Windows Home Server trials and tribulations
For the past few years I’ve been running a Fedora Core 6 box with about 1 TiB of space in it. But the problem is that (1) it’s getting old and I was itching for a format and (2) I noticed that WHS does the whole “drive pool” thing where you can add disks and it auto-RAID 0+1′s it. But I was still unsure about whether it would be a good idea on my 600 MHz K7 processor, 1 GB RAM, old-ass server that I liberated from Tom Keller.
So I had been waiting for the right moment to format and install WHS, but that opportunity didn’t come until my roommate Ken decided to build a 1 TiB server. Seizing the opportunity to transfer all my data, format my server, install WHS and transfer back later, we started building his server at 9 PM on Friday, since the Ohio State game was clogging the roads and keeping us from going to Gumby’s for pizza. One quick build and a Fedora 7 install later (by the way, anyone notice that F7 spans the / directory over all the disks? That’s awesome!) we start the transfer and go off to Gumby’s for our much needed food.
36 hours later the transfer of alll 600 or so GiB is done (that’s what you get with an outdated NIC) and I start the format/install process. Little did I know that the new Seagate HDD I bought for my C:\ drive is older than anticipated, and the noises it was making was starting to frighten me. So I formatted again, and we were off.
WHS is just a normal Server 2003 install, but with some custom software that does all the nifty stuff. So all the functionality of WS2K3 is there if you remote in as Administrator. But you never really need to if you use the WHS console the right way. But since I love futzing about with the innards of my computers, I spend most of the night remoted in and doing stuff. As a note to anyone using the ACARD PCI IDE controller for more IDE capability, it needs to be removed during the install process. Otherwise, the process just hangs. That took me a half hour to figure out.
The package has about 26 updates for a bandwidth-burning total of 66 MB, which take about an hour to install. I followed that with PowerShell, all the drivers, and DU meter. Sine spending my summer in the NYAPP01 server at work, with that DU meter in the corner at all times, I’ve grown fond of seeing what my server is doing at all times.
At the moment, the data is on its way back from holiday on Ken’s server, with the estimate running about 16 hours, and this is all I have to say:
- Slick install process, but a ton of reboots.
- Backing up my PC to a server? I don’t know if I’m ready, but I’ll try it.
- File operations are pretty quick despite the whole drive pool thing, especially on my rig.
- Worth every penny
Besides the general “nift” factor, the drive health reports, on the fly drive pooling, and simple design make this install one of my favorites to date, and the only one I’d leave my FC6 install for.
