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Windows Home Server – Server Basics
LockedI’ve used servers at home for a very long time. I’ve had CP/M derivative systems, Netware and several flavors of NT. I stopped upgrading at NT4-SP6, because the systems have run super stable for years. Ok, so now storage is a problem and I’m looking at some major upgrades. Rolling the hardware and NT server forward could work but it isn’t very green and seems like overkill. WHS is intriguing, but I can’t find any confirmation as to whether it does the basics. Four quick questions:
1. Does it support server print queues? (It feels lame tohave to ask this, but the on-line documentation makes this anything but obvious).
2. If it does, does it talk to the various HP JetDirect units? I have an external 170x for an OfficeJet G85 and an internal board model in a LaserJet 4. Typically these have required setting up a special port in the servers in the past.
3. Does it have the ability to join an existing NT4 domain and thus import all of the existing user accounts? Everyone in the family has their own laptop which are mostly XP machines installed as domain members. It would be nice to not have to fiddle with the clients just to add some servers.
4. Finally, the HP Mediasmart applaince version of WHS looks nice and I saw a nice write-up on adding memory to it. Does anyone one know if it has a PCI bus, and if so is it exposed in some way such that some solid state storage could be plugged into it? I have some of those Addonics Quad-PCI controllers for CF cards which make for some super fault tolerant storage, which if mirrored pretty much eliminates the need for backups. An alternative might be to build a small cube machine instead of using the HP, but the HP is a nice package which would save a lot of work if it can be extended a bit.Like I said, these are ultra-basic questions, but for whatever reason the on-line stuff I’ve seen so far doesn’t touch on them. thx
