[vox-tech] My Thought: Building a Server

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Richard Crawford wrote:

> My wife and I have been planning on getting a server of our own for quite
> awhile now.  And while browsing through Fry's recently, I stumbled across
> a book on building your own PC.
> 
> Here's what we want to build: a nice little server running off a DSL line;
> it'd host a couple of printers, our documents, all of our MP3's, mail, and
> a relatively low-traffic website.  I imagine this will be relatively low
> maintenance so I don't want to worry about co-locating.  I've been
> pondering RAID as well.  And, naturally, it will be running Linux (I'm
> familiar with Red Hat, but I'm certainly open to suggestions for other
> systems).  My rationale is that anything I build for myself using parts
> that I've carefully researched to make sure they're all willing to play
> with each other and with Linux is probably going to be more stable than
> anything I buy from Dell or Gateway or Wal-Mart.
> 
> I don't know.  Does this sound like a stupid idea or what?

Building your own is likely to be more expensive than buying one. If you
like doing the research though, you are likely to get a better machine
that fits your needs better.

Re: serving on DSL... make sure you aren't serving large or popular
files... sending large files upstream can significantly reduce your
downstream bandwidth.  

ObSecurity: And minimize your exposed services, and apt-get
update regularly, of course.

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