Why I'm Doing This

Being an extreme techie, I've been running my own web / email servers from home for many years. A little over a year ago I got tired of all the fan noise created by 3 (or more) server class computers that were continuously running in my home office. This was also about the time that virtual machines started to really pick up steam so I decided to condense all my servers into one (much quieter) machine to get more familiar with the virtualization process.

I scavenged an old PC case, spare P4D/motherboard combo and 4GB of RAM buried in my office to put together a decent machine I could hide in the corner. At first install, I was running a demo of MS Server 2003 with Virtual Server 2005 hosting one linux virtual machine, for my web server, and one Server 2003 virtual machine for my email server. The machine had two 73gig drives and a single 500GB. One 73GB drive was partitioned into a 25GB OS partition and the rest was for the email server VM files. The other 73GB drive was dedicated to the web server VM files and the 500GB drive was for storing all my music and video files for sharing among all the machines on my home network. Most of all, it was quite

This setup worked pretty good. The VM's made it a snap to re-install the OS whenever the host OS demo expired or when I decided to try Server 2008 instead of 2003. And it was nice being able to just backup the VM files to get full backups of the web and email servers. I also liked having a central place for storing all my media files, though I had to run Media Player 10 on the server for my Xbox360 to have access my music files. About 6 months ago I added an external four bay eSATA drive cabinet to it with two more 500GB drives, leaving two open bays for future expansion.

After the 3rd or 4th time of re-installing the host OS (because of demo expiration) I decided that it was time for something a bit more permanent. I did some Googling around looking at different server solutions and stumbled upon a little known Microsoft product that looked like it would work perfectly for my needs - Windows Home Server. So I downloaded the demo and tried it out.

With all the marketing muscle power that Microsoft has - I'm at a total loss why this software is relatively unheard of. Here are some of the features that it provides:

• Media Server: Digital memories and media stored and organized in a central location
• Backup Software: Home computers backed up daily, automatically
• Data Recovery: Simple restore of lost files or even entire hard drive contents
• Document Management: Complete access to files from both inside and outside the home
• Remote Access: A secure and personalized website address for sharing photos and home videos
• Add-ins: Easily add storage space and new software capabilities

The OS is based on a stripped down version of Windows Small Business Server 2003, but is much easier to install and maintain than the full blown server package. Plus, at $95 vs $1200 (for 10 users), it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

Though I have just started digging into all the features the software provides, the ones I currently find most useful are the automated (incremental) backups of all workstations, monitoring and remote administration of all workstations, seamless integration with the XBox360 and built in VPN to give access to any of my workstations from anywhere that I have an internet connection.

Though it was an 120 day demo, I was so impressed with this product that I purchased it after only running the demo for a little over a week. Now, that I had the OS, it was time to get together some more hardware so I could put together a machine I wouldn't have to break into for a while.

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