On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 17:12 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> On Sat 08 Sep 2007, Jeroen Massar wrote:
>> > > I'm thinking of getting an ITX server,
> > > mainly to use less electricity.
> > > Any advice on what to get?88
> ...
> > > My main requirement is reliability,
> > > as it will be in a remote site.
> > > I'd like it to run Linux without too many complications.
> >
> > What are the exact requirement?
> > - What is your budget?
> I suppose around 800 euro for a complete solution (with disks)
>
Easily done I would say.
The Jetway Mini-ITX boards are good:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=34#j7f2
Add one of the gigabit LAN expansion boards.
> > - What OS will it run?
> Linux.
> I prefer Fedora, because that is what I am running on other machines,
> but I am not (very) bigoted.
>If you like fedora, I would suggest Centos on the server. It is less of
a moving target, and in that area, easier to manage for updates, as well
as having a longer update life.
Plus it is based on Red Hat, so it should be quite familiar.
> > - What is it going to run?
> I was looking at chkconfig on my present server (a fairly ancient Asus PIII),
> and the list would include:
> cups, dovecot, httpd, mysqld, openvpn, sendmail,
> shorewall, spamassassin, sshd,
Should be fine, but might it be worth separating your firewall and
server?
>> > - How much traffic is it going to do?
> I'm not sure how this is measured,
> but over the past week about 2GB has come in,
> and 0.6GB gone out over the internet.
> All of this has come from other internal computers.
>> > - How much storage space does it need?
> Currently I have 330GB SCSI disks,
> and a 200GB IDE backup disk.
>> > - Does it need RAID or so for reliability?
> I'm not really a RAID convert.
> I haven't had any problems with my SCSI disks,
> and people seem to have as many problems with RAID disks
> as with SCSI disks.
> But this is probably an old-fashioned point of view.
>With the price of disks, and the fact that the new Mini-ITX boards come
with 2 SATA connectors on-board, RAID-1 would be cheap to accomplish.
A couple of Mirrored 500GB disks should fill your needs, or if you want
more space, get a SATA card for the board, and use RAID5.
It sure beats the PITA that is a failed disk!
Phil
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