Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed [Paperback]

Paul McFedries (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0672329638 | ISBN-13: 978-0672329630 | Edition: 1

“Computer data can be immeasurably valuable, yet most people leave it totally vulnerable to damage or loss. Windows Home Server is the data equivalent to a home safe. We recommend Paul McFedries’s Microsoft®Windows®Home Server Unleashed as the best first step in getting a strong hold on securing and maintaining personal data at home.”

–Professor Michael L. Kleper

Editor, The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing

 

Windows Home Server is a brand new server operating system from Microsoft designed to be used in home settings. Windows Home Server is designed to reduce or eliminate the complexity of a typical network server and instead present home users with a simple, straightforward interface that focuses on four core areas: storage, sharing, backup, and remote access.

 

Microsoft® Windows® Home Server Unleashed is the first book on the market that takes a deep look at what makes this new server operating system tick. Inside you’ll learn how the Windows Home Server storage system combines multiple hard disks (both internal and external) into a single storage space that expands and contracts automatically as you add and remove hard disks, making it easy for home users to share folders, files, and digital media of all kinds. We show you how to access your files from any PC in the network and provide secure access to the network via the Internet for your users. We also show you how to automate the backup of every computer on your network, including performing complete system image backups of each computer and restoring previous versions of individual files.

 

Detailed information on how to…

• Access your files from any computer in the house or while you’re on the road
• Set up security--both local (user accounts) and remote (Internet access)
• Take advantage of the power of the Windows Server 2003 code underlying Windows Home Server
• Make working with Windows Home Server faster and easier
• Use real-world examples and network configurations that will help you get the most out of your Home Server set up
• Use Windows Home Server power tools to put you in complete control over your server and the network

 

Introduction 1

Part I—Unleashing Windows Home Server Setup

Chapter 1—Understanding Windows Home Server 7

Chapter 2—Installing Windows Home Server 23

Chapter 3—Setting Up Your Windows Home Server Network 41

Part II—Unleashing Windows Home Server Configuration

Chapter 4—Setting Up and Working with User Accounts 73

Chapter 5—Adding Devices to the Windows Home Server Network 101

Chapter 6—Configuring Windows Home Server 137

Chapter 7—Setting Up and Using Home Server Storage 169

Part III—Unleashing Windows Home Server Networking

Chapter 8—Sharing Folders and Files on the Home Server 187

Chapter 9—Making Connections to Network Computers 223

Chapter 10—Streaming and Sharing Digital Media 259

Chapter 11—Backing Up and Restoring Network Computers 287

Chapter 12—Monitoring Your Network 317

Chapter 13—Implementing Windows Home Server Security 3358

Chapter 14—Setting Up a Windows Home Server Website 373

Chapter 15—Running a SharePoint Site on Windows Home Server 407

Part IV—Unleashing Windows Home Server Performance and Maintenance

Chapter 16—Tuning Windows Home Server Performance 449

Chapter 17—Maintaining Windows Home Server 485

Chapter 18—Customizing the Windows Home Server Interface 513

Chapter 19—Troubleshooting Windows Home Server 543

Part V—Unleashing Windows Home Server Advanced Tools

Chapter 20—Working with the Windows Home Server Registry 577

Chapter 21—Using Windows Home Server's Command-Line Tools 603

Chapter 22—Using Other Windows Home Server Power Tools 661

Chapter 23—Scripting Windows Home Server 715

Part VI--Appendixes

Appendix A—Understanding TCP/IP 757

Appendix B—Setting Up a Home Network 779

Appendix C—Glossary 807

Appendix D—Windows Home Server Keyboard Shortcuts 823

Appendix E—Windows Home Server Online Resources 831

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul McFedries is a Windows expert and full-time technical writer. Paul has been authoring computer books since 1991 and has more than 50 books to his credit, which combined have sold over three million copies worldwide. His recent titles include the Sams Publishing book Windows Vista Unleashed and the Que Publishing books Formulas and Functions with Microsoft Excel 2007, Tricks of the Microsoft Office 2007 Gurus, and Microsoft Access 2007 Forms, Reports, and Queries. Paul is also the proprietor of Word Spy (www.wordspy.com), a website devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases that have entered the English language.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

When you think of the word server, you probably first imagine either a massive mainframe hulking behind locked doors in the bowels of some large corporation, or a powerful and very expensive desktop-like device full of esoteric hardware that helps it—and perhaps a few others like it—run the network of a medium-sized company. The common thread here is that we've always thought of servers as business machines. With the exception of a few hardcore geeks and technical writers (not that the two designations are mutually exclusive), having a server in your home seemed, well, excessive. What home needs the power of a server? What home can afford the expense of such a high-end device?

But then a funny thing happened: times changed. All those one-computer households suddenly became two-, three-, and even four-computer households; broadband became nearly ubiquitous, and of course every family member wanted a piece of the new pipe; we began digitizing our media en masse, and we wanted to share that media with other members of the family and with other devices scattered around the house; and we discovered wireless computing and became addicted to working and playing anywhere we wanted. The result has been an explosion of home networks over the past few years.

However, it didn't take long for amateur network administrators to learn something that their professional counterparts have known for many years: the larger the network, the more you need some device in the middle of it all to coordinate activities and offer a central repository for data. And our home networks have started to become quite large, with multiple computers, multiple devices such as wireless access points and network attached storage drives, and increasingly massive files, from multiple-megabyte digital audio files to multi-gigabyte digital video files. Suddenly we, too, needed a powerful machine in the middle of it all to keep things humming.

It helped significantly that extremely powerful computers had became extremely inexpensive, but one big problem remained: a server computer needs a server operating system. Unfortunately, the only choices here simply weren't reasonable or practical choices for the home: the powerful but expensive Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition, or the various flavors of Linux, all of which are far too complex and arcane for the average home network.

However, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place when Microsoft announced Windows Home Server to the world in January 2007. Now we all had access to a server operating system that was designed specifically for home networks; we had access to a server OS that was easy to configure, simple to use, inexpensive, and could run on a variety of hardware; we had a server OS that not only did the usual server tasks—store data and manage users—but that also went much further with automatic backups for every computer, streaming media, and easy-to-configure access to any desktop from the network or from the Internet.

Welcome, then, to Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed. My goal in this book is to take you beyond the basic Windows Home Server Console interface and into the tremendously powerful behind-the-scenes features that enable you to get the most out of your investment without requiring an advanced networking degree.

Who Should Read This Book

For a book like this, it doesn't make much sense to have a "typical reader" in mind when writing. First, there's just no such thing as a typical reader, so you'd be writing for an audience of none. Second, home networks are as varied and unique as the families who use them. There are simple two-computer homes; there are large one-computer-per-person households; there are families who qualify as media powerhouses that create, share, and play audio and video incessantly; there's the home-office crowd who use their network for work as well as play; and finally there's Alpha Geek family with one person who's juiced not so much about Windows Home Server itself, but about getting his hands on the powerful Windows Server 2003 engine that comes with it.

In this book, I've tried to keep all these different families and situations in mind, and there's lots of content here for everyone. As a general rule, this book is for anyone who wants more from Windows Home Server. If you want to learn more about how Windows Home Server works, if you want to get more out of the unique features in Windows Home Server, and if you want to know how to use the powerful but hidden server features that are also part of the Windows Home Server package, this book is most definitely for you.

How This Book Is Organized

To help give you a sense of the overall structure of the book, the next few sections offer a brief summary of the six main parts of the book.

Part I: Unleashing Windows Home Server Setup

Part I takes the advice of the king in Alice in Wonderland: "Begin at the beginning." You get a bird's-eye view that describes what Windows Home Server is and what you can do with it (Chapter 1); you learn how to install Windows Home Server, just in case it didn't come preinstalled for you (Chapter 2); and you learn how to set up Windows Home Server for networking and how to troubleshoot basic network woes (Chapter 3).

Part II: Unleashing Windows Home Server Configuration

The four chapters in Part II show you how to get everything configured and connected so that you can start to take full advantage of what Windows Home Server has to offer. You learn how to set up and manage user accounts (Chapter 4); I show you how to add various computer types—Windows Vista, XP, and 98, as well as Mac and Linux—and various devices—including Windows Mobile and Xbox 360—to the Windows Home Server network (Chapter 5); you learn how to configure various Windows Home Server settings, including the computer name, the password, and various startup options (Chapter 6); and I delve deep into the new Windows Home Server storage system to show you how the system works, how to add, repair, and remove storage, and more (Chapter 7).

Part III: Unleashing Windows Home Server Networking

Part III is the biggest section of the book, with eight chapters focused on various aspects of networking with Windows Home Server. You learn how to share files and folders (Chapter 8); connect to other computers, both over the network and over the Internet (Chapter 9); stream and share digital image, audio, and video (Chapter 10); use Windows Home Server's computer backup and restore features (Chapter 11); monitor your network (Chapter 12); and implement network security (Chapter 13). I close this section with two chapters that take you well beyond Windows Home Server's core capabilities: Chapter 14 shows you how to use the built-in web server to create powerful and flexible websites, and Chapter 15 shows you how to download, install, configure, and use Windows SharePoint Services to run collaborative sites for your family.

Part IV: Unleashing Windows Home Server Performance and Maintenance

Part IV takes you into some of the features of Windows Home Server that are less glamorous but are still crucially important: performance tuning (Chapter 16), system maintenance (Chapter 17), interface customization (Chapter 18), and problem troubleshooting (Chapter 19).

Part V: Unleashing Windows Home Server Advanced Tools

The four chapters in Part V take your Windows Home Server knowledge to a higher level with in-depth looks at some advanced tools and features. You learn how to use the Windows Home Server Registry (Chapter 20); how to use the command-line tools (Chapter 21); how to use power tools such as the Control Panel, the Group Policy Editor, and the Computer Management snap-ins (Chapter 22); and how to create Windows Home Server scripts, including scripts that control the incredibly powerful Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface (Chapter 23).

Product Details

• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (September 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672329638
• ISBN-13: 978-0672329630
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #905,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul McFedries runs Logophilia Limited, a technical writing company, and has been writing computer books for more than 17 years. He is the author or coauthor of more than 60 books that have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Paul is also the proprietor of Wordspy.com, a website that tracks new words and phrases as they enter the language.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Windows Home Server Reference and Home Networking Book - All In One!, October 18, 2007

By 

Robert L. Stinnett (Boonville, MO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed (Paperback)

How often do you purchase a book on a topic and end up not only learning a wealth of information about that topic, but also getting a treasure trove of information on a related topic? In "Windows Home Server Unleashed" the author has created not only a terrific reference manual for the newly released Windows Home Server product, but also includes an excellent primer and how-to on home networking that is among the best I have seen!

Let's start out talking about who this book is for -- geeks. It's chocked full of helpful information, tweaks and "behind the scenes" information about Windows Home Server. The author not only tells you about what it can do out of the box -- but how you can extend it to bring out its full potential, such as creating shared calendars or your own internal (and external if you wish) family website to display vacation photos, journals, etc. You'll even learn how to use SharePoint technologies to extend WHS in a way that makes it seem as if you've been doing it for years!

The book is also good for those amongst us who are comfortable with computers, but want to take that next step. Who see the value in setting up a home network and using Windows Home Server, but want to do more than just share files and automate backups. It's for the Geeks-in-Training, and you couldn't ask for a better training manual.

The book itself is filled with 800 pages of information about Windows Home Server and home networking. You'll find out everything you need to know to get WHS up and running in your house -- regardless of whether you bought the software and installed it yourself or an "out of the box" appliance with WHS already installed. And don't worry if you are still running Windows XP, 2000 -- or even Millenium Edition in some cases! For many of the examples on how to use WHS features the author covers a variety of operating systems -- including Linux and Mac!

I am a tech guy, and therefore am an early adopter of Windows Home Server and this was the first book to hit the bookshelves on this amazing new software from Microsoft. I was just expecting to get a book that walked me through WHS and its basic features, but what I got was a reference I could use to really tear into it. It's not a book you read cover to cover, but rather one you refer back to each time you are ready to try out something new and push the envelope.

If you are thinking about getting Windows Home Server, do yourself a favor and add this book to your bookshelf. You will soon find that you are extending Windows Home Server to do new things and bringing your home network to life by adding useful features that brings the entire family into the digital age.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but starting to get out of date, February 18, 2010

By 

Pyanfar Chanur (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed (Paperback)

This is probably the most thorough book I've seen about Windows Home Server (or "WHS"). However, it was written some time ago and WHS has changed substantially since then, particularly in December of 2009 with the release of Power Pack 3. Windows Home Server is a very different OS from anything I've worked with before, and it helped to have some explanations as to the HOW and the WHY of Windows Home Server.

A lot of the Windows Home Server is easy to use because it goes through an interface called the Windows Home Server Console. Just the same, not all of the pieces of the Console are easy to understand at a lower level, and that's where Windows Home Server Unleashed comes in. My particular favorite section, however, is the chapter that discusses exactly how WHS manages files, folder replication, and storage: this is (to me) a weird way to do things, and the explanation helped my understanding greatly.

I'm writing this review in Feb. 2010. There is a new Edition of this book scheduled to come out in early April. If you're interested in a good reference, I feel this is the one. However, if you can wait, I'd suggest you do so because the newer version will cover the newer configuration of Windows Home Server, probably with more details on Power Pack 3.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference Resource, November 24, 2007

By 

Ryan Wu - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed (Paperback)

An excellent reference and resource book for Windows Home Server(WHS). It is not intended to be read cover to cover but piecemeal as problems or needs arise.

Pros:
- covers all of the essential, including system requirements, installation, setting up, maintaining and troubleshooting WHS
- has additional tips on optimizing WHS
- uncovers many undocumented features to really bring out the power of WHS
- provides nonWHS related information on TCP/IP, the Windows Server 2003 underlying operating system, and running your own website

Cons:
- can be difficult for nontechies to read since it assumes a certain level of knowledge of using Windows and also uses certain technical terms without explanation. Even ones that are explained, like a stack or layer, use an explanation that is technical in nature
- sometimes the instructions are redundant in that the book will repeat verbatim a 12 step process that was just covered a page before but with only 1 change in the steps

Bottom line: A great reference book for intermediate users.