Working on a help desk can get your foot in the IT door but working for more then 2 years on one is a bit much. I have been on this one for almost 4 years. I should move on. This is a tiered help desk, as many are and I am the second level. If level one takes a call and they can not resolve it for whatever reason then it comes to me. Usually what the first level gives to me could have been handled by them. They are either being ignorant or lazy; I haven’t figured that one out yet. Considering that is a state job, it is probably the latter.

If anyone is interested in Windows Home Server, I would recommend it. It is very effective at managing back ups (which is its main purpose) but you can also use it for creating easy to set up photo galleries to share with friends and family. Bear in mind though, that your ISP may block this. I have Cablevision and signed up for the boost package long ago, this allows me to open up port 80 on my router and serve up web pages. The remote access and upload feature is awesome too. You can get to your files at home and upload files while you are away. As long as you have an internet connection, you can get to your files. Under the hood it is actually Windows Small Business Server, you will see that emblazoned across the top during the install process.

Couple of things to note on WHS, you can’t use WHS to set group policy, just doesn’t work on Home Server. Active Directory isn’t there either. You can set up a raid array with your disks in the server however it is extremely difficult to get WHS to accept your drivers. I have not heard of anyone in my reading up on the subject getting it to work. The connector software can be a bit of a pain to install. For me, I didn’t know that you needed Windows update on in order for the connector to install; once that was enabled the install went fast. Backups are fast and once you create your first back up it only saves files that have changed. Cool.

WHS creates a system partition of 20 gigs. Then all other storage is merged into one virtual drive, so in a sense, it is like some form of RAID.

If you are interested, you can install WSUS which will manage the download of updates and push them out to your client PC’s. It is very involved to install and I really don’t need it since I only have 3 PC’s to worry about. Well, 3 PC’s and a server.

Speaking of photo galleries, I use WHIIST. You can create a photo album in 4 steps with no technical knowledge at all. Very cool stuff.

I have WHS running on a 3.2 ghz P4 w/hyper threading, 2 Gig’s of ECC RAM and two 640 GB WD hard drives. This is not a top end system by any means but WHS runs just fine on it.

There are a lot of add ons for WHS. I already mentioned WHIIST. However here are the ones I use in my configuration:

ASOFT AutoExit

This allows you to remotely turn on/off PC’s in your network. As long as you have wake on LAN enabled and if applicable, your router is configured properly and you have a wired connection. Wake on LAN does not work with wireless connections.

Advanced Admin Console

This add on gives you system tools right in the WHS console.

Disk Management

Shows you the health of the disks attached to your server along with temps and amount of used space.

There are many others, some I have downloaded but yet to install. Firefly is one of them, as well as PHP 5.0 and MySQL. Wordpress even has an install package so you can blog right from the comfort of your own home!

Trust me, there is a lot to like here and adds a whole new dimension to your home network.