MSWHS - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server

By Philip Churchill on March 28th, 2012

Differences Between SBS 2011 Essentials and Standard Edition

As you are probably aware Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 Essentials is very similar to WHS 2011 in some respects but do you know the differences between SBS 2011 Essentials and the standard version of SBS 2011?

If not then we have the following chart available for you which should give you some of the answers.

* Hyper-V role is not available for SBS 2011 Standard or Essentials, however is supported through the Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on.
(1) SBS 2011 must own the Active Directory FSMO roles, additional Domain Controllers and member servers are supported.
# Time limited migration domain join available

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By Philip Churchill on March 27th, 2012

RAID Calculator v1.04

ServeTheHome have created a RAID calculator which is great for you to find out the usable capacity of say RAID 1 versus RAID 5.

The calculator currently at version 1 will give you the usable capacity for a given configuration by calculating approximate array features. Future versions will include mean time to data loss calculations, ZFS RAID levels plus support for Windows Home Server V1′s drive extender and Windows 8′s storage spaces.

You can find the ServerTheHome RAID Calculator here.

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By Philip Churchill on March 27th, 2012

Setup a VPN for WHS 2011

TheDigitalMediaZone has a post on how to setup a VPN for Windows Home Server 2011:

“Windows Home Server allows you remote access to your files and some limited functionality related to managing the server. Out of the box there is no notion of being able to remote desktop into your home desktop, laptop or HTPC. Since WHS2011 is built upon Windows Server 2008R2 you can get at some of the functional bits under the hood to enable VPN among other more advanced server features. It seems a lot of people have given up and install something like LogMeIn or their LogMeIn Hamachi, which are fantastic in their own right, but these features are built into Windows Home Server.”

By following this post you will be able to log into your home network as if you were sitting there connected to your home Wifi router. And as the author states "You can remote into any machine and do whatever you want without worrying about that pesky RDP security vulnerability that was uncovered recently."

A great post to get VPN setup for WHS 2011, which you can find here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 26th, 2012

Video: Creating a Stripe and a Mirror in Storage Spaces

Mike Faucher has another video for us, and this one explains how to setup a mirror and a stripe in Windows 8 Storage Spaces. These are also referred to as a Two-way or Three-way mirror and resiliency type none in creating a storage space.

Creating a Stripe and a Mirror in Storage Spaces

Tutorial • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 25th, 2012

HP ProLiant MicroServer Build and Bios Mod

A great post on a HP MicroServer N40L build and Bios Modification.

John V. Stutsman goes through his HP MicroServer N40L Build and bios setup which includes flashing a custom bios, installing an SSD and installing Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.

Even if you are going to install Windows Home Server on the HP MicroServer then the article is still worth a read as it has lots of great info for owners of the small MicroServer from HP.

You can read it here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 25th, 2012

Add-In: StableBit DrivePool Build 5933

The Drive Extender type add-in from StableBit has had an update.

StableBit DrivePool build 5933 includes the following small fix:

[D] Alt. stream memory leak plugged.

[D] = Driver was modified (reboot required after update)

More information on StableBit DrivePool can be found here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 24th, 2012

Known Issues Connecting Windows 8 to WHS

if you are using Windows Home Server with Windows 8 then you might encounter the following 2 issues:

The Windows Live ID credential used in Windows 8 is not recognized by Home Server

The Home Server Client Connector setup may not install the OEM client software .This is caused because the Client Connector setup will launch the OEM client software setup package if they are named OEM.msi or OEM_x64.msi and are placed in the same folder of the Windows Home Server Client Connector.

A work around for both issues is available in a TechNet Wiki article, available here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 24th, 2012

More Storage Spaces Testing – Mirroring and Stripe/JBOD

The PC Doc continues his testing of Storage Spaces in Windows 8 by comparing a two drive and three drive Mirror with a Stripe/JBOD

…the mirror seems to be great way to go. It performs pretty well, it is scalable, and of course it provides hardware resiliency (duplication).

More details can be found on Mike’s post which you can find here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 23rd, 2012

Replace Windows Home Server with Windows 8

Paul Thurrott from the Supersite For Windows says replace Windows Home Server with Windows 8.

Paul looks at the similarities between Windows 8 and Windows Home Server in various areas including data redundancy and a single pool of storage, PC backup and restore, server health monitoring, remote access and media sharing.

While Windows Home Server fans such as myself are stressing over the possibility that Microsoft will cancel this solution, it occurs to me that the future needn’t be so uncertain: Windows 8 provides virtually all of the features that make WHS special, while overcoming the issues that made a server in the home a nonstarter for most.

A read for all Home Server enthusiasts, which you can find here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on March 23rd, 2012