Building a Home Server; Advice Please!

Lieutenant Dan

Lieutenant Dan

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Now that a have a few weeks off from school, I am getting serious about setting up a home network. I would like to use my old Dell Dimension 4700 as a server and I was wondering what I should consider upgrading before I begin the setup. Important information about the new network is listed below.

Server Specs:
Dell Dimension 4700
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
512 MB of RAM
Integrated Graphics
40GB Hard Drive

Router:
Linksys WRT54G (Wireless)

Ideally, I would like to use the desktop as the server while still being able to use it for some basic computing. The only other computer on the network will be my laptop, and I would like to share a printer and hard drive between the two.

Some questions about sharing a hard drive: I have an external USB 500GB hard drive I would like to share on the network; would this be a passable setup? I am concerned about the USB transfer speeds slowing down my network; is this an issue? Would it be better to install a new hard drive in the desktop instead? If so, do I need to consider RAID and SATA setups (I have no idea what those are, as I have never installed an internal hard drive before).
 
If by server you're simply looking for a central place to share files and a printer from then the only thing i'd look to upgrade is the ram as a fully patched XP machine that's being used as a desktop and serving files will most likely use more than 512mb.
If you're going to be sharing files over the wireless then dont worry about your usb speeds, as long as your ports are usb 2.0.
 
When I transfer files over my network I usually get around 8 - 10MB/s transfer rate from my USB 2.0 external harddrive to another computer on wired network. Faster transfer rate depends on if your router and your computers are Gigabit-ready or not. You'll be capped at around 12MB/s transfer rate over 100 Megabit network, which is what you have on your Linksys router and is likely what you have on your Dell Dimension. I'm gonna say you'll see minimal improvement in transfer rate if you use an internal or RAID hard drive instead of the external. So save the money and stick with what you have on hand; sharing the external HD is fine and won't be much slower than sharing an internal HD.

Like lbradeen said, you'll want to upgrade the memory to at least 1GB (ideally 2GB), otherwise you'll find yourself rebooting the server more than you'd like as it'll run slower and slower by the day.
 
Flash your WRT54G with DD-WRT to give you much more flexibility within the network. Be careful to be aware of which version of the router you have, as v. 5 and up have half the RAM and require a micro version of it (same goes with other open source firmware, you don't want to brick the router). I'd keep DHCP licensing and whatnot on the router and not with the server, it'll simplify things.

Next, since you're in school.. I suggest checking into your campus being a member of the MSDNAA licensing program. Then you can get almost any version of Windows you want for free. I suggest throwing MS Server 2003 on there. It's nicer on the system resources, and will make configuring things easier.

With that setup, you shouldn't need to upgrade anything. Maybe the RAM to at least a gig or 2, but that can be done cheaply if you have 240 pin.

The hard drive, I'd just throw it in one of the server USB ports. It should be USB 2.0, and for streaming purposes.. you won't see a slowdown. I'd say make a NAS of it, but that would probably be overkill in this situation. Either keep it on USB & make it a network drive (let your clients in the home network map to it as a network drive), or if you're daring enough.. open up the drive case and put it in your server as an internal drive. It's likely a PATA drive, and that motherboard most likely has two IDE ports on it (with each port able to support two devices with a Y cable, one master and one slave). This would be a great time to try out installing a drive (it takes a grand total of maybe 5-10 minutes to physically install the hardware, at the most. Make it a slave to an existing IDE device).

I'd keep it as simple and cheap as possible. You could forgo using the server and get a NAS enclosure for the drive, but you could actually have alot of fun experimenting with having a server. Set up some port forwarding on the router, install SSH server, and carry TightVNC and Putty around on a thumb drive.. instant remote access into your home network from any computer with internet access :)

This is pretty much a broad bare-bones bunch of advice, but googling some of the topics I've described ought to lead you to picking up a few things of interest. I'd definitely focus on getting familiar with the hardware of a PC before jumping into the realm of servers.
 
Wow, some good information here; thanks guys!

A couple questions:

If I'm just setting up a basic home network like described in my OP, I wouldn't really need to run a home server operating system, right? On that note, would running a home server OS allow me to still use the server for word processing, internet and stuff? And Skylander, are you saying you recommend Home Server 2003 over the new version of Windows Home Server that just came out?

The SSH thing sounds nice, but it might be a little advanced for me at this point. I did a google search and I think I read that I need to be running MS Server 2003 to use it, is this accurate?

Thanks again everyone.
 
If you're just serving files and a printer XP will suffice.
You should also be able to run OpenSSH on pretty much any version of windows, just have to install Cygwin.
 
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