Servers

[Lawrence]

I'm thinking of using a server instead of my NAS drive. I would probably use Ubuntu. Any advice or problems to look out for?

[Tim Watts]

What are you using it for?

[Huge]

Grief. How long have you got? I can send you my consultancy rate card, if you'd like?

[Adrian C]

My server backs up to my NAS (and so do other PCs), and bits of my NAS backs up to spare disc space on the server. Cron'd Rsync in both directions (obviously not overlapping...)

I'd keep a system of both NAS and server. I've had my NAS bail out on me once before, it trashed both mirrored drives.

Got Debian on me HP Microserver. Barefoot CLI, no GUI. Run headless.

[Bill]

In message , Adrian C writes

My backup for a Windows system here is trundling along nicely using a small HP server running CentOS, setup access via PuTTY, with 2 big drives taking what SyncToy fires at them from various machines, each on alternate days.

There are some snags, backing up open files being one of them. I gave up on Ubuntu, but I had a lot of help (from an Ubuntu expert!) to get CentOS running as I wanted.

Part of the problem was that I wanted one drive to be NTFS rather than EXT4, because I had the vague idea of being able to drop it into a Windows PC if all else failed.

I didn't like the NAS I had, and sold it, and Windows Home Server was a disaster on the HP machine, but I'm very much a simple amateur.

[Steve Firth]

Damn, got in before me.

[brass monkey]

I think you'd be very surprised.

[The Natural Philosopher]

use Debian stable for a (headless) server.

All the good things about ubuntu are not needed on a server.

If you are happy adminning it from a telnet or ssh session that's the best, otherwise maybe install webmin.

You will need at least 256MB RAM. More is better for high speed disk access.

If its windows only, you need samba.

If linux, use NFS,.

For Macs, use either, NFS if you can hack OSX otherwise it talks windows spik

[Caecilius]

Have you looked at QNAP? I've found them much better than a lot of the cheap NAS boxes, and it runs a customised version of Debian Linux. I'm using a 4-drive one at home, and a 6-drive one at work.

They do SMB (samba), NFS, rsync, FTP Etc. They also do iSCSI if you want to use them for VMware ESXi servers. Nice boxes IMHO.

[Steve Firth]

Another vote from me. QNAPs can be used as NAS or SAN or as a server. Very well built. they can also act as an iTunes server with DAAPD. A good way of distributing music and video around the network.

[Lawrence]

Just to run a home network with 3 windows PCs, a couple of Android devices, an Iphone and a Rasp-Pi. I might want to stream video but nothing very ambitious. At the moment I have an Iomega NAS just doing backup but it seems very slow. I was thinking of upgrading an old tower - new MB and HDD - and running it as a server.

[Java Jive]

I use two Zyxel NSA221s without much problems, BUT ...

+ They and all the PCs, even the laptops, are GENUINELY GIGABIT* + And are cabled to a GENUINELY GIGABIT router

Further, I've invested in a couple of USB sticks which enable me to boot them into a slightly modified OS, so that I can run rsync between them and the PCs, and between themselves. It's the best system I've ever had, but it did take quite a lot of setting up to get it how I want it. It may be that the QNAP ones mentioned up thread may be just as good or better and easier to set up as well.

And of course, it depends what you mean by slow further down the thread.

• GENU> I'm thinking of using a server instead of my NAS drive. I would

[Tim Watts]

In that case, use Debian.

[Michael Chare]

I did wonder whether a NAS would cost less than a PC in the long term as it might well use less power.

I have a ReadyNAS Duo, my only complaint is that it does not automatically restart after a power cut. It does however have a good support forum, and it sent me emails when one of my hard drives started to fail. I was able to change the disk before I lost any data.

[dennis]

Probably, my NAS uses about 6W compared to a PC which will probably use

50W. Thats about £40 pa more. Old PCs probably use more that £100 pa.

My HAS always starts when you connect the power. Guess what some people complain about.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My atom based server uses about 6W,

I will never again set a machine to boot on application of power. one time in three the auto trips try to reconnect power three times, before deciding the tree across the line is permanent, resulting in an aborted boot process which is almost guaranteed to corrupt disks.

[dennis]

When idle?

Thats what an UPS is for.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its what a not particularly critical server is set to.

If the clients are also down, and all the Internet is also down, there is little point keeping the server up.

[The Other Mike]

Then power the router / modem from the UPS then. The exchange end will still be working.