# hardware advice for a small server

## falcon_za

I am considering setting up a box under gentoo (or possibly freebsd, if i am in a adventurous mood) for the following use:

inside my (small) home LAN:

* firewall and router (wifi would be nice)

* dhcp? maybe

* file server (nfs? samba?)

* cups print server

and accessible from outside

* http server

* ftp server

It will need modest characteristics, given that both web and ftp server are for a rather confidential use, and I don't expect a lot of trafic.

Any box I can buy or make nowadays can certainly handle this limited load, I don't worry about that. The thing is I would like this box to be totaly silent, with very low power consumption. small size would be a good thing too. And given that I have very limited requirements on performance, I am certainly willing to give up MHz to save a few watts, decibel or $. That said, not caring about performance does not mean I don't care about reliablilty. possibility later on to add a few hard drives (even externaly), and set up a soft raid is also interesting option, but definitely not required.

The mac mini seems quite close to what could use, but with only one network card, and given that its wifi can't be used by open source OSes, it doesn't really make it. I guess I could probably add a second lan card and a wifi card via USB or firewire, but It feels a bit drity. Moreover, the ATI board and the sound board do no harm, but I don't really need them either.

I am totaly open to any architeture, be it x86, ppc, sparc, or something else. I also don't care wether I have to build the box myself, or buy it off the self. In the end of the day, as long as I can do the things I said on a free os, I am happy. Whether it truns out to be a custom made x86 system, a tweeked mac mini, a second-hand sun box, or a cluster of zaurus is unimportant.

Any idea?

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## NeddySeagoon

falcon_za,

Well, silent means PPC or VIA CPU, (or 486, which could do the tasks).

It also means solid state memory - no hard drives, or remote drives by booting over the network.

You really don't want a firewall netbooting.

The fanless VIA CPUs are found on mini and micro ATX boards, which have everything on board and zero or one expasion slots. They are intended for use in small cases that have at most, room for one extra drive. So they are ideal for use as a PVR.

Thats not an answer, just a few points to ponder.

Think long and hard before you put up an FTP server. FTP uses clear text passwords ...

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## falcon_za

Thanks NeddySeagoon. That's a begginning.

I'll check about VIA's cpu. It looks like I could find something nice there.

As for PPC, besides apple's mac mini and pegasos open desktop workstation, is there any maker building this kind of machines? or is it possible to find find ppc components and build it myself?

Solid state drives also sounds nice, but it seems overkill (and overpriced) for such a small system. I don't really realize how noisy a normal harddrive is, since there are more noisy things (fan) in my current computer so I can't hear it. But I guess that if I avoid super fast drives and stay with rather low rpm drives (5400?), it should stay relatively silent.

By relatively, I mean I want to put the box in the same room as my bed (I only have one room, anyway), and not notice it when I want to sleep.

As you suggest, I'll think again about FTP.

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## Headrush

Forget trying to build your own PPC box. You may find the parts, but it just isn't worth the effort and cost.

Look at your favorite dealer for XPC bare boxes. They are fairly small and all you need is to add your choice of HD and memory.

With XPC boxes you will still get the same performance as a "full" tower set at the small size and fairly cheap.

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## danielflorent

Hello,

Mini-ITX boards are a good possibility for low-power and silent computer at a reasonable price. Until recently, my home server used an Epia ME-6000 to serve NFS, Samba, FTP and audio streaming to a Squeezebox. I add to replace it recently because of the slowness of database access in slimserver (15000+ tracks in SQLite), but for basic tasks (file server and FTP) it performs quite well.

As it's low-power, you can use external fanless PSU (these aren't cheap, but are really worth their price). To make some simulations, you can use this web page :

http://resources.mini-box.com/online/powersimulator/powersimulator.html

With a 100 W model, my server was able to use 1 Epia ME-6000, 3 HDs, 1 PCI IDE controller card, 512 MB of RAM, 1 CF card (plugged in an IDE adapter) and an undervolted 120 mm fan.

I think there's several models of Epia boards which have 2 included Ethernet ports (good for a firewall), but I haven't followed recent news on these boards.

Regards,

Florent

PS: Headrush, what is an XPC ? Is it from the Shuttle line, or something else ?

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## danielflorent

As for HD noise, a good way to reduce it is to isolate them from the box : there are several systems to suspend them, I was using Zalman ZM-2HC1 (with nice but useless heatpipes...), their fixation system was consisting of efficient little silent-blocks.

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## Headrush

 *danielflorent wrote:*   

> PS: Headrush, what is an XPC ? Is it from the Shuttle line, or something else ?

 

Yes, the Shuttle line.  

They use "standard parts", aka CPU, but aren't as quiet as Via's Mini ITX lineup.

(Depending on CPU you choose, they're not bad. But for something totally quiet like A PVR, Via is the way to go.) 

The bonus is that everything should be supported like a normal desktop system, no worries about having the latest support for some ITX motherboard features.

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## Pizzagod

I ran a Dell Lattitude Notebook PC as a server for a few years.  It made absolutely no sound most of the time.  Every so often the internal fan would kick on, but you really needed to listen for it.

So, maybe a notebook PC would do the trick for you.  A couple of NICs won't be a problem (either built-in, PCMCIA or USB).  Hard drives could use USB.

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## falcon_za

I thought about using a notebook, but the one I currently have (compaq pressario) is awfully noisy, with the fan almost always on, and rather loud. Moreover, it is really hot after a while, so I don't feel confident letting it on for much longer than a gentoo install, for instance.

buying a notebook for this seems a bit expensive. but I'll look around for second hand hardware from friends.

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## danielflorent

If you can find an used Centrino, it would be a very good choice for your needs. Try to find somebody that want to sold one with a deficient battery or charger (since you'll use it always plugged, it won't matter for you and you can negotiate a low price).

Pentium-M processors have a very high performance/wattage ratio (probably the highest of the market on x86 platforms).

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## amix

 *falcon_za wrote:*   

> I thought about using a notebook, but the one I currently have (compaq pressario) is awfully noisy, with the fan almost always on, and rather loud. Moreover, it is really hot after a while, so I don't feel confident letting it on for much longer than a gentoo install, for instance.
> 
> buying a notebook for this seems a bit expensive. but I'll look around for second hand hardware from friends.

 

Notebook (especially 2nd hand) is damn slow on the HDD.

Should your concern still be actual I would recommend a VIA C3M266 µATX mainboard with a VIA C3 Nehemiah CPU min. 1GHz.

This is what I have running here. I find the EPIA boards not well suitable for any serious home-stuff (good for cars or exotic devices though), except maybe, in this case, the CL version, which does have two NICs onboard. The reasoning behind this is: Sooner or later you might want to tune up your system. With the EPIA you have 1 PCI slot, that's all.

The VIA C3M 266 mainboard is practically the same as the EPIA line with the CLE266 chipset minus the CPU, plus two additional PCI (making three in total, no AGP, since that is included in the CLE266 chipset).

However, it may be, that you can only find this 2nd hand, since it seems to be out of production for over a year. In addition you also could add a Celeron, that uses the So370. Along with a Nehemiah C3 1GHz you might pay not more than 70 Euro. Add 512MB RAM, a disc, a 2nd NIC and there you go.

The advantages: You can use the cheap via-rhine NIC for the ADSL/cable/whatever modem to the Internet and plug in a better, intelligent NIC feeding your LAN (maybe even 1 GBit).

You can add a hardware-RAID (RAID 5) card sooner or later

And you still can add a WLAN card, making your server a hotspot as well.

A very interesting choice for a home-server would be a hardware-based firewall on a NIC (these exist, search the net).

Basically these come as 10/100MBit (or faster) NICs with an embedded computer onboard, that is built as a firewall. This way you can seperate the firewall physically from your file/web-server, which is a good idea anyway. You use this for the Internet link then.

Since this is µATX you have a wide choice of coolers for SoA (these fit the So370 arch), that, should you design your case yourself and intelligently, allow for passive cooling of the CPU (Aerocool HT-101, etc.).  However, you must take care to vent the case sufficiently, but in this case you could use 120mm fans, which transport the same air while rotating slower, than smaller ones. This makes it very very silent. I have my system in the living-room and I can't hear it. Only sometimes, when the heat-control spins the fans a little faster I can hear a fine whhhhhhhhooooshhhhhh, but only, if I listen very closely. This way it is possilbe to add a small PSU <200W and tune it for passive cooling (heat-sinks, put it into the airflow or add extra 120mm fan)

A very silent HDD (and sufficiently fast) is the Samsung 120GB 5400RPM with 2MB cache.

I run adsl-modem, firewall, print, scan, mail, www and fileserver on my host and it is 24/7.

Small, powerful (for a few part-time clients), optimized to the bones  :Smile: , low power-consumption, silent. You won't get you want if you trust the industry. They never will know you.

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## falcon_za

Thanks! that's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. I'll try to look around or those. Since you seem to know your stuff pretty well, would you know what is the current equivalent of what you told me, so I can buy it new, instead of second hand? I am affraid it might not be that easy to find.

By the way, is only the mother board out of production, or the Nehemiah C3 too?

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## bjd

I agree with amix that the EPIA may not be the best, as they do restrict your upgradablitiy. A low end socket A or 370 setup can't be too expensive these days. I use a Cyrix600 as my fileserver, but its underclocked to 300MHz. That means it runs without a CPU fan and is only warm to the touch. You could probably apply the same approach to most CPU's. You could look into a 'Mobile' Barton AMD (socket A laptop processor), that will drop in to a desktop board and has a lot lower power requirement than desktop XP's. They are also fully unlocked so you could clock it down to maybe 800MHz or so. Only thing would be getting hold of one as Im sure AMD have stopped Socket A production.

The PSU fan in mine is surprisingly quiet for a no-name PSU, the types with a single 120mm fan are likely to be quietest if you're buying new. The only thing I can hear is the hard drive (old WD), but its only audible really close up. I have a Seagate drive in my HTPC which is *really* quiet. As amix says the Samsung Spinpoints are the quietest drives on the market (apparently  :Smile:  )Last edited by bjd on Tue Sep 27, 2005 10:29 am; edited 1 time in total

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## ejmiddleton

I had similar requirements and I went with a Kuro box (PPC) and LINKSYS (MIPS) OpenWRT combination.  The kuro box has a fan (you will probably want it for the hard drive) but is basically silent.  I installed gentoo on the kuro Box and and run all the servers from that.  The only thing you may have problems with is the printer drivers.  It is possiable to compile you own drivers but it doesn't just work out of the box.

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