Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Tue Jan 1 02:15:57 CST 2008
Hi Gary: What I have heard about MS Home Server is that it is not ready for prime time yet: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/31/home_server/ and... http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&arti cleId=9054178 My understanding is that MS is working full-time on getting the fixes in place but I myself will wait until it gets a clean bill of health before recommending it to clients. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gary Kjos Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 9:15 AM To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues Subject: [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 _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com