[dba-Tech] Storebought WHS

I bought the Windows Home Server system put together by HP, called the
HP MediaSmart Server.

http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-225-121.html

I bought it from Amazon for $577.52 including free shipping. I also
purchased two additional 500 GB SATA disk drives for it from
MicroCenter for $100 each.

Both the additional drives and the server itself arrived on Friday so
on Saturday I opend up the boxes and got started. I decided to pop in
the new drives right off the bat and that went well. You can do it
without even powering down the server. Just open the front door to
access the drives and slide out an unused tray, pop in the drive and
slide the tray back in. If the system is up you need to go into the
management console and tell it to start using the new drives but since
I hadn't gotten that far yet I never needed to do that.

I hooked it up to the network and powered it up and all appeared to be
as it should be. I decided to use my laptop to be the first system to
connect to the server so I booted it up and connected it to the
network via hard wired ethernet. Had a bit of trouble getting the
wireless to stop working to but eventually got that to stop by
disabling the wireless and rebooting. I then loaded the client
software CD and tried to load the Server Management client software on
the laptop. It bombed out at the point where it was "trying to locate
server" according to the message. It's right there I thought ;-)  Look
to your right. I disabled the software firewall and tried it again.
Still no good. I downloaded and ran a Connector Software Trouble
Shooter and looked at the things it saw as trouble. I tried a bunch of
IPCONFIG things and things of that nature but had no luck getting the
management software to install on my laptop. Grrrr. Tried rebooting
the server. Tried rebooting the laptop.

As I had another system sitting right next to the server, I decided to
try installing the software on that one and low and behold it
installed and ran right away. Had no problem finding the server. I was
able to assign the main system password and set up a couple user
accounts and got ths system started backing up that system. The backup
didn't take too long, but it died at some point before it finished and
told me that there was a potential problem with one of the two hard
drives on that system and that I should run chkdsk /f on it. Great!
So after some cursing I got working on that. And while the check disk
was running I installed the client software on another PC. That one
installed without any problem either and I got a backup going on it
right away. That backup finished successfully and I was feeling better
about the whole deal. Checkdisk finished on the other system
eventually and reported nothing that it couldn't fix, so after I got
it booted back up again I restarted that backup there and it ran OK
that time.

I decided to have another go at the laptop and was still not able to
get it to install that client peice. I even tried to install the
software FROM the server itself which it could see and map a drive to
and that didn't work either. It got to just before the installation
should have been complete and it died.

I then installed the software on my main system - a Windows Vista
system and it installed there without any issues and I got the backup
run there successfully too.

I still have my wifes laptop to try the client install and backup on
before I try it on my own laptop once more. I think i will try it
using the regular wireless netowrk connection on her system.

The nightly backups ran fine on two of those three systems last night
although it failed on the third - the same system that I was told to
do the checkdisk on. Upon further investigation I found that Windows
Update had caused a reboot on that system last night and it evidently
happened while the backup was running. It was sitting at the select
user reboot screen this morning and after I got it booted up I
restarted the backup and it worked just fine.

At this point I haven't done any of the other things that I can use
this server for - sharing ITUNES music, allowing remote access to
other systems, and I don't even remember what else all it can do for
me. My main interest is in it's backup capabilities. I now have my 3
desktops all backed up but I still have the two laptops to get backed
up.

The server itself is very quiet. MUCH quieter than the other PC that
is sitting right next to it. I determined that this morning after I
shut down that system after getting it successfully backed up. It's
about half the height of a normal tower system and about 2/3 the
depth. Kind of cute actually ;-)  I know that's important to a lot of
people.

So at this early stage other than the one install issue I am having
with the laptop I am pretty happy with it. Of the 1.5 Terrabytes of
disk it has, it said that 1.2 terrabytes were still free after backing
up the 2 Windows XP Pro desktops and the one Vista Home Premium
Desktop.

I'll tell you more when I have more to tell.

-- 
Gary Kjos
garykjos at gmail.com