A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
The Interface of WHS
Although we'll touch on specific points of the GUI of WHS as we come to the various functions of the OS, we'll still spend a bit of time with the WHS interface since it's one of the other critical components that separates WHS from other server products and makes it work. Because WHS needs to be usable by a subset of users that are only partially computer literate, several special considerations had to go into making an interface for the OS. Furthermore the entire thing needs to be able to run headless once a WHS server is set up.
Microsoft has opted to go with a single application to control all of the functionality of WHS, the simply-titled Windows Home Server Console. As we alluded to earlier, the console actually runs on the server, and via a specialized RDP client is controlled from the clients. For clients that install the full connector suite (used for enabling backups) the specialized client is installed, which initiates the console on a remote computer and then transparently uses RDP to display it on the client as a local application. Because this is done via RDP, other clients from other OSs connect to and control the server via normal RDP; in this case they'll get the entire desktop of the server. At this point Microsoft is seriously entertaining the idea of pushing WHS onto non-Windows households, the Mac platform especially since an official RDP client is available.
The console effectively breaks up administration into 6 tasks: backups, user accounts, shared folders, server storage/drive management, network status, and WHS settings. As far as all of these interfaces go, Microsoft isn't working with any new human-computer interaction memes, rather everything is scaled down to be as simple as possible without losing effectiveness. This means that there's little we can say that's remarkable about the interface; it looks like Windows and there's a lack of buttons to push or things to break.
We're not completely sold on the effectiveness of the interface, but torn as to why. We don't think Microsoft could have made the interface any simpler without taking out features, but that doesn't preclude making it better. The interface is effectively a listing of a bunch of things to do, with help menus available that explain what each and every last thing does. It gets the job done, but a certain degree of computer literacy is required to understand what's going on. We'd say MS has done better with simplifying complex interfaces with Vista MCE, which manages to break complex issues such as storing recordings into a simple manner very well.
To that extent organizations like Geek Squad will probably get a good amount of business out of setting WHS up; it's not by any means hard, but there will be a sizable minority of potential customers that will lack the literacy required to do it themselves. However once set up WHS is by all indications plenty capable of continuing on indefinitely on its own; even its automatic update function has been revised for headless operation so that it can install any and all updates without human intervention (which is not the case today with XP or Vista). This is the reason we're torn, since most WHS servers probably won't need administration for 99.9% of their lives. The interface, especially for backups and user accounts, is good enough that once the server is set up it should be possible for more or less anyone to handle what little administrative duties remain.
On the whole Microsoft could have done a better job on making the interface accessible for everyone, but it's good enough for now.
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mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Surely the backup client can be disabled (On one of the two)? I would be very surprised if 2 WHS systems can't coexist given a configuration change if you just wanted to avoid the wasted redundancy of having both make backups. That is, unless MS had deliberately chosen to prevent the two from getting along.ATWindsor - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Does it souppert proper raid, like raid 5 for instance? That fits my use a bit better than this duplication of files. WHS looks interesting, but seemingly a bit to primitive to be honest, seems to be missing quite a few more or less nescessary features.Rolphus - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
The choice of OS should be entirely separate to RAID considerations. Software RAID5 is a bit of a waste of time, seeing as any performance advantage over just mirroring the data would be more than offset by software parity calculations. I don't see any reason why a BIOS-level RAID system (as supplied by many high-end and server motherboards and add-in cards) wouldn't be supported by WHS; Windows 2003 Server supports any RAID level you care to throw at it.mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Most people won't care about parity calculation overhead, it's not as though the system is being used like a PC or workstation, that's practically ALL the system would be doing besides sitting idle, particularly given the rough spec of a 1GHz or more processor which is not at all needed just to serve files. Maybe with GbE, you might want a 300-400MHz processor to keep networking performance good but on a system that old you'd probably be bottlenecked by the PCI bus before anything else.yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
What is wrong with software RAID, if that is all the system does(server storage) ? In my book, implementing *any* so called server OS *needs* to have at least RAID1, and should have RAID5 in software. If not, there is not realy reason to stop using WinXP Pro, with a few registry hacks tp bypass the RAID5 limitation.Anyhow, why pay for something that is lacking when you can get an OS that does it for free, or another earlier version of windows that will do it with a few hacks, and yu're already familiar with.
As I said in an earlier post, I used WHS for a few days several months ago(early beta program), and did not like what I saw. So . . .
ATWindsor - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Software raid5 can have very good performance, modern computers are fast, besides the main consideration is not wasting so much space, if you want to have som security for your files, you get by on loosing 1/4 insted of 1/2 of the space.The main advantage off WHS is the whole storage-pool-setup, I hope they implment somethin similar in w2k3.
Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I tested software RAID5 on an nForce4 SLI motherboard (DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR) with Silicon Image 3114 chip and 4x WD 500GB drives. Reads were in 11-14MB/s range, writes sub-10MB/s, and CPU load was near full, on an Athlon 64 4000+.ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Try to test a proper software-raid, instead of the inbuilt nforce-crap, just because you tested a poor solution doesn't make all solutions bad.Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
It's not nForce, it's SiI3114, nearly ubiquitous on higher-end motherboards of that era, as well as present on many lower-end PCI cards. Building RAID5 on an "affordable" solution from Silicon Image, Promise and such will give you exactly that kind of performance, as well as guarantee a high probability of data loss due to driver/firmware bug. In order to run RAID5 you need a proper controller from Adaptec/LSI Logic/3Ware, and that costs big bucks.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
It only supports proper RAID if you can configure it all in the BIOS. Any kind of softRAID that needs Windows' help isn't supported. Basically it needs to appear as 1 disk to Windows.