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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n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Server does not need to be Media Center.If you want All-in-One OS, use Linux.
Your box will be exactly what you want it to be.
yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
I kind of view WHS as the latest WinME, but perhaps without all the software flaws that ME had. Meaning I think it *may* have been a good concept in theory, but fell short of being a true server OS. I was on the early beta program for this OS, and could not help but think this was a product for the less than technically inclined(IE Servers for dumbies).Right now, I do not think I would even consider WHS seriously, unless they made some radical changes. I mean why even bother, you have Linux(prefferably Debian in my case), or even WinXP which seems to be more technologically advanced by comparrison(in those areas that matter to me anyhow). Sure, the duplication of files for 'redundancy' on multiple drives may seem nice to those less than experienced users, but those of us who would likely use this product are already aware of rsync based *free* Windows appplications that do such a task already.
Just the next 'red headed step child' in OSes as far as I am concerned.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
You are completely wrong in every aspect. esp the winME part, that was completely wrong and in no way close.WHS appeals to everyone, including technically inclined, could care less about super advanced features. WHS has what everyone has been asking for in a server for a long time, simplicity and ease of use. The stuff you described is a SMALL fraction of people, even then those people see the appeal of WHS.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
You should of noted that the network throttling bug only effects certain users of vista. Lots of people, myself included, have not encountered such bug. Even then, its not worth saying "vista users should definitely want to hold off on doing so." since its not a drastic decline that would prevent such transfers. Especially since everyone is going to do these big backups when not at computer.That whole paragraph is misleading.
Jeff7181 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
If the prebuilt boxes are reasonably priced or the OEM licenses are reasonably priced I'm going to be buying one.I'm using the beta version of it right now, and in the past I have restored single files/directories with the backup utility and I actually just now got done doing a full restore of an NT volume because a family member filled the computer with viruses so I figured it would be the perfect time to try it out. I wiped out the partition, then put the Client Restore CD in the drive and a few clicks of the mouse later it was restoring all 25 GB of my primary partition over my LAN. Finished in under 2 hours... had to run scandisk to fix some orphaned files and whatnot, but it's working as if nothing happened now. And an unintended side effect is that it appears the MFT was completely rewritten and consolidated into a couple contiguous chunks on the hard drive if I Analyze the drive in Disk Defragmenter.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
They won't be reasonably priced if HP media center version is around the same as others are priced. They are around $500-700 with about 2x300gig hardrives (or 350gig i forget).The article mentioned they are going to offer better hardware that what is needed, so im sure that is going to make them more expensive than if you put something together on the cheap. Long as you can get the hardware for a cheap server off the internet that is required for the OS you are good.
AlexWade - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Have you tried file sharing in XP Pro or Vista Ultimate? It is less painful and a lot easier to give yourself a root canal. I've followed Microsoft's instructions step-by-step with no success. Then, come to find out, you have to modify a registry key to get it to work. But that only works on half the computers out there. Even if you turn the firewall off and every single service on, it still won't file share.Why is it so hard for Windows to get file sharing right? It worked flawlessly in 2000 and in XP Home? It is part of XP Pro's and Vista Ultimate extra security. Needless to say, if Microsoft would get it right the first time, a cheap computer would work just as well as Home Server.
Microsoft makes a broken product to sell you another product.
leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
found windows 2000 best os for it as it has no 10 connection user limitsmindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
IIRC, Win2k Pro does have a 10 concurrent inbound connection limit which 2K Server raises.leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
win2k has no limits