I will be featuring Windows Home Server on The Media Center Show and interviewing some of the Microsoft Team. So what do you want to know about Windows home Server?
Post your questions and will do my best to find out the answers on the show
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I'm most interested in the redundant storage capabilities, in particular how it actually works and why they chose not to use an existing standard such as RAID.
Don't get me wrong....I'm not dismissing the product because it "doesn't use RAID"; I'd just like some insight into the benefits / differences over building your own storage server using existing, mature storage technologies.
I personally have been tossing up a bunch of different options for a home file server; such as various dedicated NAS devices, versus a lean-and-mean Linux box, versus a rackmount Windows Storage Server box etc. When I first heard about Windows Home Server, it was instantly added to my list of possible candidates.
From what I understand, the storage pool in a Windows Home Server is more akin to a "poor-man's SAN", in that there are no volumes, drive letters, partitions etc.. it's just one big pool of storage that is managed logically at the folder level, and physically at the block level (ie. if you want mirroring for example, you don't mirror 'drive A' and 'drive B' like in RAID1; but rather you say 'mirror this folder' and the storage subsystem knows which blocks on which disks to use to protect against a single drive failure). I do like the idea of being able to slide in a new drive and it automatically becomes part of the available storage pool; rather than having to rebuild arrays, assign drive letters and so on.
I'm also interested in how it fits (or doesn't fit) into Active Directory / Windows Domains. I recall from one interview you did recently that the server synchronises user accounts across various machines, but I wasn't sure if this meant that you could use the WHS as a kind of cut-down domain controller (to avoid having to create a local login on every box in your home network)?
It's certainly an interesting product, so any information you can glean from the MS team would be well received.
I want to know as much as possible, i.e., everything. Here is a short list of what I want to know about:
Thanks for setting this up.
Great questions!
Keep them coming!
Oh, and I just remembered....the other thing I really like about WHS is the single-instance storage technology (lifted from Windows Storage Server).
When the server backs up each of the machines on the network each night, it only stores one physical copy of each unique file on the network (the perfect example is the OS itself...each machine has the same OS installed, so there's no point in storing multiple copies of the same system files).
In WSS, it works sort of like a Unix symbolic link (with a bit of a twist): If you copy a file to the server (eg. \\server\iandixon\foo.exe), then I copy the same file to the server (eg. \\server\\scotto\foo.exe), my copy doesn't actually get written to the disk...I just get a link to yours. WSS knows that your foo.exe and my foo.exe are the same file by running through a series of checks, doing the most efficient ones first (eg. comparing file size is a fast operation, and if the file sizes are different then it clearly not the same file), followed by more expensive ones (eg. hashing the same chunk of data from both files and comparing the hashes).
More importantly, if either of us make a change to our respective 'copies' of the file; the change doesn't automatically apply to both of us like it would if it were a symbolic link, but rather the link between us simply gets broken and the changed copy is written out to the disk (so now there truly is two copies of the file on disk, but only because they're no longer the same file).
All of this is managed by the server and is transparent to the users. When you consider that a good majority of what gets backed up each night is the same from machine to machine, this can add up to a huge saving in disk capacity.
I guess my main concern/interest in WHS is just like Scott0. Since Microsoft’s redundancy technology is completely new then I by default would have no confidence in it. We need to know more about it. How does it compare to RAID? I could care less how it works, I just need the confidence that it’s as dependable as RAID when it comes to hard disk failure and disaster recovery. As we all know your hard disks WILL FAIL, it’s just a matter of time. A Home Server this large cannot be backed up anywhere else so my entire collection of digital media, my memories, and my livelihood for that matter must be protected. I would have trouble trusting that media to such a new (and yet unproven) redundancy technology.
Also I would love to get my pulse on what the developers have in mind for the future of the Home Server. I hope they would like (as I) to turn the Home Server into a Media Center server as well (complete with networked tuners). That would help me eliminate one computer from ‘my collection’ since my Media Center PC is a dedicated machine, and the Home Server would add yet another.
I would be very keen to know if this includes a "windows terminal server" system that allows more than one client connection and also allows for video over thin client. video over thin client must be possible (after all thats what the xbox 360 uses - ever seen the MCX1 user!?)
I love the idea of having one noisey PC stuck up in the loft and then a selection of media centre extenders (for the 10 foot interface) and a slection of wireless thin client devices that provide the 2 foot interface.
I have done something similar with a hack thats avaiable for XP SP2 (microsoft released the dll hack back when they where testing sp2 for xp by accident).
I think the main reason why you would want a "server" at home is for the whole family to be able to access their own desktop, data etc from whichever machine they walk up to and start using without having multiple PCs all around the house.
I'd love to know if you can drag anything out of them about integration with Live. (I doubt you'll be able)
I know it includes some flavor of Windows Media Connect. I'd like to know if its an existing version, new version, etc. and what it enables (can I stream content directly to my Media Center Extender? Or do I still need my Media Center to act as the middle man?)
As is already mentioned by a few, I'm very interested in their "non-RAID" redundancy. It seems to peanut butter usable space across all drives in the system. If that's truly the case, is there going to be any way to restrict content to certain "ratings" of drives? (for instance, if I have transport stream of 1080p content I most likely don't want it stored on an external USB drive)
Support for third party services running on the box is amazing! I can't believe they're opening up the platform like that. Kudos to the whole team.
>> I know it includes some flavor of Windows Media Connect.
I agree ask for more details about the media connect feature. I would personally like to have the home server loaded up with large hard drives and have it store all recorded TV. Any integration with media center PCs to move content to the Home Server?
I remember hearing that Home Server will be able to check the security status of networked PCs (like Security Center in Windows XP). For enterprise customers there is a feature called SUS that can help manage patches and security updates you would normally get from Windows Updates. Instead of each computer going to Microsoft, meaning downloading many copies of the same files, they can instead be downloaded once to a server and all the computers get it from that instead. Will that feature be available in Home Server? Here is a link that better describes the feature:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updateservices/default.mspx
I have recoreded the interview and its going out on Thursday and I asked most of them.
Listen to the show for details
1) No Media Center UI
2) No, and you can hear why
3) No, I did discus it
4) Todd expains why RAID is not used