Windows Home Server Over XP?

[beelzerob]

The RDP'ing....you mean if I have 2 PC's connected to the WHS PC (in other words, all on the same network), then I can remote login from one PC to the other? Does it matter what OS is on any of the connected PC's?

I only have XP home on all of my machines, and I've just been using TightVNC to gain control of a target PC. it's certainly suitable, but if there's something builtin to WHS, that's an added plus.

 

[potts.mike]

The RDP'ing....you mean if I have 2 PC's connected to the WHS PC (in other words, all on the same network), then I can remote login from one PC to the other? Does it matter what OS is on any of the connected PC's?

I only have XP home on all of my machines, and I've just been using TightVNC to gain control of a target PC. it's certainly suitable, but if there's something builtin to WHS, that's an added plus.

The OS does have to have RDP included and enabled to use that function.

 

[felixrosbergen]

I bought and use WHS on my HA server for a while, but i got concerned about the way it manages disks. Maybe i didnt research enough, but it's great that it spans disks into single virtual disks and such, but what if one fails? I didnt feel like i had sufficient control over where it put which files.

The backup feature is nice, but nothing Acronis can't handle..maybe using a little more diskspace..but thats cheap these days..

I'm not trying to bash WHS..just sharing my brief history with it and my reasons for moving away from it.

Trying to install WHS on a set of hardware raid drives was a nogo...it BSOD's during install each time. Same with enabled AHCI or whatever it's called for the hard drives....WHS wouldnt install with it on..without it i thought couldnt get full performance out of SATA disks....again..maybe i didnt research enough...

In the end i installed Win2k3 server and have been happy with it.

 

[sic0048]

I bought and use WHS on my HA server for a while, but i got concerned about the way it manages disks. Maybe i didnt research enough, but it's great that it spans disks into single virtual disks and such, but what if one fails? I didnt feel like i had sufficient control over where it put which files.

The system works similar to a RAID in the sense that loosing one drive won't loose data. You simply replace the drive and it rebuilds the data.

Trying to install WHS on a set of hardware raid drives was a nogo...it BSOD's during install each time. Same with enabled AHCI or whatever it's called for the hard drives....WHS wouldnt install with it on..without it i thought couldnt get full performance out of SATA disks....again..maybe i didnt research enough...

You have to slip stream in those drivers into a disk and install from that disk. Here are directions But I agree it isn't the simplist installation job I've done :huh:.

 

[pete_c]

Personally tried WHS for a couple of weeks after using 2003 standard for the last few years on a "few" servers in the house. I am impressed with what it'll do for the home network regarding backing up computers, multimedia serving, etc.

It didn't really give me anything more than I already had with 2003. Most recently decided to switch off my oldest NAS box (may use it again shortly) and build a new NAS box using a program called FreeNAS. Had an old pc tower case laying around and put a 4 SATA drive cage in it and added 4 more SATA drives inside. I almost purchased a refurb WHS server a couple of weeks back just to build a new NAS.

I guess my thoughts are more just leaning towards just a network storage device used for backups, etc. No real maintainance on it other than getting an alert from it when a drive is about to fail.

I believe though that WHS is a great device and suits a home network environment well.....for just about everything.

 

[ano]

I tried the network attached storage path before moving to Windows Home Server. WHS is great, and there is no comparison. First, I have a household with 3 Macs and 5 PCs running all different versions of Windows. While NAS are fine, and I even ran mine in RAID, the biggest problem I had is that they were unreliable running programs on them when the programs resided on the NAS. If I copied them to my local PC/Mac no problem, but running them from the NAS was a hit or miss proposition. With WHS, there is never a problem. It runs backups of all the PCs (but not the Macs) nightly, and restoring them is relatively painless. I run a web server on it, an FTP server, it runs Web-Link 3 so I can access my HAI system from the web. I just insert a CD or DVD or Blu-Ray and it automatically RIPs it, and stores it and makes it available to my Media Center to watch (using My Movies).

Internally it doesn't use RAID, but if you do have two disks it can duplicate all data across multiple disks, if you set it to do so.

In summary, about the best $99 you'll ever spend on a Microsoft product.

 

[pete_c]

I currently has "stuff" spread across a number of boxes. The mix today is around 2003 servers and Linux servers. My HA box is running by itself on one, my media server on another one, etc. Standard desktop PC's in the house shrinking them down to become simple functional almost like netbooks each, goes on and on....so primarily my two(plus one) NAS boxes are all using RAID 1 or 5 and are only used for storage and not running applications. For a while last year I was using one of the boxes to stream music / video to my media room Vista MCE setup. The laptops and PC's important data is backed up to the NAS boxes. I guess today when writing about a NAS box looking at its redundancy (RAID) and use the term incorrectly. I should be saying redundant NAS box. I also have a few just single drive NAS boxes on the network (which I was playing with because of their size).

I can see doing images/snapshots of PC's in a typical household. Over the last 15 or so years many (the ones that use computers but are not computer savy) of my neigbors/friends trash their PCs (software/malware/viruses) at least once every 6 months or so. One of the features of one of the first NAS boxes I used (USR 8700) was the ability of providing software with the NAS box to image PC's on the network.

For $99 it's a great "do all" MS home server product.

 

[Techvet]

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I have a HP MediaSmart Server (MSS) that runs WHS. As others have posted,WHS is a pretty neat set-up. My HA is based around a CommStar CS48. I know, it's not necessarily cutting edge and there is an ongoing concern about it's future. which indeed looks a little bleak. However, the controller offers pretty robust programming capability and more than meets my needs. The interface software is called WinEVM and I have it set up to run on the MSS along with the RCS thermostat program and UPStart. All of those programs work superb. One of the nicest things is that the MSS make web access to my HA system much easier. My Commstar is equipped with a WebXpander interface and my router is set up to port forward to that device for remote HA control. The MSS comes with a free/inexpensive option for obtaining/maintaining a personal web address. The server and HA system are accessible via that address 24/7 by keeping the web address in sync with my DSL provider's dynamic IP assignment. This comes in ultra handy since my DSL provider does not offer static IP addresses for residential customers. The MSS has been offered in a variety of flavors, with the latest and greatest being a dual core Pentium equipped model (previous versions have been single core only). My impression is that the dual core unit has more than enough processing headroom to handle most of the automation tasks in addition to the normal WHS functions. I have toyed with running HomeSeer on it in concert with my CommStar, but so far I haven't expanded my HA system to the point that I need it.