Slashdot Mirror
Portables as Servers?
vincecate asks: "Do portables make reliable Linux servers? The power on the island where I live is very unreliable. With the screen off the battery should last through a long power outage. I could even put on a UPS and have it last a day. My servers have little load (DNS and some web). Prices on portables are getting reasonable. Can anyone report on using portables as servers?"
I run Apache on my laptop (locally). Seems OK
If you use such little server space/bandwidth it could be more cost productive to get one of the multiple under $5 plans that some hosting companies have.
Sadly I have no experiance with portables though.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
with some caveats:
I/O on a laptop likely to suck, due to compromises in HD size/speed/DTR
limited memory upgradeability...but do you need 16GB in a laptop doing 'light duty' as a server?
I've run L.A.M.P stuff and Samba on an old K6-400 laptop, and it ran fine.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have a server thats a laptop. It runs apache, mysql, php. It runs really well. Just gets a bit hot. But thats expected. No problems at all.
Maybe you'll find some answers here.
It's actually a very good way to recycle lappies with a smashed screen. Over time, we made a beowulf cluter of those (imagine that, eh?) at my university. In that specific case, a problem is that some batteries are old and almost dead, so it still needs its own UPS... lots of space & power saving, though.
Convertibles as freigther?
I used to run an SSH/SOCKS proxy/home monitoring server on an old Thinkpad laptop. Worked really well.
I changed over to a Linksys router running the latest White Russian firmware, though, for the SSH/SOCKS part.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
The best advice I can give is - try to make it not use any moving parts in normal operations.
Boot is okay from either HD or CD, but it should have enough ram to not poll the HD. 512m is usually a good bet, 1g will definitely be enough for pretty much anything (aside from running a mysql server with a large db or something), if you calculate everything you may find that 256 is enough... Then make it turn off HD after 1 minute of operations. Disconnecting either the CD or the HD might be a good idea too. If you boot from a CompactFlash or similar card, you don't need HD/CD at all - even less electricity consumption.
Fewer moving parts translates directly into longer battery life and better performance (standard HD speed is still 5400 RPM on laptops). It'll probably live longer, to boot (pun intended)
Heat dissipation is another issue you may want to look into (if the CPU is not one of those new low-power ones.. if you have a 15W core duo, you're golden). Since it'll be a server, you can easily pop off the keyboard and bare the cooling pipes (better cooling performance).
HTH
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
They don't get it, they do not see the difference between a joke (good or bad, it does not mater) and trolling.
Sheesh
Until you sit on them.
Ouch.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
If you get just a little traffic, you should have no problems. I used to have a site run off of a dsl connection (using dynamic dns) on a laptop. I took it down later, but it worked flawlessly, just read through the apache guides. One thing though, whatever you do, don't post it on slashdot.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
...is the hard drive - many laptops aren't built to run continuously and the HDD is likely to be the first thing to give out (I've gone through two drives in six months on an IBM laptop I ran 24x7).
See if you can boot off a USB flash drive, and increase RAM enough that you don't need swap - then you can remove the HDD and run without moving parts (unless it's a notebook with an internal fan, which I would not recommend).
You can buy / build a low power system with -48V DC PSU and drive it on normal car batteries for extended time... you could even charge them by a simple, cheap generator.
The weak point of your idea are the disk system... you could of course try with an external disk, PCMCIA/CardBUS SCSI or FireWire 800 adapters are available, but then you've got problems with power to the disk system.
I think the real question is how much diskspace is required and how intensive is the usage (of the disk), if you don't have heavy load on the disk a laptop is good enough. Keep them btw. away from dust...
--
This sig is designed for painless integration with the comment...
Laptops generally aren't built to be on 24x7. The fans and harddrives would be my biggest concern. With clean air and frequent drive replacements it could work.
The real question this spurs is why don't servers have internal UPS's like laptops do and why aren't there ones designed for low power and long batery life. A laptop motherboard with several big UPS style batteries, a mirrored set of drives and some reasonable low power cooling fans could probalby live for up to a day on battery and still be quite a capable server.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
(off topic - why is it that there's ALWAYS someone who answers a question like this with "do something that has nothing to do with your question, such as getting a $5 hosting provider"?)
I've used laptops in many places where a larger computer would not do. For instance, before you could buy wireless access points which would do real IP routing, I used to use recycled laptops to provide access via routed subnets. They can be placed in the ceiling, in closets, et cetera. One even spent a good bit of time in an awning in a storefront providing wireless access to Tompkins Square Park in NYC for a while. Of course, the "built-in UPS" is always good!
On another note, I'm running a site which hosts lots of video files and was slashdotted recently - usually two things which do not mix well. The server it runs on pushed 400 Mbps quite well, and it uses less than 30 watts measured at 120 volts - no, it's not a laptop, but it's made with many of the same parts - it's a Mac mini. If I were running a rack of these instead of your typical AMD or Pentium 4 systems, I'd be saving tons of money on power and cooling. Portables and low power devices make lots of sense, especially where it's abundantly clear that there is no need for machines which take 90 watts JUST for each CPU. (As one site recently pointed out, the Intel Core Duo is also quite performance competitive with high end AMD and Intel CPUs)
So the real question is why not? The only reason I can think of is if you were doing things which would involve thrashing the disk heavily. 2.5" hard drives are not particularly good for 24x7 thrashing. But if you were to get an external Firewire 3.5" drive, that wouldn't be an issue.
John Klos
ZiaSpace Productions
As long as you are aware of the limitations, you'll be fine. For small scale use, the only one item that I would consider is whether or not you want RAID for hard disk storage -- you'll need to use external drives if you do. Otherwise the laptops are pretty much regular computers, albeit slightly slower, as far as these things go. Oh, and you won't have fancy remote management tools that medium and higher end servers have.
A regular laptop will have even worse hardware. The HD especially is a weakpoint. However for non-heavy use where either the number of reads is limited or even avoided by loading everything in memory a laptop is just a lowend pc.
It can be very usefull as long as you don't expect it to perform the same as a real server.
The build in UPS is however very handy. I worked at an ISP where for some reason the power wasn't that stable for a year or so. Didn't matter for the important stuff because they were on a UPS like system but it did mean regular power failures in the offices (I think it was because workmen kept digging up the powerlines or something).
Anyway I put the ISP job to good use in the form of running my own FTP server. Hey, when you got a fat pipe you need to share it right? It is what I tell my gf anyway :P
It ran of an old laptop hidden in my cupboard (note, do not store chocolate in drawer above a laptop running 24/7) and it just ran regardless of power interruptions. Our workfloor test server was not so lucky and because it was badly adminned it never automatically recovered after a powerfailure.
So I developer on a laptop against my server laptop with power down all around me. Kinda cool although I now realize I was the only one working while everyone else was goofing around.
So yes, laptops can be used to overcome power outages. HOWEVER for what reason? In my case the network was on its own UPS. Will your laptop be as lucky?
No point in running a server when there is no network to serve right?
On the other hand if you can get a cheap UPS to power your network then the batteries of a laptop can last a long time especially if you add all the batteries you can by replacing the cd. Mine lasted through a 8 hour power outage once. The screen being off makes a huge difference.
Just remember heat and HD performance. Then again, I did have the old HD from that computer in my normal server (with adapter) running for years afterwards. I think HD reliability is severly underestimated.
Go for it. Just don't post your server on slashdot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Some people still use Mac Pluses and such as web servers. So if a Mac Plus can do it, a recent laptop computer can do it, even if it's not the most powerful solution.
You just got troll'd!
We actually had one e500 Laptop run ISA 2000 server for almost 2 years on and off.
Ran an additional PCMCIA card for dual interfaces and it acted as the proxy server for around 3000 computers into a 100Mb/s WAN link.
Its performance was shocking (disk I/O obviously) and we never really touched it. In fact due to the battery and UPS it had an uptime of 294days before it finally died in spectacular fashion (we deliberatley left it going till it died), when it was replaced with 2 large squid proxies.
So yes, Laptops will work as servers just fine, just don't expect significant I/O from them..
The older (PPC, pre-Intel) Mac Mini's draw about 20W at full tilt. Have been using them with Debian-PPC in mobile robotics. Haven't tried the newer Intel versions yet - they probably suck more, and in more ways than one.
Have you considered building a mini-itx based system running on DC/battery supply? You can get them to run off of a 12v car battery, and keeping one of those charged isn't too difficult, never mind that you could run of smaller 12v batteries.
Google for robots / mini-itx / dc power or any of the case modding freak sites. They are making a couple of motherboard systems just for DC operations, and not the kind that run for a few hours as a laptop... the kind that run like servers, just on DC power.
If your server / services are important enough to spend on a laptop, you might consider just building a DC powered server with a beefy battery system? No UPS needed, its built right in, and the thing is a server, not a laptop. You might start here http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=10
The other advice about not using the hard disk, adding memory, and others is good advice also. This solution allows a 7200-10000 rpm drive and plenty-o-ram options.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Three used IBM ThinkPads:
Pentium MMX 166 with 48MB RAM: Running Tinydns.
Pentium II 300 with 288MB RAM: Running Tinydns and Postfix.
Pentium III 500 with 128MB RAM: Running Hylafax.
Every one of them is doing a great job for me.
Someone mentioned 'Beowulf Cluster', and not as a tired /. joke! Someone has actually made a Beowulf Cluster of these. Fantastic!!!!!
What do you mean by "Server"? What's it serving? The web site that you use to make money? Your personal mail server? The thing that streams mp3s to the rest of the house? You mention DNS. Does that mean internal DNS for your house, or external DNS for your domain?
What do you mean by "Reliable"? Laptops almost certainly don't have the reliability you want for any of the above purposes (Heat build up, unreliable fans), but it's still a relative term.
What's the purpose of keeping a server running if your network goes down?
A suggestion: Several companies makes 12v power supplies for Mini-itx motherboards. These systems can be built to draw very little power in the first place, and eliminating two conversion cycles (The UPS and the AC power supply) gives you a big efficiency gain. Add a float charger big enough to keep up with the small power supply, and a couple deep cycle batteries, and you have a great DIY long-runtime UPS. I've not tried this, though it should be easy (getting a suitable charger is the only hard part). The mini-itx system gives you the low power draw of a laptop, but lets you design proper cooling into the case.
If you're not the DIY type, just get one of those low power mini-itx systems, and use an off the shelf UPS. Even a large UPS will cost you less than replacing laptop parts that will likely fail in 100% duty cycle use.
If this is for internet-facing services: These days, I'd suggest not trying to serve out of your house. Rent a VPS. They're dirt cheap, and even mediocre data centers have better connectivity, power, and hardware reliability than you're going to get out of a laptop at home.
I have a old P2 266 Toshiba running my FTP server works fine. Its been up for over a year with out a reboot.
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
For a time, I ran a laptop as a dial-up/dial-in router for my local network (the clients were UPS-protected for up to 30mins). It worked fine but there are obviously considerations:
1) Heat
2) Movement
3) Upgradeability/Physical Space
Laptops get hot. Make sure yours runs sufficiently cool if you're going to leave it unattended for any length of time. Also, as other posters have mentioned, check the fans regularly or make it run fanless. Mini-ITX is a good idea if you can afford the extra power as it will ensure the computer is designed for the constant heat you want it to generate.
Laptops don't like moving parts - don't have it serving CD's or running off of the hard disk a lot - keep it simple, maybe even something like a Flash key/CF disk as the main drive and/or caching everything in RAM. Mini-ITX is good here because it can use standard drives etc.
You won't be able to use the parts you would normally use. RAID is out of the window unless you want to get into external storage and powering THAT as well - pointless, you may as well just use a PC with a UPS. Additionally, things like network ports etc. are normally not that prevelant, although you could make up for that with wireless etc. Mini-ITX is again a good substitute because it's completely upgradeable.
I used to run a two-modem dial-up/dial-in router for my local network from a laptop (an ancient IBM Thinkpad - something like a P133 with 16MB RAM) - that used the internal network port, the internal modem port, a PCMCIA modem port (check for non-winmodems if you're using Linux, they do exist) and a PCMCIA network port.
The software loaded all from a single floppy disc (a "Freesco" router), detected all the PCMCIA hardware and modems and performed the job admirably. The hard disk could easily be removed as it did nothing but storage in my setup. The screen was always switched off and it survived several power outages (for much longer than the client PC's). At least it meant that it KNEW it was going down and could inform people without losing their work, cutting their downloads/uploads, and allowed me to check websites about the power outage!
If nothing else, having the "server" go down last is always more comforting than it going while the clients are still running.
It's amazing how often power goes but ordinary phone lines are left enabled - I've surfed at 10Mbps over ADSL when the entire town has been in a blackout (streetlights, houses, the local train station, etc.).
My laptop router still functioned as dial-up/dial-in for several hours after the power had gone off without any special preparation (although putting it on an ordinary UPS too may have kept it going all day long!). If I had needed to, I could have sent/recieved email, browsed websites, allowed others to connect to my machine, connect to other machines, played games online etc. for many, many hours in the pitch-black.
It's not a daft idea but DON'T DO IT FOR SERIOUS STUFF. Plus, for someone setting up from scratch, it's much, much cheaper to do things properly with real UPS etc.
I lost my hosting ISP some time ago and I had to put a backup server quickly. All I had was ADSL line and old laptop. It is running OpenBSD, so there is no serious patching required, therefore I can afford uptime of 636 day. It is time to upgrade to new hardware, and I am considering another laptop for that. Advantages are: build-in keyboard and screen, APM and battery power, PCMCIA expansion, portable if needed, and the biggest for me - it is damn quiet!
...a LAMPtop?
I'm scared you'll have to change your battery pack often.
If your laptop is always plugged and sometime there is electricity shortage, il would not be very good on your battery.
I did plug my laptop on the wall plug everytime, and 6 months after, I can use the battery for about 30 mins. So, i'm not sure it would be a good idea.
The ups has internal controls to keep the battery in health, not in a laptop.
My laptop is a toshiba (damn) and I don't know if it would be the same problem with other brand.
> Do portables make reliable Linux servers?
I can't tell you the number of laptops I have deployed as
firewalls and catch-all linux servers in small offices.
Lots of people have laptops with damaged or broken LCDs
and will just about give them away. Maybe it is the hinge that
is cracked or maybe the screen has been squished and is
bleeding in some places. In any case, the owner is upgrading
or replacing and the laptop is next to free.
In terms of memory, network and processor power, laptops
are pretty much equal to desktops. The place they lag is the
disk -- both space and speed. In the cases where I have needed
more of either, I have gone external. An external firewire or
USB2 drive will beat most laptop drives and it will run forever
on a small UPS. Plus, it moves a great deal of the heat outside
the laptop (spin down the internal drive) and gives you a way
to easily recover the data if the repurposed laptop dies.
Is a laptop a server? No. Is a generation-old as fast as a
desktop? No. Will a laptop do 93% of what most people need in
a home or small office linux server? Absolutely.
Matt
I have a p3 600Mhz laptop that I broke the hinges for the lcd panel on, so now it runs my domain at home. It isnt the fastest Windows 2003 Server box I have ever used, but even with only 256MB RAM it is fine for DNS and all of my authentications.
With its oldish battery, I get 3-4 hours with the lcd off, plus plugging it into a UPS would probably get me even more.
I would definately go with something in the more "portable" end of the spectrum, the desktop replacements still eat the battery; but a laptop server is a definate possibility for low load situations, and even higher end stuff
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
If you're primarily serving DNS and mostly serving up static web content (and not doing a lot of writes to "disk"), and your primary concern is power consumption, you might be better off with an embedded linux SBC... (http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT6449817972 .html)
Now, that said, why are you trying to keep your server up and running for a long time? Presumably, the client machiens are also down during these outages?
If the main reason is to have a basic PC with a built-in UPS, then, yes, laptops would probably be the most practical approach.
Just out of curiousity, did you read the f'ing question? If he's worried about the power going on a regular basis do you really think he's concerned with I/O and hosting something like slashdot? Sheesh, lighten up dude.
I know I'm coming off as rude
No, you're coming off as a complete dick. Do you honestly think that Vincecate was wondering if they could replace his quad Opteron server and couple TB RAID with a 1500 dollar laptop and an external USB hard drive??? He's obviously not doing 2000 transactions a second if his power goes out constantly. Remember what happens when the power goes out? Your Internet connection goes down. No connection to the outside world (or outside your "server" room for that matter) to process transactions. If his Internet connection goes down for a day, I'm guessing those 172800000 lost transactions would have a slight impact on business. Not to mention his question clearly states server load is pretty light.
I can probably safely assume that Vincecate is sick of power going off on a server without safely shutting down. I'd also guess he's not there to take care of their servers 24/7, so the laptop staying up for a full day would be ideal...they can just leave it and forget about it. Hell, he's probably like me, and is just plain lazy. So judging by his requirements (staying up with no AC source for longer than 10 minutes, handling a light server load), a laptop would work out just fine. My laptop handled it's basic server duties just fine when I used it for that.
What I really want is VGA _in_ for laptops. I want to take any old laptop - with or without a functioning OS, and with or without it _running_ that OS - and plug IN the video from another PC or laptop. In short, I want to be able to retask a laptop with a functioning LCD as an LCD screen.
Furthermore, I want to be able to do this on the fly. I want to lay two laptops on the desk and have one span both displays. Most laptops these days support spanning into an external monitor, but most don't accept input.
(Synergy2 is cool, but you can't drag windows across it.)
(I'd be all about other retasking uses, too. The only other one that comes immediately to mind is that the last 7 years of mac laptops can be booted holding "T" to make them act as an external harddrive for another machine, and I have to give props to that.)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
There's no reason that a laptop shouldn't be used for a light duty server, with one major caveat. The drives on them are generally extremely slow and less reliable than their desktop counterparts.
The fix for this is rather simple provided you use an OS with a small footprint; like my file server's CLI-only Slackware Linux install (less than 1G). Replace the drive with a flash based 2.5" drive. They come in sizes of up to 8GBs for around $300 that I've found using Froogle . An important addition to this would be to add enough RAM that you don't require much if any swapping, since I'm not aware of how much rewriting these drives will handle in real world usage.
The great thing about doing this is that it not only increases the reliability of your server (no critical moving parts remaining that will fail), but it will lower the power consumption of your laptop, adding greatly to the battery life. This being due to the fact that hard drives are one of the more power consumptive parts in a laptop. Futhermore it will seriously increase performance due to the fact that flash based laptop drives have lower seek times and probably better sustained throughput than even conventional desktop drives. (66MB/s sustained)
If your server is geared towards internet services, you're probably hosed. Even if your server remains up, what happens to the internet uplink?
Sorry, a bit OT, but when I saw your question it immediately reminded me of a question I heard from this REALLY clueless sessional at my university. She taught a basic computer class distance ed and basically got the job because she's married to a prof in the department. One of those lecturers that would show up at your office and ask questions about how to do the assignments SHE set. And we're not talking rocket science here folks, we're talking how to use word and excel.
Anyway, at the time I was a TA for the lecture section, which was the same course code, but more like a real course with actual learning. Anywhoo, so she's trying to set up a web site for the course, so students can get web notes or something, and she comes over to ask us if she can set up a web server on her laptop. Seemed like an odd request, but we figured (stupidly) that she had a good reason to do it. So the other TA basically tells her some of the same stuff that was in here...watch the hard drive, put it somewhere it won't get moved around...and then we hit her very basic lack of understanding about ANYTHING having to do with common sense. She asked us if students would have access to the web site when she left for the day and TOOK HER LAPTIOP HOME. I think we held it together pretty well until she left, but I think it was one of the hardest things ever to hold in the sarcasm. I think we sent her over to the university computer services building with instructions to ask them to set up EVERYTHING. And she was the one TEACHING the damn course. I hate to see what happened to the students.
...no two people are not on fire.
Even if the laptop server stays up, isn't whatever network it's connected to going to go down if the power goes out? Routers, hubs, terminal servers, whatever, they all tend to like electricity, too.
RAM also burns a lot of heat - if you're using compact flash, you should be able to get away with less RAM in return for accesses to the flash. Older USB equipment can't boot from USB, but check your BIOS to see if you can. If you can't, you can still set things up to use a flash stick for much of your disk.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In fact, laptops in my experience are more reliable than desktops. One reason is the limited number of configurations due to lack of expandability. The other is that laptops are somewhat 'premium' products and therefore made with higher quality. The main drawback is that this makes them more expensive, and you'll be paying for a display that gets little use.
It's also my experience that laptop hard drives are not markedly slower than desktop counterparts. People complaining about this should do benchmarks, noting practical usage rather than simply throughput, or shut the hell up. The RPM myth is just like the MHz myth. By simple physical arguments, smaller drives should have better seek times, and I see this every day in practical use.
Of course there's the general lack of expandability, and memory expansion might be a problem. But with light usage, neither HD nor RAM should not pose any problems.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
--I'll give you an AMEN to that. ;-) VGA-IN for laptops is long overdue, and could be quite helpful.
--Talk to Apple, I'm sure they'd consider adding it as $feature to distinguish themselves in teh future.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Be merciful http://treefunk.net/forum/ Apache/PHP Works great for the 20-30 visitors a day I get. .000001% of slashdotters will take it and my dsl line down faster than I can say UNCLE, now get off me already. :)
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I've been using an old laptop for an Internet DNS and web server (static pages only) for about three years now. It runs under Debian and I haven't had a single problem with it since it went in. The battery has kept it up when the power went out without a hitch (everything else is on an UPS). I used the laptop as an emergency replacement when the power supplies went out of both of my DNS servers at the same time.
I keep meaning to replace it, but it keeps working just fine. (I did get another box up as secondary DNS.) It is plenty fast, the hard disc was replaced once under warrenty then again a couple of months before it got pressed into service so I have some worry about the hardware lasting. But I put in a high quality drive--better than the warranty replacement--and it shows no signs of having a problem. And finally, a nice thing is that the laptop server is quiet and doesn't take up much room.
I recommend it, just watch out for hardware failures, if it is critical, get a spare. It's a good use for an old system.
Good luck.
i run a p3 1.33ghz thinkpad with centos.
.33ghz offered. now the machine never runs the fan at max setting, even under heavy loads.
i have power management turned down so the machine runs in the speedstep state of 1ghz max and 500 min. i did this because the p3 was getting a bit hot and i didn't need the extra performance that
this machine does the following jobs:
samba server w/ 4 firewire drives(200gb each) in raid5 for 600gb.
groupware/web server/mail server
router/gateway
this machine gets a fairly heavy load with no problems. used to run great with onboard battery as UPSlike setup but when i added the firewire drives i had to put a real ups up for them. i run with 512mb ram on this machine and a 133mhz bus with no real I/O bottlenecks.
__
the real problem is expanding on a server for file serving as firewire is not the fastest storage system. also, 100mb ethernet is a bottleneck for me. no pcmcia laptop can take a 1gb nic as pcmcia/cardbus does not have the bandwidth for it. i have seen new thinkpads with gigabit on their pci-e bus, but thats a lot of money for a low end server with no expandability.
hope that info helps.
In the name of all things Secure - NO!
If that laptop server has *any* security information on it, you're asking for trouble. Read up on the Microsoft's recommendations if you have a domain controller stolen. Yep- rebuild the entire domain.
It's even worse if you have Certificate Services installed. Feel like re-issuing certificates on every PC in the company?
Physical security is the lowest level of security, upon which all other security is based. Give a hacker (or the spooks) your server's hard drive, a little time, and anything can be extracted.
A laptop server, for anything but limited development or testing is a Very Very Bad Thing.
I was told there was going to be a version of the PIC that would be willing to boot Linux. This would be perfect. But after 1.5 years of waiting, I don't want to wait any longer.
The VIA C7 does have NX-bit support. So a VIA C7 mini-itx fanless motherboard is almost what I need. Only question left is if I can put it in a case with no vents.
Cappuccinopc seems to have a few others that might do the job... (http://www.cappuccinopc.com/slimpro-sp625f-fanles s.asp for example)
I volunteer for a non profit with four paid staff (and around 10,000 "members"). Every other weekend, they pack up their office staff and network and move to a show venue where members must be able to renew annual membership. I would not run anything other then a laptop in that situation.
Our laptop server is a win2k server with domain controller and ms sql server for 2-8 data entry personnel. It was setup this way before I volunteered, it works great for their situation. I would like to change the clunky nightly backup system for an easier to use scheduled network backup, and I'd like to find a more compact and secure way to transport 10 laptops... there are several incremental improvements I'd like to make but none of them would put the servers functions back onto a less physically rugged less compact workstation.
Portables make horrible servers. No RAID, slower disks, single processor only(although you could get dual core). Also laptops are more likely to break. I notice some people saying they run Apache on thiers, well big deal that doesn't make it a business quality server that means it can run some low memory footprint software.
For your needs, probably not... If the power goes out, your internet will probably go out as well. At best, using a laptop as a server will just mean that it lasts longer during a power outage.
No, I will not work for your startup
According to the information in your /. question, you're concerned about power, not portability or space. Since you're considering purchasing a machine, why not consider purchasing/building a machine with low power components, and spend the difference very good UPS?
I mean, you're still paying a premium for the miniturization on a laptop, and the result is a 2-3 hour built-in UPS. A good UPS, some of which will take additional external batteries, would run a low power machine for quite a while. The side advantage is you can add some redundancy to the machine, such as a simple RAID 0, which you couldn't do easily with a laptop. If you built it yourself, you can select components for low power consumption. I would look at some of the "silent" PC options, as they're probably going to use less power (less power = less waste heat = lower cooling demand = fewer/zero fans = low noise).
Can a laptop be used? Sure, I used one as a print server in my office for a while. Great for printers that are very picky about the drivers and pc-printer communication (Epson, are you listening?) and tend to choke on normal third party print servers. The advantage to me was that the screen was included with the device, and the whole thing could be stashed on a shelf near the equipment, which was remote from the file server. I don't think it's the best solution from a reliability standpoint, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I am now liking the Hurricane LX800. This has a fanless Geode LX, which I think has the nx-bit. It has 2 ethernet and 4 USB-2 ports, onboard video, and much more. It uses only 5.3 watts. Works up to 85 C (that is really hot!). Rated with a 100,000 hours MTBF. With no disk, and 2 USB flash sticks in a RAID/mirror, I should not have hardware failures very often. And it seems the price is under $400.
Soekris box (http://www.soekris.com/) running off a Compact Flash card and a small UPS.
You're done.
>> I know I'm coming off as rude
> No, you're coming off as a complete dick.
We need a +1, "Situation appropriate smack-down."
fnord.
Okay, so I'm a few days late with this, but take a look at MaxiVista. It's Windows payware but it does exactly what you're talking about, and if you're not trying to squeeze everything across a 12Mbps USB1.1 network adapter, it's pretty snappy. (Real 100Mbps cardbus is quite nice. Gigabit even more so!)