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Thread: What was your first server hardware?

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
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    Santiago (Dominican Rep)
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    311
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    My first server is still in use, see my signature. It runs Windows XP PRO and I do not change it, since I paid 90 Euros for the OEM CD and XP is still a nice system. I use it mainly as a file server first in Belgium and later here in the Dominican Republic. In the time I still worked in Brussels, I could access the server in Santiago from Belgium using the P2P Virtual Network Hamachi, that works for Linux and Windows.

    The system also runs the network monitoring software "The Dude", which allows me to see the service and the load of each PC and each link. There is even some monitoring of my phones, if they connect to the wifi.

    I control the server through RDP.
    Last edited by BertN45; March 28th, 2012 at 03:55 AM.
    Desktop: P-IV 3.2gHz, RAM= 1.5GB, Disk=80GB+500GB, LCD=22", Bought 2012 $90
    File Server: P-III 650mHz, RAM = 384MB, Disks 240 + 300GB, Bought 2005 $60
    File Server HP Vectra VL8i SFF, 2 cables connected: Ethernet and Power

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    Dallas, TX
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    7,790
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    Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    Hi Ms. Daisy.

    For testing and 'abusing' I would suggest a refurbished/re-certificated/Off-lease PC. I would even recommend going to buy it on a brick and mortar store for instance gratification

    These days, in microcenter for instance, you can get a IBM/Lenovo or Dell P4, 1Gb RAM as low as $99.

    Just my thoughts.
    Regards.

    BTW: here's my own thread with the same concern.

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Williams Lake
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    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    For my first server, I bought a dual-cpu motherboard on Ebay. It used two MMX 233Mhz cpu's and 256MiB of 72 pin ram. It ran various sized hard drives but before it was retired I was running 4 40GiB hard drives. The BIOS wouldn't detect any hard drive over 8GiB, but the drives worked with zero problems. The biggest hassle was having to compile a new kernel every time one was released, as dual cpu support wasn't built into the Debian kernel at the time.

    If I remember correctly, I spent more time re-painting the case, than I did actually assembling the thing.

    This was back in 2000.

    Currently all my server does is serve media files, so consumer grade hardware works well for my needs.

  4. #14
    Join Date
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    Atlanta Georgia
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    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    Here is another idea. If you are just wanting to learn the basics of administering a server, and you're not planning on buying actual server hardware. Have you considered renting a VPS?

    They're extremely cheap, decent VPS setups for tinkering can be as low as $20 per month with providers like Linode. It's a virtualized system in their data center. You can buy as many as you want and tear them down and set them back up as many times as you want. The only difference is you don't have an upfront cost for hardware (not more than 50 bucks if you get a really nice VPS) and of course, you don't get to mess with the hardware. In this case that is actually a bonus considering you probably wouldn't be buying ACTUAL server hardware. A PC is a PC a server is a server, if you want to learn about the guts of a server you will actually have to buy that type of hardware. That being said, you also wouldn't be paying the electric bill for an actual server.

    This would also alleviate the issue of possibly buying a bum piece of hardware.

    You can do anything with a VPS you can do with a regular system (except virtualize, but...I think they may allow you to enable nested paging so that may even be possible). But you could set up HA, clustering, load balancing and anything else you wanted (though you might have to rent more than one VPS for those)

    My only word of warning if you do that, don't cheat by using their "pre-made images" or "helper scripts" upload your own image and do it from scratch.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
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    Smile Re: What was your first server hardware?

    I use to be a datacentre engineer, government standard have IBM p570's for unix and some other high end models. For windows they use Dell poweredge gear.

    A lot of today’s servers are running in virtualized environments being more efficient for cost and productivity. I think for a home server your better off having a high end pc and set up virtualization and install some distros.

    IBM use AIX 5.1 and 6.3 on their servers, again this is desirable in the UK for government working.

    "dangertux" had a good idea of renting a VPS to play about with... however you can pick up an old server from ebay.. " rack mounted" for not a whole lot of cash.

    let us know how you go about.

  6. #16
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    Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    Beyond a media server at home (which is really just a desktop), I've only implemented servers at work. You can get some damn cheap HP/Whatever refurbs out there, but they are noisy as Hell*; I'd probably recommend going with something that is modern enough to use little power.

    *Have not been, assumed much screaming.

  7. #17
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    Mar 2012
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    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    First server was a 333mhz whitebox Viglen Desktop that could barely run windows. It hosted websites and a game server. That was about 10 years ago after getting kicked off my paid hosting. Host didn't like my perl scripts so I migrated to my own hardware and never looked back. Nowadays I work as the programmer at a medium sized businnes and we have alot of servers doing different tasks. Most of the servers are part of a vmware infrastructure. Esxi is a great piece of Software to learn because it allows mulpile virtual appliances to be run off a single hardware server. The operating systems we use on our servers are Esx hosts with Windows, Ubuntu and Freebsd as the guests. We also have a few whitebox servers floating around for training purposes. I train my junior staff on those before introducing them to, mostly simple stuff like how to install a server securely, set up lampp properly and secure the shelll and shared resources etc. Once they understand those aspects we work on their server side programming abilities.

    Knowing about servers is a really good skill in the IT industry because nearly all companies rely on their servers alot. Anyone can learn desktop admin but server admin is not as common. Add programming skills to those skills and you are on to a winner.
    Last edited by knight2000; March 28th, 2012 at 10:04 AM.

  8. #18
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    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    Quote Originally Posted by knight2000 View Post
    First server was a 333mhz whitebox Viglen Desktop that could barely run windows. It hosted websites and a game server. That was about 10 years ago after getting kicked off my paid hosting. Host didn't like my perl scripts so I migrated to my own hardware and never looked back. Nowadays I work as the programmer at a medium sized businnes and we have alot of servers doing different tasks. Most of the servers are part of a vmware infrastructure. Esxi is a great piece of Software to learn because it allows mulpile virtual appliances to be run off a single hardware server. The operating systems we use on our servers are Esx hosts with Windows, Ubuntu and Freebsd as the guests. We also have a few whitebox servers floating around for training purposes. I train my junior staff on those before introducing them to, mostly simple stuff like how to install a server securely, set up lampp properly and secure the shelll and shared resources etc. Once they understand those aspects we work on their server side programming abilities.

    Knowing about servers is a really good skill in the IT industry because nearly all companies rely on their servers alot. Anyone can learn desktop admin but server admin is not as common. Add programming skills to those skills and you are on to a winner.


    Not sure what you mean by " Anyone can learn desktop admin but server admin is not as common" this statement is incorrect as anyone can learn anything given the right tutor. I am sure you will upset a lot of " system admins" with a comment like that.

  9. #19
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    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    I ran ESXi from a 4GB USB Stick on a HP ProLiant ML115 with 4GB RAM, an extra GbE NIC and 3 250GB SATA drives for VM storage.

    Best learning experience ever.

    I also have a Linode VPS now which is fantastic value for a root access Ubuntu 10.04 server.
    Can't think of anything profound or witty.
    My Blog: http://gonzothegeek.blogspot.co.uk/

  10. #20
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: What was your first server hardware?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dangertux View Post
    You can do anything with a VPS you can do with a regular system (except virtualize, but...I think they may allow you to enable nested paging so that may even be possible). But you could set up HA, clustering, load balancing and anything else you wanted (though you might have to rent more than one VPS for those)

    My only word of warning if you do that, don't cheat by using their "pre-made images" or "helper scripts" upload your own image and do it from scratch.
    +1 to that. Using a VPS is a whole lot easier than actually getting server grade hardware and playing around with it.

    Quote Originally Posted by knight2000 View Post
    Knowing about servers is a really good skill in the IT industry because nearly all companies rely on their servers alot. Anyone can learn desktop admin but server admin is not as common. Add programming skills to those skills and you are on to a winner.
    Heh. Server admin is different from desktop admin. They are similar, but there are differences. Security plays a part on both desktops and servers, but I'd say securing desktops are more about training the people who use those machines and less about securing services that are running. It's not that hard to secure a service properly if you spend a ton of time reading about best practices and whatnot, but security is a process and is always changing. Knowledge is key.

    Quote Originally Posted by rk0r View Post
    Not sure what you mean by " Anyone can learn desktop admin but server admin is not as common" this statement is incorrect as anyone can learn anything given the right tutor. I am sure you will upset a lot of " system admins" with a comment like that.
    What they said ^.
    Come to #ubuntuforums! We have cookies! | Basic Ubuntu Security Guide

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