Windows Home Server 2020: What It Is and How to Use It

Microsoft's original Windows Home Server was both crude and groundbreaking. When information technology debuted, it had limited hardware livelihood, no 64-bit version, and weak built-in capabilities beyond file and app storage. On the other hand, it offered robust backup, reasonable security, and aim extender–a feature that easy the tasks of adding and pooling hard drives.

Because the original WHS was reinforced along an older server platform, an update was unavoidable. Windows Home Waiter 2020 has immediately arrived, and with it a bevy of new features–and one key feature of the older version removed. Let's protrude by looking at why WHS 2020 is a good fit for your home-server needs.

64-bit functionality: Windows Menage Server 2020 is 64-bit solely, but it's a receive raise from 32-bit. Using 64-scra addressing lets you add more 4GB of RAM.

With the original WHS, having a lot of RAM wasn't particularly useful. In fact, several retail WHS boxes shipped with every bit little as 512MB of RAM, and 1GB was the norm. That prototypic Home Server wasn't very worthy for continual apps remotely. Eventually, interesting plugins became accessible–like Servio, which enabled WHS to be a better media host.

Best media server: Windows Home Server 2020 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's now a DLNA 1.5-compliant server, import that DLNA-capable client devices rear end connect to a WHS system set up as a media server. As more HDTVs, A/V receivers, and other similar national lepton devices ship with built-in DLNA client capability, combining a robust media host and a robust PC server in one box becomes increasingly useful.

The original WHS didn't ingest this capability built-in, so various media host plug-ins were among the most popular WHS plug-ins available. But those aren't needed any longer (though some Crataegus oxycantha have additive features beyond those in WHS 2020.)

Windows 7 HomeGroups: You send away attention deficit disorder a WHS 2020 box to your HomeGroup, which makes share-out files and printers much easier. The only drawback is that there's setting up shares in this way results in a little granularity. You can stimulate read access, full get at, or No access.

Easier login direction: Logging in to the first release of WHS was something of a chore. You could make things easier by victimisation the same characters for your system login and for your account login on the server, and and then enabling auto-logon happening your PC. But stage setting up that agreement on quintuple PCs was tedious and created a security measur risk.

WHS 2020 uses an external application, the Dashboard, to separate PC logins from Windows Home Host logins. This allows you to induce no login on your desktop PC while maintaining secure entree to the server.

Easier server direction: Managing the first WHS wasn't especially rocky, but you always had to work through and through a single, modal screen. With 2020, you get full support for Windows on your desktop on remotely. I ran Windows Update on the server from my desktop PC, and it looked just as it would have got if I were running play Windows Update on my local PC.

Why Non Use WHS 2020?

If you'atomic number 75 comfortably using the current version of Windows Home Server, is upgrading to the new version worth the inevitable annoyance of allowance? The answer depends happening different things:

The importance you bond to the new features
The stage of upgrade pain you're uncoerced to live with
The usefulness to you of Drive Extender

Our assumption here is that you've either reinforced your own WHS box or are a current drug user of a retail WHS system.

Drive Extender: The one Brobdingnagian have that Microsoft dropped from WHS 2020 is Drive Extender. That decision has generated reams of complaints from heavy WHS interlingual rendition 1 users.

Cause Extender pooled multiple hard drives into a single large bulk. It wasn't RAID–there was atomic number 102 computer hardware redundance, and no improvement in performance. Essentially it was just a mode to minimize the hassle of adding hard drives, which didn't have to be the same sized, and of managing multiple disk volumes. But IT made building huge volumes easy; and if you canned a wad of media, that could cost a big deal.

Though Drive Extender didn't make up hardware redundance as much (nor Foray into 1, for example), you could narrow duplication for shared folders, and the software would replicate folders on classify drives. That capability simplified the job of adding external drives and configuring them as part of the system.

So if you'Re married to Drive Extender, you might non want to transmigrate to WHS 2020.

The good news is that third parties are stepping into the fray. The site wegotserved.com reports that at least three third-party drive extender drivers will cost available for WHS 2020.

Upgrade pain: If you've been using WHS 1, and you've fully configured information technology with plugins for helping up media, home-power direction, and some other features, you may be in No hurriedness to migrate. That's because upgrades to WHS 2020 from the creative aren't spearhead-shaped.

There is no clean rise way of life from WHS 1 to WHS 2020 because the first version of WHS is a 32-bit OS while WHS 2020 is 64-bit. Upgrading entails performing a antiseptic install of the OS onto the system.

This procedure is a little tricky with extant hardware. A number of retail WHS systems were built around Intel Corpuscle CPUs, and numerous of them didn't support 64-bit addressing, which means that they can ne'er be upgraded to WHS 2020. The program requires 64-number support in the CPU.

If you have a 64-bit-capable CPU, you'll have to back all your data, then install WHS 2020, and then restore the high-backed-up information. Information technology's time overwhelming and tedious if you take a lot endowed in your current installation.

Now that we understand some of the pros and cons, let's walk of life through a WHS 2020 installation. This is not an upgrade, but a new install. I've got an existing WHS version 1 box, that I'll eventually phase outgoing, merely this makes upgrading to the new system middling easier, since I can skip the championship step.

Initial Setup

The hardware utilised for this initiation is built around a Zotac mini-ITX motherboard with an Intel Core i3 530 CPU and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. The system of rules lacks a DVD drive, so we used a Samsung external USB optical drive to handle the installation. This meant making sure that the organisation BIOS was set up additionally from the USB drive.

The system housed a single unformatted 2TB Western Digital GreenPower drive. The entire appendage went smoothly at the beginning, and if you've ever run Windows Setup, you South Korean won't find much diametrical in the Windows Home Server everyday. But we strike a tear at the end of the automated process: The organisation didn't have a built-in driver for the gigabit ethernet controller. That missing ingredient generated an fault message, which resulted in a bring up, which led to the same problem and mistake message. In truncate, Windows Setup had entered an infinite closed circuit.

Escaping this catch-22 is simple. After completing the 'Preparing Desktop' phase, you'll see the 'configuring Windows' block out with a progress bar; at that orient, simply weigh Ctrl-AL-Delete, open the project manager, and kill the setup process. Windows testament unceremoniously dump you to the background, at which point you hind end install the chipset and the meshwork drivers. Unlike in the Windows 7 setup, installing chipset drivers didn't require a bring up.

For United States of America, after that little gotcha, the remainder of the installation treat went smoothly. Windows Home Server 2020 configures a unique drive into two partitions: a comparatively small boot partition, and a larger information drive. Now information technology's time to configure the first customer Personal computer, which will also be the main waiter management console.

Configuring a Client

You no longer need to use a 400 Oregon a thumb drive to configure a customer, though you canful certainly set a system up using a Candela if you want to. Instead, bring ascending a browser and type the following URL:

http://<homeservername>/plug in

replacing <homeservername> with the name that you assigned to the host during frame-up. You'll download the WHS connector installer, and then black market information technology.

If you have auto logon designed, you'll be prompted to revert to login-required mode. You don't have to search around for this; the WHS connector app bequeath launch IT for you. At that point, you'll induce to reboot, so unravel the connection frame-up app again.

Launching pad is separate from Dashboard, so you can have antithetical logins than your background system uses.

Once the WHS connector is installed, you'll run the Launchpad app. The first fourth dimension you make out this, you actually run the Windows Home Server dashboard. After you've set rising WHS, Launch pad and Dashboard are two different animals. You should set upward a user account that is non the same as the system decision maker account, and give it a different password. This will admit you to process just with your ain file cabinet shares. You can always launch Dashboard from Launch pad.

The new admin Splasher for WHS 2020 looks much like the old one and only.

This separation of the WHS user login, your topical scheme login, and the WHS server admin login simplifies matters considerably. You no more pauperization a guest login if you're dealing with a simple home meshwork where you trust each your sept members–but sometimes it's best to cost cautious.

You'll also wishing to configure global host settings, which we will talk over below three headings.

Configuring the streaming quality depends along your CPU performance.

Media server and media flowing capabilities: The tricky component here is to digit out streaming quality, which depends on the performance of your CPU; unfortunately, figuring out which setting to use is difficult. If you click on the 'Lowborn processors and the profiles that they hold' link, you'll engender a Web page that tells you which Windows See C.P.U. Index is suitable for which quality level. Merely you suffer no separate clues, since WHS 2020 doesn't implement WEI. Instead, the refrence page suggests that you "find a system that's running the same CPU and use that WEI." That advice is about as dumb as it seems. If you'rhenium victimization a Core i3 or better, you tooshie believably safely adjust the setting to 'Best'.

WHS 2020 fanny be part of a Windows 7 HomeGroup.

HomeGroup setup for Windows 7 users: Whol this means is that you add the WHS system to your Windows HomeGroup, which simplifies access to the server.

You rear end wont your own demesne name, but your prize of domain epithet registrars is limited.

Far access: You no longer have to use the Microsoft homeserver site, though you can use it if you the likes of. If you have a domain of your have, you can piddle the WHS system piece of that for remote access, just your choice of domain name providers is noncomprehensive to GoDaddy.com and eNomCentral.com. If your domain isn't registered with one of those providers, you'll feature to transfer your domain name to them in order to use up it.

Assumptive that you have other node PCs to configure, you'll need to placed those heavenward next; but with your newly acquired get, you should possess zero problems doing that.

You'll require a separate account for each user.

The side by side thing you need to manage is set off upfield user accounts of each person on your home network. This is a pretty simple job, and it should take very little time on each system that you install the WHS connector package on. Note that WHS 2020 now defaults to weak passwords, so if you require stronger passwords, you'll have to change the insurance.

Backups

One key feature of Windows Home Server is its backup capacity. You bathroom set backup schedules, specialise which files and folders to back up, and start backups manually as needed. If you need divergent backup configurations from the default one, you must make those changes via Dashboard. Individual users cannot make changes to their own backup policies through Launchpad.

You configure backups from the Splasher.

Since WHS 2020 doesn't support GPT partitioned drives, you can't use the newer 3TB severely drives unless you possess a special driver. Your client system rear end use GPT drives, which you bathroom back up on a file-aside-file basis, but restoring files to the GPT volume appears not to equal implemented. As a upshot, you'll have to copy to an intermediate volume first.

That pretty some covers all of the steps up to their necks in performing a basic WHS installation and configuration. You may have to do more for your exceptional installing–for good example, you may have to point DLNA clients to the new server, surgery find tot up-Immigration and Naturalization Service (such as the tierce-party tug replacements add-ins). At this point, though, you have all of the basics set up and ready to go.