Hi all- Im rebuilding my Windows home server I see more and more people seem to be purchasing ready made solutions but I always just build my servers out of old desktop bits- and they work great So how many people bought either a ready made or new kit for their Home Server And how many liek me use old bits and some big hdd's what spec is you home server? Cheers
I used the parts from my old desktop as my server. i bought a 4U rackmount case for it though aswell. the spec is an athlon 64 x2 3800+, 2gb RAM, and a bunch of HDDs. the beauty of getting a big case is you can just shove as many HDDs as you want. i had a copy of windows server 2008 r2 from dreamspark, so i used that. it runs 24/7 perfectly.
I used the parts from what used to be a server back at a shared flat at university. The spec is pretty similar to Barndoor's, athlon 64 x2 3800+, 2.5gb ram, 1x1tb and 1x1.5tb samsung drives. Used to be running an Ati 2400 pro but I pulled that out so it's actually got no video output at all. Runs great, just need to throw it in a case now.
I've sort of done a bit of both. I built my own server, but used new parts. Intel Celeron E3200 (underclocked to 1GHz @ 0.9v) Gigabyte G31M-E2SL Mainboard 2GB DDR2 LSI SAS8704EM2 RAID card 3x WD Green 1.5TB in RAID5 Running Vista64 (I already had it, so couldn't be bothered buying Windows Server 2k8.. or using a Linux solution) Configured for fast, large file sequential file writing, as all desktop machines back up to this server as well.
My file / print server has been running for a few years now. Using a copy of XP, an old Athlon XP 3200+ 2Gb RAM and a load of hard drives. I spent a fair amount of time reducing it's power consumption levels by taking out as many fans as possible, underclocking etc. Does it job perfectly.
I have a machine running Ubuntu, old AMD Athlon XP and 2Gb of RAM (I think). 500Gb HDD, which I had spare from another PC. All bits re-claimed, didn't buy anything for it. Not sure what you guys are using your servers for, but mine doesn't need to be powerful, just file shares on the network really, it also does online backup of some files when they are modified
file server, print server, torrent/emule machine, ftp server, test space for online code, and anything else i need - win server 2008 is amazingly easy to configure
A bit of a mixture of old and new for my WHS box: Coolmaster Elite 335 (bought for WHS box) Asus P5Q-EM (which came out of an Asus V2-P5G45) 2GB OCZ PC2-6400 ram (bought 2nd hand) Intel Celeron E3300 (bought for EHS) Thermalright XP-90 (with 92mm fan, from old socket 478 build) Corsair CX400w (recently bought for WHS) HDDs: 1 x 750GB (system HDD, from old build), 1TB Hitachi (from old build), 3 x Samsung EcoGreens F2s (1 of which was from old build) ________ TSBunnY69 live