Deep Dive: Windows Home Server Features (part 1) - PC Backup and Restore, Document and Media Sharing

1. PC Backup and Restore

With the advent of Windows Home Server, Microsoft now offers multiple levels of backup protection to Windows users. Windows 7 features the Backup and Restore control panel, for image-based backup of the entire PC as well as more typical file backup. Windows 7 also includes Previous Versions, a way to retrieve older versions of documents and other files directly from the file system, as well as tools such as System Restore.

Windows Home Server offers another level of backup protection via its PC Backup functionality. This Windows Home Server feature provides a centralized backup solution that applies to all of the PCs on your home network (up to 10 PCs). Sure, you could individually configure a Windows 7 Backup on each PC, but Windows Home Server is a better solution because the backups are stored in a more logical place—the headless "back room" Home Server—and because it reduces the required hard drive space by not creating duplicate copies of files that haven't changed.

Windows Home Server Backup provides two basic services: it backs up the entire PC and then performs incremental backups on a daily basis going forward, enabling you to restore your computer to a previous state using a Computer Restore CD that's included with the server. It also provides a way to access and restore individual files and folders, similar to the way Previous Versions works on the local system.

This interface is a bit hard to find. Open the Windows Home Server Console and navigate to the Computers & Backup tab. Then, right-click the computer whose backups you'd like to access and choose View Backups. The dialog shown in Figure 1 will appear.

Figure 1. You can view all of the backups associated with a particular PC.

To access backed-up files from a specific date, choose the date from the list at the top and then click Open. If the backup contains files backed up from two or more drives or partitions, you'll be prompted to pick one. Then, Windows Home Server will open the backup—a process that can take a few minutes depending on the size of the backup—and provide a standard Explorer window, like that shown in Figure 2.

From here, you can navigate around the virtual file system of the backup, find the files you need, and drag and drop them onto your PC as you would any other files. When you close this special Explorer window, the connection with the backup is lost.

Figure 2. Backup sets can be navigated using a standard Windows Explorer window.

2. PC and Server Health Monitoring

Windows Home Server includes health monitoring, both for the server itself and all of the connected PCs. The overall health of the entire network—the home server and all of the connected clients—is optionally communicated via the Windows Home Server Connector icon that appears in the notification area of any connected PCs. If it's green, all is well; yellow indicates a risk; red is a critical problem; and blue means that the PC is being backed up.

Windows Home Server monitors several things to determine overall health. On the server, it monitors the integrity and free space of the attached hard drives (both internal and external). On the PC clients, it monitors backups to ensure they're proceeding without problems, and, on Vista systems in particular, it integrates with Windows Security Center to ensure that each PC is up-to-date with anti-virus and other security controls. That way, you know when a PC elsewhere in the house is behind on updating its security features and can take proactive steps to correct the situation.

Notifications, which appear when there are issues, can be annoying, as anyone who has used Windows OneCare or similar notification-based security software will know, but individual users can elect to just turn off tray-based health notifications, which isn't a bad idea for all the non-administrators in the house (that is, everyone else in your family).

3. Document and Media Sharing

While it's relatively simple to share content with HomeGroups or even create a shared folder manually on a Windows 7 PC, Windows Home Server builds on this basic functionality in a number of ways. From a general standpoint, a server is an ideal place to store file archives of any kind, though this may be a foreign concept to many consumers currently. Though we had both been using Windows Server–based servers for years at home, we switched over entirely to Windows Home Server when the product first shipped in late 2007. It's a product we both use and recommend, for its simplicity, functionality, and extensibility.

From a file-sharing perspective, Windows Home Server works like any Windows-based machine. It includes a number of prebuilt shares, such as Music, Photos, Public, Software, and Videos, and it creates a default share for each user you create (at \\home-server\users\username by default). These shares have standard rights associated with them, so whereas even a guest has read access to the Public folder, only a user who was explicitly given the correct credentials can access any share with Full rights. The UI for configuring this is far simpler than what's available in Windows 7, and you can, of course, add other shared folders if you wish. To do so, just navigate to the Shared Folders tab in the Windows Home Server Console and click the Add toolbar button.

Windows Home Server isn't just about simplicity. In addition to making it very easy to access and control access to whatever is available on the server, Windows Home Server also includes a unique and innovative approach to disk storage. Instead of using the arcane drive letter layout that still hobbles Windows 7 today, any hard drive you connect to Windows Home Server is added to the pool of available storage, and you don't need to deal with any disk management arcana. Just plug in the drive, external or internal, navigate to Server Storage, right-click it, and choose Add.

In a nice nod to future expansion, Windows Home Server will work with as much storage as you can throw at it, and it's basically limited only by the USB 2.0, FireWire, ATA, and S-ATA connections on your server. Our Home Server setups both utilize about 4TB of storage, although much of that is used for file duplication.

Indeed, this file duplication functionality is another innovative Windows Home Server feature. Rather than burden users with complicated existing technologies like RAID, Windows Home Server instead supplies a very simple interface that ensures that important files are duplicated across at least two physical drives, so if one drive fails, you won't lose anything critical. Paul has configured Windows Home Server so that all of his digital photos and documents are duplicated in this fashion, for example, while videos are not. File duplication is configured on a per-share basis and is automatic if you have two or more drives connected. You can, however, configure this feature as you will.

Finally, Windows Home Server also makes it easy to remove storage. This way, if you want to disable older, less voluminous storage devices and plug in newer, bigger drives, you can do so without interruption. Windows Home Server first copies whatever data is on the older drives to other drives, and then it removes that drive from the storage pool so you can disconnect it. (Obviously, this requires enough free space on other drives.) It's a brilliant scheme and works as advertised.

NOTE

More important, perhaps, you can also use the Windows 7 Library feature to monitor Windows Home Server–based folder locations alongside those that are available on your local PC. The Windows 7 Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos libraries automatically aggregate content from two locations each on your PC. There's no reason you couldn't also include locations on your Home Server. After all, that's where your content will typically reside anyway.

Here's how: using the Pictures Library as an example, say that you would like this library to monitor a Windows Home Server–based Photos share as well as whatever local folders are already being monitored. To do so, open the Pictures Library and click the locations link under the Pictures Library name in the folder header. This opens the Pictures Library Locations window. Click Add to add a new location. Then, browse to your Home Server's Photos share on the network and click Include folder. Then, click the OK button to close the Pictures Library locations window.

Now, as shown in Figure 3, you can see that the Pictures Library is monitoring three locations: the My Pictures and Public Pictures folders on your local PC, and the Photos share on your Home Server.

Figure 3. Windows Home Server can integrate nicely with Windows 7.