Installing Windows Home Server is straightforward. Just follow the instructions in our Masterclass
In this installation tutorial we're setting up Windows Home Server to be a functional home server
backing up client PCs on your network, serving a website publicly under your own subdomain, allowing remote access and
offering file shares to all users (and guests) on the network.
Make sure your system is set up to boot from your optical drive
first and insert the WHS DVD in the drive. Boot your system and you
will see the first installation screen after some initial loading. Then
click Next
This screen identifies drives attached to the system. Make sure
the drive you want to use as your primary (system drive) is detected
and available. If you can’t see the drives, click Load Drivers and
locate the drivers for your storage controller. If it’s available,
click Next.
Select New Installation, which should be the only option
available if this is the first time you’ve installed WHS. In the
future, recovery abilities are available from this screen if you need
to re-install WHS. Make sure New Installation is selected and click
Next.
This screen allows you to enter your product key for WHS. Like
Vista and Windows XP SP3, you do not have to enter your key at this
time, however it needs to be entered within 30 days or WHS will stop
working. Either enter your key or click Next.
You name your server in this screen. This is the name your
server will be identified by on your network. The default is SERVER,
but you can name it whatever you wish. Enter a name and click Next.
This screen confirms that the hard disk drives in your server
will be formatted. Select the check box to acknowledge that all data on
the drives will be lost, then select Next to proceed.
The installation of WHS will then proceed unattended. It may
take some time depending on the size of your hard disk drives and the
speed of your CPU. Sit back, make a cup of coffee and wait for it to
complete. In the latter stages of the setup process, the system will
reboot a number of times.
Once this process has completed, you will be presented with a
screen asking you to create a password for your WHS. Considering the
system will be exposed to the internet (more on this later) choosing a
high security password is very, very important. Use a combination of
upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols to protect your data.
In the next three screens you need to choose whether or WHS is
allowed to update itself with Automatic Updates, whether you wish to
participate when sending error reports to Microsoft and whether you
wish to join the customer experience improvement program. All of them
are optional, however strongly recommend you at least allow WHS to
apply updates automatically.
Finishing off the setup. At this point you’re asked to log off from
your WHS server and install the WHS Connect software on one of your
client PCs. You’re also given you first glimpse (and last, if you
aren’t going to improve the functionality of WHS beyond its default
config) of the desktop. However, you’re not necessarily done. You will
want to install drivers for your hardware at this stage. Start ->
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager will
help you identify if there are devices without current drivers. At the
very least install chipset and Ethernet drivers from your motherboard
manufacturers website.
Once the drivers are installed, and your server is rebooted, you can
disconnect the keyboard, mouse and monitor from your server. From now
on, all your interaction with your WHS is via your network.
Getting it set up
Now the OS is installed on your server, and it’s happily purring
away in the corner, it’s time to set it up for its basic usage. The
first thing that needs to be done is install the Windows Home Server
Connector software, which is provided on one of the disks in your WHS
package.
You can run the Connector software on any client PC on
your network (and should be run on every PC on the network) for the
remainder of the setup. It’s a basic installer program and should not
pose any challenges to the reader as far as form, however there are a
few screens that may not be obvious. First, you must connect to the WHS
on your network, which should everything be correct, should be located
and listed. On the next screen enter the password you created during
the WHS setup to add the PC on to the WHS list of PCs to look after.
Once the Connector software is installed, you can access your
server again. In the system tray will be a small icon with a house on
it, in Green, Yellow or Red. A green icon will mean there’s no issue
with any part of your network monitored by WHS, yellow means there are
non-critical issues, like a slightly out of date backup, and red means
there’s something amiss, including out of date AV signatures or no
firewall on a PC. The icon also appears in blue when a backup is in
progress or grey, when the home server can’t be located. Right click on
the icon and select Windows Home Server Console to access your WHS
system’s configuration.
Creating users
Log in with the WHS password set during the installation and
you’re presented with the WHS Console, from which most oft he
administration of your server is done. The first thing to set up is
user accounts. For every user on your home PCs, you need to create an
account with password on WHS. The down side to this is that the
password for each user must be the same on the client PCs as on the
server, otherwise you won’t be able to access private documents and the
users share on the server.
Click the Users tab on the top of the console. In its default
configuration, there’s a single, inactivated guest account (more on
this later). So click Add, type in the user’s name and Login name (as
it appears on your other PCs) and click enable remote access for this
user.
The process creates a personal folder for the user,
which can only be accessed by someone logged in to any of the client
PCs as that person. You can give access to other users folders on the
system also, but you’ll need to edit the account details each time you
add a new user to the system.
Type in the same password used on the client PC for the user, or
change it make a strong password. Click next, then set the access
privelidges for the user. In this case, the user Nick has full access
to everything on the WHS. Click Finish then Done after the account is
created.
At this point, using My Networks in XP or Network on Vista to
browse to the WHS’s shares is fully functional. Under the WHS, in this
case named Server is a series of folders named for common usages, like
Music, Public, Video, Software and Photos. Feel free to use this
structure, or ignore it and create your own. A copy of the WHS
Connector and the Backup Restore Disk is included in the Software
folder.
Configuring Backups
Backups are the bread and butter of the core functionality of
WHS. It’s surprisingly easy, low click process to get the PCs on your
network backing up nightly. At the time of writing, only Windows XP
& Vista 32-bit OS’s are supported by WHS, however x64 support is
included in the first update for WHS named Power Pack 1.
Any client PC that’s run the Connector software will show up in
a list on the Computers & Backup tab of the WHS console.
Configuring a PC to back up to the WHS is a simple matter of selecting
it in the list, clicking Configure Backup and selecting the tick boxes
for each drive you want backed up in the next screen. After that you’re
given the option of excluding specific folders from the drives you’ve
selected, however at this stage, just back up the lot.
Getting it online
One of the best things about Windows Home Server is the ability
to let you remotely access the server itself, plus the Windows PCs
connected to the network online wherever you are. Getting this done
can involve a little messing around in your router, as unfortunately,
the list of routers with which WHS can automatically configure isn’t
that long. To get started, click settings in the Windows Home Server
Console, then browse down the list to Remote Access.
First, click the Turn On button, it will automatically trigger
the rest of the process, namely trying to talk to your router via UPnP
to configure port forwarding for the services offered (those ports are
port 80 (http), 443 (SSL) and 4125 which is Remote Desktop Proxy if you
need to forward them manually). Click the Setup button in the Router
field to attempt to automatically configure your router. If it doesn’t
succeed, click the Configure Router button, which will open a web
browser to the interface page on your router.
Once your router is successfully passing the connections on to your
home server, you can register a subdomain on homeserver.com to easily
access your WHS. This lets you avoid memorising your IP address, and
offers a web portal to people for when you begin creating web sites.
Clicking the Setup button in the Domain Name field opens a wizard
which allows you to create a subdomain on homeserver.com. You will need
a Microsoft Passport (or Hotmail address) to create it. Only one
subdomain per Passport account is available, but the process is
painless. Proceed through the Setup Wizard and obtain a subdomain. Our
example is apcs.homeserver.com.
Once that process is complete, you should be online. Open a
web browser (IE7 is preferred) on the client PC and input the URL of
your WHS in the address bar. You should then see the default WHS
website, with a Log On button on the top right hand side if everything
is configured correctly. You can log in with the username and password
you created earlier.
At this point, we’ve got an installed and functional home server
backing up client PCs on your network, we're serving a website publically
under your own subdomain on homeserver.com allowing remote access and
offering file shares to all users (and guests) on the network.
Congratulations, you’re using WHS as Microsoft intended.
Stay
tuned, and in the next tutorial we’ll start extending WHS with Add-Ins,
to create simple websites, install a public blog and register your own
domain to point to your server.