travis' brain dump

Ok, as promised here is a run down. I’m going to make an assumption that if you’ve gotten Windows 2003 Server running in your home environment there are some things I don’t have to explain. If for some reason you really don’t get it… then post a comment and I’ll take more time to reply more steps.

Here’s my scenario and the hardware used:

1x Windows 2003 Small Business Server
1x Windows Vista Ultimate (running media center)
1x XBOX 360 (connecting to the Vista Ultimate system)

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the biggest problem I ran into was finding a way to see all of my media (which was stored on the SBS server for obvious reasons) on my XBOX 360 in both media center *AND* streaming from WM11’s media connector sharing. I had searched high and low across the internet with no luck. There are possible solutions for various versions of Windows Media Center and Vista flavors but nothing that would work 100%… Here is my solution which I believe will work on any Windows system.

First and formost, iSCSI is your friend. There are a few target servers available out there but they seem to fall into the category of a) they won’t run on the version of 2003 Server you have or b) they cost insanely too much. In my searches I found one tool found over at iSCSI-Cake. It’s free, it’s small and it’s incredibly easy. Here’s what you do:

1) Download & Install iSCSI Target to your Windows 2003 System.
2) Download & Install Microsoft iSCSI Initiator to your Windows Media Center. (If you have it as part of Vista already (it’s in the control panel) skip this step.
3) Configure the Target by opening up the application… Typically you just unpack this app to your server and run it. It’s *that* easy. You then right click on the iSCSI Disk icon in the application and select ‘ New Disk ‘. From here you can pick the disk, the folder, or whatever you’re wanting to share out as an iSCSI device.
4) Configure the Initiator in Windows by filling out the correct server where necessary. (sorry i don’t have pictures of that right now and I’m not at my computer, I’m blogging this from Mexico because I have a few minutes… lol)

Once this is done, you should see some new drives in ‘My Computer’. You can change the letters if you want from Disk Management if you see fit to. Either way, this disk or disks will show up as valid hardware devices and therefore be seen from the XBOX with no issues at all. No logins are necessary as these drives are system-wide and loaded at boot. No security permissions are necessary for reading as long as ‘Everyone’ is set to read rights on the folder on the target server.

The software is a freebie from the site. I would like to try MySan from Nimbus when they come out with a compatible version but for now this has been working fine. If you setup your WM11 and your Media Center as if they were local drives on your machine, every aspect of the 360 will see it just like they were physical drives sitting in your media center. Questions or comments if I missed something obviously important *will* get a response posted. 🙂

Merry Christmas, good luck and hopefully this solves your issues as it did mine!