Windows Home Server: Install Impressions
Following the recommendation of my co-worker Mike Frank, I decided to give Windows Home Server (WHS) a try. WHS has the capability to do a lot of different things, but straight out of the box I was looking to take advantage of its automated backup capabilities, data duplication, file sharing and remote access capabilities.
I have only had WHS installed for a few days, but my first impressions are very positive. I don't know what I expected, but it just works. After I got it installed, setting up the connector software on my machine was easy and I was immediately setup for nightly backups. File sharing was also quick to setup and after a few well explained configuration changes to my router, I had a web site up so I could access my shared files and computers from anywhere with an internet connection. There is a lot more I want to do, including exploring Xbox 360 integration, putting a source control server on it and installing some of the many user created plug-ins, in particular for media management.
On the install side, I did run into some trouble. I built my own system, which is not the route that most consumers would probably take as there are a lot of solid looking pre-built options out there. I did some research beforehand to find parts that were compatible, but still had a problem getting my SATA hard drives recognized.
The first part of the install went smoothly, but then there is a part of the install that looks like it uses the Windows XP text based installer which does not have built in drivers for SATA drives. So, I was confronted with having to do the F6 "provide additional drivers" step, which means I had to have drivers on a floppy disk.
Since I have built a fair number of systems, I have a floppy drive (which sadly is still an essential tool for a system builder). However, I didn't have any other computers around that I could install the drive on to load a floppy disk with the SATA controller drivers. The motherboard came with a CD of the drivers, so I could take the drivers off there to make a floppy, but I needed a machine I could boot into to do the copying. So kind of a chicken and egg problem since the server machine was not in a bootable state.
My solution was to reboot the server off of the install media for WHS and then pretend to load additional drivers in the first GUI based part of the installer. This part of the installer uses standard Windows file dialogs to let you search for additional drivers. Standard Windows file dialogs let you right click, copy and paste files, so I used this dialog to navigate to the drivers (on a USB key) and then copied and pasted them to the floppy disk which I had hooked up to the server. I then canceled out of that dialog, got back to the text installer and was ready for the F6 to floppy disk, which worked perfectly. So, that was annoying and more time consuming than I care to admit, but beyond that the install was straight forward. I will wait until I've had the server up and running for a while before I give WHS a full review though.