Windows Home Server For Dummies E-Book

Woody Leonhard

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 455

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

If you work in an office, you probably don't lose much sleep worrying about whether your files are safe if your PC melts down. Company IT departments handle those things for business networks. But how about all those precious photos, address lists, the family genealogy, and everything else that lives on your home network? Windows Home Server can save the day if one of your personal PCs hiccups, and Windows Home Server For Dummies serves up all the stuff you need to know to put it to work. Forget everything you've heard about previous versions of Windows Server; this all-new variation has been designed for people who don't wear white lab coats or pocket protectors. Woody Leonhard has tested it and it passed with flying colors. If you have a home or small business network, this book shows you how Windows Home Server helps you * Share files among all the PCs in your home * Access your files from anywhere * Make regular backups automatically * Store files securely * Play music, TV shows, or movies on your Xbox * Share multimedia across your network * Keep your virus protection and system upgrades up to date * Get regular reports on the overall health of your network Windows Home Server For Dummies provides sage advice on choosing a version of Windows Home Server, installing it, setting up users and passwords, using remote access, scheduling automatic scans and backups, and having fun with multimedia. Trust Woody-- you'll sleep better.

Leseprobe

Windows Home Server For Dummies

by Woody Leonhard

Windows Home Server For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright ” 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Curmudgeon, critic, and perennial “Windows Victim,” Woody Leonhard runs a fiercely independent Web site devoted to delivering the truth about Windows and Office, whether Microsoft likes it or not. With up-to-the-nanosecond news, observations, tips, and help, AskWoody.com has become the premier source of unbiased information for people who actually use the products.

Starting at the dawn of Windows 3.0, Woody has written more than 40 books, drawing an unprecedented six Computer Press Association awards and two American Business Press awards. Woody was one of the first Microsoft Consulting Partners and is a charter member of the Microsoft Solutions Provider organization. He’s widely quoted — and reviled — on the Redmond campus.

Woody moved to Phuket, Thailand, seven years ago. He lives in Patong with his wife, Duangkhae (better known by her Thai nickname “Add”); his father, George; and his ornery all-American beagle, Chronos. Add and a crew of 30 run Khun Woody’s Bakery and three Sandwich Shoppes in Phuket — one each in Patong, Laguna, and Chalong. If you’re ever in Phuket, feel free to drop by for the best bagels in Asia.

Dedication

To Duangkhae T. Leonhard. May our future be as happy as our past.August 26, 2007, Le Meridien, Phuket, Thailand

Author’s Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wondrous agents, Claudette Moore — who’s been with me since the beginning — and Ann Jaroncyk, who keeps it all running; Becky Huehls, who got all the hard work, including the nail-biting task of ensuring that edits finished in time for me to make my wedding; Steve Hayes, Melody Layne, and Tiffany Ma, who championed the cause of a For Dummies guide to a mass-market server; Jason Dossett, who kept me honest; Barry Childs-Helton for the tremendous copy edit; and Patrick Redmond and all the production folks who turned my keyboard clicks into the tome you have in your hands.

Thanks, too, to Mike Craven (theofficemaven.com), Terry Walsh (wegotserved.co.uk), and Philip Churchill (mswhs.com) for all their help and support.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions and Editorial

Project Editor: Rebecca Huehls

Acquisitions Editors: Melody Layne, Steve Hayes, and Tiffany Ma

Sr. Copy Editor: Barry Childs-Helton

Technical Editor: Jason Dossett

Editorial Manager: Leah P. Cameron

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Carl Byers, Carrie A. Cesavice, Reuben W. Davis, Joyce Haughey, Melissa K. Jester, Christine Williams

Proofreaders: David Faust, John Greenough, Sossity R. Smith

Indexer: Broccoli Information Management

Anniversary Logo Design: Richard Pacifico

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Contents

Title

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I : Getting Windows Home Server to Serve

Chapter 1: Bringing Windows Home Server to Life

What Can You Do with Windows Home Server?

How Do You Control Windows Home Server?

Knowing Windows Home Server’s Limitations

What Hardware Do You Need?

Choosing a Great Windows Home Server

Positioning the Server in Your Home or Office

Chapter 2: Installing the WHS Software

Do You Need to Install Windows Home Server?

Preparing to Install

Installing Windows Home Server

Part II : Setting Up the Network

Chapter 3: Bringing Computers into the Home Server Fold

Kick-Starting the Network

Installing Windows Home Server Connector on a Windows XP Machine

Installing Windows Home Server Connector on a Windows Vista Machine

Configuring Windows Home Server

Chapter 4: Adding Users and Controlling Passwords

Understanding User Control

Raising the Bar for Passwords

Adding New Users the Smart Way

Using the Guest Account

Synchronizing Passwords

Changing Passwords the Old-Fashioned Way

Chapter 5: Using Built-In Shared Folders

Organizing Files with Shared Folders

Finding the Shared Folders

Controlling Access to Shared Folders

Controlling Shared Folders from the Console

Duplicating Shared Folders

Part III : Making the Most of Multimedia

Chapter 6: Sharing Music and Videos

Sharing from A to Z to PC to PC

Playing From (and With) the Server

Ripping to the Server

Sharing C.R.A.P. Music on the Network

Chapter 7: Recording and Playing TV

Understanding Windows Home Server and Recorded TV

Storing Shows on Your Server

Viewing TV Shows Stored on the Server

Why WHS Doesn’t Back Up Recorded TV

Chapter 8: Streaming with the Xbox

Using an Xbox in Server Land

Getting Your Xbox to Play with the Server

Using a Media Center PC to Stream to an Xbox

Chapter 9: Nailing Down Your Photos

Using the Windows Tools

Modifying XP for Shared Photos

Modifying Vista for Shared Photos

Part IV : Sharing in the Wild

Chapter 10: Starting Remote Access

Remote Access — the Good, the Bad, and the Really Frustrating

An Overview of Remote Access Setup

Setting up the Server

Configuring Your Router

Establishing a Permanent Domain Name

Spreading Out the Welcome Mat

Getting Connected for the First Time — or Maybe Not

My Encounter with the Seventh Ring

Chapter 11: Using Remote Access

Logging on to Your Windows Home Server Remotely

Accessing Shared Folders

Getting into the Windows Home Server Console

Pulling Puppet Strings on Your Home Network’s Computers

Part V : Backing Up

Chapter 12: Running Backups

Mired in Myriad Backups

Unraveling the Mess

Setting Up Server Backups That Serve You

Checking That Backups Run Smoothly

Chapter 13: Restoring a Dead Computer from Backup

Dealing with Home Computer Restore Restrictions

Restoring a Hard Drive

Rolling Your Own Home Computer Restore CD

Chapter 14: Restoring Files from Backup

Restoring a Backed-Up File

Restoring a Shared Folder File with Windows XP, Media Center, or Tablet PC

Restoring a Shared Folder File with Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate

Chapter 15: Backing Up the Server

Mapping Out Windows Home Server Storage

Using Folder Duplication

Making Offsite Backups of Shared Files

Part VI : Staying Alive and Well

Chapter 16: Monitoring System Health

Understanding the Network Health Indicator

What Can Go Wrong?

How to Fix Health Problems

Chapter 17: Breaking into the Server

Deciding to Break In

Logging On to the Server with RDP

Attaching a Printer with RDP

Restoring a Previous Version of a Shared File with RDP

Giving Your Server a Permanent IP Address

Chapter 18: Adding and Retiring Drives

Knowing When and What to Feed the Maw

Adding a New Internal Hard Drive

Adding a New External Hard Drive

Retiring an Old Drive Safely

Chapter 19: Repairing and Recovering the Server

Dealing with Lost Passwords

Fixing a Broken Server Hard Drive

Part VII : The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Top Ten Health Traps Triaged

No Spyware Protection

Backup Warning

Backup Warning, New Hard Drive

Backup Error

Backup Server Error

Storage Status, Not Enough Room

Storage Status, Failing Hard Drive

Passwords Do Not Match

Updates Are Ready

Antivirus Out of Date

Chapter 21: Ten More Tricks with Windows Home Server

Installing (and Uninstalling) Add-Ins

Launching Programs from Windows Home Server Console

Changing Your Remote Access Page with Whiist

Running uTorrent on the Server

Wake on LAN for Home Server

Uploading Photos to Flickr with PhotoSync

Streaming Away from Home with WebGuide

Streaming to Your TiVo

Streaming to Your Phone with LobsterTunes

Finding More Add-Ins

: Further Reading

Introduction

When I first heard that Microsoft was working on a new, supposedly dumbed-down version of Windows Server for use by mere mortals, I let out a groan. Literally. Years ago, Windows Small Business Server had the same original premise that Windows Home Server has today — a trimmed-down version of Windows Server for people who don’t wear white lab coats. I worked on the first beta versions of Small Business Server, and I carry emotional scars about it to this day. So it was with great trepidation, and more than a little skepticism, that I installed an early beta test copy of Windows Home Server on my own home network. I came away more than a little amazed.

Windows Small Business Server rates as a snarly, Byzantine, overwhelming glob of software that any sane person avoids like anopheles mosquitoes. Installing a gigantic Windows Server program like Exchange Server on your home network is like parking the QE II in your driveway. The average home user needs the fancy Windows Server Web hosting (and its ubiquitous security holes) like a jogger needs a wheelbarrow. Windows Server in my home? No way. I’ve got better ways to waste my time, ya know?

Fortunately, Windows Home Server is different. Way different. In fact, the only similarity I can find between Windows Server and Windows Home Server is the name.

If you have a network at home or in your small office, and you haven’t yet tried Windows Home Server, you’re in for a treat. It’s the first Microsoft product I know about that goes in slick, with very little fuss, and performs useful tricks right out of the box. You don’t need a Ph.D. in Windows Server Arcana. In fact, if you never do anything more than stick the WHS box on your network and forget about it, you can sleep better at night, knowing that your data’s backed up. And you needn’t lift a finger.

About This Book

This book shows you how to get Windows Home Server to peacefully coexist with your network — and what to do with WHS once it’s in. In usual For Dummies fashion, I show you how to accomplish what you want to do with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of clarity — one very straightforward step at a time — and I promise I won’t put you to sleep in the process.

In addition to showing you what you need to know today, in this book I also try to lay the groundwork for your future Adventures in Home Server Land, fully realizing that new killer applications could arrive any day. That’s because Windows Home Server rates as more than an operating system — it’s a platform. (At least, that’s what Microsoft’s marketing department calls it.) I fully expect that WHS will take on a life of its own as more and more software developers discover that a home network can do more than turn on the Jacuzzi every afternoon and warn you when you’re running out of milk. We’re just beginning to see applications appearing that are designed specifically for Windows Home Server — the nascent platform is just beginning to, uh, plat. These are exciting times, and WHS is an exciting product!

The Cheat Sheet at the beginning of the book lists my choices as the most important things you need to know about WHS. Tear it out, tape it to your monitor, pass it around to other folks with home networks, and be sure to tell ’em Woody shares their pain.

Foolish Assumptions

I assume that you already have a home or small office network, and that you know how to use either Windows XP or Windows Vista — possibly both — depending on what kind of computers inhabit your network.

If you have an Xbox 360 and you want to use it with Windows Home Server (believe me, you do!), I assume you know how to get your Xbox cranked up.

If you’re running Windows Small Business Server, you can follow along here, too: I won’t tell you anything in particular about SBS, but Windows Home Server backs up SBS-connected PCs like ringin’ a bell.

How This Book Is Organized

You can read the book from front to back, or you can dive right into the chapter of your choice. Either way works just fine. Any time a concept is mentioned that isn’t covered in depth in that chapter, you’ll find a cross-reference to another chapter to find out more. If you’re looking for something specific, check out either the table of contents or the index.

Part I: Getting Windows Home Server to Serve

If you haven’t yet bought a Windows Home Server, look at this part for a few key considerations — and limitations. If WHS didn’t come preinstalled on its own box, I show you how to install it. Then I step you through setting up the box and plugging it in.

Part II: Setting Up the Network

Here you find out how to get WHS going for the first time — and you don’t set up WHS from the WHS computer itself. Discover the art of plugging computers into the grid, adding users, establishing passwords wisely, adding printers, and using the built-in shared folders.

Part III: Making the Most of Multimedia

This is the part that puts the WOW in WHS: getting music, photos, videos, recorded TV, and movies to work across your WHS network. Discover what you can and can’t do (Digital Rights Management — what I call “C.R.A.P. music and movies” — will drive ya nuts). This part is also where I explain how to hook up an Xbox to play music and TV shows stored on your Windows Home Server.

Part IV: Sharing in the Wild

Another whiz-bang feature of WHS is shared folders. Here you find out how to control access to the shared folders, and set up Remote Access, so you can log on to your WHS network and any computer on the network, from anywhere in the world.

Part V: Backing Up

B-o-r-i-n-g. Backup elicits snores until the very moment your hard drive dives into the bit bucket. That’s when you’ll wish you had read this part. WHS contains a remarkably smart, capable, hands-off backup system. Spend a few minutes getting to know it. Then remember this part of the book the next time your computer crashes, or the kids completely screw up one of their machines.

Part VI: Staying Alive and Well

It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are? WHS won’t tell you that much, but it will tell you whether their PC has its antivirus programs up-to-date, or if the latest backup failed because the cat chewed the USB cable. This part also talks about getting into the WHS box, adding and retiring hard drives, and the like.

Part VII: The Part of Tens

So you gotta ask yourself, why isn’t this Part X? I dunno. Sometimes life doesn’t quite turn out the way you planned, eh? This part is my favorite part because it points you in new directions, giving tantalizing glimpses into the new kinds of WHS application software currently being built in a garage near you. Life is short. Eat dessert — and read the Part of Tens — first.

Icons Used in This Book

While perusing this book, you’ll notice some icons in the margins screaming for your attention. Each one has a purpose.

When I’m jumping up and down on one foot with an idea so absolutely cool that I can’t stand it anymore — that’s when I stick in a Tip icon. You can browse through any chapter and hit the very highest points by jumping from Tip to Tip.

You don’t need to memorize the stuff marked with this icon, but you should try to remember that this icon indicates something special that you need to know in future WHS endeavors.

Achtung! ¡Cuidado! Anyplace you see a Warning icon, you can be sure that I’ve been burnt — badly — in the past. Mind your fingers. These situations are really, really mean suckers.

If your hat’s propeller doesn’t work very well, you can skip these snippets. But if you want to understand the why behind the how, these icons point the way.

Here’s how I call out the inside story — pointed facts that Microsoft might find embarrassing, school-of-hard-knocks advice, the kind of straight (sometimes politically incorrect) talk that shows you what’s really happening. Hit my Web site, AskWoody.com, for the latest.

Where to Go from Here

If you want your voice to be heard, you can contact the publisher of the For Dummies books by clicking the Contact Us link on the publisher’s Web site at www.dummies.com or by sending snail mail to Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard, Indianapolis, IN 46256.

You can contact me at [email protected]. I can’t answer all the questions I get — man, there ain’t enough hours in the day! — but I take some of the best and post them on AskWoody.com frequently.

Speaking of AskWoody.com, drop by! I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the straight story, and coverage of important news items that you can’t find anywhere else. And I have hundreds of volunteers who have written more than half a million answers to computer questions, all accessible by clicking the Ask A Question tab on my Web page.

Confused about where to go next? Well, you can flip the page. Or you can flip a coin. Or you could hire a hundred monkeys and have them sit down at a hundred PCs and see how long it takes them to come up with the first chapter.

Part I

Getting Windows Home Server to Serve

In this part . . .

Windows Home Server makes a great slave, but a horrible master.

As long as you stick to the prescribed installation procedure — described here in loving detail — your Windows Home Server box will purr like a kitten, and you’ll never have to deal with the Byzantine underbelly of the beast. At least, WHS’s sharp fangs won’t appear until you try to do something strange, like set up an old printer. Follow the rules here and you only see the Dr. Jekyll persona of the server; with a little luck, you’ll never even know that Mr. Hyde hides deep inside.

This part of Windows Home Server For Dummies takes you on a guided tour of Windows Home Server, its features and foibles, and then escorts you through choosing and installing the WHS box itself. If you bought WHS as a shrink-wrapped, standalone product (as opposed to buying it preinstalled on a new PC), this part also shows you how to get WHS installed on the PC of your choice.

Chapter 1

Bringing Windows Home Server to Life

In This Chapter

Making great things happen with Windows Home Server

Dealing with WHS’s limitations

Controlling Windows Home Server with a “headless horseman” console

Choosing a fabulous Windows Home Server — cheap

Sticking the Home Server box in your home or small office

Installing the shrink-wrapped version of Windows Home server

As a first approximation, you should think of your Windows Home Server as a washing machine.

Okay, okay. It’s a washing machine with a LAN cable and a gaggle of hard drives. Picky, picky. I’m pushing the analogy a bit. But in many ways, your Windows Home Server box just sits there. No keyboard to soak up spilled coffee. No mouse accumulating gunk on its slick little feet. No 27-inch widescreen LCD monitor with Dolby 7.1 surround sound and an independently powered subwoofer that pushes more air than a Lear Jet.

Naw, it just sits there.

Once you get the hang of it, and customize the software in a couple of ways, your Windows Home Server sort of fades into the background. Then you needn’t lift a finger. You can completely forget about it. Until the day the hard drive on one of your PC dies, or you discover that one bit in your magnum opus flipped and Word can’t read it anymore, or you’re vacationing on Mt. Denali and the boss calls to say she needs that report you left back at the house right now, or the kids invite a friendly little rootkit to take up residence on the family computer.

That’s when you’ll thank your lucky stars that Windows Home Server’s sittin’ in the background doin’ its thing.

I can’t recall any Microsoft product (except for Notepad, maybe) that works so well, so easily, with so little fuss, right out of the box. If you have two or more computers networked together — doesn’t matter if you only use them to send email and surf the Web, or print cross-stitch patterns and play Gears of War — some day, in some way, Windows Home Server will save your bacon.

What Can You Do with Windows Home Server?

For a little box that just sits there, Windows Home Server covers some very important bases. But it doesn’t try to cover all the bases. That’s part of the genius of Windows Home Server: Its designers didn’t try to solve every problem, didn’t cater to every wish list, didn’t let the ugly Windows Server 2003 genie — the guy inside WHS with Robin Williams’s voice and Hannibal Lecter’s soul — out of the bottle.

From my point of view, Windows Home Server does just six things — and each one rates its own section . . .

Backing up and restoring

At the top of the feature heap, Windows Home Server backs up all the data on all your computers (see Figure 1-1). Automatically. No setup wizards, other than a very simple hook-up program. No weird jargon.

Figure 1-1: Windows Home Server backups are a breeze.

Here’s what you can expect if you use WHS as your backup central:

If you need to retrieve an old copy of a file, WHS makes it easy. I talk about the ins and outs in Part V.

WHS Backup lets you restore an entire hard drive. This ain’t your father’s backup program: if one of the PCs on your network suddenly loses its C: drive — or you get clobbered by a virus, or a rogue Windows automatic update freezes your Windows XP machine tighter than a penguin’s tail feathers — WHS’s computer restore feature (Chapter 13) lets you bring back an earlier version of the entire hard drive with very little fuss.

If you shell out the shekels and put two or more hard drives in your WHS computer, Windows Home Server mirrors backup data: Separate, individually recoverable copies of the backup reside on more than one hard drive. That way, if one of the WHS computer’s hard drives fail, you can resurrect everything. Try doing that with your one-button-backup hard drive.

The backup program itself packs lots of smarts. For example, if you have the same file on two different drives, or even on two different computers, WHS only maintains one backup. In fact, if pieces of files are duplicated across multiple machines, only one copy of each piece — each Lego block, if you will — gets stored. WHS maintains a table that keeps track of which piece goes where on what machine.

Very slick.

Sharing folders

Any server worth its salt lets you store folders on the server and get at those folders from other computers on the network. That’s the premise behind shared folders.

If you’ve struggled with shared folders in Windows XP or Vista (or even Windows 98 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11, for that matter), you have no doubt become conversant with \\really\convoluted\folder\names. Heaven help ya if you want to look at the photos of your summer vacation three years ago, and can’t remember if they’re sitting on the TV room computer’s D: drive, or the bedroom’s C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\Desktop\Vacation Pics folder.

Windows Home Server creates a small set of pre-defined folders for you, and you can readily add more. People using your network can easily find the folders — and (if you give them permission) stick stuff in the folders and take stuff out. The great saving grace about WHS shared folders: they sport simple names like, oh, Photos or Music (see Figure 1-2). None of this \\computername\drive\folder\subfolder garbage.

Figure 1-2: The pre-defined folders. Simple. Easy.

As the Reverend C.A. Goodrich famously wrote in 1827, There is as much meaning in the old adage, and the observance of which let me urge you as a remedy for every degree of evil I advert to — “Have a place for every thing, and keep every thing in its proper place.” Maintaining one shared location for everything, and keeping everything in its place, can simplify your life tremendously, whether you advert to degrees of evil or not. (Could somebody please tell me how to advert to a degree? Sounds like fun.)

When your Great Aunt Martha wants to look at your family photos, she can sit down at any computer on the network, and she can see this folder called Photos. Mirabile dictu, that’s where the photos reside. Auntie Martha doesn’t have to know the name of the computer that contains the photos, the drive they’re on, or any other computer arcana. They’re just there.

As you get more adept at using WHS, you’ll discover that you can create new shared folders, grant access permissions, and the like (see Chapter 5). But straight out of the box, the folders suddenly appear out of thin air — and they make sense.

Managing disks

Windows Home Server takes care of disk management behind the scenes so you don’t have to.

You’ll never know, or care, which drive on the WHS computer holds what folders, or which files.

Figure 1-3: The Vogon International Web site has a thorough description of RAID.

If you have more than one hard drive on your WHS computer, backups get mirrored automatically. Computer geeks tend to think of that as a RAID feature — Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, see Figure 1-3 — but WHS doesn’t use RAID technology. RAID’s too complicated for most home users to maintain, and it’s married to specific kinds of hardware.

The Windows Home Server approach to highly reliable data storage works with plain, everyday hard drives, and the kinds of hard drive controllers you find on any PC these days. It’s all done with smoke and mirrors — and some smokin’ good programming. No fancy hardware. Nothing to break down. The following list takes a closer look at what you don’t have to worry about:

In the WHS world, disk drive volumes and folders get extended as needed and you don’t have to fuss with the details.

Individual folders can and do reside on two or more disks. You needn’t deal with any of it.

When the WHS machine starts running out of disk space, it tells you. Install another drive (see Chapter 18) and the drive is absorbed into the collective, Borg-style: more space becomes available, and you don’t need to care about any of the details.

Okay, you do have to do one thing: When you run out of space, you have to add more. But disks are cheap and easy to install.

Accessing your network from far afield

If you so desire, Windows Home server can open up your entire home or small office network so you can log on to any computer on your network from any browser, anywhere in the world (see Figure 1-4).

Figure 1-4: Log on to any of your home computers from Atchafalaya to Timbuktu.

That sounds scary, but (at least at this point) the security looks mighty good.

WHS’s Remote Access feature takes a little while to set up (see Chapters 10 and 11), but once it’s in place, you can

Log on to your server.

Upload or download files from a specific folder.

Use any pre-ordained PC on your network as if you were sitting right in front of it. (Give or take a little time for a slow connection, anyway.)

Let other people log on to your home network and retrieve files in specially designated folders. (If you’re clever and set restrictions properly, that is.)

Geeks might be reminded of something called an FTP server, which performs a similar function, allowing people to get into a folder from the Internet and send files to the folder or retrieve files from it. Part of Remote Access acts like FTP, but it employs an entirely different technology: Windows Home Server doesn’t use FTP.

Having your own Internet-accessible repository can be really handy, and keep casual surfers from leafing through your private pics. Instead of posting pics of your new toddler, uh, toddling, on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or dotPhoto or Webshots, you simply stick the pics in a shared folder on your own Windows Home Server and give all your family and friends the Web address and password that’ll let ’em in.

Keeping the home fires burning

Windows Home Server constantly monitors all the computers on your network and gives you a concise, centralized “health report” (see Figure 1-5).

Windows Vista computers on your home or small office network keep WHS abreast of the current status of patches and virus signature file updates. Vista computers also notify the WHS server if they’re running out of disk space. Windows XP and Vista machines both keep WHS apprised of their backup status.

For a thorough look at the warnings on offer — and what to do about them — see Chapters 16 and 20.

Figure 1-5: The Windows Home Server network health report.

Streaming media

Windows Home Server doesn’t provide the media streaming capabilities that you find in Windows Media Center Edition, or Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. However, if you treat your server nicely and discover how to say “please” (see Part III), it will hold your media collection, and feed the collection to a Media Center or Home Premium PC. If you have an Xbox 360, you can connect it to your Media Center or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate) PC, and that PC, in turn, can pull the media off the server.

How Do You Control Windows Home Server?

Windows Home Server was designed from the ground up to run on a “headless” computer. That means, quite simply, that a fully functional WHS server can survive with a LAN cable, a power cord, and absolutely nothing else sticking out of the machine.

Many WHS servers don’t have a CD drive. Some don’t even have a rudimentary video card.

If you buy Windows Home Server in a shrink-wrapped package, you’ll need to connect a CD drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor to the server box long enough to get the WHS software loaded. (See Chapter 2 for details.) But once WHS comes up for air the first time, you can unplug all that accoutrement, and strip the machine down to its LAN cable, power cord, and nothing else. WHS won’t mind a bit.

Welcome to the Console

You control Windows Home Server through a program that doesn’t run on the WHS server. Windows Home Server Console runs on one of the computers on your network. In fact, you can run the Console from any Windows XP or Windows Vista computer on your network.

As soon as you have your Windows Home Server set up and plugged into the network, the Console setup goes something like this:

1. Stick the Windows Home Server Connector CD into any computer on the network and run the Connector setup program (see Figure 1-6).

The Connector setup program searches your network to see if it can find a Windows Home Server.

2. If the setup program determines that it’s never been run before on this particular network, it steps you through the seven steps necessary to get the WHS server box going (see Chapter 3 for details).

You have to enter a product key (unless the WHS software came pre-installed and pre-validated), give the server a name, create a super-password, help WHS phone home and update itself, and generally bring WHS up to snuff.

3. Once the Connector setup program has the WHS box’s seatbelt fastened, it puts all the networking goodies on the PC, gets the backup software going, and then installs the Windows Home Server Console (see Figure 1-7).

Figure 1-6: Run the Connector setup program on every PC on your network.

Although it’s true that Windows Home Server works with Macs and various flavors of Unix/Linux PCs, you have to interact with the server manually: Microsoft doesn’t supply anything like a Connector CD or the Home Server Console for Macs or Unix/Linux PCs.

Figure 1-7: The WHS Console controls the server remotely.

What happens behind the scenes

The installer program on the Windows Home Connector CD accomplishes much, much more than doing the initial setup of the Windows Home Server, uh, server and cranking up the Windows Home Server Console. Behind the scenes, when you run the CD on your Windows XP or Vista computer, the Connector installs and configures dozens of programs that tie deep into the guts of Windows XP or Vista.

So while you may believe that you’re controlling Windows Home Server, in fact its minions latch onto your PC and every PC you add to the WHS network, tying it all together.

That isn’t necessarily bad. But it does mean that your PCs will pick up a bunch of software they’ve never had to run before.

Perhaps most notably, the Windows Home Connector CD installs a gigantic program on Windows XP computers called the .NET Framework. (.NET Framework is baked into Windows Vista, so the Connector doesn’t have to install it.) .NET Framework has a reputation for being big, slow and buggy, although it’s been getting better. (“Buggy?” you ask. Well, yes. Take a look at Microsoft’s Security Bulletin MS07-040, if you’re looking for examples.) Whether you like it or not, when you connect a Windows XP computer to a Windows Home Server network, you get .NET Framework.

In addition to installing new software, the Connector CD is responsible for establishing hundreds of default settings. In my experience, it performs the job admirably well.

Behind-the-scene activities include these:

Definingbackup locations: Unless you change the settings (see Chapter 12), the Windows Home Server Connector backs up most of the data files on all the hard drives inside your PC. It does not back up system files, although it does back up USB-attached external drives. Surprisingly, it does not back up recorded television programs.

Linking to initial shared folders: These include basics such as Photos and Music. Your Windows XP or Vista machine suddenly acquires new shortcuts on the desktop that point to the shared folders on the server.

Turning off remote access: You have to go into WHS and quite deliberately give it permission to grant access to your network from the Internet (see Chapter 10).

The Connector CD also installs the programs necessary to monitor your system’s health, and keep the WHS server apprised of the computer’s condition.

Once you’ve finished running the Connector CD on a specific PC, it’s your responsibility to

Tell the WHS server about users on the PC (at least if you want to allow the users to work with the WHS server — see Chapter 4).

Set up shared folders on the server for users on the PC (Chapter 5).

Add printers to the server (Chapter 17).

If you have Windows XP Media Center or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate), unlock shared media folders and enable the Guest account so other computers on your network can get to them via the WHS server (Chapter 6).

Knowing Windows Home Server’s Limitations

Have you ever bought a new product and discovered — an hour or a day or a week down the road — that it can’t do what you need it to do? Hey, I sympathize. Been there. Done that.

I wanted to carve out a small part of this book to explain what Windows Home Server doesn’t.

What Windows Home Server won’t do

By and large, WHS can do anything you would expect a server to do, and much more. But there are a few shortcomings that you should understand before you knock yourself silly trying to accomplish the impossible:

Windows Home Server only supports ten users (plus the Guest account). You can have ten different user names on your network — and that’s all she wrote. If you need to allow more than ten people to use your network (remember The Brady Bunch? I was trying to forget it, too . . .), they’ll have to start sharing user names.

Windows Home Server only supports ten PCs on the network. Perhaps surprisingly, you can put two WHS servers on the same network, and you can even stick a WHS server on a Small Business Server network. But you can’t have more than ten PCs connected simultaneously to a single WHS server.

You can’t use a laptop as a Windows Home Server. That’s a real pity because, all other things being equal, a laptop with a dead screen would be an ideal candidate for a server.

Only NTFS-formatted drives get backed up. Chances are good that all of your network’s hard drives use the newer NTFS file system, instead of the old Windows 98-and-earlier FAT. Windows Home Server won’t even try to back up a non-NTFS drive, so if you have a USB “thumb” drive that’s formatted with FAT, it won’t make the cut. You have to format your thumb drive with NTFS first. (For details, consult your thumb drive manufacturer’s Web site.)

Windows Home Server won’t back up laptops running on battery power. Windows Home Server’s automatic backup will back up any Windows XP or Vista computer, but it won’t back up a laptop unless the laptop’s plugged into the wall. That makes sense: Backups can draw a lot of power, and the last thing you need is to have your laptop’s battery die in the middle of a backup.

WHS won’t give the full health report on a computer running Windows XP. When WHS reports on computers attached to the network, it only shows the backup status of Windows XP machines; there’s no attempt to show the status of updates or other indicators from the Windows Security Center. By contrast, Windows Vista machines report whether the firewall is enabled, whether the antivirus software is up to date and working, and whether Windows Update is set to update Windows automatically.

Remote access to a computer doesn’t work with certain versions of Windows. If you want to run WHS’s Remote Access to reach into your network from the Internet and run one of the computers on your home (or small office) network, the computer that’s being suborned — the one that acts like a puppet while you pull the strings from afar — must be running Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, or Vista Enterprise. Alas, XP Home, Vista Home Basic, and Vista Home Premium aren’t sufficiently endowed. In other words, XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, and Vista Enterprise PCs can play Pinocchio to your puppeteer. All the other operating systems don’t have strings that can be pulled.

Tapping into previous versions of a file

Windows Home Server supports “previous versions,” but the feature probably doesn’t work the way you think it does.

If you have Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate, you already have a shadow-copy feature, and it works on all files and folders on your Vista computer. Once a day, usually around midnight, these versions of Vista take a snapshot of all the files on your computer that you’ve changed during the previous day and store the snapshots — creating what is commonly called a shadow copy. Anytime you mess up a file that’s located on your Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate computer, you can right-click the file, choose Properties, then click the Previous Versions tab and bring back any earlier snapshot of the file.

That’s a very powerful capability, which I discuss at length in Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, Inc.). Installing WHS doesn’t turn off the feature you’ve already paid for — but the Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate shadow-copy feature works only on files located on the Vista PC. Files stored on your Windows Home Server, uh, server don’t inherit the shadow copying capability from Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate.

Here’s where things get complicated.

Windows Home Server keeps shadow copies, but only for files stored in shared folders on the server. WHS doesn’t reach into your Windows XP or Vista computer to make shadow copies, but it does make shadow copies of your data files on the server. It automatically takes snapshots of all the altered shared files and folders on the server twice a day — at noon and midnight every day. But the method and the relative ease of access differ — depending on what version of Windows XP or Vista your computer is running:

If you run Windows XP Service Pack 2 (either Home or Pro), you can use this Windows Home Server “previous versions” capability to easily bring back one of the snapshots, using a Previous Versions. (See Chapter 14.)

If you run Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, you can get at the previous versions of files on the server using the same technique.

If you have Windows Vista Home Basic or Premium — and you probably do — you can still get at the snapshots of server files, but retrieving them is cumbersome and error prone (again, see Chapter 14).

While WHS does, technically, support “previous versions,” the previous-version snapshots get taken twice a day, on a fixed schedule. They only cover files on the server — there’s no independent “previous versions” support for files on the rest of the network’s PCs, even if they’re backed up every night. Retrieving the previous versions of files on the server is easy with Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate — or, for that matter, with Windows XP. Paradoxically, it’s considerably more difficult with Vista Home Basic or Premium.

What Hardware Do You Need?

Microsoft publishes a set of minimum hardware requirements for Windows Home Server. As is the case with most Microsoft minimum requirements, you can stretch things a bit and still run the product reasonably well.

Don’t even think about installing Windows Home Server in your home or office unless you have a functioning network. If you’re going to try to reach into your home network from afar, using WHS’s Remote Access capability, you also need a reasonably fast Internet connection (ADSL, cable, satellite, whatever). Specifically:

WHS won’t help you set up a network. You need to have one working before you can install WHS. (If you need help setting up a network, see my Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies or Windows XP All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies.) Microsoft designed WHS to go on an existing network with two or more PCs, but you really need to have only one PC on the network in order to get WHS to work.

I hate to burst any bubbles here, but running a crossover cable between two PCs doesn’t count as a functioning network. Sorry, Charlie.

The network’s router (you can call it a hub or a switch) must have at least one available jack on the back, so you can plug in your WHS server. Although it may be physically possible to configure a WHS server using a wireless network connection, you could go insane trying.

I know people who have tried to put a WHS server on a network that uses a dial-up Internet connection. They use Windows’ Internet Connection Sharing to get onto the Internet. You may think of such people as Luddites; I think of them as deluded. They pull hair out of their heads in massive clumps.

If you buy WHS pre-installed on a computer, skip the rest of this section entirely: every recent computer is capable of running Windows Home Server, and the one you bought will no doubt work well.

On the other hand, if you’re going to install WHS on your own computer, you need to pay attention to a small handful of specific details. Many of us wooshgoons (that’s what I call WHS aficionados) stick WHS on an old PC, one that was destined to accumulate dust anyway. Re-using old hardware is good for the environment and for the pocketbook. Most old — nay, ancient — computers can run WHS quite well, if you keep these few things in mind:

Make sure all your WHS hardware has Windows 2003 drivers. Some people report success installing Windows XP drivers on a Windows Home Server box, but others find themselves in the seventh ring of Server Hell. If you have an old PC with an obscure network card, hop over to the card manufacturer’s Web site and download the Windows 2003 driver. Can’t find a Win2K3 driver? Then replace the hardware. Life’s too short.

Get 512 MB of memory. If you already have more than 512 MB of memory on your designated WHS server, think about scalping it, and using it on another computer. Bone-stock WHS doesn’t need more than 512 MB; you’ll never notice the difference if you get more (so why get it?). Of course, if you intend to add new programs to your server — something to monitor the quantity of milk curdling in the fridge, turn on the fog lights in the bathroom, and bring the Jacuzzi to a slow boil, simultaneously — you might need more memory.

You need to boot from a DVD — once. A WHS server needs a DVD drive like a surfer needs a Great White. After you have WHS installed on an old PC, the DVD drive just takes up space. But if you use a removable (say, USB) DVD drive to install WHS, you need to make sure that your old computer can boot from the DVD drive. (D’oh!)

Just like points on Whose Line Is It Anyway, thegraphics card, keyboard, mouse, and monitor don’t matter. You use them once to get the PC set up and then (so far as the server is concerned) you can throw them away.

The other, official minimal requirements are — truly — minimal. Every PC made in the last five (maybe ten) years should be able to handle the load: a Pentium 3 running at 1 GHz; an 80GB hard drive; a network adapter; and the motherboard has to follow the ACPI power-saving spec.

Choosing a Great Windows Home Server

If you’re in the market for a new Windows Home Server computer — or if you’re going to cobble something together with the Frankenstein pieces sitting around your house — you may be pleasantly surprised to find that WHS doesn’t need much at all. You may be equally surprised to find that spending a few extra zlotys on some unexpected pieces of hardware can make a big difference in how well your system works.

From my (admittedly jaded) experience, these bits and pieces make a real difference in how well WHS works now, and will work in the future:

Cooling: Really. WHS servers typically pack a lot of hot components inside a small box, and you need to keep them cool. With WHS up 24/7, and many WHS servers stuck inside stuffy closets, heat can rapidly become enemy #1. Recent studies show that hard drives aren’t as sensitive to heat as once thought (see “Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population” at labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf), but other parts of your computer will wear out faster — if they don’t melt down literally — when they run hot. The solution? Fans. Lots of them. You might even consider putting a high-quality desk fan next to the box, to keep cool air flowing.

Multiple hard drives: Given a choice between one big hard drive and two small ones, go for two — or, better, three — smaller drives. WHS works better when it has two drives to “mirror” data stored on the server, and it works best with the system itself stuck on a third drive. You can always add more hard drives later, but you’ll get maximum protection from the get-go if you start with two or more drives.

If you stick USB hard drives on your WHS server, don’t attach them to USB hubs — you know, those cheap little gizmos that let you turn one USB port into four or eight. USB hubs work fine for mice and electric coffee warmers, but they’re really slow when two or more attached pieces of equipment are vying for attention. One USB hub controlling two overworked drives performs about as well as one guy playing both parts in Dueling Banjos.

UPS: Nope, we’re not talking big brown trucks here. No matter where you live, no matter how reliable your power supply, you need an uninterrupted power supply (UPS), both to keep the WHS server running in the event of a power hiccup, and to minimize weird power disruptions.

Fast Ethernet: You can run WHS on a plain-Jane 100Mbps Ethernet network connection (also called 100Base-T or, confusingly, “fast Ethernet”). But if you start streaming videos, you’re going to want the fastest Ethernet you can find — which usually means 1 Gbps (which also goes by the names “Gigabit Ethernet” and “1000Base-T”). Buying a 1Gbps Ethernet card for your WHS server isn’t enough; your network’s router (hub, switch) has to support a 1-gigabyte-per-second speed, too.

If you stick a 1Gbps card in your server, it won’t do much good unless the other PCs on your network can run at 1 Gbps, too. From what I’ve seen, moving up to 1 Gbps doesn’t make much difference with backups — they take all night anyway. But it can make a difference if you’re streaming high definition TV shows or movies to, say, an Xbox, and it most certainly will make a difference if you stream more than one video at a time.

If you’re into the little things, you can also add the following bits and pieces, but you probably won’t notice much difference:

More USB 2 controllers: Here’s one they don’t teach in Windows school. At times, WHS handles massive amounts of data, particularly when performing its daily backups, streaming multimedia, or copying big bunches of files. If you have two or more hard drives attached to your computer with USB cables (see the preceding), and they’re both connected to the same USB controller inside the computer, the controller itself can present a significant bottleneck. The solution? Get more controllers. One controller per USB connection isn’t a bad idea at all.

Alternatively, if techie language doesn’t intimidate you, consider using external SATA hard drives. External SATA hard drives are just like regular internal SATA hard drives, except the hard drive’s connectors and electrical thingies dangle out of your computer. External SATA doesn’t bog down as badly as USB.

Faster drives: For most people, most of the time, most WHS disk activity takes place at night. If your WHS server runs from 3:00 to 3:12 a.m. backing up the computers on your network, but a faster hard drive would cut the job down so it completed at 3:10 a.m., well, pardon me if I snore. But if you commonly stream videos on your WHS server, you should consider picking up faster hard drives.

There are several arcane and confusing variations, but if you first choose the technology (most likely Serial ATA inside your computer and either external SATA or IDE if you want to hang the drive out the back), and then briefly consider rotation speed (10,000 rpm runs faster than 7,500 rpm, but built-in caching can — and does — make a huge difference), you should be able to make a good decision. If you want the latest unbiased reviews, consult Tom’s Hardware at tomshardware.com.

A cool-looking case: No joke. If your WHS box looks cool, you’re more likely to keep it somewhere that you can see it — so you’re more likely to notice weird disk activity with the concomitant blinking lights. Besides, the top of your desk is cooler than your closet, eh?

Note that I didn’t say anything about processor speed, or memory, or PCI slots, SCSI drives, SD card readers, cache, fingerprint readers, webcams, sound cards, video cards, or any of a million other hardware niceties than can make a difference with Windows XP or Vista machines. WHS doesn’t use ’em, doesn’t know, doesn’t care. If you’re going to use your server for something more than WHS, you may need more oomph — hey, it takes a lot of cycles to control a gig watt Christmas light display — but for standard WHS stuff, the processor and memory you have are good enough.

Positioning the Server in Your Home or Office

You should take these factors into consideration when you pick a place to stick your Windows Home Server server:

Plan on plugging the server into a router.