Runsmall

Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server is misnamed. Few people really want a server for their home. It should be Windows SOHO Server, and Microsoft should market it to micro-businesses like mine - businesses with fewer than ten employees and no IT help. WHS has the features of Windows Server that are most important to these businesses: backup and remote access; and it makes those features dead easy to use.

The backup situation at Seal Rock Research has been adequate but never truly satisfactory. For the last eight years, we've backed up to servers running Samba on various flavors of Unix or Linux. Each PC has a simple batch file that incrementally copies changed or new files from our document directories to the server. Too much of this is manual. Everyone has to remember to launch the batch file, and if Outlook is running the Outlook files don't get backed up. Applications and OS are not backed up, and I have had to rebuild machines a few times. We have never lost a document, but I wanted to improve this situation.

I installed the trial version of Windows Small Business Server on an old PC to try it out. It wanted to take control of my gateway router so I went no farther with that. SBS seems like overkill to me anyway; running my own Exchange server is not on my list of must-dos.

The trial version of Windows Home Server was much more successful. In an hour or so I installed it on an old PC, connected one of our client PC's to it and got a complete image backup. 

So When HP started blowing their HP LX 195 out the doors for $199 I was ready. I bought one the first day that price was available at NewEgg. That deal is gone but good deals are still available at Amazon. 

The LX 195 is a tiny box with an Atom 230 CPU, 1GB of memory, a 640GB hard drive, and Windows Home Server. It is headless by design, with no video or PS/2 ports on its back panel. In two hours I had it up and running, and installed the connector software on all our PC's and laptops. I left everything turned on, and the next morning our entire network was backed up. This, really, is magic.

I want to setup remote access but there are wrinkles. I have a dual-NAT network. The gateway router has a 10.1.10 internal network that connects to my LAN/wireless router. The LAN router has an internal 192.168.1 network, which all PC's and laptops connect to. Here's a picture:

 

If the WHS server is on the 10.1.10 network, it can do remote access but not backup; on the 192.168.1 network, it can do backup but not remote access. For now backup is the key application, so I'll leave it on the 192.168.1 network, but this makes me want to flatten my network topology. There are probably lots of ways to do it, but I'm tempted to just burn a public IP so the Linksys can be the only NAT router on my network:

 

Another wrinkle is storage. We aren't a very data-intensive business, but the initial backup used up over half of the ~600GB the LX195 makes available. The LX195 has only one internal drive bay. Expansion is by adding external drives to the four USB ports on the back. This is OK, but I'd rather not have two pieces of gear where one would do. I don't want to find myself in a space crunch a year or two from now, so I've ordered a 1.5TB drive as a replacement.

Use a good headset for better call quality

Right now we're doing a series of telephone interviews for a Web 2.0 company that I won't name. The number isn't large, just 15 interviews of about 40 minutes each, but you can imagine the fatigue of using a conventional handset for four or five of these calls in a row.

I tried using cheap Plantronics headsets intended for cordless phones, but the quality was poor.

If you're on the phone a lot and use a landline, you should invest in a call-center quality headset. I use a GN Netcom 2125 that I bought at Amazon. There are probably others that are just as good or better, but I've had just about complete satisfaction with this unit. It's lightweight, and doesn't squeeze your head the way some other headsets do. The sound quality is remarkable. At first the light weight and lack of pressure makes it feel insecure, but it stays in position very well. I almost forget I'm talking through a device and can converse more naturally. I also can use my hands to look up websites, take notes, or flag down Julie to get the dog to stop trying to jump in my lap.

It took a while to figure out the best way to connect this headset to a telephone. Call centers have specialized telephones with amplifiers to run the headsets. But the amplifier GN Netcom sells to use with this headset costs more than the headset itself. Fortunately, our great Polycom SE-220 desk phones come with a built-in headset amplifier.

But there remained a problem: the GN Netcom headset comes with a so-called "quick disconnect" plug for use with GN Netcom's amplifiers and call center phones. The Polycom SE-220 has a 2.5mm headset jack. Amazon doesn't mention this, and doesn't sell an adapter. I had to go to Hello Direct to get the part I needed.

For about $100 each (plus the Polycom phones, which we already own) we can talk on the phone all day without fatigue. I even have started to wear the headset when I'm not on the phone, if I expect a lot of calls. I definitely pick it up to answer any call I think might last longer than a minute or two. And it makes telephone interviewing a breeze.

Non-standard? Non-starter.

the Netgear Storage Central has been around for a while.

Netgear SC101

Recently, though, I noticed that it is available for a very attractive price.

The Storage Central appeals to me as a small business owner: it is good looking, quiet, and flexible. Manufacturers often charge exorbitant prices for small upgrades in hard drive capacity. With the Storage Central I can install any drives I want. I also want to like it because it reminds me of the dear old Cobalt Qube.

But the Storage Central uses the proprietary Z-SAN protocol. Z-SAN is not widely used, and operating systems don't support it out of the box. I would have to install Netgear software on every computer that needs to access the Storage Central. Netgear doesn't make its special software for every operating system. The Storage Central system requirements limit you to "Windows® 2000(SP4), XP Home or Pro (SP1 or SP2), 2003(SP4)". In other words, Macintosh, Linux, or Unix systems need not apply.

This is a showstopper. I will not buy a product like this. Not because I want to access it from a Mac or Unix/Linux machine - all our desktops and laptops run Windows. It would probably take me less than 30 minutes to install the software on our three desktops and two laptops. But there is such a thing as a standard.

Standard file sharing protocols include the Unix-oriented NFS and the Windows-oriented CIFS. Every major operating system implements one or both of these standards. With NFS or CIFS, you can access your files from any other device that implements the same standard. You can even get NFS software for Windows from Microsoft.

With the Storage Central, you can only access your files if Netgear has chosen to write software for the operating system your device uses. This may not be a problem now, but what if Netgear is slow releasing software for Microsoft's next operating system? You have probably already noticed that the list of supported operating systems does not include Vista (though I believe Vista is in fact supported now). What if I wanted to try a Macintosh? What if Netgear's software has a bug? I would be at the mercy of a single vendor, my freedom limited by their architectural and technical choices.

I can get a Storage Central for $160, without hard disks. I put together this shopping cart in a few minutes at NewEgg:

GIGABYTE GA-945GCM-S2C Micro ATX Intel Motherboard $50.99
Intel Celeron 420 1.6GHz LGA 775 35W Processor $42.99
Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 667 Memory $10.99
IN WIN IW-Z583T.J350BFU2AD Black Computer Case (with PS) $55.99

total: $160.96

This system is fully the equal of the Storage Central, and much more flexible. I would probably spend a few more dollars to get a motherboard with built-in Gigabit Ethernet (which Storage Central doesn't have).

Add a hard drive or two, and this is a fine Linux file server. Install Ubuntu or CentOS from a USB CD-ROM drive, and set up Samba. This server will work with every computer I have now, and every computer I might buy in the future. No extra software, no extra steps, no limits.

Storage Central looks fine until you see what the real costs might be. Ignore products that don't support standards. Proprietary protocols are good for vendors. Standards are good for customers. Especially small business customers.

Server Part II

In an earlier post I talked about wanting a new server that could potentially run Windows Small Business Server to enable both internal and client-side collaboration. It also has to replace our current file server, a low-powered Linux box that has been utterly reliable and trouble free.

Here are the requirements for the new server:

• Enough power (CPU, RAM) to run Small Business Server without notable sluggishness in the interface
• More speed serving files than the old server, with its 100MBPS Ethernet bottleneck
• Storage capacity to last two or three years – and the ability to upgrade if needed
• Low noise
• Power efficiency, since it's going to be on 24x7
• Inexpensive to buy
• Easy to assemble

I selected these parts:

Component	Rationale	Cost
ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard	An older design, tested and reliable, with GB Ethernet and on-board video	$90
45 watt AMD Athlon 64 LE-1600	No dual-core desktop processor has less than 65 watts TDP. This Athlon part runs at 2.2 GHz, has a 1MB cache, and a 45-watt TDP. It should be faster than a similarly priced Sempron and use less power than a dual-core.	$46
WD Caviar SE16 WD1600AAJS 160GB operating system drive	Separating the OS from the data will simplify backup and restore	$50
WD Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB data drive	Fast and inexpensive. This drive actually is faster in some benchmarks than the Raptor 10k RPM drives. I wanted to use the "green" Western Digital Caviar GP, but it costs much more per GB.	$150
2GB Kingston DDR2 667 Value RAM	Inexpensive and reliable	$45
NEC/Optiarc DVD-RW	Just buy the cheapest major brand	$25
Antec NSK4480 case/power supply	Quiet, easy to work with, includes an efficient power supply with active power factor correction	$90

The total cost before tax and shipping was $495 – pretty good for a server with .75 terabytes of useful storage.

Here it all is, except the case.

Note that none of these parts are actually intended for servers. Most servers and server components are grossly over-specified for typical small business use. They cost more and do nothing to address the most common cause of server failure in a small business – human error.

As long as I keep the data backed up and don't get too fancy with configuration, this box should be perfectly adequate and reliable.

These components went together in an afternoon, and a 6-month trial of Windows Small Business Server was up and running an hour later. I can't say that the performance is snappy. Windows Server 2003, on which SBS is based, seems to be quite a hog. But it's not the tremendous annoyance it was on the first machine I tried it on – a 2.53GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM.

I'll do some performance testing and report in a later post.

File server

For the last three years our main file server for backups has been a Linux computer.

Its specs are very basic:

VIA EPIA ME-6000 Mini-ITX motherboard with 600 mHz passively cooled C3 CPU
128MB DDR SDRAM (probably from Crucial)
Samsung Spinpoint P series 160GB 7200 rpm hard drive
IBM Flex-ATX case with a power supply of 150 watts or so - these were selling on eBay at fantastic prices at the time, evidently from a canceled production run

I temporarily added a spare CD-ROM drive to install White Box Enterprise Linux 3.0. Today I'd choose CentOS 4.6 or 5.1. I didn't install the GUI, and I do almost all maintenance on an ssh command line using putty.

After configuring Samba and setting up some shares, this computer has needed almost no maintenance at all. It cost less than $300 to put together, uses 30 or 40 watts at idle and is close to silent. At what I pay for electricity, it is saving me about $100 per year compared to a full-sized computer of that era, so it has paid for itself while providing reliable service.

Each of us (all three of us) has a batch file to back up any changed or added files in our document directories with a single click.

[batch file contents]

rem documents
xcopy c:\documents\* \\porpoise\shared\david\documents /C /M /E /Y
rem email
xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\David\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles" \\porpoise\shared\david\thunderbird /C /M /E /Y
rem outlook
xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\David\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" \\porpoise\shared\david\outlook /C /M /E /Y
rem quicken has a bug, fails to open the file unless a is set
attrib +a c:\documents\quicken\*.*
pause

[end of batch file]

This simple setup lets us restore accidentally deleted files, access another person's documents without turning on her computer, and create consolidated backup DVDs by copying the whole mess to a Windows computer with a DVD drive. It's not sophisticated, but I favor simplicity and transparency.

The VIA CPU at 600 MHz seems about as fast as a 400 MHz Pentium II or III. But you don't need anything faster for a small workgroup file server running Linux. Even in 2004, 128MB was a minimal amount of memory, but I have never seen a need for more. By right-sizing this server instead of overbuilding, I saved on money, space and noise. And I avoided wasting thousands of kilowatt-hours of electricity that a Netburst Pentium 4 power-hog would have used, saving hundreds of dollars more.

But now it's 2008, and the 160GB Samsung drive is 97% full. There are many options - I could:

• keep using the old server by culling old files and directories, moving them to offline storage

• keep using the old server by upgrading to a larger hard disk drive - probably the easiest and most economical way to go

• upgrade the entire system to a more recent, equivalent platform - if I were to do this, I'd use an Intel D201GLY2 motherboard, which would support either a current Linux install or [Solaris].

But instead I want to try another route. Microsoft's Small Business Server has a number of features that could prove useful in our business - Sharepoint collaboration being near the top. I'm not ready to commit to it, but I want to give it a try. The problem is, when I installed a beta copy of Windows Server 2008 on a spare P4 machine - <i>many</i> times more powerful than the Via box - it ran at an odious crawl. So for SBS I need a new server, and something more powerful than the Celeron 220 and 1GB max available with the D201GLY2.

[more later...]

Polycom Communicator

The Polycom Communicator is a cool device. It's a USB speakerphone that is optimized for voice communication and works seamlessly with Skype.

I had little interest in Skype before I got the Communicator - I thought it was a service for cheapskates who would take inferior call quality to save a few cents. I was wrong. The call quality isn't bad, and the savings can be far more than a few cents.

Picture this: Julie and I are in a hotel room in Frankfurt, on a project that has us doing focus groups in England, Germany, India and Brazil. We need to touch base with focus group facilities in New Delhi and Sao Paolo. We also need an hour-long conference call with a client in California.

The hotel room has a speakerphone. International calls are 5 euros a minute. Julie's cell phone has a tinny sounding speakerphone without enough volume, and international calls are only 3 dollars a minute - a bargain next to the hotel phone. For some reason, my cell phone isn't working in Frankfurt, so if we go the cell route it has to be the crummy speakerphone.

So we can do our calls on the hotel phone. This will set us back about $500. We can use the cell phone. This will only cost about $200, but the call quality will be abysmal. Or we can try the Communicator with Skype.

Skype is a PC-based Voice-over-IP telephony and messaging system. With Skype you can call or message any Skype user for free. But the real magic is a feature called "Skype Out". With Skype Out you can call just about any phone in the world from Skype. The cost is typically $.03 per minute. You make an initial deposit, typically 10 dollars, euros or pounds, and your usage is charged against that balance.

I had Skype installed on my laptop, and I'd brought along the Communicator. Our hotel had a decent broadband connection, so we decided to give it a try. I plugged the Communicator into the USB port, pushed its call button (which launches the Skype application), and started calling.

After an hour and a half of clear, crisp conference calls to India, Brazil, and the US I still had more than seven of my original ten dollars. There had been no shouting, no "please repeat that". In one evening I had saved more than the cost of the device (for the sake of disclosure, I should note that Polycom gave us this device because we did much of the market research during its development).

I am a convert, both to Skype and to the Communicator. We often need to do conference calls from hotel rooms, focus group facilities, or airport lounges. These calls have been tense, difficult, and tiring because of the low quality and high cost of the available telephone options. The Communicator makes those calls fun and easy - and cheap, too. It's a winner.