I bought a small server for home - need some advise
 

I have been looking for an "inexpensive" server for a while and I finally pulled the trigger on a Dell 2400 PowerEdge with one 1Ghz PIII processor, 1GB Ram, four 18GB hard drives in Raid 5.

I want it primarily to serve as a file share as I just depend on my desktop harddrives too much and backing things up is just too much of a hastle to DVDs so I plan to add a 20/40Gig DLT to make it easier to do backups I can lock in the safty deposit box in case the house should melt down :confused: I may also add a secong 1GHz PIII processor as I can get one for about $125 and the server will support duel 1GHz PIII processors (I need to see if I think I need that) I am not planning to hook this up to the web to use as a webserver but I would like to use it as an intranet as well as a file share.

What I don't know is what operating system I want to install? I believe I will be getting the licence certificate for Windows Server 2000 but I need to see. If not, I will need to purchase something and I am debating if I should go with a Win 2000 / Win 2003 Server or a Linux server package (Redhat or ?).

I hope to install Apache, PHP, and MYSQL in this box to allow me to do site development directly on the server as at the moment I am doing everything on a remote server via FTP and that is a painfully slow process.

Can someone share your advise?

I can not afford a $1,500 to $3,000 server at the moment so I need to et started with this entry level machine which without the operating system I will have about $500 into!

Well, I can't say for sure because I dont know exactly what kind of development you'll be doing, however I run a PII 400 with 512MB ram as my server in my basement. Its a fileshare, RRAS, Web Server, FTP Server, & VPN Server. The thing is a hog and runs through it all without any problems. Fast as hell, and I've never understood it, lol. I use it as my fileserver, etc without any problems. I do coding on my local workstation, php for example, then transfer it over and pop it on my web share so I can run it from my webserver.

I also run windows 2003 server on it, IIS, Mysql, & Apache.

Then that is good news! Like I said, I only paid $125 + $35 for shipping for what I bought so it will allow me a chance to learn the basics of running a server and I can upgrade later. I looked at Microsoft's site and they recommend a minimum of a 1GHz PIII for Server 2003 but with the reality that there will likely only ever be one of us connected to that server at any time I am sure I can make do with less.

I have a IT friend that has old MS Server 2000 disks that he does not use anymore so it looks like I can get him a case of beer and wanl away with Win 2000 Server with the keys/COA.

I have been pricing the spare parts and it may be cheaper for me to buy a second server with a secong 1GHZ processor, DLT and additional hard drives in the hot swapable caddies then it will be for me to get the parts seperately.

Here is my box:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...9345&rd=1&rd=1

Our desktop PC are reasonably new (P4s one running 2.0GhZ and the second is 2.6GHz) so the computing power is on our desktop machines like you suggest.

Edit: I got greedy and picked up a second box. The second is another Dell 2400 but with quite a bit more including duel 1GHz Xenon PIII processors, three 36dives, 4Gigs Memory, and the all important 35/70 Tape drive.

I figure the $160 I spent for the first server gives me a cheap box to play with and when I am done I can just move the SCSI drives to the bigger box for 3-18GB drives in RAID 1 for the server software and the othe three 36-GB drives (plus one more when I find it) I will set up as Raid 5. When I get done, the box with the single processor can still be run or I can just keep it for spare parts