Setting up a home server?

[Hedgie]

I have acquired a HP Proliant G6 Server complete with 6 x 300gb hard drives.
I have considered setting up a home network with the server but havent the foggiest idea on how to set it up etc? Anyone give me a laymans idea of what I do?
I am used to building home pc's from scratch but never attempted a network server.

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

Suggest watching a u tube walk thru , it's a slightly technical process.

IF it's Windows, then if I recall, you need to create a work group and buy a cat 4 hub and cables. Set read write permissions etc ... nominate a folder to be shared

I used to do data backups via network, but that was a looooong time ago

Cat5e and Cat 6 cables are faster, but not so bendy

Gigabit LAN cards and a Ram Disk on each machine make for reasonably fast transfer

Fist sized holes in the walls make for short tidy cable runs.

A crossover cable can link two machines directly, handy for tests




NEVER SHARE THE ROOT DRIVE ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE ONLINE

Unless you like collecting viruses as a hobby,lol

 

[LiveNetworks Ltd]

Really depends on what you want it for. Personally, I'd rather have by eyes poked out than put Windows on anything.

Try Ubuntu

 

[KM-Tiger]

I have considered setting up a home network with the server but havent the foggiest idea on how to set it up etc?

Best if you work out what you want to use if for and then we can advise on how to go about it.

As said, avoid Windows. A flavour of Linux will be free, and capable of almost anything.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

When our server got old and the disks full up we just brought a modern computer and linked all five computers together via a switch and NAS drive, A lot faster and no server that nobody understood except some expensive outside help

 

[DavidWH]

Bought a dell poweredge server from their outlet, threw ubuntu on it, and now it acts as a Samba file server in our office, also acts as a VPN server, so we can work remotely.

All backed up to a removable HD that gets rotated on a regular basis.

A bit overkill, but was a useful project to keep me occupied.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

What you have is an 12 year outdated high power consummation, noisy, rack mount server. Bin it! And get yourself an up to date nas drive. low power consummation, probably faster too or does the same. Most NAS run on linux so the linux guys on here are happy too.

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

I think the OP just wanted to dabble, not take on Google


Linux dominates server land, mostly, M$ is still in there

Home network's are usually Windows based because 90% of home computers run windows, XP and Win 7 still the dominant OS


The network effect results in segmention (function and OS) eventually hardware and software unification will occur...odds are it will be a WIntel future


Linux? the most expensive software in history, funny how they can't give it away for free, lol ... too many cooks spoil the broth, lol


Hark, yonder ... The march of the penguins thunder

Time to sleep, perchance to dream
Of what unification could n shoulda been
Apple is for rich nerds, Linux is for poor
The Win'blows for everyone who needs a little more

 

[Nico Albrecht]

If you wanna built something for your home network from scratch get one of those boards: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/ super power efficient many sata ports and you can run any os on it + you have modern tech. those 300gb drives are probably 10 years old running 24.7 and i wouldn't trust them for a second to put any data on them.

 

[DavidWH]

Definately not 12 years old.

Definately not a rack server.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

End of life for G6 from HP was 2016 and running 300gb drives makes them quite outdated. But again a full model name would help.

 

[Hedgie]

Thanks for all the replies

I am just dabbling really and probably out of my depth

The unit is a ProLiant G6 350ML

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

running 300gb drives makes them quite outdated

They're likely SAS 10/15K @300GB in a G6 and still perfectly adequate.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

As mention before they are ready for the bin. Probably velocity raptors running some sort of database for many years 24.7. Worked on them many times before and they fail very hard and very tricky to recover. If you built a server people tend to put data or backups on them. A server is all about planning for needs and if he spends weeks to built just to realise that stuff is failing is a waste of time. Putting 9 year old hardware to good use regardless and in this case high performance drive is not a very good idea.

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

As mention before they are ready for the bin. Probably velocity raptors running some sort of database for many years 24.7. Worked on them many times before and they fail very hard and very tricky to recover. If you built a server people tend to put data or backups on them. A server is all about planning for needs and if he spends weeks to built just to realise that stuff is failing is a waste of time. Putting 9 year old hardware to good use regardless and in this case high performance drive is not a very good idea.

Agree on the old hardware in an office environment, but there's benefit and life in those SAS yet for NAS purposes (given RAID10 on a decent controller, subject to nominal SMART data). I'm genuinely surprised you'd find these harder to recover than say SSD.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Well i own a data recovery business and a single sas drive sets you back at least a £1000 + VAT for a recovery. If you have a raid system this cost can go up quite easy. SSD drives I do recoveries from and they have their own challenges but I can read each chip out and overlay a virtual controller to rebuilt them. 10-15K drives run hot and i mean very hot and if the head crashes it will rack the plates quite bad and recovery is slim. They had their place before ssd drives but they were used in commercial environments and replaced between 2 - 4 years. You set them up to spin and never stop again since wear and tear is huge on them. So you can expect they past for what they were built. You wanna built a home server great but dont use such exotic hardware you pay more in the long run versus a raid 5 nas. If you add up all the costs for the server including upgrading the switch too for link aggravation, cost of at least £1 for electricity build on hardware that can fail any minute. All the best for your project but you might realise at some stage that time and cost outrun by far the means. For extra kick you could run your own linux own a nas and play with that.

 

[Alan]

I am just dabbling really and probably out of my depth

If it is a learning exercise, then decide what you want to learn ( and maybe why ).

Personally ( and the majority of developers ) would recommend linux.

If it is for learning, then best to start just with complete basic headless set up - I'd use Debian and learn about installing stuff from searching Google.

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

It's fun to dabble with computer power that was unaffordable if not unobtainable a few decades ago

Econet FTW, lol

BNC 4 kicks

etc etc

Moore's Law might be over (mostly) but it's been a ride


Intrepid surfers might want to visit YouTube and search for

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