Currently I have a switched 100T network of ten computers of various types. My server is a Blue and White G4 400 with 256MB [I really, really need to up that], and a mirrored RAID of 160GB 7200rpm ATA/133 drives on a Sonnet ATA/133 card.
The server does local file sharing and auto-mounting of network shares as well as home directories. I would love to upgrade to gigabit but well ... money ... I am very happy with its performance. The clients are running a variety of OSes from 8.1-9.1 and Mac OS X v.10.2, Linux, Windows, and others. I am using Mac OS X Server v.10.2.6.
Not sure what else I can say. If you want to stay with a Mac server, I am very happy with my setup. If you want to use PC hardware and Linux, build your own, its cheapest and you are more likely to get what you want.
David
On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 10:51 PM, Clyde Kahrl wrote:
Q3: What is a good reference for setting up a cheap used pentium server and can I do that with reasonable ease having not done PC networking for five years or so?
Not exactly sure what you are asking for here, toss out some more specifics.
David
Here's the proposition: With 250GB drives going for under $200, I was just wondering if I should buy a newer used mac that needs no card (David says I need the mirrored doors) or should I get yet another a beige g3 with a card or get a used 1gb pentuim III server--I saw some for under $400--and put red hat on it or something. Of course the pentium might not have an ultra ATA133 card in it either, but the wintel cards cost $15-20 versus $69 or more for macs (I believe that macs are way cheaper than PCs in almost every regard, but this is the first time I have seen this kind of pro wintel price disparity on something that is truly generic).
So anyway, If I buy an ultra ATA 133 card for my beige G3, put in a 250GB drive (I'm now near $300 more, and, now I'm starting to see the machine choke on the traffic--so maybe I should have gotten a B&W,G3, and maybe I need gigabit ethernet, and really it helps to have OSX running on the server so that long file names are recognized.
Anyway, a long time ago I thought I'd get my old 7300 set up as a server as someone suggested. It really didn't work as well as it should have and I don't really know why. Even a slow computer should be able to handle a simple file transfer over ethernet. Even my G3s don't seem to be very good file servers with OS9 filesharing--even with 100bt cards. Maybe a sawtooth with OSX is the minimum now?
And I was thinking, why not just put in a generic red hat server?
So the question is: what's the cheapest way to set up a reasonably good file storage server with big fat 250GB drives---this month. (I am waiting for the flood of G5s to drive down G4 prices (sawtooths are now getting down to $400?) but I can hardly restrain myself from clicking on the buy it now G5).
I'm just twiddling my brain--and looking for short vague answers or insights.
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