Rebuilding server Rebuilding server

Since I am still sick and not feeling like doing any real work, I decided to spend sometime to rebuild my closet home server since I constantly have problem access that machine thru my iPad and Android devices, and it's getting so extremely annoying.  

I started by drafting a list of items that I need to configure based on my current setting, and put them in Google doc.  Then I need to decide which OS to install.  I finally decided to use Windows 8 Release Preview because by the end of this year I will have Windows 8 and by then I will install the final version on it. Plus the Release Preview is stable enough that I think it's a good enough to use it as server OS.  And finally, I like a Windows 8 environment that is always there whenever I need to do any Windows 8 Related R&D.

The whole process went great.  I found my server machine working very well despite the fact that it is 5 year old machine.  I found out that there's some problem with the Windows Media Center on Windows 8 regarding to searching TV program, but I found a way to work around it so it's not a show stopper.  And the most important thing is that now my iPad and Nexus 7 can access files on my server without any problem.

I am about to install Visual Studio 2012 RC and Office 2013 Beta on it as the 2 final pieces of software I will use on that machine.  I hope they won't be the one that messed up the network set up which I tried so hard to fix in the first place.  We'll see.