Setting up a dedicated server: experiences, please.

[michaelsanford]

More and more I'm considering taking the plunge and moving 100% of my server in-house for:
• web*
• Incoming mail (IMAP)*;
• Outgoing mail (would be cool but not necessary, I have 2 external SMTP servers);
• ssh;
• anon ftp;
• mush server;

(DHCP and LAN DNS are handled by my DLink router and NetInfo database respectively.)

* necessary services;

I have a 200MHz RH9 machine that I don't think will really cut the mustard (plus one of the HDs has bad blocks). My site's not super high traffic or anything but I know that with only 128 megs of ram, which is the maximum that motherboard supports, when I log in over XDMCP the ram is 93% in use with no apps running.


So, what would you all recommend for a server, hardware and software? I was thinking along the lines of a G3 tower blue & white, or even an iMac DV 500, with Panther (client, since I don't have a license for Server, nor a copy of it for that matter). I have an extra Panther license hanging around so Panther vs RedHat cost isn't an issue.

For a small site am I better to go with x86/RedHat?

 

[legacyb4]

Depends if you want to be able to say you are running on Mac or not, I guess.

Otherwise, go with a GUI-less Unix/Linux server which is light on resources and really stretches the life out of your old hardware.

Lot of dissatisfaction with recent changes in their direction for the product, but I use Trustix to run several servers on older hardware.

You could also go with FreeBSD or NetBSD if you are up to the task of setting it up.

Hope that helps.

 

[Salvo]

I agree that the 200MHz x86 may be a bit weak, but would do the trick. The RPM Database used to run off a K6-2/450 with 512MB RAM.

The B&W G3 sounds very nice, but I'd definitely recommend using a Server OS. Panther is nice, but is still a Desktop OS. Panther Server would do, but you don't have a license for it, and it will always chew more memory than a Dedicated Server. Updates to Panther would break any customizations to Apache.

I Agree with legacyb4 that the BSDs are the goods, if you can set them up, but YellowDog or MDK-PPC may be another option, especially since you've had experience with RPMs.

 

[mdnky]

Someone just put a B&W G3 400 in the classifieds section for sale. It would probably work pretty good for you under OS X as a server.

We're using my old beige G3 300 right now as a testing server, running 10.1.5 and it works pretty good. Before that was a PII 233 (runinng Linux Mandrake 9.0) with 192mb ram.

The only limitation we have currently is the connection to the net...not enough up speed (3m down, 768k up - DSL). Do you have a connection that'll support running your own server and do you have the speed & bandwidth to do so might be something to look at first.

 

[diablojota]

The bandwidth is not too much of an issue when running a small website with not too much traffic. I used to do this off of my cable modem bandwidth with very little issue. My server was a firewall, router, webserver, storage & backup, email server, etc. It was a PII-400 with 256mb RAM. It ran Red Hat, and never broke a sweat. I had an uptime of 420 days before i brought down the machine to move. Coincidentally, I haven't used the machine since I did move...

 

[michaelsanford]

Thanks for your input guys.

Bandwidth was actually my primary concern. With another dedicated server I'm going to have 4 computers sharing one DSL, so I'm likely going to upgrade to my ISPs "DSL ultra" service, which also has no bandwidth quotas (which is nice).

Of secondary concern is the server hardware -- not swapping, being able to stream a radio broadcast while people are browsing my site, run SQL queries and act as a little bit of a local file server -- all without dying on me. That's why I'm not aversed to getting a 300/400 MHz machine with a bunch of RAM, since it'll probably end up running seti@home most of the time anyway...

I'll look into getting Panther Server from my university bookstore, they probably have a discount

PS Ok there's no way I can afford Panther server, so it looks like YDL for me. Since I'm a big Apple fan, I think I'm going to go for an iMac or G3 tower. Do we think an iMac DV 400 or a G3 Blue & White tower with 256 RAM would do the trick?