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Even with Windows Home Server storing and protecting my data and backing up my PC’s, there is still a need for an online backup solution. The risk of disk failures and accidental file deletion makes backup up your valuable data a must.   After trying a few other online backup solutions, with varying degrees of success, I found CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server.  With CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server you are able to backup your Windows Home Server data to Amazon S3, Azure, Mezeo, Dunkel, and Walrus.  This provides a wonderful data backup and restore solution designed to leverage many of the best online storage provider. 

CloudBerry Online Backup Features

• Easy Add-on installation and Setup
• Integrates with WHS Console
• Secure online storage (Amazon S3, Azure, Mezeo, Dunkel, and Walrus)
• Hourly and Daily Scheduling capabilities
• Email Notification (Success or Failure)
• Data encryption and Compression
• Data versioning and Purging
• Restore files from previous versions or dates.

Install and Setup

Installation is easy, it installs like any other Windows Home Server Add-on and works seamlessly with Windows Home Server Console interface. 

Configure Backups

Configuring your backup plan is easy, first thing is to choose your cloud storage provider.  I debated between Azure and Amazon S3, but eventually went with Amazon S3 since it had the more understandable pricing plan. 

By default CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server detects your Windows Home Server shares, making for easy selection of your most valuable data.  Although you also have the option to backup based off physical drive paths and even network shares.  With all these options it makes it easy to choose what you want to backup, no matter where it is on your server or network.  You can also add excludes and many other filters to the limit what you are backing up.

Other great options are encryption, compression, and the ability to use S3’s Reduced Redundancy Storage(Money Saver).  Next you have many options for versioning and purging files that are deleted locally, purge old versions and setting version limits.

Next is Scheduling and notification. Pretty straight forward, you can schedule backups to run every x minutes, x hours, or recurring.  You can then setup email notification for either failures or successful backups. 

Backups and Logs

After a backup you will get an email detailing what was backed up and if there where any errors you can easily view the logs on the Windows Home Server console interface to find out about the problem.   You can also browse the file that have been upload to the cloud.

Restores

Restoring files is just as easy as backing them up, a simple restore wizard allows you to choose what to restore and where you want to restore it to,  This makes recovery plan simple and reliable.

Conclusion

After setting up and using CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server for more than 2 weeks I am much more confident that my valuable data is safe and secure.  CloudBerry has put together a great service and product with quality and reliability at the top of the list.  I look forward to future versions of CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server when the next version of Windows Home Server is released.

There has been a lot in the WHS news lately about the removal of the drive extender from WHS Vail.  My reaction is mixed as to the removal of the drive extender from the upcoming version of Windows Home Server.  I would actually like to be able to choose not to use the drive extender but don’t think it needs to be removed. 

I understand the need and usefulness of drive extender, being able to group together multiple drives into a single storage unit, without having to use raid is a good solution for those who need/want it.  And since WHS implemented this feature so easily, it was a great option for simply adding on storage. But here has always been my argument against this.

My Original WHS Setup

When I first got my WHS it came with a single 500GB HD, of which 400+GB were available for storage after setup.  I added a second 500GB HD and extended the storage on the server.  This worked great, literally took minutes to do.  with almost 1TB of storage I thought things where relatively safe, my home pc’s all backed up to WHS, so did my laptop.  Even had a small (250GB) USB drive hooked up to my WHS that stored daily backups of my most important data.  All was great until the main/original drive on my WHS failed.  The system was down to about 100GB left when the drive failed, and HD upgrades was something I was planning on, but came too late.  Sure I had my USB drive data backups but there was a lot of other data that I didn’t have on an external system/drive.  Since the other 500GB drive was an extension of the WHS Drive Extender, I couldn’t simple plug it into another pc and mount it and it potential wouldn’t have all the data anyways.  After a few days of attempting to get my data back, I gave up and moved on, with a lesson learned. 

My current WHS setup

I replaced the failed 500GB HD with another 500GB HD, and re-setup WHS.  Same setup, but with one big change.  I added a third drive, a 1TB HD that is not part of the WHS system; it’s a simple NTFS drive on the server.  The data on the two 500 GB drives is backed up to the 1TB drive.  And since the 1TB drive is not part of the drive extender, I can remove the drive and plug it into another pc if needed.  I feel much safer with this setup, but would actually prefer to not use the data extender if I could.  I would prefer a simpler setup, 500 GB drive for the main system, 1TB data drive, and a 1TB backup drive that must has a copy of the data drive.  Yes more of the traditional raid setup, but I would skip the raid setup and just have two independent drives. 

But in my opinion the drive extender still is an essential part of WHS, and for many WHS users it’s a major feature.  So the complete removal of it is a great loss.  Hopefully with all the uproar about its removal something will be done to put in back on the WHS feature list.

I have always wanted to build or buy a windows home server since it came out.  I had participated in the beta for a very short time but was in no big hurry to get one, especially since the pre-built ones where so expensive.  I finally took the plunge when I purchased a refurbished 500GB HP Media Smart EX470 Server at a very good price.  I had shopped around for awhile before choosing the EX470, there where definitely bigger, faster, and newer home servers out but the EX470 had many good reviews and was just what I wanted.  My requirements where pretty simple, must have multiple drive slots, needed to have a small energy foot print, at least 3 USB connections, and a gig network adapter.

So in May my adventure with my home server began. It started off bad, my refurbished server was apparently not very well refurbished, it looked great but the drive that was in it was not reset, it still had someone else password and appeared to still have content on it.  After doing a format and a reinstall I was finally up and running the next day.  After many updates I had it hooked into my home network and all 3 pc’s connected, which included my Windows 7 main pc, windows XP laptop, and other Windows XP PC. I then began tweaking/customizing the server to my needs.  This went well for a day or so then I messed something up, couldn’t figure out exactly what I did wrong but permissions started to break.  I began randomly losing access to files and folders.  I think it must have been one of the add-ons I installed and then removed, but I never figured out how I broke it.  After a day of trying to figure it out, I decide to just reformat and reinstall again, but this time I decided not to play as much with testing a lot of add-ons.  This time around things went much better.  Installed 4 add-ons ( FTP, Download Manager, and two others ), customized some IIS settings, and installed some other software on the server to make life easier. 

After this second setup thing went well for about 3 weeks, but I did have some performance issues.  So I opted for some upgrades.  I ended up upgrading from the 512mb of ram to 2 GB of ram.  An article out on Home Server Hacks made the process easy.  I also upgraded my CPU at the same time, removing the 1.8GHz AMD Sempron 3400+ and add replacing it with an 2.6GHz AMD LE-1640 Orleans, again with the help of an article at Home Server Hacks .  Both upgrades had no issues and there was a noticeable improvement to performance.  At the same time I added a 2 more 500GB HD’s, one to mirror the 500GB HD that the system came with and the other for server backups.

After almost 4 months of use I would have to say I am very satisfied with my HP EX470 Window Home Server.  There are only a few things I would do differently, first I would either build or get a Windows Home Server with onboard video, rdp is fine but sometime when you want to change network settings on the device it would be nice to be able to hook a monitor, keyboard and mouse up to it, just incase.  I would also prefer an additional USB in front, one just isn’t enough.  Overall I am very happy with my Windows Home Server and would recommend one to anyone need a home network storage system.