Server Spec?

[BenWall]

I want a server to have on 24/7 just tucked away somewhere and that I can remote if I need to make any changes. I want to spend around £100 on the computer...I have seen some okay specs on eBay, for example.

I would be putting MS Server 2k on it, would this be okay to run it on? I mainly just want it for a file server and I will put a 500GB HD in it, I will also be using it for active directory, what are your thoughts?

Thanks

 

[McBunny]

that will die quite quickly they have problems with motherboards

but cpu wise it would do oh and bump it upto a gig but why you would really want ad running at home id never know lol

 

[16v_jon]

dual boot it with linux so you can learn some proper server technology

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

Should be fine, for file and print serving at home you wont need a mass of processor power, ram is handy and storage is easy as you can add the disks you want.

Just so you have some sort of idea, I am doing the same as you want to do at the moment. I have an old 5 -6 year old Compaq desktop PC running Server 2003. It has a P3 733 Processor and 512MB of RAM & 320 GB HDD for all data. This is doing all of my data so that I can access it from any PC, printing and is also hosting my website through IIS, which also has the option of FTP which is handy when moving around files from home to work.

It also has attached to it a 250GB mirrored external storage drive where I copy backups of all the data to every week, just incase the hard disk dies. This backup drive allows me to take backups for about 2 1/2 months.

Server 2003 also has the option of enabling shadow copies on drives which I have scheduled for every 12 hours. Quite handy if you accidently delete, or mess a file up, allowing you to go back to a version that was available 12 hours (or whatever schedule you set) ago.

My recomendation would to be like suggested above, create some reasonably sized spare partitions wo you can set some dual boots and have a dabble in some other server OS's if you may wish.

Chris

 

[BenWall]

that will die quite quickly they have problems with motherboards

but cpu wise it would do oh and bump it up to a gig but why you would really want ad running at home id never know lol

I want AD so I can log on on multiple PCs all over my house, my Dad has around 10 PCs as well as my two PCs and my laptop around the house and a few other laptops. Would be good, and also gives me the chance to set it up and mess around with it for practicing etc.

Thanks for advice people, we have those exact dells at college and the amount of s**t they go through, e.g being turned off at power all the time, smashed around etc. They seem to do pretty well and stand up to it all.

I would like to run my website off it, but my file server and active directory come first.

 

[Evil Ally]

I've just finished building a storage server for my home cinema, dreambox and dbox recordings. I took an old Poweredge 2400 server from work, but I've seen these go for as little as £35 on ebay, bargain! Original spec was 1x 500Mhz P3 with SCSI RAID 5. I managed to shoe horn in 2x 1.26Ghz Tualatin core P3 processors (1.4Ghz is also possible). Bear in mind that clock for clock the P3 is faster than a P4. I also ditched the SCSI and kitted it out with 2x 4 port SATA RAID cards (£16 each on dabs) and 5 hard drives totalling 1.5TB. Plonked in a gigabit NIC and a USB 2 card. Stuck with 512MB as it's plenty. I can fit 3 more hard drives and maybe more with some modification. It's currently tucked away in my hall cupboard running server 2003.

It should prove to be far more reliable than a desktop, it's been running 24/7 for the last 6 or 7 years so I don't see why it should fail me now! It's fooking fast as well, it rebuilt a 22GB HD-DVD in 10 minutes!

 

[BenWall]

lol sounds amazing, 1.5tb lol

 

[Mells]

I want a server to have on 24/7 just tucked away somewhere and that I can remote if I need to make any changes. I want to spend around £100 on the computer...I have seen some okay specs on eBay, for example.

I would be putting MS Server 2k on it, would this be okay to run it on? I mainly just want it for a file server and I will put a 500GB HD in it, I will also be using it for active directory, what are your thoughts?

Thanks

LOL, that Dell in the ebay link is what I'm sat on at work now!

Not bad. s**t access to front USB ports.

 

[McBunny]

that will die quite quickly they have problems with motherboards

but cpu wise it would do oh and bump it up to a gig but why you would really want ad running at home id never know lol

I want AD so I can log on on multiple PCs all over my house, my Dad has around 10 PCs as well as my two PCs and my laptop around the house and a few other laptops. Would be good, and also gives me the chance to set it up and mess around with it for practicing etc.

Thanks for advice people, we have those exact dells at college and the amount of s**t they go through, e.g being turned off at power all the time, smashed around etc. They seem to do pretty well and stand up to it all.

I would like to run my website off it, but my file server and active directory come first.

the motherboads as i said are the weak point the power caps on them expand then it all goes tits up

 

[BenWall]

I am probably going to go with a rack mount server, just need to find a rack now

 

[Norris_309]

Dell GX270s (ebay link at the top) make sure they havn't got X's on top of the capacitors!
as said above there was a major problem with them.
We had something like 500+ gx270s when they were new & literally hundreds have had the capacitors blowing which then needs M/B replacing, luckily most were under warranty & i think our tech support are still getting calls for them even now. (years on)
Just a little warning, other than that they seem ok

 

[Daz]

You'll be spending nearly your budget for the cabinet alone.. and all for one single server? Mad.. for a cabinet to hold a server, it has to be like 800mm deep.. not the sort of thing to be "tucked away"

 

[McBunny]

i have a few spare 42u racks lol

 

[Mole]

All caps have score marks on them, usually on the tops, as if they do have something wrong, its a weak point for the casing to blow.

I remember a couple of years ago, there was a huge cockup with the solution they use to make the electrolyte inside the capacitor, which caused the caps to blow their tops off.

My ECS K7S5A had caps that had almost popped on them, not sure if they've gone just yet

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195