Help with Time Machine and Mediasmart Server and my install experience

I need help with setting up my new HP Mediasmart server with Time Machine. While I am at it, I thought I would let people know about my experience in getting the server set up. Hopefully, I can help people avoid some issues.

I have a couple older PC's and a late 2008 MBP (my first Mac - yes, I am a Mac noob ). I use boot camp to run XP on the MBP and decided to use that for the initial set-up of the server. Things were going well until it was updating the server software. It ticked up to 18% and stalled. About 45 minutes later, I (wrongly) figured that I shouldn't have tried to use my MBP and stopped the update. I switched gears and tried to run it on my HP desktop. It did the same thing - went to 18% and stopped. After another 30+ minutes, I called HP, and waited and waited on hold. I was getting impatient and decided to run the HP server recovery disk. While that was running, I got through to HP (close to an hour on hold). The guy seemed knowledgeable and told me that the updates are stalling at 18%. He told me that they are hearing waits/stalls that average around 2 hours at the 18% figure. For anyone else with a new HP mediasmart server, learn from my lesson and be patient.

The HP rep told me that it should not be a problem to run the first install with a windows OS via boot camp. This is not true for something like parallels. In the end, I did get the install done through XP via boot camp.

He also told me that they are seeing problems with people dedicating a space larger than 100 GB's for Time Machine. He said it works for some people for a while, but it inevitably fails. When it fails, he said they are finding that people have to run a full server recovery (you lose all of your data) to get TM running again. They have not been successful with just creating a new slot/space for TM. Has anyone else heard this?

I checked my current TM backup folder (on a different external) and it is less than 10GB's. So I thought I would be fine with setting the server space to 100Gb's. No such luck. I am receiving error messages that there is not enough space.

I guess there are two options: 1) reduce the size of the data to be backed up via TM or 2) increase the size of the space allocated for TM. I am not sure how widespread the 100GB issue is, but I am inclined to try to follow it. I tried to go through and "Exclude" things that I don't need to back up, but it seemed to have already excluded some files. Also, I don't recall having to do this with the other TM back up that is less than 10GB's. Since a TM backup through the server does not allow for a full restore (my understanding is that you need to re-install the Mac OS from the disk and then update the data from the server-based TM back-up), it doesn't seem like I need a huge space allocated on the server. I don't have that much on my MBP, and frankly, I don't intend to. I plan to use the server to store pictures, video, as an iTunes server, etc.

One other bit of advice, although the install software shows that it is updating to the most recent software during the initial run through, it doesn't. Once you get into the server console, you need to run an update of both the HP software (to update to version 2.5) and run an update on the windows side (to update to power pack 2, among others). Which leads me to another issue that I had. I hit the wrong key when windows was running it's update and it did not update to IE8.0 (I think it said server version of IE 8). It showed that update failed, but when I try to run another update, it says everything is up to date.

Sorry for the long post. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Alright. Here's an update...

My MBP would not boot up tonight. I ended up calling Apple for support and the wonderful rep got it going again - basically thru the utilities on the install DVD.

Time machine is now working correctly. When I choose to exclude something, it actually does it. Last night, it wasn't excluding things that I was trying to exclude. Hence my confusion.

I have run a wireless TM backup to the HP MSS and it worked!

Anyone have any thoughts or comments on the 100GB limit?

Any suggestions on getting the IE 8 update to work?

Thanks!