How To Configure Windows Home Server 2011
Microsoft's original Windows Habitation Server was both crude and groundbreaking. When it debuted, it had limited hardware support, no 64-bit version, and weak built-in capabilities beyond file and app storage. On the other mitt, it offered robust backup, reasonable security, and drive extender–a feature that simplified the tasks of adding and pooling hard drives.
Because the original WHS was built on an older server platform, an update was inevitable. Windows Home Server 2011 has at present arrived, and with information technology a bevy of new features–and one key characteristic of the older version removed. Let'southward commencement by looking at why WHS 2011 is a good fit for your dwelling-server needs.
64-bit functionality: Windows Dwelling house Server 2011 is 64-chip but, but it's a welcome upgrade from 32-bit. Using 64-fleck addressing lets y'all add more than than 4GB of RAM.
With the original WHS, having a lot of RAM wasn't specially useful. In fact, some retail WHS boxes shipped with every bit footling equally 512MB of RAM, and 1GB was the norm. That first Home Server wasn't very suitable for running apps remotely. Eventually, interesting plugins became available–like Servio, which enabled WHS to be a improve media server.
Better media server: Windows Dwelling house Server 2011 has robust media transcoding and streaming capabilities, and it supports a wide range of codecs–AAC, AVCHD, DivX, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV, and more. It'south now a DLNA 1.5-compliant server, meaning that DLNA-capable client devices tin can connect to a WHS system set up every bit a media server. As more HDTVs, A/5 receivers, and other similar home electronic devices ship with built-in DLNA client adequacy, combining a robust media server and a robust PC server in i box becomes increasingly useful.
The original WHS didn't have this capability congenital-in, so diverse media server plug-ins were among the almost popular WHS plug-ins available. Only those aren't needed any longer (though some may have additional features beyond those in WHS 2011.)
Windows 7 HomeGroups: You can add a WHS 2011 box to your HomeGroup, which makes sharing files and printers much easier. The only drawback is that there's setting upwards shares in this fashion results in a picayune granularity. You tin have read access, total admission, or no access.
Easier login management: Logging in to the offset release of WHS was something of a chore. You could make things easier by using the same characters for your system login and for your business relationship login on the server, and and so enabling auto-logon on your PC. But setting upward that arrangement on multiple PCs was tedious and created a security risk.
WHS 2011 uses an external application, the Dashboard, to separate PC logins from Windows Home Server logins. This allows you to have no login on your desktop PC while maintaining secure access to the server.
Easier server management: Managing the get-go WHS wasn't specially difficult, just yous e'er had to piece of work through a single, modal screen. With 2011, yous become total support for windows on your desktop connected remotely. I ran Windows Update on the server from my desktop PC, and it looked just equally it would take if I were running Windows Update on my local PC.
Why Not Use WHS 2011?
If you lot're comfortably using the current version of Windows Home Server, is upgrading to the new version worth the inevitable pain of adjustment? The answer depends on several things:
-
The importance yous adhere to the new features
-
The level of upgrade pain you're willing to live with
-
The usefulness to you of Drive Extender
Our assumption hither is that you've either built your own WHS box or are a current user of a retail WHS system.
Bulldoze Extender: The ane huge feature that Microsoft dropped from WHS 2011 is Bulldoze Extender. That determination has generated reams of complaints from heavy WHS version 1 users.
Drive Extender pooled multiple hard drives into a single large book. Information technology wasn't RAID–there was no hardware back-up, and no improvement in functioning. Essentially it was just a way to minimize the hassle of adding difficult drives, which didn't have to be the same size, and of managing multiple disk volumes. But it made building huge volumes piece of cake; and if you recorded a lot of media, that could be a big bargain.
Though Drive Extender didn't create hardware redundancy equally such (nor RAID 1, for example), yous could specify duplication for shared folders, and the software would replicate folders on separate drives. That adequacy simplified the chore of adding external drives and configuring them as part of the organization.
Then if you're wedded to Drive Extender, you might non desire to migrate to WHS 2011.
The expert news is that third parties are stepping into the fray. The site wegotserved.com reports that at to the lowest degree 3 tertiary-party drive extender drivers will be available for WHS 2011.
Upgrade pain: If you've been using WHS 1, and you've fully configured it with plugins for serving upwards media, home-power direction, and other features, y'all may be in no hurry to drift. That's because upgrades to WHS 2011 from the original aren't simple.
At that place is no clean upgrade path from WHS one to WHS 2011 considering the first version of WHS is a 32-flake Os while WHS 2011 is 64-fleck. Upgrading entails performing a clean install of the OS onto the system.
This procedure is a niggling tricky with existing hardware. A number of retail WHS systems were built around Intel Cantlet CPUs, and many of them didn't support 64-fleck addressing, which means that they tin can never exist upgraded to WHS 2011. The program requires 64-bit back up in the CPU.
If y'all have a 64-bit-capable CPU, you'll take to support all your data, then install WHS 2011, and so restore the backed-up data. It's time consuming and tedious if you have a lot invested in your current installation.
At present that nosotros empathise some of the pros and cons, let'southward walk through a WHS 2011 installation. This is non an upgrade, just a new install. I've got an existing WHS version 1 box, that I'll eventually phase out, only this makes upgrading to the new system somewhat easier, since I tin can skip the backup footstep.
Initial Setup
The hardware used for this installation is built around a Zotac mini-ITX motherboard with an Intel Cadre i3 530 CPU and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. The system lacks a DVD bulldoze, and then we used a Samsung external USB optical drive to handle the installation. This meant making sure that the organization BIOS was gear up upward to kick from the USB drive.
The system housed a single unformatted 2TB Western Digital GreenPower drive. The entire procedure went smoothly at the beginning, and if y'all've ever run Windows Setup, you won't notice much different in the Windows Abode Server routine. Merely we hit a snag at the stop of the automated process: The system didn't have a built-in driver for the gigabit ethernet controller. That missing ingredient generated an error bulletin, which resulted in a reboot, which led to the aforementioned problem and mistake message. In curt, Windows Setup had entered an infinite loop.
Escaping this grab-22 is simple. After completing the 'Preparing Desktop' phase, you'll come across the 'configuring Windows' screen with a progress bar; at that bespeak, but press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, open the task manager, and impale the setup process. Windows will unceremoniously dump you to the desktop, at which bespeak you can install the chipset and the network drivers. Unlike in the Windows 7 setup, installing chipset drivers didn't require a reboot.
For us, later that little gotcha, the rest of the installation process went smoothly. Windows Home Server 2011 configures a single drive into 2 partitions: a relatively small-scale boot sectionalization, and a larger information drive. Now it's time to configure the first customer PC, which will as well exist the chief server management console.
Configuring a Customer
Y'all no longer demand to utilise a CD or a thumb drive to configure a client, though you can certainly set a system up using a CD if you want to. Instead, bring up a browser and type the following URL:
http://<homeservername>/connect
replacing <homeservername> with the name that you assigned to the server during setup. You'll download the WHS connector installer, and then run it.
If you have machine logon configured, you lot'll be prompted to revert to login-required manner. Yous don't have to search around for this; the WHS connector app will launch it for you lot. At that indicate, y'all'll have to reboot, and then run the connector setup app again.
In one case the WHS connector is installed, you'll run the Launchpad app. The first time yous do this, yous really run the Windows Home Server dashboard. After you've set up WHS, Launchpad and Dashboard are ii unlike animals. Yous should set upwards a user account that is non the aforementioned equally the organisation administrator business relationship, and give it a dissimilar countersign. This will permit you to piece of work just with your ain file shares. You can always launch Dashboard from Launchpad.
This separation of the WHS user login, your local system login, and the WHS server admin login simplifies matters considerably. Y'all no longer need a customer login if you're dealing with a simple dwelling house network where you trust all your family members–just sometimes information technology's all-time to exist cautious.
You'll as well desire to configure global server settings, which nosotros volition hash out under three headings.
Media server and media streaming capabilities: The tricky part here is to figure out streaming quality, which depends on the performance of your CPU; unfortunately, figuring out which setting to apply is difficult. If y'all click on the 'Common processors and the profiles that they back up' link, yous'll get a Web page that tells y'all which Windows Experience CPU Index is suitable for which quality level. But you lot get no other clues, since WHS 2011 doesn't implement WEI. Instead, the refrence page suggests that you "find a system that'due south running the same CPU and use that WEI." That advice is nearly as impaired as it seems. If you're using a Core i3 or better, you can probably safely adjust the setting to 'Best'.
HomeGroup setup for Windows 7 users: All this means is that y'all add the WHS arrangement to your Windows HomeGroup, which simplifies access to the server.
Remote access: You no longer have to use the Microsoft homeserver site, though you can use it if yous like. If you have a domain of your own, you can make the WHS system office of that for remote admission, but your selection of domain proper name providers is express to GoDaddy.com and eNomCentral.com. If your domain isn't registered with one of those providers, you'll have to transfer your domain name to them in order to use it.
Assuming that y'all have other customer PCs to configure, yous'll need to set those upwardly next; simply with your newly acquired experience, you should have no problems doing that.
The next thing you demand to do is prepare user accounts for each person on your home network. This is a pretty simple job, and it should accept very piffling time on each system that you install the WHS connector software on. Note that WHS 2011 now defaults to weak passwords, then if yous want stronger passwords, you'll have to modify the policy.
Backups
One fundamental characteristic of Windows Home Server is its backup capability. You tin fix backup schedules, specify which files and folders to back up, and start backups manually equally needed. If yous need dissimilar fill-in configurations from the default one, you lot must make those changes via Dashboard. Private users cannot brand changes to their own backup policies through Launchpad.
Since WHS 2011 doesn't back up GPT partitioned drives, yous can't apply the newer 3TB hard drives unless you have a special driver. Your client arrangement can use GPT drives, which you can support on a file-by-file basis, only restoring files to the GPT book appears non to exist implemented. As a outcome, you'll have to copy to an intermediate book beginning.
That pretty much covers all of the steps involved in performing a basic WHS installation and configuration. You may have to do more for your item installation–for example, you may accept to betoken DLNA clients to the new server, or detect add-ins (such equally the 3rd-party drive replacements add-ins). At this point, though, yous have all of the basics set up and gear up to become.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/491760/windows_home_server_2011_what_it_is_and_how_to_use_it.html
Posted by: lopeznectur53.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How To Configure Windows Home Server 2011"
Post a Comment