Windows Home Server vs. Home Users
I’ve been reading recenly about the beta of Windows Home Server from Microsoft. This is supposed to be almost a plug-and-play server, but it seems fraught with problems for anyone who isn’t a “techie.”
One of the features that I think will be the most troublesome is the RAID data storage. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. That might make you think that it is the installed cure for backups — you couldn’t be more wrong.
RAID requires special thought even for normal use, other than what plug-and-play functionality Microsoft builds into it.
One problem with RAID is that many versions of RAID actually “stripe” data from one file onto multiple hard drives. This makes access much faster. But, it doubles your chance of a hardware failure taking out your data.
Another issue is: when a drive goes bad, how do you identity which one is the bad one? According to Robin Harris’ article Why home RAID won’t fly, even the people using RAID now will frequently will replace the wrong one!
At this point, I have no interest in Windows Home Server. If I decide to have a separaterserver machine, mine will be based on Linux — current Linux distributions make it too easy and too cheap of an option to skip.
Just a quick note to point out that Windows Home Server does not even use RAID. Since RAID is too complicated for most home users, Microsoft developed a new technology called “Drive Extender”. Drives can be any size, any interface (USB 2.0, Firewire, SATA, eSATA), and Windows Home Server just adds them to a storage pool. Drive Extender also enables duplication, so that imnportant files are stored on more than one physical disk. If a drive fails, the user is alerted to which drive is bad. If you still have more than one good disk, files are “rebalanced”, which means that the storage engine makes copies to ensure that files are still on more than one physical disk.