Mauriat Miranda     mjmwired

Local Server Hardware

After identifying exactly what my local linux server requirements were, I decided to take a good look at my hardware options. From the start, I wanted to (1) save money, (2) save electricity/power and (3) minimize noise.

To address these issues, there were many decisions I made. First of all I did not need any peripherals. The server could be entirely “headless” (i.e. no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, etc). The primary things of value are: disk storage, memory, cpu and network. Hence the following are my requirements:

  • Processor - CPU speed should be about 1Ghz. Preferably a low power processor (ex: Geode-NX, Pentium-M, etc.). I prefer a CPU without a fan and that could be cooled with the heat-sink alone. Although I do not plan to do major computational critical tasks, in the past I have seen certain processors (Via) have difficult with SSH (something that will be critical to performance for me).
  • Memory - Minimum memory: 256MB. From my experience using Fedora as a server and building other minimalistic Linux machines, I know that all my tasks/processes should be fine with about 150-200MB of memory after some tweaking. For safety, about 512MB will be perfect.
  • Disk - Minimum storage space: 80GB. All of my critical documents, development, music (mp3’s, etc) and server backups could be fit easily into 20-30GB. I think double that amount should be adequate. However, realistically, since I most likely would want a SATA drive for performance, most drives are at 160GB for the best price.
  • Video - Don’t care. On board. The most I would need to do is run a remote X-server session, which does not benefit from better video hardware.
  • Sound - Don’t care. On board. Would never be used.
  • Network - Standard networking is now 100Mbit, however it would be a nice to have 1Gbit. Although both my desktop and laptop are both 1Gbit, I do NOT have a gigabit switch.
  • DVD - For installation, a DVD drive would be needed, but once complete, everything would be done over the network. However, there is a practical advantage to having a DVD-RW. Even if the hard drive was very large, a 4GB DVD backup could still be useful for incremental long term backups.

What did I end up getting?

  • Motherboard/CPU - Intel Celeron 220 1.2Ghz. I found a mini-ITX CPU/board combination. My primary reasons for purchase were (1) price - less than $80 USD, (2) no noise - fanless, (3) power consumption was only 27W. The other features of the board were SATA, Onboard video/sound, ethernet and USB2.
  • Memory - 1GB 533Mhz. I did not need 1GB, but the price was only $25 USD and since the motherboard only had 1 slot which supported maximum 1GB, I decided that it was best to just max it out for now.
  • Storage - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 250GB. I did not need the space either but the price was only $70 USD which for the features (16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s) was a good deal. I currently recommend Seagate Barracuda drives, they are great performance and reliability.
  • Case - Antec NSK MicroATX Cube (350W). I thought it would be best to minimize the space the system would take. Also this series of cases is known to be absolutely silent as well as power efficient. This was the most expensive part: $100 USD.
  • DVD - I recycled an old DVD-ROM I was not using.

Total spent: ~$280 USD. This was well within my budget of $300-400.

There were some things I learned and I did run into some issues. I should first mention that everything did “work” correctly.

  • Motherboard SATA - I realized later that the motherboard only supported 1.5Gb/s SATA. So my drive is not operating as fast as it can be, but this is acceptable since majority of my file transfers will be somewhat smaller and the standard SATA performance is very good.
  • Motherboard Video - I knew that onboard video is pretty low performance (in this case SiS Chipset). However for whatever reason the VGA-out on this board was especially noisy. While this would be unacceptable for normal use, I never intended to have a monitor on this machine.
  • Motherboard BIOS - This board had an Intel BIOS. I am most familiar with Asus motherboards and in the BIOS setup there is an option to manually set the startup time (fixed, daily, etc.). The nvram-wakeup utilizes the setting to wake-up the computer. However this board does NOT have that option. I was hoping the machine would sleep during in-activity and wake automatically. I have not yet decided how to work around this other than manually starting it each morning.
  • Celeron CPU - While this CPU met my needs perfectly, I was a little disappointed it did not power-throttle (i.e. reduce clock speeds to save power). The ACPI information is a little bit confusing, however given that it is low power anyways and it does support 64-bit, this is acceptable.
  • Case - Any “smaller” case typically has problems. Antec is usually known for their quality, however I found my case incredibly noisy. The power supply fan rattled too much. I was thinking I would have to RMA to Newegg, but luckily I eliminated the noise by taking everything apart and re-tightening every single screw. Very frustrating but it worked.

Overall I am happy with the purchase. I did end up saving quite a bit, but I can’t help thinking that perhaps spending a little bit more would have allowed for some slight benefits.

I guess I was a little bit wordy, but I wanted to explain very clearly my thought process in assembling a computer with a very specific purpose.

More on this after the software is up and running!

Posted in: CentOS, Devices, Hardware, Linux, Server,

1 Comments:

  • David on November 26, 2009 - 09:21 PM

    Please do worry about being wordy, as this is exactly what I have been looking for. I cannot help but wonder how many people just like myself want a home server but cannot/will not afford the high-end, wasteful absurdities currently offered. With Linux we do not need much processing power to offer a file server to benefit our home needs.

    This is an appreciated thought process that decides what is really needed for a local server. I am seriously looking at the MSI Black Wind PC to run Ubuntu for general home networking and sharing. Thanks for your thoughts!