[vox-tech] home server choice

[Tony Cratz]

Hai Yi wrote:
> first, i have already had my server running on a ubuntu box at home, i
> want to upgrade it to a more reliable solution since my data become
> more important.
> As to Tony's question, the services I need to have are: web pages,
> ssh, ftp, and svn; also as a media server for internal use.
> I have only a home router, but it's fine for me, at least for now; i
> don't really need a static IP, everytime it changes, I just re-route
> it, it doesn't happen too often.
> As of the hard disk, I am thinking of 1TB, and having a raid support,
> but I heard we can have it in a software way?

	So you want what I will call a general server. This can be
	any good computer. In the past (and even now) I use my main
	desktop system as my server.

	Seeing you want it to be a Web, FTP, SVN and media server (I
	assume storage of files but are you also planning on streaming?)
	it means you will want to have some large storage of data.

	Again as I pointed out before it is getting harder to find IDE
	drives. All drives are slowing being moved to SATA drives. You
	can get a PCI/SATA board for about $15.00 to convert an older
	computer over or just get a case which was SATA to begin with.

	As for the computer itself, if you don't have a good computer
	look toward a computer liquidator for getting a used computer.
	In the past I was able to get a P4 2.3 Ghz 750 Megs of RAM for
	the large cost of $75.00 via a liquidator (no drives). This
	replaced my old system.

	As for type of CPU, of the list you provided, WEB, FTP, SVN
	and media server, the media server is the only one which may
	have some CPU requirements. The others can be with a slower
	processor. For years I ran my home server using a PII-450 Mhz
	CPU with 512 Megs RAM. This worked fine but when mailman was
	pushing out a message to a exploded mail list the CPU would
	bind up. Moving to a faster CPU solved this problem.

	Lets talk about home routers for a quick moment. I use to
	have a Cisco-806 router (really a SOHO small office, home
	office router) which worked great for me. At the end of May it
	died and I had to quickly put in a new router. I had a D-Link
	which I was able to get working for my surfing but had some real
	issues with punching holes through its firewall and doing
	port-forwarding. I could not get it to work correctly. But I
	was mostly back on line for a while.

	I had a old computer around the house with a small 5 Gig hard
	drive. I used this box and installed the Vyatta software router
	on it which I'm still using today and love. It gives me all of
	the control I had with the Cisco-806 router and more. And the
	cost to me was great, FREE!!!!!!. Vyatta is an Open Source
	router with the goal of taking over Cisco market. And most of us
	have an older computer we are not using which works great for a
	router. While I have in my collection right now 5 routers
	(2 non-WiFi, 3 WiFi) I only use one of the WiFi at home for
	the rare times I want to be wireless instead of wired (I like
	the security of being wired and not having a neighbor trying
	to snoop my WiFi connection). I normally keep my home WiFi
	turned off. Anyway where I'm going with this is I'm not planning
	on ever using a home or SOHO router as a main router again. I
	would use Vyatta software router. Yes I know about OpenWRT but
	I'm not convince I want to go that router. And so far Vyatta
	does not have a version which will work with WRT routers yet.

	Anyway I hope the above will give you some ideas of what you
	can do. At the same time, I might suggest you look at a hosting
	company such as 1&1.com to do the hosting of web pages. It might
	be a better/cheaper solution for you. You mileage may vary.
	Most of my friends who use to host their own servers has moved
	to a hosting company the small amount of web pages and E-mail
	they served and dropped from having 5 static IPs to a single
	DHCP connection. Thus dropping their monthly cost from about
	$50/month to closer to $30/month ($20/month DHCP, $10/month
	for web/email hosting). And this also means they don't have to
	worry about doing OS upgrades as much (I should note they were
	running CentOS base systems and not Debian base systems). It
	also means someone else does their SPAM filtering for them
	instead of using their own.

	For myself I enjoy having my own servers (which are both Debian
	for different reasons). If I was to set-up a new server be it
	for a friend or a business I would really take a look at using
	Ubuntu. I have worked with CentOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris
	and Debian base systems. The Debian base have been the easies
	to work with. With that said I'm kind of keeping an eye on
	Nexenta with is a Debian base OpenSolaris OS.


							Tony