Fileserver Hardware Requirements?

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Hello all,

Currently have spare rig that I was wanting to setup as a simple XP-based fileserver (nothing fancy, just sharing files between 3-5 clients). It's a 440BX-based P3-450 (Katmai, 512KB L2) w/512MB and a dinky Quantum Corona 4GB HDD for the OS. The big drives sit on 3 Promise UltraTX 100s. Just wanted to use up some of the stuff in the closet 😉

Will not be running any RAID configs (so no worries about the speed of hardware XOR ops). In your experience, would this make a decent CPU/chipset combo for Gigabit level fileserving, with the occasional anti-virus scan? Not expecting 125MB/s network speeds, I'd be real happy with around 20-25MB/s or so...

Many TIA.

 

[BlitzRommel]

It's not gunna fly, but it'll get the job done.

 

[keeleysam]

I bet it will do like 30MBps.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: keeleysam
I bet it will do like 30MBps.

Me too. Let us know how it goes, eh?

 

[mobilecommand]

One thing to know about gig,

PCI bus could never support full 1 gig speeds, you really need to go to 64 bit pci to get that speed..

so even if you had the cpu and disk on a pci bus i think best case you are in the 300bps give or take...

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

True that. That's why I would just be real happy if it can sustain approx. ATA-33 rates 🙂
Helps out a lot with DVD->DiVX conversions...

 

[LBmtb]

Put linux on it and use Samba. Hell you could even set it up as a primary domain controller. 🙂

 

[nweaver]

the biggest problem with the CPU/Memory is OS selection. The XP GUI uses lots of memory and CPU cycles, even though it's in the closet without a monitor.

Linux+Samba would be a better option, plus you can spend the extra $100 license on ice cream!

 

[skyking]

MMMMMM!
Samba and Ice cream, my favorite!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Many thanks to all for the suggestions. Since I'm moving in a couple of weeks, I decided to just slap on XP Pro 🙂Q) on there for now. Works quite well @ 100baseT, will check 1000baseT when I get some CAT5E / 6 cable 😉