Notebooks and Mini ITX Machines as Home Servers?

An anonymous reader asks: "I recently moved into a townhouse (the first time on my own, actually) and need to get a server up and running before the other trivial stuff (furniture, getting food in the fridge, *getting* a fridge, etc, etc). I need the basic set of services - HTTP, FTP, DNS, SMTP/POP3 for any self respecting geek. The drawback is that I'm on a limited budget (money and space wise) and need a server that is *extremely* energy efficient, takes up little space, makes no noise, and generates very little heat. A basic P4 notebook seems to fit the bill - small, low power consumption, built in screen/keyboard/mouse (no need for KVM), wireless so I can stick it on the top shelf of my closet, and generates less heat and noise than your average desktop. Is there any reason to consider, say, a mini ITX rig (such as a shuttle) over this? Any drawbacks?"

Comments

Does a home computer really use that much power???

[SoCalChris]

I have a P4 2Ghz, with 17" monitor, laser printer, router, Cisco ATA and scanner that is up and running 24/7, and out monthly power bill is around $20. That is here in Southern California, where our electricity bills are ridiculously high too. That $20 power bill also takes into account that we use a lot of lights, and usually have the tv going.

This leads me to ask, why spend a bunch of money on a notebook or shuttle case to use as a server? If you're on a tight budget, won't one of those cost you a lot more than a regular PC would use in power?

Re:Notebook? Cheap?

[crow]

Consider a used notebook. While the built-in screen is a nice convenience, you could possibly find one really cheap with a broken screen.

smaller, cheaper, better

[MSG]

You can get a number of units that will be smaller, cheaper, quieter, and produce less heat than either Mini-ITX or a laptop.

For instance:
http://www.soekris.com/

It's an X86 PC that boots off of a CF card. Perhaps you could use this with an external HD enclosure, or network-mounted storage?

My server

[GiMP]

I have a pentium 166 as my router/firewall. I put in an old 256 megabyte harddrive, installed Linux, setup iptables, then copied the important files to a tmpfs filesystem, remounted / read-only, and spun-down the harddrive. A completely quiet system (the processor doesn't need a fan).

If you need more speed for some reason, try a Via C3 processor. With a good heatsink you shouldn't need a fan at all.. even if, the fans required make little or no noise.

I found that harddrives are too loud. If you need to write to the disk, get one of those 'low noise' harddrives. Alternatively, you can try a flash disk which would be quiet and wouldn't have to be spun-down; however, you would only have a limited number of writes.

Best of both worlds

[Hardwyred]

What I have done is purchase a socket 370 Via C3 online (they go for like 30 bucks for a 900Mhz that uses very little power) and then just used an old socket 370 mini atx case (ya know, the one with 2 PCI slots and EVERYTHING else built onboard). No harddrives in it, I run everything off of CD and use Ramdisks for RW stuff. It's a little noisy when it first boots up but after 45 seconds or so, it's as quiet as a powersupply fan and a CPU fan can be. Cheap too, I think I have a total of 60 bucks invested (god love ebay). So in short, be a geek and build your own. The power difference over a year between the eden boards and a C3 you can buy will amount to a super sized extra value meal over a year.

Have been there many times

[mnmn]

Ive had to look for a small minimalist firewall+server, and the best thing Ive come across is an old Pentium1 IBM system. Its low-profile, and the power supply is 200W. 200MHz and 64MB Ram using FreeBSD has been enough for me serving 7 domains with their webpages, mysql and postgresql, qmail with virtualhosts, ircd, samba, VPN and other things I cant remember. Ive also installed similar systems at other places including homes and offices, and manage them through ssh. Uptimes have been since the installation and have never had a performance problemo.

Am thinking now to replace the IBM system with a Sun Ultra 5, just for the heck of it. I dont think you should go for a power-guzzling Duron or any system with a loud processor fan. Nor should you have to go with an ATX tower with extra drive bays. Be minimalistic and efficient and you wont need a Pentium4 unless you plan to serve your webpage through an IBM Websphere and DB2.

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[LordNimon]

If you disable all logging, a properly configured laptop with enough memory should almost never go to disk. The laptop will then power down the hard drive. Some exceptions would be if you had a POP3 and/or SMTP server.

Hmmm... that would be a useful FAQ: How to configure a Linux server to minimize/eliminate disk I/0.

I do this

[Ratbert42]

I have a stack of Dell P2-266 laptops I got cheap at auction. Two of those running all the time is a lot less space, noise and heat than a single desktop. Still, they aren't silent and they do put out some heat.

The idea of batteries as a UPS is kind of a problem. You'll probably fry the expensive battery in less than a year. I only use batteries when I need to move the machines and run on a real UPS the rest of the time.

Memory on an older laptop can be a problem. The ones I have use EDO SO-DIMMs. Going from 2x64m to 2x128m would cost me $300-800. If I had picked laptops that used a pair of SDRAM sticks, I could probably get to 256m for $50.

One of my biggest problems with using these laptops as servers is that it feels like such a waste. I've got friends that could still squeeze a good bit of life out of them, especially on a wireless lan. In fact I've given away most of my stack and I'm down to just one busted-up spare.

Consider a flashdisk

[isaac]

For what it's worth, old laptops can make great servers for low-intensity use. One trick I've used before is to remove the hard disk and replace it with a compactflash card attached to a CF2.5" IDE adaptor in order to A. replace the only moving part with something less failure prone and B. make the laptop silent instead of merely quiet.

The only caveat is that you need to have enough ram for your application to never need swap (64 meg is more than enough for basic non-X, non-java server and/or firewall use). Never ever run a swap file or partition on flash media - you will quickly exhaust the limited write cycles of the flash media.

-Isaac