You possibly don’t want your client computer joined to a domain nor any messing around with your client computer DNS settings either.  So here are the three commands you need to run in an elevated command prompt on your client computer.

reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows Server\\Networking\\ClientDns" /v SkipAutoDnsConfig /t REG\_DWORD /d 1
reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows Server\\Networking\\ServerDiscovery" /v SkipAutoDNSServerDetection /t REG\_SZ /d true
reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows Server\\ClientDeployment" /v SkipDomainJoin /t REG\_DWORD /d 1

SImple you would think but there are a few steps more than what you may first think to getting SSO through Windows Azure Active Directory working. 

Next you need to install Active Directory Federated Services.  You do this through Server Manager->Roles on your WSE box.  The go to the flag in Server Manager and select the post deployment details.  Follow the wizard creating new managed service user and creating the KDS root key as instructed.

Renaming a domain can break things and generally is unsupported.  One reason you may wish to do this is to keep an old domain server around but want to reuse the NetBIOS name when installing a new domain.  My requirements were for experimentation and should not be used in production.  Proceed at your own risk and it’s possible you will stop functions that rely on AD, user, certificate and computer authentication from working.  If you are just trying to make room then all may be well.

This is just a quick post to say that iCloud works fine on Windows Home Server 2011. Though Apple don’t list Windows Server 2008 R2 or WHS2011 as a compatible product I’ve installed iCloud without any issues on my Windows Home Server and it’s been happily downloading photos sent by an iPhone 4 over the past week.

Simply logon to your Windows Home Server via RDP and go to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455 and download the iCloud Control Panel for Windows.  Install the application as normal but due to the fact it registers a new component with the Windows control panel you will need to reboot before you can access the system control panel.  Don’t install iCloud unless you can reboot right away or live without the control panel until your server is rebooted.

For a good year and half now my EX490 has served me well as the only server in my household.  It takes care of all essentials activities such as media sharing and backup.  It’s the hub of my digital archives, the brain in the distributed backup solution and with VMware it’s my own little cloud.  I’ve been thinking of upgrading to Windows Home Server 2011 for a while and I wanted to run my old WHSv1 in a VM to keep some of my old backups accessible.  My major concern was still being able to have a responsive server along the way.  I’m lucky in that in the past I’ve found a Q8400S and 4GB for relatively low costs and recently I acquired a Crucial C300 256GB SSD and a Kingston Storage Bay Adapter (SNA-DC/35) 

Introduction

This article will cover installing VMWare Virtual Server 2.0 on Windows Home Server and setting up guest operating systems.  Part 1 covered the steps in upgrading the hardware in an HP MediaSmart Server EX490 to deal with virtualisation.

You will need a copy of VMWare Server 2.0.2, a License Key (given for free after a no-fee registration with VMWare.com) and Remote Desktop Access to you Windows Home Server.

Got VMWare?

In the last paragraphs of the previous article on turning your HP MSS EX49x into a Virtual Server I said it was a good idea to get hold of VMWare Server 2.0.  You can download it by following this link and going through the download steps or by navigating the huge menus at VMWare.com.  You will have to register with VMWare but you get the option to opt out of emails if you won’t be interested in the odd email about Virtualisation and Cloud Computing.  The download is 507MB and I advise you go through VMWare’s Download Manager.  The version you need to get is VMWare Server 2.0.2 (10/26/2009) – it’s the first version under the Binaries heading, be careful not to download the Linux version or the API instead.  On this same page is the only time you will be given the licensing information for VMWare Server.  I suggest saving this page or making a copy of the License Key somewhere safe – keys are provided for both Linux and Windows versions.  As always I recommend you use a Client PC to do the actual download and move the file to your Windows Home Server Software Share once you have virus scanned the executable.

Introduction

This article is based around upgrading the hardware in an HP MediaSmart Server EX490.  Later articles will cover installing VMWare Virtual Server 2.0 and guest operating systems.

Say What?

There are a lot of articles and posts on the internet showing you how to run Windows Home Server in a virtual environment.  I did consider turning my EX490 into a Virtual Server using VMWare ESXi (the enterprise Virtualisation solution) but because I would severely lose out on important storage characteristics with regard to the ability of hot swapping and expanding the virtual disk datastore I decided against it.  Long before ESX (and ESXi) though was Virtual Server from VMWare supporting a more traditional approach of an application layer on top of the operating system – as opposed to installing a Hypervisor on top of bare metal (the machine itself with no underlying operating system).  Anyway this is not a lesson of which is best or why use virtualisation, I assume if you are reading this then you are familiar with Wikipedia for definitions and are interested in taking advantage of your ‘always on’ home server.

First select to Boot from CD-ROM – if you have a blank hard disk then most systems will automatically boot from CD-ROM if not you will have to tell you computer to boot from a different source by pressing a certain key at boot time to bring up a Boot Menu.  You will need to refer to your motherboard manual , keys such as F10, F2 might work – look carefully at the screen when your PC first switches on for clues as to what key to press.  It is also possible to go into setup and select which source to boot from also.

Wuala (http://www.wuala.com/) is an online storage platform from Lacie.  It differs from many other platforms because you can trade storage with other users.  That is you can allocate a certain amount of storage that can safely and securely be used by other users and in return get access to storage provided by other users. 

From the Wuala Website they describe their product as:

… innovative

Wuala is based on unique and innovative technology. In stark contrast to other online storage services, Wuala can harness idle resources and store files redundantly in its growing grid network.

This is an overview of how to setup DVBLink on Windows Home Server allowing one to serve live TV to other devices on your network including UPNP Players, Windows Media Centre and Windows Media Player.

Setting up your hardware

Open device manager and see if your hardware has been detected.  In most cases you should see your hardware present but no drivers may be found for it.  You’ll have to locate the drivers either on CD with the tuner device or download them from the manufacturer’s website. I previously downloaded the drivers for my TechnoTrend USB 3600 from their site and pointed the installer to the files on my USB stick.  Simply follow the hardware installation wizard   Now that we have hardware with working drivers in Device Manager we are ready to start with the Installation of DVBLink.