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| Thread ID: 72422 | 2006-09-12 08:37:00 | Server box - suggestions for use | chiefnz (545) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 484167 | 2006-09-12 08:37:00 | Ok, I have in my possession a Dell Precision 210 server grade box. The specs are as follows: CPU: 2 x PIII 550MHz (it's a dual CPU board obviously) RAM: 192MB PC100 SD RAM (max per slot 128, total RAM max = 512MB) HDD: Have a 40GB Samsung drive that I may put into it Audio: Onboard Crystal Audio chip Graphics: AGP 4x slot (I have a S3 AGP card that I can use) PCI slots: 2 free ISA slots: 1 free 2 x USB ports 1 x onboard ethernet controller (3Com I think but could be Broadcom) 1 x floppy disk 1 x CD-Rom (may replace this with a CDRW 52x) Will be installing a Linux distro but not sure which one. Possibly Xandros but I have a few others as well. Questions: 1) Suggestions for a suitable Linux distro to do this box? Hoping to use it has a file server for storage so that I can have my files stored off my main PC. Only problem is I'll have to buy bigger IDE drives for this purpose as my main tower uses SATA drives. Not a major issue but I don't really want to invest money into the machine unless I really have to. 2) Will the machine provide suitable performance in terms of file-serving? I'm not expecting lightning performance, but I don't exactly want a half dead mouse running on my file-serving "treadmill" if you know what I mean. 3) Would it be better to flog the machine off for some $$$ and see if I can buy a higher spec'd machine off tardme? Thanks for your input. Cheers chiefnz |
chiefnz (545) | ||
| 484168 | 2006-09-12 09:05:00 | Those specs are perfectly fine for a file server. You don't even need to run a graphic interface (X server) if you don't want to, but if you do you may wish to put a little more RAM in. The box will only be serving files so does not need much grunt. I would suggest Centos (centos.org/) (a Red Hat Enterprise look-a-like), Classic Tinysofa (http:) (easy to set up as a server) or Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/) (may be a little greedy on resources) as distros to consider as well. |
Jen (38) | ||
| 484169 | 2006-09-12 10:17:00 | Considering freeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/) and if investigations reveal that this is the way to go I might get hold of another 40GB or 2 x 80GB HDD's and setup them up in a RAID configuration? Can IDE drives be setup in a RAID configuration? Your thoughts? Cheers chiefnz |
chiefnz (545) | ||
| 484170 | 2006-09-12 10:40:00 | ide drives are fine in raid. best way would be to get a pci raid card. just make sure you can get drivers for it for your OS. | tweak'e (69) | ||
| 484171 | 2006-09-12 23:53:00 | Software RAID is another option. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, one of the most significant being the expense of cards that can run RAID-5. RAID-0 is a very bad idea if you store any critical data as any single disk failing breaks the whole array. RAID-5 will allow for any single disk to fail without losing any data. Try, however, to get disks of the same size if you want a redundant array like this. Take a look at www.tldp.org for some information about running software RAID on Linux. It uses the command line tools and is reasonably tricky but is a useful source of information whether you plan to set it up manually or use a graphical tool. It explains the principles of software RAID and even has a guide to booting off RAID drives, which may require a bit of fiddling to work. It may be simplest to install your system normally on a small disk then use a series of larger ones in a RAID array for your file server storage. You might like to try a distribution like CentOS or another distro designed for server use as these will usually come hardened against attack using tools like SELinux. It should just be a matter of installing the appropriate packages, mounting a nice big RAID drive at the appropriate place and setting the access permissions. |
TGoddard (7263) | ||
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