Building a cheap server

[Simon]

I know a few days ago i was considering building a cheap desktop, but im also considering building a cheap server. Any suggestions on what parts I should use?

Im going cheap, under $600 maybe? Nothing big to host really, just for testing and such

 

[Ice hearted killer]

iv got an article from a pc mag il try copy it in and post it up here

 

[Simon]

Sounds good

 

[ronpaul]

if you don't have anything in particular you want to host then it doesn't really matter what kind of hardware you get. You can run a LAMP linux distro on a Pentium 3. You can have your own 24-32 slot TF2 server with a pentium 4, as well as a Xen virtualization box if you wanted. What kind of operating system do you want to use, anyway? What is it you want to test? If you truly have nothing in mind you can pretty much get away with any barebones system on newegg, know what I'm saying? Without anything in mind, anything will suffice.

 

[Simon]

I only really intended to use it to get fanilar with different Linux server distro's, maybe run a LAN steam server for me and a few friends, or even simply use it as a remote media server.


Newegg barebone probably would suffice

 

[BFM]

For testing OSes, get familiar with VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox. It saves a lot of headaches.

For storage, I've had good luck with D-Link DNS-321 and DNS-323. I like the power saving features of the D-Link and I've installed a few dozen of them as backup storage in the past. They work great for offsite storage because you can set the hard drives to spin down after 5 minutes and they'll spin up with you need to access them, be it through FTP, the built-in iTunes server, or UNC/Samba. Since the D-Links run their own embedded OS, they're not ideal for tooling around with other distros or hosting anything resource intensive. I only mention this as a storage solution if you are willing to go virtual for playing with OSes. Unless you really need the USB print server, just save the $100 and go with the DNS-321 over the 323.

 

[Simon]

For testing OSes, get familiar with VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox. It saves a lot of headaches.

For storage, I've had good luck with D-Link DNS-321 and DNS-323. I like the power saving features of the D-Link and I've installed a few dozen of them as backup storage in the past. They work great for offsite storage because you can set the hard drives to spin down after 5 minutes and they'll spin up with you need to access them, be it through FTP, the built-in iTunes server, or UNC/Samba. Since the D-Links run their own embedded OS, they're not ideal for tooling around with other distros or hosting anything resource intensive. I only mention this as a storage solution if you are willing to go virtual for playing with OSes. Unless you really need the USB print server, just save the $100 and go with the DNS-321 over the 323.

I already own a Belkin N1 wireless router. Its really nice.

I have already tested out server os's on VirtualBox, but not the server itself.

Im familiar with Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, and several others.

So i probably could just upgrade my RAM a bit to do more, then keep using it as a VM

 

[Passerby]

i run a lamp server with a p4 and 1gb ram with 4 500gb drives into

it runs a customized openSUSE linux that i made with suse studio and is pretty full featured

the server has a full LAMP setup and FTP with NFS for local files sharing with my other linux boxes and samba for sharing with windows boxes and torrentflux so i can use it as a seedbox for torrents and constantly download.

and since it is headless i can admin it with ssh or the webyast interface.


all of that runs smoothly on a p4 with 1gb ram.

if you want you could tell me what features you want and i could set up an system and image it for you.

 

[Simon]

i run a lamp server with a p4 and 1gb ram with 4 500gb drives into

it runs a customized openSUSE linux that i made with suse studio and is pretty full featured

the server has a full LAMP setup and FTP with NFS for local files sharing with my other linux boxes and samba for sharing with windows boxes and torrentflux so i can use it as a seedbox for torrents and constantly download.

and since it is headless i can admin it with ssh or the webyast interface.


all of that runs smoothly on a p4 with 1gb ram.

if you want you could tell me what features you want and i could set up an system and image it for you.

What exactly would you recommend for running a small media server/lamp?

 

[jniscool]

older xeon cores work great due to the fact that servers only need processors for number crunching.

 

[Simon]

I checked it out on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...BESTMATCH&Description=barebone+server&x=0&y=0

barebone's range between 300-1400

 

[DragonD]

What exactly would you recommend for running a small media server/lamp?

It depends on how you define small..

Personally, I'm a big fan of Linux servers. I use to host my own server that I used as a Web Server, storage space and even gaming (UT2004).

It's really more about your net connection (specially the uplink bandwidth) than it is hardware ability (although that counts also of course)