On 19 December 2017 at 16:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
For many years I've been running a 2nd-hand "desktop" machine as a home server, which runs print, file & email services and a few others. It's an least 10 Y/O Pentium (5?) with 3GB RAM and is usually not taxed by these services. I will be running some flavour of Ubuntu on it. I'd probably prefer it was 64Bit. I want it to be a "standard architecture" processor so that there will be a full-range of apps available to install from the ubuntu repositories.
I would like to have a low-power-consumption as it's an always on device, and it doesn't seem to need much processing power. I'd also like to have raid (mirroring), but most low power-consumption machines don't seem to have space for raid.
Does anyone have any comments or recommendations, especially of any companies they have dealt with, or products they have purchased that work well?
I've been running four servers for the last 3 years at home.
My main work server has a raid10 with WD 4tb drives, and is a lenovo thinkserver similar to this: https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-... The power usage won't be that of a mini-server but that doesn't mean you're consuming hoards of electricity. I find my bills pretty low considering I'm working from home and have these powered up 24/7. This machine has proven to be extremely robust, and haven't had any issues. A UPS has made sure it's stayed on for over 45 min whenever there were any power outages when doing work on the house. One not so great feature is the HDD slots are pretty basic. I've got 5 drives in mine, and some are more difficult than others to install. As I've only changed 1 faulty drive from the raid in 3 years, this hasn't been much of an issue. The price on thinkservers are incredibly competitive, so you can spend more on drives.
My other machine is an old Asus eeebox, which is only 32bit and yes, I agree you'll be limited with software compatibility and isn't that futureproof if you want mainstream OS/software. It does consume very little power and is also *very robust*. Had it running for over 5 years without issues.
The other two are Pis. (a 2 and a 3) Yes, they're super cheap, and consume very little power. However they do crash occasionally, especially when under strain, so I only use them for file shares, media playback and other non-critical functions. The asus kicks ass compared to these. Also they are not usb3 or gigabit ethernet. When dealing with hoards of data for backups etc, it's not a great option. For simple NAS setups, they're great.