Recreating Win Home Server on Win7 Enterprise OR Win Server 2k3/8

Audigex

Audigex

Audigex

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Hey

I'm looking to implement myself a little Windows Home Server setup to backup my uni work, however I don't want to buy WHS itself.

Why? Because I can get Windows 7 (Premium/Enterprise) or Windows Server 2k3/2k8 absolutely free from the MSDNAA.

So basically, I'm looking to implement WHS features such as
+ Centralised backup (single-instance) - ie keeping a copy of files on my PC/laptops on the server, syncing between at least two and the server
+ Health monitoring of the rest of the PCs on the network
+ Printer sharing
+ Media streaming (to xbox and media centre)
+ Server backup (ie backing up the media on the server to a second either internal or external)

Now, I know I'm not going to get quite the same ease-of-use as WHS, but that's the price I'm willing to pay to save the cash. As such, I'd appreciate any links on the setting up of the above services, or the setting up of a secure server based on Win7 or WS2k3/8.

Anyone had any experience of similar setups? How easily can I set up the above?

Any advice appreciated, of course :) Thanks muchly
 
pretty easy really, i have a Win7 Server running as most of the things you need.

one thing i will say is that if you plan to play FLAC or MKV, DO NOT install the 64-Bit versions, i have had endless problems, there is no support for these in media center and getting flac to work in media player is a pain aswell.

look at windows homegroup, its a great little feature, allows for media and file sharing between PCs.

network and sharing center has all the features neccessary to choose what to share and as for centrallized backup, you should be able to map a network drive from the server onto each PC/Laptop and set up windows backup to backup to that drive.

try Cisco's Network Wizard, that allows you to monitor all the computers on the network and tells you if they are up to date and have antivirus, i had a quick play with it a while back and that supports windows 7.

hope some of this helps
 
That sounds excellent - and I only use AVI, MPG and AAC and MP3 for the most part (I started my collections with these formats and I don't really want the hassle of changing it all over)

Can I get the backing up to be automatic? I'd really like a fire-and-forget style system, where I can set it up once on each PC and then leave them for months at a time, I know my family won't run anything regularly enough to be useful. That's the main thing which has attracted me to Win Home Server.

Does the Cisco network wizard have another name? I can't find anything that seems to be related under that name after a quick google.
 
Windows 7 has an automated Backup and Restore feature [Professional and above] which is really easy to set up. You could also a robocopy script on a scheduled task.

Homegroup will only work with Windows 7 machines, so you need at least two to make it work.
 
That's not a lot of use :-(

I'd want to backup one win7 box and two each of vista and XP. Is there any way to recreate almost the same system as home server? ie the server grabs the files off the 7/vista/xp machines without any client-side interaction?

I suppose I could use a batch script to copy whole folders to the networked drive, but that doesn't quite have the same effect.

Ah I wish home server was on the MSDN - presumably MS don't consider it useful for academic purposes though.
 
I suppose you could run a script on the server to grab stuff off the network. Or use something like SyncToy 2 and put it on a scheduled task.

Vista has an automated backup system too and is available in Home Premium, so really it is only your XP machines that would need something like a script/SyncToy.

There is probably 3rd party paid for backup tools that will do what you want too, can't think of any off the top of my head though.
 
I do all of my backups using robocopy to a server08 machine scheduled to run at startup on each client pc

the server then runs backup scripts every so often to place these documents on various harddrives across my network

essentially creating one place to access all files and also 4 backup locations of these important files uptodate to every 6 hours.
 
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