Setting up my Windows Home Server

Before leaving for Holland I purchased a copy of Windows Home Server and ordered some hardware. Now that I'm back and all stuff has arrived I can start building the little computer that will backup our home network and store my brother's and my growing music collection.

Hardware

Building your own Windows Home Server can be really cheap: you'll need some really basic hardware components, preferably a low-power processor, an energy efficient power supply and a copy of WHS which recently dropped in price.

Here's a summary of the needed components and what I decided to buy:

Pretty cheap for a quite powerful setup. Theoretically you could spend a bit less settling with a single-core Atom with less RAM (even if RAM is disturbingly cheap in this moment) and less storage space. Anyway, here's the stuff I was happily unpackaging 5 minutes after my return at home:

Putting everything together

Since I decided to recicle a very old computer case to host the WHS, I first started ripping out everything from the case and cleaning it from its archeologically very interesting layers of dust. After a quick pass with a sponge to clean some tough pieces of dirt, I left it to dry in the sun.

Piecing together the new components wasn't as easy as expected: the power supply couldn't be screwed to the case for some reason (the screw holes were displaced by some millimeter) and I had to bend everything in place. The result isn't pretty, but who cares...

The Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard has a Mini-ITX form factor which is somewhat compatible with standard ATX cases (the screw holes are in the same places) but the rear panel is a bit displaced. Again, estetically not very pleasing but it works nonetheless (the server could stay bread boxed for what I care, the only point of enclosing it in a case is to lower the chances of some member of the family walking over it ).

Ready to go.

Software

After a couple of test runs to ensure the system works, I started installing Windows Home Server. The product is actually based on Windows Server 2003 and basically customizes the install, provides the WHS console, adds some advanced features (like software data replication and backup) and... sets a very nice WHS desktop wallpaper.

The installer first sets up the underlying operating system and then installs the rest of WHS. I left the pc doing his work on his own, but I think it rebooted at least three times in the process. After the first boot, you certainly should install all updates available for the server as soon as possible (that is, all standard Windows Server 2003 updates and some specific updates for WHS). The whole procedure can take some time, more or less 2 hours and a half in my case (with several reboots).

OK, now that the server is running, let's focus on the clients that will connect to it.

Installing WHS Connector

Make sure that your Windows Home Server is on the same Windows network as your computers and that each local user of each client computer has a corresponding user account on the server with the same credentials.

In order to install the Connector, dump the bundled CD and simply head to your server's "Software" shared folder on the network (that should be \\HOMESERVER\Software, depending on your installation). You'll find the updated installer in the Connector folder. Strangely, the software cannot be installed as a limited user elevating to superuser in Vista: you must fully log in as Administrator and then install the Connector.

In most cases, if your router supports UPnP you should already be ok and launching the connector will open up the remote WHS console. In my case though, the router didn't handle the DNS requests to "homeserver" correctly and therefore the Connector software was unable to connect to the server. In this case, there may be infinite solutions (especially for more networking-savvy people than me), but I chose the brutal way:

1. Physically log in to your home server (you'll have a keyboard, mouse and monitor attached for the installation anyway) and set its network options to use a static IP, carefully checking that there are no conflicts with your computers already using a static address and the router's DHCP address range).
2. Check if the connection works: ping your home server from one of the clients at its new static IP address.
3. Open up the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file (with a text editor running with elevated privileges) and add an entry for the "homeserver" name. For instance:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

127.0.0.1       localhost
::1             localhost
192.168.1.10	homeserver

4. Now run the ping homeserver command and check whether Windows correctly pings the static IP you defined.

If everything worked your client is now correctly set up to manage the network and to backup itself using the WHS Connector. Just remember to update your hosts file if you ever change the server's address.