[dba-Tech] Storebought WHS

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Jan 1 07:49:21 CST 2008


You will wait for many years then, nothing ever gets a clean bill of health.
Of course recommending it to clients is different from using it yourself.

Back in the dark ages, as Windows XP was being released I read that it had
63 THOUSAND known bugs when they released it.  I am quite sure that it still
has a rather long list of known bugs.  Programming is about discovering the
bugs and fixing them in order of importance.  As we all know here on this
list, you can write an application, test the hell out of it, give it a
"clean bill of health" and then a user does something that you didn't in
testing and your "clean bill of health" goes right down the tube.  So you
fix it, test the hell out of it and release the fixes, then your user does
something else that you never tried and your "clean bill of health" goes
right down the tube.

So when do you begin to use an application?  That said, WHS has not had the
first service pack applied yet, and most of us would not recommend any
software until the early adopters had found the most serious bugs and they
had been fixed.  Since I do not do any editing of files using any of those
programs, and certainly do not edit them directly on the server, this bug
does not apparently effect me.  ;-)

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 3:16 AM
To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Storebought WHS

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




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