A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
WHS As A Backup Suite
Although Microsoft is offering many features with WHS, it's WHS as a backup suite that is the single biggest feature of the OS. For Microsoft, this is more or less breaking new ground on an industry that is underdeveloped. At the corporate level there are numerous competting backup suites, but at the consumer level that WHS is targeting there's a handful of packages and Windows' own built-in backup system.
What does exist in the consumer space right now either does backups to the local disk, or if it's designed to do remote backups it does so via making whole copies of a disk, neither of which come close to what corporate software can do. WHS's backup abilities as a result are Microsoft's attempts to bring corporate features down to a home user, in line with the entire theme of WHS being a home's first server.
Central to the backup feature of WHS is the WHS Connector package, which serves as both the backup client for the machine and the key piece of software that integrates a machine into a WHS server. Once a new client is connected, the console can be used to configure the backup settings for that individual machine; out of the box all clients are set to backup between 12am and 6am, and most users will only need to enable backups for the new client. The client also has some control over the backup process without using the administrative console, and can initiate a backup at any time. Finally, the connector software allows WHS to keep track of the general health of each client and report on problems such as missing updates.
On the server side, anyone familiar with corporate backup software will undoubtedly find themselves at home with WHS. Along with scheduling backup times and triggering backups, administrators can exclude folders (but not files or file types) on a per-machine basis, view a list of backups, and manually purge old backups. To that extent WHS will also purge old backups automatically based on retention settings. All of this past the first backup is done incrementally to minimize space used and data transferred.
Furthermore, as the developer of Windows, Microsoft gets a strong ace up their sleeve in backup management: the volume shadow copy ability. We've previously talked about this in our Vista review as Microsoft is using it to run Vista's Previous Version feature, and on a server this ability is much more potent. Because WHS can back up the entire contents of a system (including the OS) it will back up a lot of redundant files; with a 10 client limit that's potentially 10 copies of Windows that need to be stored. Volume shadow copy can recognize the redundant clusters making up all those files and only store a single copy, so in a completely homogenous environment WHS will only need to store a single copy of Windows for the entire house.
The benefits of this further extend to user data, as any other duplicate files (e.g. music) will also only be stored a single time. The incremental backups that WHS does further benefit from the cluster level identification as WHS will only need to store the cluster changes of a file whenever a file is changed. Finally all of this is compressed to squeeze out whatever last bit of space savings can be found. All of these abilities due to volume shadow copy results in WHS backups being exceptionally efficient and making it possible to back up several machines with a drive much smaller than their combined drive space.
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archer75 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Actually the main purpose of WHS is not only backup but it's also as a file server. It's meant to store all of your data on it and have it protected so all in your home can access it.I am using it as a file server exclusively and I don't have it set to do any backups and it works great.
n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Sorry, i will explain my self.I can't imagine file server without raid.
1. Mirror if you have enough money and need best performance.
2. raid 5 will give you same performance as normal disk.
3. soft raid.
when you store your data on server with redundancy, what backup do you need ?
shabazkilla - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Any Windows XP or Vista PC has RDP server capability. I don't have my Vista laptop powered up at the moment, but in XP right click on My Computer, click Properties. Select the Remote tab and check "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer."
As for the RDP session being HTTPS encapsulated, there is a known security bug with RDP that makes it less than secure.
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/317244">Microsoft Terminal Services vulnerable to MITM-attacks
If you need remote access to your network stick with VPN rather than opening up a Terminal Server to the internet.
tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
> Any Windows XP or Vista PC has RDP server capability.that is only XP Pro, Vista Business or Vista Ultimate
XP Home, Vista Home Basic, and Vista Home Premium do NOT have RDP
archer75 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
I don't get the complaint with setting up WHS and Media Center. All you have to do is tell Media Center to watch the folder with your shows in it. You are going to do that anyways so it's not difficult at all. Just a normal part of Media Center's setup. I told it to watch a share which it found on it's own. Done. That's it.WHS is targeted at your average home users. As such they don't know anything about RAID or have the ability to set it up. And even for the experienced user it is simply not needed. Ditch RAID all together. Forget about it. It is not needed here in the slightest. WHS will duplicate what you set it to and you are protected against drive failure.
The only other step I would take is using an online backup service to keep your data safe off site. There are at least two that will integrate with WHS console for easy management.
I have personally built my own WHS and it currently has 6 hard drives in it with room for 6 more. It's been rock solid so far for a RC.
iwodo - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
It is nice this article prove a point. NAS ( or NAS like product.. in this case WHS ) does not necessary means slow.If we look at the graph at smallnetbuilder almost all NAS perform below 30/s MB per sec.
Verdant - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
well not a complete solution, the webguide add-in covers many of the features i would want for MCE, the main problem is still the multiple computers issue though.Whiist allows you to do a pretty good job of web hosting too,
it just seems that some of these add-ins were ignored when this article was written!
n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
This product can't be used by grandma because it is to complicated and she even don't aware of what it can do and for what she will need it.No enthusiast will use it since there is no reason to use product pretending something that it is not. It is not Server OS (hardly can call OS anything carrying Win logo with exception for WinCE which is truly interesting modular OS with micro kernel).
From my experience, when you have 3 and more computers, you do want centralize storage for media and docs. and some to keep private. no way I'll trust MS to be responsible of such things. Not with NTFS which is far from being perfect.
I'm sure MS will find the way to push it through OEM. But this is only thing they good at.
neogodless - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
If your grandma has three computers and an XBOX360, she might want this...Assuming she does...
Option 1)
Spend THREE DAYS setting up a Linux box with her spare old computer?!
Spend extra money on hard drives because it does have SIS.
When she adds hard drives... how does she tell Linux to spread out the files?
Option 2)
Spend 30 minutes setting up a pre-built WHS system or 90 minutes installing and setting up WHS on her old spare system. Maybe buy an extra hard drive here and there and spend 5 minutes adding it to the system.
leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
grandma lolbut i agree good post (must make sub account so can rate users)