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Help me build a cheap server!

G

Geekling

Senior member
I'll want a lot of HD space. But I can find the HDs a little later.

I'll want this mainly for my PC (holding misc files and pics) and my Xbox (holding MP3s and movies).

I would like for it to have SATA and maybe dual CPUs like Xeons. But I'm sure those aren't cheap.

I've never had a server before so I don't know whats good for it. I guess this would mainly be a FTP server?
 
Originally posted by: Geekling
I'll want a lot of HD space. But I can find the HDs a little later.

I'll want this mainly for my PC (holding misc files and pics) and my Xbox (holding MP3s and movies).

I would like for it to have SATA and maybe dual CPUs like Xeons. But I'm sure those aren't cheap.

I've never had a server before so I don't know whats good for it. I guess this would mainly be a FTP server?
Click to expand...

Sorry, you want dual Xeons for a fileserver!? Do you have any idea a) how expensive that will be and b) how absurdly unnecessary as well?

To give you an example; our database server at work runs on dual Xeon 2.8s. Most of the time they're barely being used. You don't need dual Xeons.

A fool and his money are soon parted. A Pentium-200 will be enough for a fileserver. Celeron/PII 400Mhz and upwards for a touch more muscle.
 
Originally posted by: Phil
Originally posted by: Geekling
I'll want a lot of HD space. But I can find the HDs a little later.

I'll want this mainly for my PC (holding misc files and pics) and my Xbox (holding MP3s and movies).

I would like for it to have SATA and maybe dual CPUs like Xeons. But I'm sure those aren't cheap.

I've never had a server before so I don't know whats good for it. I guess this would mainly be a FTP server?
Click to expand...

Sorry, you want dual Xeons for a fileserver!? Do you have any idea a) how expensive that will be and b) how absurdly unnecessary as well?

To give you an example; our database server at work runs on dual Xeon 2.8s. Most of the time they're barely being used. You don't need dual Xeons.

A fool and his money are soon parted. A Pentium-200 will be enough for a fileserver. Celeron/PII 400Mhz and upwards for a touch more muscle.
Click to expand...


:thumbsup:
if you really want bragging rights of a xeon, then a p2 based one will be cheap enough
 
Originally posted by: Phil
Originally posted by: Geekling
I'll want a lot of HD space. But I can find the HDs a little later.

I'll want this mainly for my PC (holding misc files and pics) and my Xbox (holding MP3s and movies).

I would like for it to have SATA and maybe dual CPUs like Xeons. But I'm sure those aren't cheap.

I've never had a server before so I don't know whats good for it. I guess this would mainly be a FTP server?
Click to expand...

Sorry, you want dual Xeons for a fileserver!? Do you have any idea a) how expensive that will be and b) how absurdly unnecessary as well?

To give you an example; our database server at work runs on dual Xeon 2.8s. Most of the time they're barely being used. You don't need dual Xeons.

A fool and his money are soon parted. A Pentium-200 will be enough for a fileserver. Celeron/PII 400Mhz and upwards for a touch more muscle.
Click to expand...



lol...umm Thanks?

Well like I said. I've never had a server so I don't know exactly what is needed.
 
Originally posted by: Geekling
Originally posted by: Phil
Originally posted by: Geekling
I'll want a lot of HD space. But I can find the HDs a little later.

I'll want this mainly for my PC (holding misc files and pics) and my Xbox (holding MP3s and movies).

I would like for it to have SATA and maybe dual CPUs like Xeons. But I'm sure those aren't cheap.

I've never had a server before so I don't know whats good for it. I guess this would mainly be a FTP server?
Click to expand...

Sorry, you want dual Xeons for a fileserver!? Do you have any idea a) how expensive that will be and b) how absurdly unnecessary as well?

To give you an example; our database server at work runs on dual Xeon 2.8s. Most of the time they're barely being used. You don't need dual Xeons.

A fool and his money are soon parted. A Pentium-200 will be enough for a fileserver. Celeron/PII 400Mhz and upwards for a touch more muscle.
Click to expand...



lol...umm Thanks?

Well like I said. I've never had a server so I don't know exactly what is needed.
Click to expand...

You'll be wanting a cheap, probably slower than 800Mhz CPU, motherboard to match and about 256-512Mb RAM. If you're storing big files, then you can't hope to cache them in RAM, so don't worry about it.

Get a pair of 200Gb Seagates, place them in RAID-1 for fault-tolerance. Get three and go RAID-5 with the appropriate controller, or get more, depending on how much room you need.

Remember, RAID-5 with three 200Gb disks will "lose" one disks' worth of space for the parity information, so you'll end up with 400Gb usable space. That 400Gb, however, can suffer the failure of any of the three drives. Replace the drive, rebuild, and you'll be back up and running.

Apologies if my first post came across a bit condascending, it's just that I see so many people fall into the trap of "ooh, servers mostly come with Xeons. I want a server, therefore I need a Xeon or two". Most small businesses function perfectly with Pentium 4-based servers.

Lastly, remember that your bottleneck will be the network. A half-decent Gigabit network card will help with that, but that plus the hard disk traffic on the PCI bus means that you'll probably hit the practical 120-125Mb/sec limit for the PCI bus. Food for thought 😉
 
I am running a fileserver/dns/ftp/webserver in my apartment with a 600MHz P3 with 128 MB ram. I rarely, if ever see anything more than 10% processor load, and the limiting factor has always been the network. Save the money.
 
Originally posted by: Umberger
I am running a fileserver/dns/ftp/webserver in my apartment with a 600MHz P3 with 128 MB ram. I rarely, if ever see anything more than 10% processor load, and the limiting factor has always been the network. Save the money.
Click to expand...

Unix?


I too am overdoing it on my server.
XP1800+, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB as a DC, DHCP, DNS, Ventrilo, file server, but I had leftover parts 😀
 
Originally posted by: psteng19
Originally posted by: Umberger
I am running a fileserver/dns/ftp/webserver in my apartment with a 600MHz P3 with 128 MB ram. I rarely, if ever see anything more than 10% processor load, and the limiting factor has always been the network. Save the money.
Click to expand...

Unix?


I too am overdoing it on my server.
XP1800+, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB as a DC, DHCP, DNS, Ventrilo, file server, but I had leftover parts 😀
Click to expand...

I am currently running Fedora Core 2. Kinda overkill for what I'm doing, but I wanted to see what it was like. I installed it and played with it, then turned off X and put it under a desk to sit forever and ever. (I forgot to mention, it's also a printserver).
 
What OS would you guys suggest for the file server? Linux?

I don't know linux that well. so it would be a learning experience.

Maybe Suse?
 
Originally posted by: Geekling
What OS would you guys suggest for the file server? Linux?

I don't know linux that well. so it would be a learning experience.

Maybe Suse?
Click to expand...

Maybe. If you don't know Linux at all, it's going to be a very steep learning curve. I, personally, would get a 180-day evaluation copy of Server 2003 from Microsoft, and play, experiment 🙂

Then, dual-boot and work on getting the same functionality with Linux.
 
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