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Servers...

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
A friend of mine has done it and due to the amount of computers I have in my house I am forever swapping between computers here there and everywhere or transfering data between the them. so It has me thinking, why not get a server, I do not mean a full on proper built server but a PC to act as one,

A goodish PC with a

decent (prob dual core) processer,
3/4 x 1.5tb HDD
4gig of ram
gigabyte ethernet connection into a switch
and possibly a local only wireless router

My question is has anyone here done it? if so what are the main things that I shouldn't overlook, I want wireless for my laptops and then I want to have internal CAT5 sockets around the house. and also route my internet through the server so I can monitor traffic and set restrictions. Does anyone know of any software where I can throttle individual computer speed??

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ive got a fileserver, tbh the hardware is near enough irrelevent for that purpose, its an amd athlon xp 2500, 512mb ram, 300gb hard disk (this needs upgrading), sata pci card, 10/100 built onto motherboard.

    I will upgrade it to something with gigabit but tbh wireless only supports 54megabit so thats the bottleneck. it depends what you're doing but i cant imagine why you would need that much ram unless you were running it as a game server (and then a domestic internet connection wouldnt be good enough).

    running xubuntu happily. dont know about using it as a router but my housemate does use his as a fileserver and its -hard- in ubuntu but powerful, very easy in windows server (though you need a shitload of memory for that, like 1gb for 2008 / 2008 R2 minimum which is silly).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hellfire wrote: »
    A friend of mine has done it and due to the amount of computers I have in my house I am forever swapping between computers here there and everywhere or transfering data between the them. so It has me thinking, why not get a server, I do not mean a full on proper built server but a PC to act as one,

    A goodish PC with a

    decent (prob dual core) processer,
    3/4 x 1.5tb HDD
    4gig of ram
    gigabyte ethernet connection into a switch
    and possibly a local only wireless router

    My question is has anyone here done it? if so what are the main things that I shouldn't overlook, I want wireless for my laptops and then I want to have internal CAT5 sockets around the house. and also route my internet through the server so I can monitor traffic and set restrictions. Does anyone know of any software where I can throttle individual computer speed??
    I really love to do this, infact make it something which also act as my webserver for my website and also handle my emails, but i really dont have time for this tbh.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    thanks,

    I have a copy of Server 03 sitting about so thinking of using that.

    In terms of the internet I am not sure how I would get it to work, I know at work we have the

    Router > Switch > computers & server

    so the internet is actually not going through the server to get to the other computers, which I would do if it would let me monitor ALL traffic, however I understood you get better traffic monitoring if all internet traffic actually goes through the server, however I wonder if this would increase lag...

    Hmm I think the reason for the ram is because I am going to upgrade my PC to a 64bit os and stick 8gig of ram in and i'll be left with the 4gig I already have,

    heck I could use my whole PC as my server and just buy/build a new PC *ponders*
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm currently using a W2K box as a print server. The purpose of that is to leave my main machine uncluttered downstairs, which accesses the W2K box upstairs wirelessly via a wireless router. The W2K box acts as a back-up store too, again by wireless although it's slower than ethernet.

    I heard a few years ago that if you want a hardware firewall, you only need a 486 box for that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i think 4gb of ram and 4tb+ of storage is a little bit overkill for a home server.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i think 4gb of ram and 4tb+ of storage is a little bit overkill for a home server.

    Not really as my current PC has 1.5tb of data stored over a 6month period and it is growing so 4tb+ is not overkill I am aiming for about 6tb if possible

    I use 4gig of ram at present and in my opinion it helps massively and means multiple operations, Eventually I am hoping to host a couple of things from the server (local programs) so it may have some load.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I run one here. It's primarily for automated off-system backup of my desktop PC and the daily download of the forum database, and acts as the only means of accessing the other two machines from the internet. The desktop and laptop will both only accept SSH and FTP connections from machines on the local network, so anyone wanting access has to hop through two sets of strong passwords, or find flaws in both OSes to gain access.

    It also gets to run Climate Prediction. :)

    I think it's a 2.8ghz s478 P4 overclocked to ~3.1ghz, 1gb RAM and 160gb HDD.

    What are you planning on serving? 4-6tb is huge for the immediate future...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Basically 4-6tb will not be straight away,

    I will have 1 or 2 1.5tb drive to begin with and upgrade it slowly, I am thinking of buying the skeliton of the server,

    Mobo
    Ram
    CPU
    Drive
    Case
    switches

    then upgraded slowly over time, extra drive, extra ram, extra so on...

    Mainly it will be for file hosting, I back up all my DVD's to my computer at present, all of my games as well etc and the main thing is getting access to them from any computer, at present I have to put them on an external drive to move them etc.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hellfire, how the hell did you accumulate 1.5GT over 6 months? I've been using PCs since March 1999 and even now I only have 82GB of personal data over those 10½ years, which includes loads of MP3s and large graphics.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i dunno, I just have
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah, but what does it involve? :-D 1.5TB in 6 months, cor blimey. Educate me, my friend :-)

    My 82GB over 10½ years includes everything - even my set up files for freeware / shareware, my temp area, MP3, drivers, service packs, portable apps. Everything!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've managed to fill @970gb in a few months. It's HDTV these days thats the killer.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Are we talking about video players that captures HDTV digitally?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm still at a loss here guys. 1.5TB is like 350 single-sided DVDs or 175 double-sided.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    my download collection, for example I have Adobe Master suite CS3, thats like 30 gig, Stargate SG1 all episodes 60gig, Stargate Atlantis 30gig, Star trek, everything 200gig
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hellfire wrote: »
    my download collection, for example I have Adobe Master suite CS3, thats like 30 gig, Stargate SG1 all episodes 60gig, Stargate Atlantis 30gig, Star trek, everything 200gig

    Indeed, then i also have about 100g worth music, films, lots of other tv series, games... it all adds up!

    Also HD movies take up a crapton of space...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Indeed, then i also have about 100g worth music, films, lots of other tv series, games... it all adds up!

    Also HD movies take up a crapton of space...

    Of course all of mine are legal back ups of my dvd collection.

    HD movies take a whomping amount of space.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't forget games these days are in the 20-30gb range. And my home CCTV use a 1TB a month (4 cameras). I'm forever trying to buy new HDD cheaply. Just a thought though, if you wanted a home server. It would all have to be wired. So when you log in the DATA can move fast enough between PC and server. I don't think 54mbps wireless would hold it. Why Don't you just get a HDD that plugs into the router, and store everything on that instead? I don't know. I dislike networking computers really.

    routers don't have the ability to read or present a storage device to other network nodes. network attached storage cases on the other hand can take any 3.5" hard drive and present it to the network nodes via DNLA or similar protocol and can often do stuff like download torrents and act a print server in the background.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't forget games these days are in the 20-30gb range. And my home CCTV use a 1TB a month (4 cameras). I'm forever trying to buy new HDD cheaply. Just a thought though, if you wanted a home server. It would all have to be wired. So when you log in the DATA can move fast enough between PC and server. I don't think 54mbps wireless would hold it. Why Don't you just get a HDD that plugs into the router, and store everything on that instead? I don't know. I dislike networking computers really.

    funny that my wireless N router is operating currently at 108mbps so I think that would suffice if alot of networks are 100mb ethernet connections.

    I'll be using wireless 802.11n with at least 108mbps and a gigabyte ethernet connection.

    The reason i am not going for a NAS drive is because I want run program off of the server which a NAS drive cannot do so this is out the question, I'll be honest I am not looking for alternitives as I want a server
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks for explaining about the films. I didn't realise you had that much Hellfire. I tend to just keep my DVDs as they are as they'd take too much space otherwise, but I do have my entire CD collection on my PC to have for my travels.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Monserrat wrote: »
    Thanks for explaining about the films. I didn't realise you had that much Hellfire. I tend to just keep my DVDs as they are as they'd take too much space otherwise, but I do have my entire CD collection on my PC to have for my travels.

    No worries mate, glad I helped.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My fileserver / mailserver / firewall:

    cpu0: AMD Athlon Model 1 ("AuthenticAMD" 686-class) 549 MHz
    cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,MMX
    real mem = 66629632 (65068K)
    avail mem = 55914496 (54604K)
    wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <IC35L040AVVN07-0>
    wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 39266MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 80418240 sectors
    wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2

    user filespace is 73% used.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    that's a half giga hertz CPU,

    64 MEGA bytes of ram, and 40 gigabytes of hard disk.
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