Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Storage Server 2008R2, Windows Small Business Server 2011 - Which one is for me?

I was a huge advocate of the original Windows Home Server operating system that Microsoft released, I had it running in my VMWare VSphere environment as a virtual machine. The software worked very well and allowed me to share my audio/video libraries both internal on my network and external using remote access.

One thing I really thought made WHS stand out was its ability to pool all of your storage devices into one storage pool (Drive Extender), and the ability for you to ensure that data was backed up across physical devices. These features combined with de-duplication made WHS hard to beat. Unfortunately Microsoft decided to pull the drive pooling feature from all of the products because of bugs that couldn't be easily resolved.

There are several addins that are showing up claiming to take the place of Drive Extender, DriveBender and StableBit are two of the biggest. Performance and lack of a sleek UI were the only things holding WHS back for being what I thought the best media management/sharing software available.

Before the next generation of WHS was set to roll out Microsoft decided to make some huge changes to the product. First the new version was built on Windows Server 2008R2, it makes sense that Microsoft would release the server platform on the latest and greatest operating system. Next, they decided to expand the product line into 3 distinct options, WHS, WSS and WSBS.

First I installed Windows Home Server 2011, I was familiar with it and it seemed to make sense to use it, after using it for a while I started to wish that you could create more than just 10 user accounts for remote access. This is a huge limitation if you want to share media with friends and family, I also wanted to join my WHS machine to my domain which you cannot do with WHS.

The new 2011 interface is great, everything looks a lot cleaner than in the previous WHS versions and the UI is easy to navigate.

Next I decided I would install Windows Small Business Server 2011 because it offered so much functionality in a very compact package. WSBS includes most of the WHS functionality (minus the media streaming) and Microsoft Exchange Server, Sharepoint Foundation, SQL Server Express and a Domain Controller.

Joining to a domain was a huge plus and I really liked the fact that I could now create 25 user accounts. One thing I noticed right away with WSBS was it needed a lot of resources, I ran WSBS in a virtual machine with 6GB of RAM and 2 processors. The machine seemed to take forever to shut down and restart when I needed to because there were so many services running on this one machine.

Performance for external users was not great either, I was getting complaints that it would take over an hour for a 700MB file to download and the bottleneck was not my internet connection. There is no media streaming in WSBS, this doesn't make any sense to me as all three products share the same code base and WSBS should be a superset of functionality being the most expensive and functional product of the three.

In the end I opted to stop using WSBS and give the third and final product a try (WSS).

Windows Storage Server is in the middle for functionality as it allows you to join to a domain (not be a domain controller like WSBS) and you can still have 25 user accounts. Microsoft hasn't done a great job marketing this product, apparently they sell it as an appliance hardware/software and it can't be purchased separately. I downloaded it from MSDN so if you have an account this is what I would recommend.

The first thing I noticed about WSS was the media streaming option is enabled just like WHS. From what I can tell the addins for WHS, WSS and WSBS are interchangeable and work with all three servers. WSS is perfect for me, it is a lot more lightweight than WSBS and offers the media streaming and the 25 user accounts.

One thing I don't like about all three of the products is that you can't share a mapped (network) drive, this would be such a great feature for me. Now I have to create a virtual hard drive (vmdk) and present that drive to the virtual machine, copy files to this drive and then share the drive in the WSS interface. It would be nice if I didn't have to move my media files inside the vmdk drives in order to create shares in WSS.

Comparison between WSBS and WSS

	Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials	Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials
Number of users supported	25	25
Server Solution	Integtrated & Pre-configured	Network Attached Storage Appliance
Cloud integration support	One-click setup	None
Remote Access	Integrated Remote Web Access	Integrated Remote Web Access
Identity Management	Pre-Configured Active Directory	Active Directory Join Only
Setup/Deployment	Automated Wizard Driven	Plug and Play
Application Support	Yes, any	Only Storage Application Support
Multi-Workload	Supports Many	Storage Only
Memory Support	32Gb	8Gb
CPU Support	2 Sockets	1 Socket
Avaliability	All purchasing channels	OEM only

I will continue to evaluate the products as they evolve but for right now Windows Storage Server 2008R2 works best for me.

Inside Apple iTunes, Sharing music on your home network

I've been trying (and still am) to figure out the best way to manage and share a large library of .mp3 files, I never cared much for iTunes but considering I have iPhone/iPads I thought I should at least look into it.

The sharing features of iTunes leave much to be desired but I am going to attempt to configure it so that I have an iTunes server with a library that can be shared throughout my network.

What I decided to do was to install iTunes on a virtual machine running in my VMWare ESXi environment, this way I could add iTunes into the startup folder and it would always be open and available. One of the things I don't like about iTunes is that to share a library iTunes has to be open and if you setup sharing and want to add or edit music or playlists, you have to do it from one computer.

So I wanted to come up with a way where any one of the computers could add or edit music or playlists and it would propagate to all the other iTunes computers in the house.

First on the iTunes server I pointed the media folder to my network share that contains all of my .mp3 files, I also checked the copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library checkbox. This way any new music added to the library will be copied into a central location.

Import Music

To import my music I selected File - Add Folder and proceeded to browse to my mapped drive where all my .mp3 files are located. Note this can be a very slow process if you have several GB of music.

Once all the music has been added to the library, I'm ready to look at how iTunes keeps track of the library and what files are important to know about.

iTunes Library Files - Library.itl and Library.xml


The iTunes library is a database iTunes uses to organize your music. Two iTunes library files are created and maintained by iTunes for different purposes. They're both in the iTunes folder.

Location of the iTunes library files:


Mac OS X:
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml


Windows XP
\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl 
\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.xml


Windows Vista
\Users\username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl 
\Users\username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.xml


Windows 7
\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl
\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.xml



About the iTunes Library.itl file
This file is a database of the songs in your library and the playlists you've created. Some song-specific data is saved in this file. If you delete the file, iTunes creates a new, empty copy when you open the application, but any playlists, song ratings, comments, or other information you created is lost. The iTunes Library file is only used by iTunes, and is the only one backed up by Time Machine on OS X.



About the iTunes Library.xml file
This file contains some (but not all) of the same information stored in the iTunes Library file. The purpose of the iTunes Library.xml file is to make your music and playlists available to other applications on your computer. In Mac OS X other iLife applications (like iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie) use this file to make it easier for you to add music from your iTunes library to your projects.




The point of this tutorial is to let several computers share the same iTunes library so after all of my music has been successfully added to my iTunes server I need to share the library files on the server. On the iTunes server, I navigated to the folder containing the iTunes library metadata. By default (see locations above) you can typically find this in \Users\username\My Music\iTunes. I see a file called iTunes Library.itl so I know I'm in the right location. I need to share this folder on the network, so I right-click the iTunes folder, select Sharing and security and select Share. Now I add the users that I would like to give share access and select the share button.

Grant permissions to all user accounts that will need access to the iTunes library

Next I connected all of my networked computers to the iTunes share, I mapped a drive on each. To do this, access a networked Windows computer, right-click on My Computer, and select "Map network drive" Choose a drive letter, then I browse to the share I created on the iTunes server. When I'm done, I click Finish. 

Now on all of my networked computers, I launch iTunes while holding the Shift key. This let me change the default iTunes library. I Clicked on Choose library, then navigated to the mapped drive (W:) that I just created. Select the iTunes Library.itl file and I'm done.

This completes the shared iTunes library, I'll continue to test how this works and if I find any improvements I'll update the post.