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, Cont
As for restoring data, WHS comes with two options. The first is the traditional per-file restore, which can only be handled by a client. When a user/client wants to restore a file, they will pick the date/backup from which they want to restore the file, at which point the connector software will mount a dynamically-generated volume that is the contents of the client as of that backup. At this point the user can copy over files from the backup volume to their hard drive.
For a more complete restore, such as in the case of a catastrophic failure or those looking to use WHS as an image backup server, WHS ships with a live-restore CD. When the restore CD is inserted into a computer, the affected machine can connect to the WHS server and select a whole backup to restore. Since the operating system is included in the backup, it is also included in the restore, returning the machine to the same state it was in as of the backup. This process does however wipe the client's hard drive in the process, so it's not something that can be used leisurely. Power users that will be using it as a way to image and restore machines will especially appreciate the ability to restore to volumes of arbitrary size, and while Microsoft isn't pushing the imaging ability hard, it's one the best features of WHS.
There are a few caveats with the backup features of WHS that bear mentioning however. First and foremost only machines running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista x86 can be backed up. Older versions of Windows are not supported, and more surprisingly x64 versions of Windows are not supported. The WHS development team has cited the need to write drivers for the backup/restore abilities as the reason for the latter limitation, as they did not have the time to write a good set of drivers for both x86 and x64, so x64 support is not included for now. Unfortunately we don't have a good idea when such support will arrive; the development team for WHS is working on writing a version of the software for x64, but they are not saying when it might be ready.
Hardware constraints also need to be considered. Backups are transfer intensive, so anything less than a gigabit Ethernet link will cause the network to be the bottleneck. This is especially problematic for wireless links, which under 802.11g are practically capped to less than 6MB/sec (and realistically top out at under 4MB/sec), a fraction of the transfer rate of a hard drive. Microsoft highly recommends at least a 100Mb Ethernet link (forgoing a recommendation for wireless entirely), but wireless will work at the cost of being especially slow when WHS needs to do another full backup because it is ready to throw out the old one.
Last, there is the issue of doing backups at convenient times. A machine needs to be fully-on to be backed up, and WHS only has a limited ability to deal with AWOL machines and deal with machines that aren't currently on; it (or rather the connector) can wake up sleeping computers, but does not have a wake-on-LAN feature for waking up computers that are shut off entirely. An add-on exists that can handle this, but the only reliable way of backing up a machine at night is to leave it on or put it to sleep instead of turning it off. Sleeping however can be more problematic on an enthusiast computer than an OEM-built one.
With that said, it's very clear that Microsoft has put a lot of thought and their best technologies into the backup feature of WHS. Although this isn't a round up where we can adequately and fairly compare all the major backup software suites, we will say that we're very impressed with what WHS can do here. The backup features alone can sell WHS if the price is right as is the number of machines.
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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