Gaffer-Tape Engineering : Windows HomeServer

Installing TFS 2010 Beta2 on Windows Home Server

Jason Neave — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:41:40 GMT

After many attempts to install TFS 2008 on WHS I ended up giving up on the whole idea. Reporting Services and WSS kept throwing up roadblocks periodically and seemed to make it more hassle that it’s worth. From the first rumbling I heard internal regarding TFS 2010 and new configuration options however I had hope that things would be considerably easier. Enter TFS Basics.

TFS 2010 can now be configured with or without SharePoint and Reporting Services, it can also now be installed against SQL Express. In fact, if you install TFS 2010 and follow the steps to install as TFS Basic SQL Express will be installed and configured automatically!

Installation on Home Server is a breeze, get the bits from MSDN and install from the Tfs-x86 folder. Once installation completes the configuration wizard should open, click on “TFS Basic” in the left hand menu and click next a few times. Installation is that simple! The rest of this post will cover how to configure your instance of TFS to use your homeserver.com certificate and enable you to connect via the internet.

Without further adieu…

Open a remote connection to your Home Server using Remote Desktop.
Download and install TFS 2010 Beta2 (easy)
Install TFC 2010 Beta2 somewhere and test local connectivity
Follow these steps to export the Home Server certificate, you will be looking for one that matches your *.homeserver.com (or similar) URL.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/2cfeeba2-511f-47e8-913c-f196b74e6a44.mspx?mfr=true
Open inetmgr and find the "Team Foundation Server" website then right click and open the properties dialog. In the Directory Security tab click on "Server Certificate" and the certificate wizard should show itself. Click on Next.
We will want to import the certificate so click on the radio button then click next.
Navigate to the location of the PFX file from the previous step and click next.
Click next and enter the name of the password you entered for the PFX file.
Enter the port you wish to use for SSL, 8181 for example.
Review the details and click next.
Click on the Web Site tab and if not present, enter the port specified for SSL in the SSL Port text box.
Done.

That should be it, you will need to follow the steps to forward the ports on your router such that a public port on your router passes through to the SSL port on your Home Server and then you will be able to connect locally and remotely. Please be aware that some routers will route their external address to their control panel. If you see issues connecting to TFS using the public name then try to connect to your WHS Remote Access page and ensure it connects to your Home Server rather than the router.

Hopefully your router will play ball and you will be up and running, otherwise likely a bit of Binging will get you the help you need. Enjoy and feel free to add comments if you have any questions.

Jason

Useful Links

Jason Neave — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:04:00 GMT

This post is more for myself than anyone, it is a collection of links difficult to find that are nevertheless very useful. If they can help others as well then all the better.

Team Foundation Server

Customizable Team Foundation Build Targets
Team Foundation Build Tasks
Team Build 2008 Build Definitions

Windows Home Server

We Got Served

More to be added over time and feel free to add yours to the comments, I'll add them to the list if useful :)

Regards,
Jason

Windows Home Server and Live Mesh

Jason Neave — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Regular readers of my blog will know I've been a fan of Foldershare on Home Server for a while now. The main reason for this is a simplified version of "Offline Files" that works across the internet. It also works as a nice backup when remote access fails and I cannot connect normally for some reason, usually on those days when I forget my iPod and have nothing to listen to...

Enter Live Mesh.

I received an invite from a friend and decided to give it a go, as is my want. To say I was a impressed is an understatement, Mesh does a lot that Foldershare does, namely sharing folders, but it also has online backup of folders to the tune of 5GB and remote desktop capabilities as well! Apparently a Mac and Windows Mobile client will be coming soon which will be interesting, I assume the Mac client will offer the same functionalities as the PC client though how it will work on Windows Mobile has me truely intrigued.

I think my favourite feature is similar to Foldershare insofar as it works as a backup for those occastions where remote access fails. Using Mesh on my Home Server I can still get to the server console and my files now rather than just my files.

Mesh will also be exstensible though the SDK is not yet available, apparently it will allow you to add an application to your mesh though which is promising indeed. I'm thinking that media sharing across clients, remote Home Server notifications and a better remote control guide for MC would be a few likely candidates. Lets hope someone reads this and gets a few ideas!

Jason

My New Toy: Windows Media Centre

Jason Neave — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:43:00 GMT

I've had an old warhorse of a machine serving my media needs for some years and now I am moving house and will be moving back to Freeview so I thought I would build a new Media Centre machine based around Vista Ultimate. To that end I've sourced and thrown together the following parts;

Silverstone ML02 Micro-ATX case
Gigabyte 780G Series Motherboard
AMD 4600 AM2+ Processor
2GB DDR2 RAM
500GB Seagate HDD
Slimline DVD-ROM

The ultimate aim of this system is to view HD content, the motherboard I am using has HDMI onboard and those onboard graphics are capable of DX10 which is nice. The HDMI port also supports HDCP which will allow me to upgrade the DVD-ROM drive to a Blu-ray drive at some point in the future, an easy choice now the format debate is over. The motherboard also supports PCI-E which I will be filling with the Blackgold 6-in-1 Tuner card, on a sinle card you get dual analogue, digital terestrial and digital sattelite and as Freesat (www.freesat.co.uk) has just been released in the UK with the promise of free HD content from the BBC, ITV, ~~Channel 4~~ and a few others this choice is a no brainer.
Update: Channel 4 HD will be BSkyB only, no news on Freesat yet though likely it will move over at some point.

So far I've only played some HD content freely available online, a few trailers for example and a program released under Creative Commons whose name eludes me but the picture quality is astounding, definetly the way forward! It has to be said, with the new interface and improved hardware spec the addition I am most happy with is the remote. Until now I have been using a wireless keyboard, somewhat unwieldy to say the least, and being able to use a remote is a blessing. It also plays ball quite happily with my Home Server.

The last thing to note is the power requirements of this new machine. The board and processor I chose are based on mobile technology, to that end they are quite efficient devices. I borrowed a power meter from a friend of mine to test the power usage and while watching HD content from the hard disc it used a mere 60 Watts. Considering that most standard lightbulbs in the UK are of a similar rating and a less entertaining to watch I would say this is a hell of a result. The tuner card should add around 9 Watts to this however I will be replacing the hard disk with a WD Green Power disk that runs at 7 Watts so that should even things out quite nicely.

More news as I play around with it more.
Jason

Webguide Goes Live

Jason Neave — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:45:00 GMT

Today (or recently) WebGuide for WHS goes live as a free download. For those who haven't come across WebGuide I would suggest you follow the link and take a look. This add on gives your Windows Home Server users the ability to stream media (music, photos and videos) directly from Home Server, obviously the bandwidth of your home connection can effect this, but I have been using this for a while and can say it works a dream.

http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/homeserver.aspx

The latest version integrates a little better with WHS and I couldn't reccomend this one higher.

Jason

My Home Server Upgrade

Jason Neave — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:16:00 GMT

I recently decided to take the plunge and decided my home server really deserved a case rather than running on my dining room table so invested in new hardware for my Home Server. I also upgraded from the 1GHz workhorse I was using to an almighty 1.2GHz system. The difference is amazingly underwhelming, a testament to the low requirements of WHS I guess.

Jetway J7F4 Mainboard
1GB RAM
2TB Storage

Western Digital Green Power 1TB
2x Maxtor 500GB

Chenbro WHS Case
SATA PCI Card (2xSATA)

I found these at mini-itx.com (other retailers available). The impressive thing is the Jetway is fanless, runs at only 7W under full load and has dual gigabit ethernet. The Chenbro is also really easy to install the hardware considering the size of the case and pretty quiet too, the big decider is the drives you use though the Green Power discs barely vibrate while active and those too run at 7W under load. Between the mainboard and GP discs you could have a 4TB home server solution that runs at around 35W under full load. Truly astonishing considering most desktop PCs have ~500W power supplies as standard.

Bottom line if you want to go it alone and make your own WHS, I couldn't recommend the above any higher. For legal reasons the choice is yours however ;)

Jason

FolderShare + Home Server + OSX = WIN

Jason Neave — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:20:00 GMT

Not exactly a Home Server addin so I didn't add it to The List but I'm finding that FolderShare is yet another background service I can't live without for one very simple reason. OSX.

FolderShare is something Windows Live are currently working on and is in open beta. It allows you to set up distributed shared folders between various machines, including Mac's running OSX. You can find more information at www.foldershare.com

A couple of examples of where this is use are:-

"Home" Edition of Windows that doesn't have Offline Files, use FolderShare to keep a Sync'd copy of your share on WHS on your local machine
Sync Shares with OSX which has no offline file support, my OSX now maintains a sync'd copy of my Photos share for example
Create a shared folder between you and a friends machine, drop a file in a folder and it will automatically (settings depandant) be replicated to thier machines
Web access to your files from www.foldershare.com (requires host machine to be running for this)
Syncing of files between home and work machines. You can work on a file at home and drop it into a shared folder. It will be at work before you are.

...and so on.

If you can see the benefit of FolderShare then give it a go, if you have the need for something like this you wont be disapointed.
Jason

HomeServer Addins: The Essential Collection

Jason Neave — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:55:00 GMT

An FAQ I am seeing internally is what Addins do people recommend for use with WHS so I am putting together this list to advertise a few that people may have missed and a little justification for each. At the minute I only consider two truly invaluable, there are others out there I have looked at but these for me really stand out. I will add to this list over time as I find others of note and maybe even a few of my own...

Program Launcher
http://www.danno.ca/blog/WHS+Program+Launcher+12.aspx

This addin gives a new tab and the ability to start a program from within the WHS console, it even includes a desktop icon so you have desktop access. The reason I find this essential is because by adding taskmgr.exe and clicking on the users tab you can connect to the homeserver console session or switch between active sessions very easily. This does require the console session to be active but as mine always is that is not an issue for me. At worst you could always add "mstsc /console" to Program Launcher which will start a console session which you could then switch too. Messy but if you need access to the console session messy will do in a pinch!

Web Folders 4 WHS
http://ihatelinux.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-home-server-add-in-web-folders-4.html

This addin which I came across today simplyfies the setup of web folder access to homeserver. For those not familiar with web folders they allow you to mount a network location as a drive in Windows. This addin also allows any WebDAV client to access homeserver as well though this is something I have not tried. Put it this way, I have access to my shares on homeserver via an explorer window, as this uses https this is still secure and very convenient. For those who use WHS to transfer work files between home and office you can drag a file in at one end, get to the other and have it waiting. Bandwidth constraints will effect this obviously...

WebGuide for WHS
http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/homeserver.aspx

Allows WHS users to access thier media remotely either from the browser or from within a stand alone player. For those days when you forget your generic audio player and need music at work or are simply at a party with a soundtrack that sucks, this add on is invaluable. Be warned that (unless the setup has changed) when you install WebGuide it performs an "iisreset /stop" until configuration completes. If you are installing this remotely (ie not from home) this may cause a few issues with Remote Access until you get home, Remote Desktop to home server and finish the installation. I didn't fall foul of this issue, honest...

Thats it for now, i will add more as I find or remember them!

Jason

Home Server Toolkit

Jason Neave — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:03:00 GMT

The Home Server Toolkit v1.0 is now available for download, aids in troubleshooting Home Server issues and will allow for the sending of error logs and other information to Microsoft when issues occur. Available from the link below;

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=de10c0e9-2d46-4770-91fe-6b84ae06f960&DisplayLang=en

HomeServer Tomfoolery - Tips and Tricks

Jason Neave — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:21:00 GMT

So, finally got homeserver running on my ghetto setup. At the minute it consists of a VIA EPIA M10000 mainboard, 512MB RAM, two 500GB Seagate Baracuda's and a random power supply I had lying around. The case is notable by its absense, this is currently living on my dining room table.

Asides aside, it is running superbly. The borderline-obselete mainboard, it is only 1GHz afterall, is more than comforable with WHS running on it and the backup and remote access features are simply astounding.

Tips and Tricks

First things first, a few assumptions. Most home users have a single username and password combo that they use amongst thier home machines. ie "User" and "password" are the same across laptop and desktop. If you add a user to WHS with the same username/password combp you get to use something called passthrough authentication. This means that you will not have to supply credentials to WHS when connection from a machine on the same network.

Another useful tip is to set the location of your "special" folders to a share on your homeserver. For example, right click on your "My Pictures" folder in XP ("Pictures" in Vista) and select properties. One of the tabs should read "Location", set this to the following location replacing the placeholders as needed;

\\homeserver\Users\username\Pictures

If this folder doens't already exist it will ask you if you want to create it, it will then ask if you want to move the existing files to the new location. This will move all your pitcures to your personal folder within WHS under the "Pictures" folder. If you perform the same task on your other machines all of them will work against the same folder. It also automatically sets up Offline Files for this folder (Professional OS dependant, not available on Home Editions) and you will also be able to access these files by remote access.

~~This same principle can be used for your Music, Videos, Documents and Favourites folders. Probably a few others too but I haven't use for them.~~

Update: As the redirection above would result in frequent direct access to a share by programs on a client machine I have struck the text out as this is not recommended due to the data coruption bug;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/946676

Once the bug is fixed then this method can be used once more though until then I would not recommend (nor use myself) the above.

Hope this helps, comments welcome!

Jason