Category: Computers and Internet

While I’m deciding whether I should bother upgrading from my current Windows Home Server system to Microsoft’s brand spanking new Windows Home Server 2011, I thought that I should take a look at the online help system for WHS 2011. After all, when people get into difficulties, a well-designed online help system with relevant and accurate information should help them on their way, right?

So, how does the online help for WHS 2011 measure up?

Weeelll…

• Could do better, I think is the diplomatic answer,
• Could do an awful lot better, if we’re being more realistic.

Let’s start with the entry page of the help system:

(Note: since writing this blog entry, Microsoft has dropped the original web pages, and moved all the help text into the TechNet Library. None of the typos/grammar/errors/text have been changed in the move, so my criticisms are still valid…)

OK, let’s get started…

Oh, here’s a link about connecting computers to the Server…

Under the “Prepare to connect computers to the server” heading it says:

The section provides information about the Connector software, the operated [sic] systems that are supported by Windows Home Server 2011, etc.

The correct text would be operating systems.

Further down the page, it has a section on how to “Connect computers to the server using the Connector software”. The first four subheadings are all to do with the concept of “How do I… (do a particular task)” . Three of the headings start with the phrase “How do I…”, yet for some reason the second item does not. It states baldly: “Install the Connector software?” when in fact what is implied is “How do I install the Connector software?”.

There’s a minor omission on the last subheading  “Troubleshoot connecting computer to the server” – a missing indefinite article.

So, back on the first subheading and link on the section “Connect computers to the server using the Connector software”, we arrive at the “How do I connect computers to the server page”…

Here, there’s a minor typo in the third bullet point of the “Before you begin” section – a missing space between the words 2011 and when…

More importantly, in the text box labelled “Important”, there is reference to dynamic disks on client computers, without any further reference as to what, precisely, dynamic disks might be.

Let’s just think about the target audience for WHS2011 for a moment. It is, I assume, the same as for the original version of WHS, that is, ordinary home consumers who have possibly a number of PCs, some or all of which will be holding digital media or documents, which need to be protected against loss.

Using IT jargon (dynamic disks) without any further reference does not help – and this is supposed to be the online Help… This isn’t the last time this mistake will be made in the online Help…

OK, let’s carry on… Under the “To connect your computer to the server” section, item 6, we read:

a. From the Launchpad link, you can access the shared folders shortcut, configure computer backups, address alerts, and open the Remote Web Access site. For more information about the Launchpad, see Overview of the Dashboard

Erm, I think that link should be “Overview of the Launchpad.”…

After item 6 follows an extensive Important text box. There’s a typo at the end of the first bullet point: “For more information about user accounts see, see Manage User Accounts”.

Back on the Connect Computers to the Server page, there’s a link promising help on Prerequisites for connecting a computer to the home server.

Skating quickly over the reference to the fact that computer must be on the same IP subnet as the server that is running Windows Home Server 2011 – er, what’s an IP subnet? I’m just a home consumer… we come to the statement that:

The boot partition—that is, the disk partition where the Windows operating system is installed—is formatted with the NTFS file system.

Er, hang on – I thought that I could connect Macintosh computers to Windows Home Server 2011? What’s all this about Windows? Oh, don’t worry, the online Help system hasn’t got around to you yet…

Just in case you thought that the online Help system was missing out crucial information, we come to a section where Microsoft has apparently thought it worthwhile to include irrelevant padding to further confuse the reader.

Here’s the Install the Connector software? section (which as already noted, to be syntactically conformant and grammatically correct, should be titled How do I install the Connector software?). It reads:

The Windows Home Server 2011 Connector software is installed when you connect your computer to the server using the Connect a Computer to the Server wizard. You can launch this wizard by typing http://<ServerName>/connect in the address bar of your web browser (where <ServerName> is the name of your server).

• Connects your home computer to Windows Home Server 2011.
• Automatically backs up your home computer nightly (if you configure the home server to backup your home computers).
• Monitors the health of your home computer.
• Enables you to configure and remotely administer Windows Home Server 2011 from your home computer.

For step-by-step instructions about connecting your computer to the Windows Home Server 2011 server, see How do I connect computers to the server?. For additional information about connecting your home computer to the home server, see Connect Computers to the Server.

Now, tell me – what do those four bullet points add in any way at all to the answer to the question “How do I install the Connector software?”? Answer: nothing whatsoever. They are pure fluff – and irrelevant fluff at that.

OK, let’s skip now to one of the key areas of WHS2011 – Backup and Restore. We saw on the Home page of the online Help under the Backup and Restore heading the text:

Back up your server, and use your server to back up your computers.

So, clicking on the Backup and Restore link takes us to a page where there is information about backing up and restoring client computers, but not a single word about server backup and restore. A dead end. Oh well, never mind, after a bit of hunting, we find a page devoted to learning more about setting up server backup.

After the throwaway line that “Server backup is not enabled during server setup” (why not? was this important? should I worry about it? – who knows…) we come to the first meat of the section under the heading Server backup schedule:

You should protect your server and its data automatically by scheduling daily backups. It is recommended that you maintain a daily backup plan because most organizations cannot afford to lose the data that has been created over several days.

Er, hello? I’m not an organization – I’m a home consumer. Who, exactly, are Microsoft talking to? I don’t think it’s me…

Oh well, let’s continue… Under the section on considerations for the backup target drive, we read:

Choose a drive that contains sufficient space to store your data. Your storage drives should contain at least 2.5 times the storage capacity of the data that you want to back up. The drives should also be large enough to accommodate the future growth of your server data. Because server backups are incremental, a backup drive of 300 GB in size or more can hold months of backup data.

This advice is all very well, but nowhere does the help text spell out that (a ) your backup storage drives can not be bigger than 2TB in size and (b ) you can’t actually backup more than 2TB of server data in any case. And that “Because server backups are incremental, a backup drive of 300 GB in size or more can hold months of backup data” is possibly misleading if you’re a professional photographer doing daily shoots, or a TV addict recording lots of shows.

Still, let’s skip to another help page: Move a server folder. Frankly, this whole page reads as though it has been written by someone to whom English is not their first language. Don’t Microsoft employ proofreaders any more?

That same person appears to have been responsible for the Where should I add the Server folder? and the Where should I move the server folder? pages with:

• their interesting sentence constructions (e.g. “If possible, avoid adding or moving a shared folder to the system (c:) hard drive as it make take away the necessary drive space that is required for operating system and its updates”.) and
• their lack of clarity (e.g. “Also, avoid adding server or moving server folders to an external hard drive because you may not be able to access files in a folder on an external drive because they can be easily disconnected”. – using “they” when referring to “an external drive”).

There’s another pile of help pages to wade through, but I’ve had enough for today. I’ll just leave you with another gem on the How do I remotely access my computer? page. Under the Home computer status: connection is disabled section, it says:

The home computer connection is either blocked by a firewall, or the remote desktop is disabled at the computer or by Group Policy. It may take up to 6 hours for this status to be updated in the server if there is a change.

Once again, I’m a home consumer – what in heaven’s name is “Group Policy”?

Frankly, the majority of these help pages are written by IT people for IT people, not for ordinary people. This does not augur well for success in the supposed target market for WHS 2011.

I see that Windows Home Server 2011 has been released to manufacturing. So it should be available on the market in April/May.

I’m sorry, but I can only raise a faint cheer about this product. It doesn’t strike me as a major step forward from the original Windows Home Server, and in some respects – notably the removal of the Drive Extender technology – it is a step backwards.

The comparison datasheet is long on marketing and short on actual comparison with WHSv1, and that’s not really surprising.

What really gets to me is that Microsoft had the chance to build upon the base of WHSv1 as a server and media appliance that could be used by the average consumer, and they’ve thrown that chance away.

I’m channelling Victor Meldrew again today. And the cause of my frustration is once again the forthcoming Windows Home Server 2011. I wasn’t too impressed with some of the backup features I found when I looked at them a few days ago. After digging a bit further, I’ve come across one “feature” that has flabbergasted me. It really should be called a bug, because it introduces an extraordinary limitation into WHS 2011.

It turns out that the maximum size of a server backup that can be made is 2TB.

OK, you say, but WHS 2011 recognises multiple backup discs. So suppose my WHS has 5 TB of data that needs to be backed up, then I just use three backup discs, right? Two discs of 2TB capacity and one disc of 1TB capacity (or three discs each of 2TB capacity; the third will only be half-used). Plug ‘em in, let the server backup processes run, and everything’s hunky-dory, right?

Wrong.

Even though WHS 2011 will recognise multiple backup discs, it won’t let you slice up the server storage across them. You can only backup the same files and folders to any of the multiple discs. So, in the example I used above, even though I have three backup discs, I can only ever backup a maximum of 2TB of the 5TB stored on my server.

I ask you, what sort of design is that? The term brain-dead springs to mind.

The WHS team at least do recognise the limitation. Over at the Microsoft Connect bug-reporting site, a member of the team has written:

At this time we can only back up to 1 single 2 TB disk. We realize the limitation and are working with the Core Windows team to fix this. Hopefully it’s something we can provide in future releases. For now you have to pick your critical data.

Er, “hopefully” you can fix it? Dear lord, is that the best that you can do?

It turns out that there seems to be a workaround, but it’s not, I think, for the average home user – you know, the sort of person that WHS 2011 is targeted at.

WHS 2011 is built on top of Windows Server 2008 R2 – an extremely powerful server operating system. This has its own Backup and Restore mechanism, which is equally powerful. However, this mechanism is designed for IT people, not for the home user. Here, for example, is a screenshot of partof the Overview of Windows Server Backup, taken from the online help manual (click to see in its full gory glory). Full of jargon and certainly not for the faint of heart (or non-IT person)…

If you want to take a look at the full manual, then please, be my guest, and visit Microsoft’s online help web site.

Now, it is certainly possible to use the Backup and Restore mechanism of Windows Server 2008 R2 to do what I want to do – slice the 5TB of storage on my WHS across three backup discs, but I’ll have to figure it out for myself, and start being an IT person again.

The whole point is that I shouldn’t have to do this. WHS 2011 is supposed to be for the home user.

The last irony about all of this is that in fact the backup features of WHS 2011 do seem to be using the underlying mechanisms of Windows Server 2008 R2, it’s just that their current design is extraordinarily limited, and, in my case with more than 2TB of data on my server, utterly useless.

Update 20 October 2011: I see that Microsoft have now posted a TechNet article covering this 2TB limit in the TechNet Wiki. Since it’s a wiki, I’ve edited it to improve the language and the grammar. The original was clearly written by someone for whom English is not their first language.

Update 31 March 2014: It appears as though there has been some improvement made to the Server Backup function in the Dashboard since I originally wrote this article. It remains the case that WHS 2011 continues to use the VHD format for backup, which has a maximum capacity of 2TB. However, it now appears (contrary to what Microsoft originally stated) as though the Server Backup function can now deal with multiple VHDs, providing the backup drive is big enough. So, if your backup drive is 4TB, that means you can have 2 VHDs of 2TB created on it. That, in turn, means that you can backup up to 4TB of data from your data storage drives (with a maximum of 2TB for any one drive). That’s a theoretical maximum, since Microsoft also recommend having some free space in the VHDs to handle incremental backups.

I wrote yesterday that I’d decided to kick the tyres of the Release Candidate of Windows Home Server 2011. Today, I thought I’d take a look at how server backups are handled in WHS 2011.

First, a bit of background. WHS Version 1 can make backups of its shared folders (e.g. the Pictures, Videos, Music and User folders held on the server) to external discs. This is a one-click manual process (see figure 1). That means, unlike the backups of client computers attached to the server, there’s no built-in function in WHS V1 to schedule the backups of shared folders. Also, WHS V1 does not have the option of backing up the client computer backups from the server itself onto external discs. There’s a third-party add-in to do this, but this function is not built into WHS V1 by Microsoft.

figure 1

When it comes to WHS 2011, there are a number of changes in this area over WHS V1. First, server backups are always scheduled – you can’t actually initiate a server backup manually with one click of a button (NOTE: the final version of WHS 2011 does now contain a button to start a server backup manually. Microsoft added this in). Second, in WHS 2011, server backups can include both the contents of the shared folders and the backups of the client computers held on the server.

I find these changes a bit of a mixed blessing. First the good news: it’s great that you can backup the client computer backups to external discs in addition to the shared folders (see figure 2).

figure 2

However, I’m less enthusiastic about the fact that server backups are always scheduled, and that they run daily (see figure 3).

figure 3

Let’s think a moment about the nature of these backups to external discs. As far as I’m concerned, they are for the purpose of making backups to be held offsite. That’s what I use them for, at any rate. If I were to have the external discs permanently connected to a WHS 2011 system, then, it seems to me, I’m only getting a slower version of the Shared Folder duplication that was built into WHS V1 and which was provided by the now-removed Drive Extender technology.

And Microsoft’s own guidelines for Backup best practices for WHS 2011 state:

You should backup server data to multiple external hard disks and rotate the hard disks between onsite and offsite storage locations. Doing so can improve your disaster preparedness planning by helping you recover your data if physical damage occurs to the hardware onsite.

So if I’m going to be using the external discs for making server backups to be held offsite, then allowing the backups to be made only on a scheduled basis seems to be a bit counter-intuitive to me. I want to be able to fetch the discs from offsite, plug them in, push a button to initiate the server backups, and then return them offsite. I do this on a weekly basis. I can do this with WHS V1; I can’t do this with WHS 2011: (a ) there’s no manual server backup and (b ) the backups run on a daily schedule. At the time of originally writing this post, the Beta version of WHS 2011 did not have the capability to manually initiate a server backup. The final release version does. However, the backup task still continues to run on a daily basis…

In fact, even the act of removing external discs seems less clear in WHS 2011. In WHS v1, once the server backup is complete, then I simply select the external drive and click “Remove drive”. WHS V1 will ask if I want to remove the drive temporarily or permanently (see figure 4), and I select the “temporary” option. The disc is then safely dismounted from the system, and it can be returned to its offsite location.

figure 4

In WHS 2011, if I select an external drive, I don’t get a choice to remove it temporarily, the only option shown is to remove it permanently from the server backup (see the tasks shown in figure 5). Choosing this starts the “Customise Server Backup” wizard (see figure 6), which I find somewhat confusing. I’m not trying to customise the server backup – I want to remove the drive… It turns out that the only way to temporarily remove a drive seems to be to yank out the cable. I suppose I’m set in my ways, but I always prefer to safely eject media (as WHS V1 allows me to do).

figure 5

figure 6

The elephant in the room with server backups is that WHS 2011 can’t easily deal with discs bigger than 2TB. Now I know that even only a couple of years ago, this would have seemed an enormous capacity. However, with today’s high definition media, coupled with the ready availability of 3TB discs (with higher capacities on the horizon), then this limitation seems very surprising. The sad fact is that the backup method that Microsoft has chosen to go with in WHS 2011 has 2TB built-in as an upper limit. Never mind the fact that Windows 7 (even Windows Vista) and Windows Server 2008 (the operating system underneath WHS 2011) can support disks of more than 2TB capacity, WHS 2011 and its backup does not. If you install discs of more than 2TB into WHS 2011, then you must partition the disc into chunks, none of which can be more than 2TB in size. Even more frustrating, you can’t even backup a client computer that has a disc of more than 2TB assigned as one contiguous space. The Windows 7 client computer will be perfectly happy, but WHS 2011 will refuse to have anything to do with it (note: please see Addendum 2 at the bottom of this post for some clarification of this statement).

I note that, on my WHS V1 server, my Movies shared folder is already at 1.86TB. Just a few more Blu-rays added to my library, and I won’t be able to use WHS 2011 without having to sit down and plan my storage, both for now, and in the future, very, very carefully.

And this, to me, is the bottom line. WHS 2011 seems to force me to think like an IT support person; far, far more than WHS V1 ever did (or does!). That’s why I continue to think that the current WHS team don’t understand the home market sufficiently for WHS 2011 to succeed.

Addendum 1: It just gets worse. It turns out that the 2TB limit doesn’t just apply to the size of a backup disc, but also to the maximum amount of server storage that you can backup for offsite storage. I don’t believe it!  Update 31 March 2014: It appears as though there has been some improvement made to the Server Backup function in the Dashboard since I originally wrote this article. It remains the case that WHS 2011 continues to use the VHD format for backup, which has a maximum capacity of 2TB. However, it now appears (contrary to what Microsoft originally stated) as though the Server Backup function can now deal with multiple VHDs, providing the backup drive is big enough. So, if your backup drive is 4TB, that means you can have 2 VHDs of 2TB created on it. That, in turn, means that you can backup up to 4TB of data from your data storage drives (with a maximum of 2TB for any one drive). That’s a theoretical maximum, since Microsoft also recommend having some free space in the VHDs to handle incremental backups.

Addendum 2: Above, I wrote that: “you can’t even backup a client computer that has a disc of more than 2TB assigned as one contiguous space”. It turns out that’s too sweeping a statement. It was clarified by a discussion in the comments, and it’s worthwhile repeating the main points here in the blog entry itself.

The issue is that you cannot Backup and then Restore a GPT OS drive with Windows Home Server. You can backup a GPT with v1 and perform the Restore but the disk will not boot. You can Restore individual files from a GPT backup but again not the OS into a bootable device.

For WHS 2011, Microsoft’s release notes state:

“If a client computer is running Windows Home Server 2011, and it has a hard disk that is configured to use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) format, you cannot use back up or restore data from the operating system, individual files, or folders on that computer. However, you can restore individual files or folders from other computers to a client computer that uses GPT formatting.

In the event that a client computer is configured to use GPT hard disks, you must employ an alternative method to back up or restore that computer”.

[Update 4th March 2013: Microsoft has at last issued a Hotfix to add backup support for UEFI-based computers to back up to servers that are running Windows Home Server 2011]

Addendum 3: There are other issues with the Server Backup function in WHS 2011 that I explore in depth here. Sigh.

Yes, this is yet another grumbling post about how the current Windows Home Server team just don’t seem to understand what the word “Home” means in the name of the product.

I decided that I’d take a closer look at the Release Candidate for Windows Home Server 2011. So, I’ve wiped out the Windows 7 installation on my HP TX2000 laptop, and installed the WHS 2011 RC on it. On the plus side, I appreciated the way in which the installation process recognised hardware that had been developed since the days of Windows Server 2003 (that WHS V1 was based on). The installation process was painless.

On the other hand, there are some losses if I compare what I would have with WHS 2011 versus what I had with the first version of WHS.

The major difference is of course the removal of the Drive Extender technology. Now, this has been done to death (but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important), however, let’s look beyond that.

I approach Windows Home Server from the perspective of a consumer who has computers in their home. I’m someone who wants to have two things:

1. backup to a centralised server of all the data in the individual computers, such that, in the event of a failure of any individual computer, I can quickly restore that computer to a running state with the most recent data and,
2. to have digital media (music, pictures, videos, movies) available throughout my home from the same centralised server, with connected devices sharing media as simply, and as directly, as possible.

And I want that centralised server to be easy to manage, with regular offsite backups being made to ensure that the integrity of that server for both shared media and the data of client computers is preserved.

All this must be done as simply as possible. I really don’t want to carry on being the IT guy in my household. If I fell under a bus tomorrow, I would want my nearest and dearest to be able to carry on without any special knowledge.

And there’s the rub. While WHS V1 was certainly not perfect in this respect, it seems to me to be light-years ahead of the retrograde step of WHS 2011.

As I said, let’s ignore the elephant in the room, the Drive Extender technology, for the moment. Let’s just look at managing storage on WHS 2011.

In WHS V1, you could look at the shared folders to see how much space they currently took up. Here’s an example from my WHS V1 system:

And here’s the equivalent screenshot from WHS 2011:

Er, where’s the “used space” column? Well, surprise! It isn’t there. Instead, you have a “Free space” column that represents the space available on an individual drive. Nowhere near as useful. Because drive extender has been removed, the support person has to start thinking in terms of individual drives, not in terms of the total amount of storage as in WHS V1.

This mode of thinking in terms of individual drives, instead of the total storage pool is also reflected when considering backups. WHS 2011 is unable to deal with backups (or discs) larger than 2TB.

Frankly, if I were designing the follow-on product from WHS V1, then it would seem to me to be essential that I would handle the situation where discs and backups would be larger than 2TB. After all, if I’m going to claim that:

Today large hard drives of over 1TB are reasonably priced, and freely available. We are also seeing further expansion of hard drive sizes at a fast rate, where 2Tb drives and more are becoming easy [sic] accessible. Since customers looking to buy Windows Home Server solutons [sic] from OEM’s will now have the ability to include larger drives, this will reduce the need for Drive Extender functionality.

…then I would make sure that a 2TB limit did not exist in my product. Not so with WHS 2011.

I really do wonder who the team are designing the product for. Certainly not home users.