complicated in a home with multiple computers.  I might have to add that account to every computer in the home and the server.  Ug.  I think I am going to have to take a point away for this Microsoft.  This is a support nightmare waiting to happen, some kind of server based directory would have been great.

Remote Access:
Another big benefit of Windows Home Server for me was the remote access feature.  This feature allows you to access your files and computers remotely.  According to the marketing material you can access your files and remotely control computers on your home network, and this is true, with a few notable exceptions.

First you have to jump through a few hoops to configure the remote access.  If you have a UPNP router it will attempt to configure it for you.  If you care anything about security and have UPNP turned off like I did, it doesn’t.  Not only does it not configure for you, it doesn’t tell you how to manually configure the port forwarding on your router.  I had to turn UPNP back on to get it going (grumble grumble grumble).  Configuring Remote Access in Home Server also took a bit of guess work and hunting.  This could have been make a whole lot straight forward.

One of the first things I did was try to access my server from work.  This went smooth, I went to the URL that the Home Server automatically set up for me and I got a login screen.  I logged in and could see all of the shared folders on the server.  But I didn’t have the ability to remotely control my computer.  I dawned on my that I wasn’t using Microsoft’s browser, I was using Firefox.  I logged of an logged back in with IE, viola, now I could remotely control computers on my network.  Microsoft looses a point here (they are down to 2).  They were already detecting that I wasn’t using IE and removing the remote control options from the interface, instead of removing them why didn’t they put up a message that said I needed to use IE?

The next place that Microsoft looses a point in my book (they are down to 1) is that they only partially deliver on remotely accessing files.  I can remotely access files, but it seems it is only the files on the server.  This is the case even though it has a complete backup of my PC on the server already, so it has the files from my PC also.  This means to use the remote access feature I will have to change the computing habits of my wife and myself to use the server (not a big deal, we both do it at work).  But even if we do that there is an even bigger problem.  I end up with all of my files on the server, now my server needs to be backed up and I don’t really see a great way to accomplish this.  Maybe someone will come up with something post launch.  There is a capability to spread files across multiple drives, I only have one drive in my server, and that still doesn’t protect me from non-drive related problems, it is just to risky if the reason I am buying this is to help with backup.

Conclusion So Far:
I actually think Microsoft is onto something with this model.  I think it has to be dumbed down another level to really work for most homes.  I also think that Microsoft is really missing a very big market by not specifically targeting this appliance at the small office network.  There are a ton of small offices (less than 10 employees) out there that would love to have this kind of remote access and automated backup solution.  This would be a great fit in an office like the small CPA firm my wife works for.  For me so far, the best features are the automated brainless backup of my PC, and the ability to use Remote Desktop to access my home PC from anywhere (BTW, this even works with XP Home machines which can’t normally do Remote Desktop).

In my mind, Microsoft ends up on the plus side of neutral as far as points go.  However, 1 point isn’t enough to get me to shell out $600 for a Windows Home Server.

Share on Facebook
Tweet This

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.