The Anatomy of a Server - Sound Card and Drives
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Most motherboards now come with onboard audio, and because we are building a server with limited need for any stereophonic sound, the onboard audio is more than enough. If you end up with a motherboard that requires a sound card, and you decide you need one (99 percent of the servers I’ve worked on do not have sound cards), you can get one at a low price. I picked up a SoundBlaster Live card at a computer show in Washington, D.C. (with a 30-day warranty) for $5.00.
Floppy Drive
The floppy drive is an out-of-date legacy device, but is still a necessary emergency boot component of any computer system. If the computer crashes for whatever reason, an emergency boot disk in the floppy drive can bring it to life for surgery. It’s also valuable for upgrading the BIOS on your machine. I’ve picked up many “lots” of floppy drives off of eBay—usually three of them for about $10—but if you don’t need more than one, you can pick one up for about $8 to $12 at a local computer show or wholesaler.
Compact Disc Drives If anything were to replace the legacy floppy diskette, it would surely be the CD-ROM. Today you can periodically get up to 100 CD-Rs at OfficeMax for free (after mail-in rebates). I’ve been an advocate of picking up free discs, and the CD-ROM since the “multi-media computer” (computers with CD-ROM drives) reached mass-market proportions in the mid-1990s. With up to 650MB of space, the vast majority of your software comes on a CD-ROM, and many of Microsoft’s multi-disc sets are also available on DVD-ROM (DVD-5), with up to 4.7GB of space. The DVD-5 is called a “single-sided/single-layer” disc, referring to the physical encoding scheme. The largest DVD-ROM (DVD-18) holds up to 17GB of data and is “double-sided/double-layer” encoded.
DVD-ROM/CD-ROM
A DVD-ROM drive can read any compact disc—DVD-ROMs, DVD movies, CD-ROMs, music CDs, and CD-Rs. The DVD-ROM drive can read data nine times faster than the equivalent CD-ROM drive; the data on the DVD is more closely packaged and thus doesn’t need to “spin” as fast. For example, a 1x DVD-ROM drive can read the same amount of data as a 9x CD-ROM drive, which is about 1.35 Mbps. This makes the data transfer rate of the newer 20x DVD-ROM drives equivalent to 180x CD-ROM drives, or 27 Mbps. The tightly packed data on the DVD will force the extinction of the CD-ROM, because the reading technology can’t keep up any longer.
I purchased a 12x DVD drive (including all the cables) on eBay for $30; only weeks before, DVD drive manufacturers introduced rebates that dropped the price to under $20. If you find a DVD-ROM drive for a deal, grab it—but keep in mind that the most use it may get is holding the master in the duplication of CD-ROMs and installing new software, so don’t go out of your way and beyond your budget to grab one. The CD-ROM drive can handle your needs at about $15–$30 for something comparable to a 52x.
CD Writer
I broke down a while ago and decided to buy a faster CD writer (32x) to add to my server at home, for the same reason I installed one at work. Now, with a 32x (write), 10x (rewrite), 52x (read) CD writer in my servers (at home and the office), I don’t have to worry about scheduling time with “Bob” in Accounting to burn a series of CDs. I can drop a CD-R in the drive and, through Terminal Services, burn a CD-ROM in about three minutes. My original 4x took about 45 minutes. However, keep in mind that this eats up resources.
Tape Backup System
Although the ever-dropping price of hard drives makes it an attractive alternative to traditional tape storage drives, the typical large-capacity tape drive offers a few advantages. The tape is easily removable and transferable, and more economical than the hot-swappable hard drives, which are hard drives that can be pulled out of a machine without having to turn off and open the machine first. Even your hot-swappable hard drives are still electronic devices that can crash and fail. A tape cartridge is a universally proven solution, and thus will be an optional part of our machine. If a tape drive is within your budget, you may wish to add one to your server. I have found that a protected and well-maintained hard drive can do the trick, and it doesn’t need to be one located in the same building.
Some of the miscellaneous parts include an audio cable for the DVD-ROM/CD-ROM to the sound card (either on the motherboard or the expansion card), another IDE cable for the hard drive (unless it came with one), a three-pin to two-pin Power LED connector adapter for the motherboard (if it doesn’t offer both options), and chassis cooling fans. The four types of cables that link drives to motherboards are (shown from left to right in Figure 16) SCSI; IDE, with 80-wire and 40-pin (for larger and higher-speed hard drives) and the older 40-wire, 40 pin IDE; and the 3.5-inch floppy drive cable.
Figure 16 The four cable types that link drives to motherboards
Computing Without a Monitor
Windows 2000 and Server 2003 offer the ability to work without a monitor and mouse. This is accomplished by using Terminal Services, an embedded application that opens the server’s actual desktop within any workstation’s desktop (see Figure 17). Figure 18 shows how you can log into your server from a laptop computer, either at the office or from home, eliminating the need for the server to have input peripherals.
Figure 17 Logging into Server from a ThinkPad
Figure 18 Microsoft’s Terminal Services opens the server’s desktop on another computer.
If you decide to purchase a monitor for this server (rather than borrowing one for installation and configuration), keep in mind that this is not a workstation, so any SVGA monitor will do, even the ones in the bargain bin at the next computer show. I found a new keyboard at Micro Center in Westmont, IL, for $5.00, and clean used ones for about $2. They also had a basket of used mice for 99 cents. My file/web server at the office doesn’t even have a mouse or monitor attached. It sure saves a lot of space because without a monitor, keyboard, and/or mouse, there’s no need for a desk.
 This chapter is from Build Your Own Server, by Tony Caputo (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003, ISBN: 0072227281). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today.
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