** steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk [2017-12-19 16:05]:
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 have asked before, but I've never actually got round to doing anything about it, but I've got executive approval from the S/O BUT....
I'm in two minds. Do I go for
A) a traditional box, plenty of room, RAIDed disk but comparatively high power consumption
e.g.
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/nyx
or
https://secure.zeta.systems/store/desktops/D540/
which seem to have PSUs rated about 650W
or
B) a small NUC style box, low power consumption thingy like
https://www.entroware.com/store/desktops/aura
or
Something like the mini-itx jobbies available here
https://www.logicsupply.com/uk-en/products/commercial-computers/mc500-series...
These seem to consume about 65W.
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?
** end quote [steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk]
I've run servers at home since probably '99 at a guess. I've always used retired desktops because they have enough power for a server and it is easy to replace parts without paying a fortune. For quite some time I had a pair of matching Celeron 366MHz boards. These were replaced a few years ago (actually, probably around 10 years thinking about it!) with a pair of Atom 330 based boards.
This came about because I was given a 48U rack with five dual Athlon MP based servers. When I looked at the power use of these I found they used 180W with just a single HD, so it seemed to be cheaper to sell these boards on eBay and invest in the Atom boards which only used around 45W. I still have those, and the boards may get re-used for something, but I currently have a couple of old desktop boards again (one isn't in commission yet), along with a pair of HP Microservers which once in a while turn up on eBuyer on offer at pretty good prices (although mine are old Turion based ones that were given to me. I also have a Raspberry Pi running Nextcloud.
Fiver servers may seem overkill, but I do work from home and experiment quite a bit with them. The Raspberry Pi probably shouldn't count as that is a Nextcloud Box that I was playing with (with a WD PiDrive - 1TB 2.5"HD with built in USB connectivity and custom Pi cables) that ended up being used rather than just played with - I'll be moving it onto on of the other servers soon. Performance has been adequate, but it hasn't been under serious load. Managing the HD and network over the USB bus probably isn't ideal.
The HP Microservers may be worth a look. They are nicely put together with the HDs fitted into removable caddies and can be bought, iirc, without an OS. Working on them involves disconnecting wires to slide parts out, which is neat but does involve fairly custom parts (although what compact computer doesn't). I've added a couple of extra NICs so one will likely be configured as a firewall eventually - they use half height cards, but I had access to some very cheap Intel based ones from Novatech.
RAID wise, I always use the Linux software RAID to mirror my drives. If you are short on physical space have you thought about using 2.5" drives and fitting two onto a single bracket in a 3.5" bay? That either involves replacing the existing drive (not ideal with a warranty), buying setup with no HD (less easy) or building your own (usually my preferred option, but the new builds tend to be desktops). If you are doing this on a pre built / part built setup check the motherboard has enough SATA ports though.
Hmm, that was longer than planned - o/ if you made it to the end :-)