WHS Connectivity Problems

I have had some problems with my home server over the past couple of weeks. It all started when I tried to install the latest Power Pack (Power Pack 2) for Windows Home Server. In reality the problem had nothing to do with Power Pack, but the update process highlighted that my Internet connection for the home server was down. This was due to the issues with my Netgear router (see previous blog entry), but in trying to fixing it I thought it was a firewall issue. In trying to identify the problem, I set the firewall settings back to their defaults.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but I am using a Tranquil Harmony Home Server and you can only connect to it remotely (via a remote desktop connection). The firewall defaults are to deny file & print sharing AND remote desktop connections. Duh! I realised about 10 seconds after hitting the restore default button what I had done.

To fix this, you need to connect to the Tranquil server directly. Fortunately this is fairly straightforward. Remove the rear face plate (just three screws) and you will find a VGA, keyboard and mouse sockets (see photo above). This will allow you to logon to the machine directly without having to use a remote desktop. Just set the firewall settings back to normal (firewall set to "ON", but file & printing sharing and remote desktop selected on the "Exceptions" tab). And bingo, you are back in business.

Once you have the back plate off, the motherboard assembly just pulls out of the front of the unit. The motherboard and hard disk all come out as a single unit. There are a couple of screws on the top of the unit that allow you to remove the hard disk and access the memory. There is a single module - PC2-5300 DDR2 - I just happened to have a spare 1GB module, so I swapped it for the 512K already installed.

Power Pack 1 (PP1) for Windows Home Server went live today!

Well, the long awaited Power Pack for Windows Home Server (WHS) finally went live today. You will find the update package here and the release notes here.

It fixes the data corruption issue that some users have encountered (you only run into this if you have more than one hard disk in your home server) as well as providing 64-bit support (which you will need if any of your client PCs are running 64-bit Vista or XP). The install on the server is straightforward (it does require a server reboot) and the connectors on each of the client machines should update themselves automatically once the update has been installed and the server rebooted.

I seemed to run into an issue which required my router to be rebooted as well, but I am going to put this down to coincidence (it does happen, but not all that often).

I am running WHS on a Tranquil 7-HSA and it works really well. I had to get an update to the BIOS from Tranquil to change the boot order. The server seemed to be set up to boot off an external hard drive by default, if one was present. This doesn't matter unless (like me) you use an external hard drive to back up your server. If you leave the external drive attached and the server needs to be rebooted, you have to remember to unattach the drive while it is rebooting. A quick email to the support folks at Tranquil help fix it - they sent me a BIOS update on a flash drive.

Intel Atom DG945GCLF Motherboard

Just built a mini ITX PC using one of these motherboards. The motherboard has one of the Intel Atom processor onboard (230 clocked at 1.6Ghz). Probably the most remarkable thing about this processor is its power consumption of around 5W. The motherboard does have a fan, but it is on the graphics processor and not the CPU.

The motherboard was bought from Tranquil in the UK and set me back £42 (excluding VAT and delivery). I fitted it into a Noah 3988 case with a 500GB 7200rpm SATA drive, 1GB RAM and a slimline format CD/DVD drive. It is powered by an external power block and DC-DC board.

This combination is very quiet and produces so little heat that I could probably disconnect the fan in the case, leaving just the fan on the graphics processor.

I installed Vista Ultimate onto the machine. It installs without any issues and the CD that is supplied with the motherboard contains all the relevant drivers. The CD even recognise that it was installing on a Vista machine. The aero UI on Vista came up first time with the drivers on the CD. The network also installed without any issues. The audio took a little more fiddling with to get it to work.

The screen capture above shows the performance figures that I got out of the machine once I had installed the drivers from the CD enclosed with the motherboard. There is a definite improvement in video performance with these drivers - the graphics increased from 2.0 to 4.2 and the gaming graphics increased from 2.4 to 2.8.

When running Vista, this unit is pulling between 30-40W (most of the time it runs at about 33W). Exactly the same configuration with a D201GLY2A motherboard (Intel Celeron processor running at 1.2GHz) pulls about 40 - 50W (averaging around 45W). Because the Intel Atom is generating less heat, I unplugged the internal case fan. In hindsight, this was pretty pointless - it saves about 1.5-2W and makes very little audible difference to the running of the unit.

With this configuration, this unit is pretty quiet and would make an ideal candidate for a small format Vista Media Center. However, the motherboard's very limited video output capability (a single VGA connector) probably limits it's use in this department. Personally, I have been using the Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to connect to my TV via HDMI. So the lack of video connectivity is less of an issue.

I have a Hauppauge Dual Tuner TV USB stick that I will put into this machine and test out in the next few days.