Featured on “The Home Server Show” Episode #249
The last time I was able to join "The Home Server Show" podcast as a guest was episode 155, back in October 2011. A lot has changed since then, with David McCabe in new digs, with fancy gear and great audio and video. It was great fun to be a part of the discussion, as we dove into Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, and highlighted many of the things it can do for the home lab enthusiast. And what it could do for the average guy too, with some tweaks that we discussed. As usual, it was fun, and educational. If you don't already subscribe, visit:
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This podcast had a large cast of characters, with @homeservershow @dieharder @byobpodcast @tinkererguy, and @drashna.
Shownotes:
Let's start with the mentions from the episode, with the first URL being the article I would love to be completely obsolete one day, wishing folks like Mike Faucher didn't have to do these somewhat strange steps I developed, just to avoid joining a domain.
How to make Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials client connector install behave just like Windows Home Server
How to remove Active Directory Domain from Windows Server 2012 Essentials (bad idea), attempt to restore the simplicity of Workgroup (failed)
TinkerTry.com/ws2012e-domain-removal
Windows Server Essentials Media Pack
Featured on “The Home Server Show” BYOB Episode #138
And let's end with the hypothetical:
“What if Microsoft and Synology had a child?”
TinkerTry Pie-in-the-Sky Build
- ~$600 gets you a compact unit with upgradeable RAM, and a tiny capacity but very fast M.2 based flash drive (for pre-installed 2012 R2 Essentials based OS)
- 4 available, empty drive bays, for seamless drive pooling (minimum of 1 drive must be installed by user), it’s auto-formatted NTFS, and automatically all D: E: F: drive stuff migrated over
- fast backups, fast restores, with hardware and software optimized to make those key tasks much faster than anything you’d build yourself
- super easy client install (with skip workgroup mode the default, and checkbox if you want domain-join)
- BELOW IS THE STUFF OF DREAMS, THAT I DIDN’T MENTION ON AIR
- 10GB NIC
- portion of flash drive used as landing spot for files copied to shares (that are then de-staged to spinning drives)
- affordable way to back up user-selected data to the Microsoft Cloud, part of the Microsoft Live ID login provided for the VPN/name registration
- affordable way to completely restore C: drive and the user-selected data from the Cloud, to a replacement unit, should things go horribly wrong (fire/theft)
Correction to what I said on air:
Most of my Home Server daily backups are on super cheap and simple to configure 4 bay <$200 RAID5 solution, it's the RAID5 Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2 that uses a simple pushbutton RAID selector, and a single eSATA cable. Read all the details of what nasty things I did to it to be sure I could trust it over here:
TinkerTry.com/raidabuse-mediasonic
