Josh Dersch wrote:
I recently built myself a server based on this:
...
It's an Intel Atom D510 (dual core, 64-bit) based
system, and it the
entire system draws about 20 watts at peak load. Best of all it cost me
about $230 total (w/shipping) to build (w/500gb drive and 2gb of RAM and
a modestly priced case).
I've got a similar machine acting as my home server. Jetway JNC92
motherboard running an Atom N270 (single-core with HyperThreading) at
1.6GHz, with 2GB of RAM and a pair of 500GB drives in a RAID-1 array.
It's all packed into a 1U rackmount case, and I've tweaked it for low
noise -- basically I wired the case fan (a Sunon squirrel-cage blower)
up to a Zalman fan speed controller that was left over from a PC build.
After that, I got rid of the noisy little power supply (complete with
fully-custom mounting bracket, ick) and replaced it with a 90W PicoPSU.
It's a lovely machine, but the hard drives whine a bit -- hardly
surprising given that they were "liberated" from one of my old desktop
builds and have 14862 and 10670 hours on their life counters (for sda
and sdb respectively). When I've got some spare cash, I'll be replacing
them with 1TB Western Digital Caviar-GP (GreenPower) drives; from past
experience I know they're A LOT quieter than the Seagate Barracuda 7200s
I'm using now.
Heck, even the pair of Caviar RE2s in my desktop (though in performance
terms it's probably closer to a workstation) are quieter than the
Barracuda, and the RE2s are server drives... Reason I used those was
because I used to have a RAID set up, which I've since dismantled
(having one physical drive for WinXP and one for Linux just seems tidier
to me).
I don't know what Solaris 10's hardware
support looks like
these days on x86 machines,
From what I've heard and been told, it's pretty dire. Frankly if I was
told to set up a server without using Linux, I'd probably go with one of
the BSDs...
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/