A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
WHS as a Webserver/Gateway/Everything Else
The final major task of WHS is to act as a webserver and gateway computer to the internet. Many people want to be able to access their files outside of their private network and WHS offers the ability to get this done and more.
As we mentioned previously, WHS comes with a very locked down version of IIS 6.0 as the webserver software. Enthusiasts looking to use a WHS server as a full-fledged webserver will be disappointed to find that out of the box the webserver abilities are limited to a web interface of some of the previously mentioned features of WHS. While we'd imagine this is quite possible to work around, it's not something that can be done inside of the WHS console.
In this respect, most of the webserver abilities of WHS are mentionable for being unmentionable. When the remote access option is enabled (it's disabled by default) accounts that have been flagged as having the rights to use remote access and are using a strong password may log into the web server. The entire transaction is encrypted, which as of this point is actually problematic because the security certificate doesn't (and can't) match the server, throwing up certificate warnings when attempting to log in. Since we're using the release candidate, we're not sure how this affects the release version at this point.
Once logged in, a user is presented with a few options. The first and most useful of these is accessing all the shared folders that user has access to. This entails both uploading and downloading of files via an HTML interface, basically replicating the feature set available as if it were done via a Windows share. While this is a useful feature we also feel Microsoft has missed a massive chance to do more with webserver access of the shared folders. For example, why not make the Photos folder a special photo gallery folder where photos can be viewed and manipulated as they can with other internet photo gallery services? It would certainly make sharing photos with the relatives easier.
The other ability users gain when logged in is using the WHS server as a fully HTTPS-encapsulated gateway for RDP. With the right passwords, users can log into the RDP console interface for the server itself, or the server can relay RDP controls to any clients on the network that are connected to the server and capable of acting as an RDP server (some versions of XP and Vista). We're a bit at odds with this second feature because it's so strange. It makes sense to offer RDP access to the server itself for management of the server and the network, but we don't immediately see the utility of being able to RDP into everything else. Certainly it's a nifty feature and we'll keep it, but we don't see it being very useful to all but a handful of users. How many people actually run a version of Windows that's RDP-server capable, after all?
This also brings up the security aspect of the remote access feature, which is something that can't be easily dismissed. The fact that Microsoft is encouraging users to purposely expose a computer to the internet with an active service, while necessary to enable the features offered by remote access, troubles us all the same. As the only thing exposed (if everything is configured correctly) are the ports required for IIS and not the more vulnerable Windows sharing services, this is potentially very secure as IIS 6.0 has had very few problems over the years. But at the same time we're worried about how many servers and routers won't be configured correctly, and what may happen when the next IIS exploit is found.
Is the version of IIS 6.0 locked down enough to keep it from being a participant in the next Code Red worm? If Microsoft is successful with WHS, there's going to be a massive increase in the number of IIS webservers on the internet, and that opens the possibility for major trouble if any exploits are found right after a patch Tuesday. Then again, we don't have any idea of how many users would be able to even access their server from the internet; blocking ports 80 and 443 are popular activities with ISPs.
On a lighter note, Microsoft is offering their own dynamic domain names for WHS owners who do use remote access and want something easier to remember than an IP address. Microsoft recently picked up the homeserver.com domain, and WHS owners will be able to reserve a subdomain for themselves that the WHS software will keep updated. It's a small feature among the whole, but we'd call it important in making WHS more usable with the average home user. We're still not ready to call these remote access features more than an interesting side show, but it does tilt things slightly more in favor of WHS.
Finally, Microsoft has taken an interesting approach with WHS when it comes to dealing with the shortcomings of the product. Microsoft has included an SDK for WHS for developing a new class of applications Microsoft is calling add-ins. Add-ins allow the server to do new things such as new services for clients, for the remote access component, or a new GUI. Among those developed for the release candidate, we have seen add-ins for a BitTorrent client, connecting TiVos, and using wake-on-LAN for clients that are turned off.
This will be something that we'll definitely need to keep an eye on, as add-ins could potentially resolve a lot of our complaints with WHS. We should have a better idea of what these add-ins can do (and do well) once Microsoft's Code2Fame contest for creating add-ins comes to a close and the add-ins are released. It's unusual for Microsoft to be interacting with the development community on this level, so we're interested to see how things turn out.
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Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Cheap motherboard-integrated controllers corrupt and outright lose RAID arrays all the time due to driver bugs, and performance is atrocious. I won't trust a RAID5 array to anything that costs less that $500, and for that price, you can just stick a few extra drives for duplication.n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
A 5 year old controller that you pick up at a second hand store is not something that I - or an OEM - can base a line of products on. A new RAID5 controller which is not built by Promise or Silicon Image will run you $500+ - the ~$300 solutions are ZCR cards that are basically addons to $500+ motherboards. ServeRAID 8s costs around $700, HP P400/256 nearly $600, well over $800 for P400/512. A bigger case to store extra drives - or a few external USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosures - will run you much less.tynopik - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
> power outage is not on option when we talking about some kind of server.don't tell me, that UPS is something you don't use.
1. ups is not something most home users will use, you have to design assuming it won't be there
2. even if you do have ups, what happens when the batteries die? often the only warning you will get is one day the power flickers and the system shuts off. do you replace all batteries every 2 years whether they need it or not?
3. even if you meticulously maintain your ups, the internal power supply can still go bad
> hardware problems will do the same to your system and its really does not matter what you running inside.
NOT TRUE
ntfs by itself is fairly fault tolerant. you yank the power you might lose a file, but everything else is fine
raid5, you yank the power you might lose EVERYTHING
that is why WHS file duplication is far safer and better
> of course i can give you examples of corporate Data Centers with 0 data loss, but we are talking about home.
of course i said it works if you're using ENTERPRISE LEVEL HARDWARE everywhere. Good raid cards start at $300. A $150 motherboard with onboard raid doesn't even begin to cut it.
> let's organize it from worth to best.
> no raid
> soft raid
> raid 1
> raid 1+0 or 0+1.
there is no such thing as 'best'
there is 'best for a particular set of requirements'
maybe your requirements are such that your best looks like that
my best would like
soft raid
raid 1
no raid
raid 1+0 or 0+1
(that's right, i would rather have no raid than 1+0 or 0+1)
> This press machines working at full load non stop 24/7/365. Year @ IT department, no problems with raid.
congratulations, you are one of the 70% who didn't have problems with their raid last year. Are you confident you won't be one of the 30% next year?
> for not very advanced user i will recommend Debian box with Bacula to manage backups, syncing, share etc.
not very advanced users aren't going to have a clue about Debian
not very advanced users are going to be setup up raid properly
n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Any UPS have connection to computer and will shut it down properly when configured to do so.As for controllers. I was surprised to find that almost all integrated raid controllers (including my), actually software and not hardware. So need to admit you were right about it. (I spent few hours to transfer my disks to Promise ST150 TX4 and rebuild the raid).
NTFS is the best in Microsoft's world. but since we can't run Windows on ext3 or reiserfs, or Linux on NTFS, we can't actually compare them in real world benchmark. Theoretically, NTFS is inferior. Actually any modern FS of all desktop systems is good enough.
So we still at the same point.
I agree with you that WHS is good for redundancy (if you enable this option) where you don't want to use real raid controller with "small" price tag.
But I just can't see justification to use it. Compared to alternatives it does not have something spacial enough to pay extra 180 USD. Yes I know that for most of users, Linux is something horrifying. But we are not talking about them, but about the WHS and alternatives. in this case about raid.
by the way, i'm very curious. what raid 1+0 or 0+1 did to you ? :)
that remind me to answer. shut down will cause you to lose open/unsaved files in any scenario. but it can also damage you entire HD. raid 5 will give you better redundancy then SINGLE disk(single data instance). but when duplicating, raid 1 is the best.
n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
nForce (i'm not sure, but i think there is intel's chipset based MoBos with raid 5) raid still better in terms of stability, redundancy and performance then any soft raid.think what will happen if your WHS will crush unrecoverably.
how will you restore your data ?
n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Hello, if you have important things that you don't want to get lost or corrupted by some virus or anything else, do your self a favor and checkhttp://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org
http://www.ubuntu.com">http://www.ubuntu.com
or any other user friendly distro.
you will find a way better solutions for home (and not only) server.
more exactly you'll find OS capable to be everything with more then proven stability and security.
and yes, it will work inside your MS environment. as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server), you will find much better performance.
You may want to extend it to be your media server. means really distributed one. server with tv card and clients on other boxes.
tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
> as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server)no, the main purpose of WHS is backup
if your main purpose is just a simple file server then yes, WHS probably isn't for you
mindless1 - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
Absolutely not. A server is not backup, it would be a very foolish thing to keep your back as an online windows box.