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