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

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I actualy built my firewall on a WinChip C6 board. Cheap at auction/sacrifice.

My point is about the HD. I use a 10GB 2.5in notebook harddrive in here, for noise and heat considerations. My Exim SMTP proxy and Squid run GREAT, no real issue aboutthe form-factor. This has served me for 2-plus years. I tar the whole thing up nightly - via SSH - onto my big workstation. Even if the drive blows, I pop another cheapie in the box, boot with Knoppix, and restore!

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.

Sounds Familiar

[Coyote67]

I too have been looking into putting together a small media server/web services
machine. A little research turned up, Mini-ITX.
I would start here, its a pretty good site that has a lot of information of
what you can do with mini-itx and features note worthy products as they come
out. Personally I think what you need is a HUSH.
Its the size of a dvd player, its completely silent and its so low power that
the power supply (95watts I think it is) is external. It might not be the cheapest
itx option out there but it fits all your (and mine) requirements and adds the
nice look factor aswell. They seem like a pretty good shop and they even let
you buy it without an OS, which I'm sure you'll (and me too but for different
reasons) appreciate. If you do get one I suggest getting it with 128ram and
buying more ram elsewhere, they're based in Germany and the value of the Euro
really shoots up the price of ram (and everything else I imagine). Btw I don'
work for these guys so don't assume I do, but I'd gladly trade a free one for
advertising these guys as often as possible.

And before anyone says it, I have imagined a beowulf cluster of these :)

Re:laptops rule

[mnmn]

Is there a space constraint?

Well it just doesnt feel right to have a complete half-tower case buzzing in a corner just to run a firewall and an apache. Gotta be minimalistic and smooth. On one hand, its nice to have a small quite laptop or old IBM Pentium1 system with no processor fan in a corner, and on the other, to be an extremist and get an old and obnoxious AS/400 system and try to run the webserver off it. Yet other geeks try things like running it off dreamcast or a beowulf of Linux PDAs. A simple computer just doesnt help that sense of self-respect. What if there are geeks in the new neighborhood?

I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.

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.