Installing Windows Home Server

And so to the execution of part one of the project. I bought an HP Media Smart home server. Nice. Surprisingly small and quiet. My favourite part of the server is being able to control the brightness of the blue LEDs from the WHS control panel. It’s the little things…

Turns out that this installation was extremely straightforward. The box came with a super-friendly “for dummies” style poster and the config just worked. Once attached to the network (wired) it was no bother at all.

So this has meant that I’ve been able to implement a backup plan similar to Scott’s. Essentially that involves the use of 3 drives being rotated with one being sent to a safety deposit box. Having a safety deposit box is cool because it makes me feel like a spy. It’s also funny because it just contains a bunch of holiday snaps.

That also frees up my main machine for more frequent rebuilds.

Anyway, I thought there’d be something more to say about this installation but the reality is that it executed quickly and easily on backup and centralisation of media.

Being able to install services on WHS is also very handy. Whilst there are a whole bunch of community addins out there– haven’t installed one yet – you can also just install some arbitrary code as a service. A good for instance in my case is to build something that automatically pushes photos that are tagged in a specific way to Flickr, or maybe encodes certain videos to Vimeo. It’s surprising how time consuming that can be otherwise.

So, the WHS part of the project was complete. Flushed with success, it was time to tackle Media Center. More later.