[LUNI] In search of a server

[Branko Kotur]

If you want to try to build your own, you can take a look at either newegg.com 
or mwave.com.  I've been favoring newegg lately as they have a large 
selection and I haven't had any problems with them before.  I'm pretty sure 
you can put a simple/cheap computer together for the price range you're 
looking at, but I haven't paid attention to their cheaper hardware recently, 
so I don't know for sure what your final price would come out to be.  

As far as RAID, I always understood it to offer reliability at the cost of 
slightly reduced performance.  Unless you're looking at RAID 0, which really 
isn't RAID.  If you want true hardware RAID, then an addon card will cost you 
$100 - $300 (or more) extra just for the addon card, depending on how many 
hard drives you're looking to use.  Otherwise, if you can live with 
software/fake RAID, most motherboards seem to have it these days.  

On Saturday 11 November 2006 11:24 pm, Larry Garfield wrote:
> My home server is dying.  Specifically, the hard drive is developing bad
> sectors, always in my mail archive (where else?), and I'm fairly sure the
> rest of the system is too old to even cope with a new, large hard drive. 
> So I am now in the market on short notice for a new home server.
>
> "Home server" in this case means something that handles email, Jabber, DNS,
> minor web stuff, etc. for a user base of generally no more than, uh, 2. :-)
> The only really strenuous thing it ever does handle a 2 GB mail archive
> over IMAP.  Other than that, it's really just a glorified file server.
>
> Does anyone have a favorite source for such a contraption for a low price?
> I'm open to building my own (I do that all the time), or buying pre-made,
> or a decent gently-used box.  I don't know if I want to bother with RAID or
> not, as I'd be interested more in reliability than in performance
> increases. Brands aren't really important, although reliability and
> expandability of the case is.  Quiet is, since it will be sitting in my
> living room.  I'm thinking 1 GHz+, 512 MB RAM, and 200+ GB storage, and
> trying to keep the cost in the $300-$400 range if I can.  No Windows Tax if
> I can avoid it.
>
> Any recommendations for where to find such a system, or parts for it, or
> someone with such a system they want to offload to a good home? :-)  Is the
> price range I'm looking for too low for this task?
>
> TIA and such.
>
> --
> Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
> larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012
>
> "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
> exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
> which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
> himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
> possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."
>  -- Thomas Jefferson