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Home Server

S

scottnkansas

Junior Member
Anyone have any ideas or examples of a good home server setup - i.e. motherboard, cpu type, memory type - for a file server, exchange server, and just general home usage.
 
Originally posted by: scottnkansas
Anyone have any ideas or examples of a good home server setup - i.e. motherboard, cpu type, memory type - for a file server, exchange server, and just general home usage.
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Did you just use "Exchange server" and "general home usage" in the same sentence? 🙂

Seriously, if all you're going to use it for is file serving, I'd get an inexpensive mb with a relatively slow processor, and spend the money on storage.
 
If you want to get an idea of what i am using for my home servers, take a look in the link to my System Rigs in my signature. If you are going to be running a Domain Controller with Windows2000 Server and Exchange2000 Server, I would highly recommend using a Dual CPU server-depending on how big your home network is and what you will be doing with it. Stabiltiy is the key to a good server, whether it be for home or for business. I'm running a whole Rack of dual CPU servers, 7 total plus 3 singlw CPU servers, all in 4U rack mount cases with U160 SCSI RAID Arrays. That is all that I build is servers so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask, I design and build them all day long.
 
Beeker35: Man you have a lot of nice hardware kicking there...do you mind if I ask what your occupation is? You wouldn't have a picture of that whole setup would you? 😉. Awesome stuff!
 
Beeker35, why do you have GeForce3/4s and SB Audigy cards in your PDC/BDC?

One shouldn't play games on servers, and one doesn't even need sound at all on a server.

Your PDC has a Ti 4600 and your gaming rig has a Radeon 8500?
 
For anything but a rather high traffic domain controller/Exchange server, dual CPU's will be completely useless.
The Exchange server here at work servers ~50 people, and it runs on a box with a P3(Katmai) 550 MHz, and CPU usage rarely even hits 10%.
Memory usage is another story, but then again, if it's only for your home environment, you'll probabaly be fine with 256-512 MB.

As for the CPU, go with the lowest speed P3 you can find, and a good mobo with that(I'd go Intel or Tyan).
If you want something that's really easy to cool, you could always go with a VIA C3, yes they do suck for anything that requires CPU power, but they can be passively cooled, and will be more than sufficent for a domain controller and Exchange server in a home environment.

The disks are where you wanna put your money, go RAID1 or RAID5 depending on your needs.

But I just gotta ask, why on earth do you want an Exchange server at home?
 
Originally posted by: Sunner

But I just gotta ask, why on earth do you want an Exchange server at home?
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I don't know why anyone would choose to use Exchange. It is the laughing stock and torment of Internet postmasters.
 
Originally posted by: dszd0g
Originally posted by: Sunner

But I just gotta ask, why on earth do you want an Exchange server at home?
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would choose to use Exchange. It is the laughing stock and torment of Internet postmasters.
Click to expand...

Not that Im very fond of it myself, but I can see why companies would want it.
Most of the people here at the office make good use of many of it's collaboration functions and such, Im the exception in that I only use it as a mailserver and nothing more.
As "just a mailserver" it's utter crap though IMO, but that's not really why you get Exchange.
 
Originally posted by: dszd0g
Originally posted by: Sunner

But I just gotta ask, why on earth do you want an Exchange server at home?
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would choose to use Exchange. It is the laughing stock and torment of Internet postmasters.
Click to expand...

OMG! You're such an idiot

BTW, have you ever even used E2k at ALL??? I seriously doubt you have enough experience to judge the product.
 
Originally posted by: TonyB
im kinda dumb, what is a primary domain controller and what is an exchange server?
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Basically a PDC is the main server on an NT domain, with the main task of authentication. A Backup Domain Controller (BDC) is the fallback if the PDC is down and in addition the BDC can provide some limited load balancing for some services.

Samba PDC FAQ

Exchange is Microsoft's success at writing as broken a mail server as possible and convincing people they like it, because they don't know any better.
 
Originally posted by: TheUnhappyCamper

OMG! You're such an idiot
Click to expand...

I will ignore the flame-bait.

BTW, have you ever even used E2k at ALL??? I seriously doubt you have enough experience to judge the product.
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It is my experience with the product that I am using to base my opinion. You are welcome to disagree with my opinion.

[Edit: To answer your question directly, I have worked more with Exchange 5.5 than Exchange 2000. But I was involved with a migration of Exchange 5.5 servers to Exchange 2000 and worked with it quite a bit when it was in late beta and then a little bit with it after it was out of beta.]

I have helped administer Exchange servers (They had to have the Outlook Calendar support and HP OpenMail did not support it yet), and have been the administer for Sendmail, Exim, Qmail, Mercury, and others I am probably forgetting. I have been responsible for handling the mail for over 14,000 users. By far the most painful I have worked with has been Exchange. I believe I have the experience and qualifications to judge.
 
For a home server I'd drop the dual cpus too, it really depends on what you use it for though. If it is really serving a load of data then maybe I can see it but if you are just using it to learn I'd just run something cheaper, still stable but with less gee wiz factor and deal with it.
 
Originally posted by: scottnkansas
Anyone have any ideas or examples of a good home server setup - i.e. motherboard, cpu type, memory type - for a file server, exchange server, and just general home usage.
Click to expand...

How many users are we talking here? I will assume six people or less.

If you look at even the recommending system requirements for Exchange:

Recommended
Computer/Processor Pentium-compatible 133 MHz processor or higher
Memory 128 MB of RAM (256 MB recommended)
Hard Disk 500 MB of free disk space on the disk drive where you install Exchange 2000

200 MB of free disk space on the system drive
Drive CD-ROM drive
Display VGA monitor
Operating System Windows 2000 Server operating system

Although if you look at the recommended requirements for Windows 2000 Server:

To use Windows 2000 Server, you'll need:
Computer/Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible Central Processing Unit (CPU)Windows 2000 Server supports up to four CPUs on one machine.)
Memory 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum (128 MB minimum supported; 4 gigabytes [GB] maximum.
Hard Disk 1.0 GB free space on hard-disk. Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network. For more information, please see the Getting Started Guide.
Drive CD-ROM or DVD drive.
Display VGA or higher-resolution monitor.
Peripherals Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device (optional). Ensure that all system components are on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for Windows 2000 Server.

Neither of these have hefty hardware requirements. However, this just means it will run on these. I would never run Windows 2000 on a Pentium 133. It would crawl.

Honestly though, any Celeron 500+, Pentium III, K6-III 550, Duron, Athlon, or newer system you have will do fine for what you need. You will want at least 512MB of memory and put a new harddrive in it, maybe in RAID 1 if its in your budget.

What most people I know who build home servers do is take one of their older systems that has been a stable system, then they add memory, put in a new harddrive, and some form of backup device. This is often actually a better approach then building a new system. One does not want to have to worry whether the system is stable or not.

The reason for the new harddrive is two fold. First, one does not want to store important data on an old harddrive. Second, newer hard drives are faster than older ones.

[Edit: If you plan on having the machine as a game server too, that does place higher hardware requirements. Find out what other people use as game servers for that particular game. Some games do not have as high requirements for the game server as to play the game itself (Example: Unreal Tournament).]
 
Thank you all so much for you input. Please don't beat each other up too much about who knows more or less about exchange 🙂 Its really not the issue. Have a great day all! 🙂🙂
 
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