On a personal note, I rather like the idea of having a Windows-based server at home. But I do miss having the ability to play with Linux hacks. So I was thinking what I could do to have Linux as an option at home when I came with a solution where I could have both Windows Home Server and Linux on my MediaSmart server running at the same time: Virtual Server.

After upgrading the amount of RAM on my MediaSmart served from 512MB to 2GB, I felt this would be a great opportunity to have a Linux system without compromising the features of Windows Home Server. So I have prepared this guide to explain what I have done to run a Linux virtual machine under my Windows Home Server. I part from the principle that you know what you are doing and you have some idea of what virtualisation all about.

Here is what you need:

• Upgrade your server’s RAM. 512MB is unrealistic if you want to do anything with Windows Home Server besides its out-of-the-box features. If you have a HP MediaSmart server, you can find instructions on how to upgrade the server memory here.
• A copy of Microsoft Virtual Server. At the time of writing this post, the last version was 2005 R2 SP1. Virtual Server is free and can be downloaded from here.
• A distribution of Linux. I am a big Ubuntu fan. However I opted to use openSUSE because of the benefits it has from the interoperability agreement Novell has with Microsoft (e.g.: virtual machine additions). You can get openSUSE from here, and Ubuntu from here.

Setup Instructions

1. First and foremost, you must do a remote access to your HomeServer using UltraVNC or Remote Desktop and log in as administrator.
2. Once on the servers desktop, install Microsoft Virtual Server. Reboot the server is necessary and remote desktop into the server again as administrator.
3. On the Servers Start Menu under Microsoft Virtual Server, click on Virtual Server Administration Website.
4. Under Virtual Machines on the left-side menu of the Admin Site, choose click on Create.
5. You must now provide the initial settings of your virtual machine. Here are some of my recommended settings for a simple Unix Server:
   1. Name. The name of the Virtual PC (e.g.: Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu).
   2. Memory. The amount of RAM you want to provide for the virtual machine, bearing in mind you should leave enough for your server to run smoothly. It really depends of the amount of RAM you have and what you want to do with your Linux server. For example if I only want to use some console (text) applications I would go from a minimum of 256MB to 512MB (if I want to run services for a development environment). If using a graphical desktop and/or some more intensive applications, I might go to 1GB. As I have 2GB for my home server, I prefer to never leave the Home Server operating system with less than 1GB.
   3. Virtual hard disk. You can create the disk to use with your Linux virtual machine now or specify one later.
      NOTE: If you already have or plan to have Linux on an external disk or flash drive, you could create a linked virtual hard disk that points to the Linux you partition you want to use (see point 8 below for further instructions).
   4. Virtual network adapter. Make sure you configure your virtual machine to connect to the external network. This will ensure that the virtual machine can be seen and accessed on your network.
6. Once the machine is created, you will be presented with its configuration page.
7. If you need to install Linux, you need to ensure the virtual machine will be able to initiate the Linux installation process:
   1. If you have a CD/DVD drive on your home server, simply put the disk on the drive and ensure your virtual machine CD/DVD drive properties is configure to use your physical CD/DVD drive.
      NOTE: If you want to use your CD/DVD drive within your Linux virtual machine, you should do this procedure regardless if you need to install Linux or not.
   2. If your home server doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive, you must configure the virtual machines CD/DVD driver properties to capture the ISO image of your Linux install disk.
8. OPTIONAL: If you already have an external disk with Linux installed, or if you want to install Linux on a dedicated disk, you must create a linked virtual disk that points to your existing Linux install:
   1. Plug the external disk with Linux on your home server.
   2. On the Virtual Server Admin Site under Virtual Disks, choose Create then Linked Virtual Hard Disk.
   3. Specify the location name of the file to be saved and the physical drive that will be used for the virtual disk.
   4. Go back to the configuration page of your Linux virtual machine and under hard disks, provide the filename of the file created for your linked virtual hard disk.
9. OPTIONAL: Still on the virtual machine configuration page, you can click on General properties in order to specify a username and password to run the virtual machine upon system start-up. Recommended if you want your Linux virtual machine to be always on (i.e.: starts when the home server start).
10. On the Virtual Server Admin Site under Virtual Server, choose Server Properties.
11. On the bottom of the page under your server Properties, click on Virtual Machine Remote Control(VMRC).
12. On the Virtual Machine Remote Control (CMRC) Server Properties page, ensure you enable VMRC server and specify a TCP/IP port that is not already in use on the server. Then click OK to reflect the changes.
13. OPTIONAL: Back on the left-side menu of the Virtual Server Admin Site, under Virtual Server you could click on Resource Allocation to specify the maximum amount of resources your virtual machines can use in order to ensure resilience to your home server.
14. Once again on the left-side menu of the Virtual Server Admin Site, under Navigation click on Master Status in order to see your recently created virtual machine. Hove the mouse over its title to show its context menu that would allow it to start and stop the virtual machine, as well to Remote Control it.

All done! Once I got my Linux box installed, I was running things like shell scripting, mySQL, Apache, PHP and other nifty tools. I hope you found this little guide useful!

As a next step, you could look into Microsoft Services for Unix for good interoperability between your Linux virtual machine and your Windows hosts. You can find more about Windows Services for Unix here.

If you want to discuss this implementation with other Windows Home Server enthusiasts, there is a forum thread at wegotserved.co.uk (registration required) here. Thanks to Bodog from wegotserved.co.uk for the support!

While I see the value both products, first and foremost I don’t have an iPod, so I disabled the iTunes server. as for the Photo Webshare, I don’t like it for the main reason that the albums you create are independent from the pictures you have in your shared photos folder. Which also brings into the attention the fact that pictures published in Photo Webshare aren’t going to be protected by the folder replication redundancy feature.

The only problem is, I can ‘t find an out of the box way of uninstalling or disabling HP Photo Webshare. At the moment I am researching on how this could be done without breaking everything, and I’ll make sure I post my findings here. In the meantime, if you know a way to disable or uninstall HP Photo Webshare, please let me know how. Even better, you could share your findings with everyone at this forum.

 UPDATE (March 2010): After a long wait, HP has finally released an update for their MediaSmart Servers series 47x and 48x. This update will remove HP Photo Webshare, and add more features. You can find more information about this update here.

So, if you want to consider having a WHS, you should be aware of some of the bugs haunting the system. Below is a list of the ones that are personally afecting me. Besides a description, I have included my own classification of severity, and useful links.

• Forum Thread: You should join (or at least monitor) the discussion other enthusiasts are having in the official Microsoft forum for the WHS about the particular issue.
• KB Article: When Microsoft acts like a mature company and acknowledges the issue, they publish information about it on knowledge base article, and their official position about the issue.
• Feedback on Connect: This is the site where users and testers of WHS can raise issues (bugs) and suggestions to Microsoft. If you are experiencing one of these issues, you should go to Microsoft Connect and give your feedback.

Data Corruption with alternate NTFS data streams

This is the infamous one that is giving everyone the goosegumbs. If you try to modify directly from a fileshare using certain applications, the file can be corrupted. Microsoft claims that the issue is likely to happen only if you have more than two hard disks, and as per the discussions in the official Microsoft forums, this is likely to be an issue of WHS data replication (wich ironicaly has been designed to protect your data through redundancy) not handling alternate data streams very well (if you don’t know what alternate data streams are, have a look here).

UPDATE (JULY/08): This bug has been addressed with the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1) for Windows Home Server.

Severity: 5/5

[Forum Thread] [KB article] [Download Fix]

PORTFWD.EXE Memory/CPU Overload

You can notice that your WHS is running slow, or claiming that it is low on system memory. You check task manager and finds out that a single process named POWRTFWD.EXE is consuming a huge amount of CPU and/or RAM. Often rebooting the server will sort out the issue – at least for a while. For what could understand, this service is used to automatically update power forwarding using uPnP. If you have manually configured port forwarding, you might as well disable this service as a workaround.

Severity: 4/5

[Forum Thread] [Feedback on Connect]

SYS Volume Failing – NOT

You keep receiving messages from your WHS that the SYS disk is failing and needs to be repaired. Rebboting would often make the message go away (this what I do). By other users report, the message can also go away by repairing the disk from the WHS console, or by scheduling a CHKDSK on the disk. Nevertheless the error would eventually return. Ah, almost forgot: There is NOTHING wrong with the disk, by the way (you ran every single diagnosis tool available on the planet).

UPDATE (APRIL/08): By looking at the logs through Event Viewer, I noticed some “not enough memory” error events around the time of reported SYS volume failures. After I disabled the PORTFWRD.EXE service (see above), the issue of SYS volume failures disappeared; which hints that the PORTFWRD.EXE memory leak issue might be associate with the SYS volume failure.

Severity: 3/5

[Forum Thread] [Feedback on Connect]

Differences between VNC and Remote Desktop

Why should one consider installing VNC anyway? Isn’t Microsoft RDP enough?

Microsoft RDP is a proprietary protocol which is mainly used in Windows operating systems for Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Connection. Upon connecting to the remote server, the user is initiating a new individual session on the server in the background. In practical terms, RDP supports multiple connections, and each session wouldn’t interfere or interact with one another. If you were to be in front of the server, you wouldn’t notice any visible evidence that the computer is being remotely accessed with Microsoft RDP by simply looking at its screen.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) on the other hand is an open source solution which is platform-independent, and although it is widely used amongst *nix users (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc) there are also Windows flavours which are widely popular amongst system administrators. VNC is a desktop sharing application, allowing a users accessing the server remotely to interact with it as if they were sitting right in front of it. In practical terms, this means that if more than one user was to connect to the server, they would all be sharing the same screen, keyboard and mouse; thus interfering and interacting with one another. If you were to be in front of the server, you would be able to watch all remote interactions as if there as a user sitting right in front of it (as if being used by a ghost). Because a VNC connection allows you to see exactly what is happening on the remote screen, it gives you an advantage to troubleshoot and configure computers remotely.

Installing VNC through RDP

First you need to choose a distribution of VNC you would like to use. I choose UltraVNC which supports plug-ins, encryption, file transfer and other neat features. For this document I assume you are going to use UltraVNC which you can download here.

1. Log as administrator into your Windows Server through a Remote Desktop Connection. The next steps are to be performed on the Server.
2. Download UltraVNC here.
3. Install UltraVNC. When asked for the installation type, choose “UltraVNC Server Only“, but not the silent option.
4. If you are asked to install Windows VISTA addons, you don’t need to select this option.
5. If you are asked to install the mirror driver, I recommend you select this option.
6. When asked, select the option to “Register UltraVNC as a system service” and continue with the installation.
7. Once the installation is finished, go to your Start menu.

The problem is, VNC set-up doesn’t update the Windows Registry with the proper configuration when installed through remote desktop. In practice this means you can’t log into your ser through VNC because you can set a password for it. This is a common issue which is widely discussed in Internet forums, and the easiest way really is to import a registry file with the default configuration.

1. Log as administrator into your Windows Server through a Remote Desktop Connection. The next steps are to be performed on the Server.
2. Download this registry file which contains a default configuration for VNC.
3. Open the file. Once asked to merge the file into the registry, click on yes.
4. Reboot the server.

You should now be able to log in into your Windows Server. The default password is ‘Pass@word1‘ (without quotes). You should now be able change the password for the VNC server.

A while ago, I acquired a Siemens DECT (cordless phone) to use at home in my office. I opted for Siemens first because they’re a market leader in DECT phone, and also because they had an interesting product called M34; a USB device which would allow a computer to join your DECT set-up.

With the M34 device you could do things such as remote control your computer over the telephone, have Skype calls routed to your phone system and other sorts of data transmission between your PC and DECT set-up. I got the M34 with the objective to set it on a home server, as soon as I could get one.

However, the M34 software was built around a desktop perspective. That is, its supporting software that communicates with the device were built to interact with users that are logged in into the PC. It technical terms, this means that the M34 software was not designed to be ran as a Windows service.

This documentation is a work in progress which I would like to share with people interested in using the M34 with a WHS. It is by no means a final documentation, but by sharing it with the world I am hopping to get more users interested in finding the best solution around setting the M34 with WHS as a Windows service. If there is any progress on this project, expect this documentation to change over time. Otherwise, consider it to be just the published results of my initial tests!

The processes involved in this practice are:

1. Installation of Siemens M34 USB hardware and device drivers on the server
2. Creation of a service account to load the M34 software as a Service
3. Creation of services for M34
4. Configuration of M34 under the created service account

1. INSTALLING THE SIEMENS M34
   1. Download the latest drivers from Siemens website. If you downloaded it from another PC rather than WHS, move the driver self-extractable executable to a shared folder of your WHS.
   2. Log-in into WHS as the administrator. If you have a headless server you must log-in from another PC using Remote Desktop Connection.
      1. You can find it on the Start menu under Accessories -> Communications. Once Remote Desktop Connection started, type-in the IP address or NetBIOS name (network name) of your WHS (example: 192.168.0.10 or HPSERVER).
      2. Make sure to log-in with the username ADMINISTRATOR, using the password you have chosen when you set-up your WHS.
   3. Once logged in as administrator, execute the setup program for the drivers.
      1. You should follow the instructions provided with the M34 manual. An updated copy of the manual should be included with the downloaded drivers in PDF format.
      2. The basics are that you should NOT plug the M34 device until you are instructed to do so, and that you should select the correct base station you plan to use with the M34 when asked by the set-up.
      3. If you plan to use skype, make sure you select to install Skype as well, but don’t choose to load Skype on starting Windows since you are on the administrator account. So far I didn’t manage to have Skype and M34 working harmoniously as Windows services, and I plan to cover Skype in a separate document.
   4. There might be a point where the driver will ask you to plug the device and wait for “FOUND DEVICE” messages to pop. However, if you are using Remote Desktop Connection to manage the WHS, it is likely that no such messages will pop-up. You must SKIP this process and install the drivers manually after finishing the installation (and restarting WHS). Make sure you have the M34 device plugged into a USB port of your WHS at this stage.
   5. Once the installation is finished and WHS has been restarted, log-in again as administrator. On the Start menu, right-click My Computer and choose properties. Once loaded, click on the Hardware tab, then click on Device Manager. You should see several Devices with a yellow exclamation mark which are related to the M34 device. These are:
      • Cordless Internet Access
      • Cordless Device Configuration
      • Cordless Device Line Access
      • Cordless Device Update
      • Cordless PC Control

      NOTE: You must right-click each device and choose the option Update Driver.

   6. Once the Hardware Update Wizard appears, choose the (Advanced) option and click next.
   7. When asked for the search and installation options, choose the option “Don’t search, I will choose the driver to install” and click next.
   8. When asked to select the driver, the Siemens driver should be listed the each device (because you installed the drivers, remember?). WHS will say that the driver is not digitally signed. Ignore the warning and click Continue Anyway.
   9. Select the listed driver and click next. Again, make sure you do this for every single Cordless device that has a yellow mark on it.

   Background: The whole ordeal about having to manually install the drivers is because Siemens didn’t care to digitally sign their drivers (this is a Microsoft initiative to reduce the ammount of bad drivers which could crash a PC). An alternative would be to temporarily disallow the driver signature warning. But this is something I don’t like doing (for newbie readers: the hard way is good! It forces you to learn more)

   Once all drivers are installed, you can now proceed to the next stage, which is the creation of the M34 service account.

• Good industry standard support: No proprietary-only stuff, unless it is in addition to standards.
• Reliable: A solid firmware with no bugs.
• Easily expandable: If I add a new disk to the array, I shouldn’t have to format any disks.
• Fast: Both network access and disk access.
• Good support and active community: To have my questions answered and to promote enhancements to the product.
• Extra features: Media streaming, download stations, external USB connections, web server and any other interesting set of features would be a plus.

The first option I came across was Techus, but I dismissed it immediately after some negative reviews. Then after reading some reviews about Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ (followed by Infrant’s acquisition by Netgear), I thought I had finally made my choice. But when I called the distributor to place an order, he mentioned that Infrants ReadyNAS was out of stock and they were currently renegotiating their contract with Netgear (Infrant’s new owner). He immediately suggested that I looked at the Synology CS-407 instead, which has a plethora of interesting features.

According to reviews, the CS-407 is quite fast. It also support standard RAID technologies (RAID 1,5). At first I was concerned that the CS-407 had no NFS support, but I have no immediate plans to use NFS in my network anyway and moreover, I found out by reading at some Synology related forms that it is relatively easy to add NFS for it anyway.

As for the RAID methods, what I am really apprehensive about is the ability to expand into my NAS device (i.e.: add more disks) without the need to format any disks, a feature that Infrant claims that their proprietary X-RAID technology (available on the ReadyNAS) can do.

I decided to download the Synology CS-407 User Guide to see if I could get some of my questions answered, and I found some very positive information in there:

• Although the CS-407 doesn’t have the hot-swap trays that the ReadyNAS has, the CS-407 is still a hot-swappable unit. Perhaps not having such trays is what makes the CS-407 smaller than the ReadyNAS?
• The manual clearly explains that it is easy to expand the unit (i.e.: replace disks with higher capacity ones) without having to format the disks. So what’s the deal with ReadyNAS X-RAID you might ask (well I did)? For what I read, it is simply dumb-proof: It changes the RAID technology according to the amount of disks added, and takes care of storage expansion with very little user intervention. Well I think I can handle RAID without needing my mom to change my diapers.

My last concern was with the ammount of built-in RAM. The CS-407 comes with 128MB, compared with the ReadyNAS which comes with 256MB (which you can also add more memory to it). However, CS-407 seems to be doing very well in its reviews, and I guess that the amount needed is really down on how heavyweight (thus RAM hungry) an operating system is; so I guess that I shouldn’t worry about it.

So I got completely sold by the Synology CS-407 unit. Not only it has more appealing features for my needs than theNetgear’s ReadyNAS but it is cheaper too! However, I was about to place an order for the CS-407, when I decided to read about the upcoming Windows Home Server (WHS) Units to be released Mid/2007, which are focusing on Network Storage. I briefly tried WHS Release Candidate 1 and I must say that WHS has some quite interesting features. However, I also have my reservations about certain “features” and claims which, I will be discussing in an upcoming post.