| The Anatomy of a Server - Build It and They Will Come
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Some of my friends think I’m crazy. Oh, they agree that the concept of building a great, inexpensive server is possible; many of them use a few I’ve built daily, so I’ve convinced them of that. The continued skepticism is about time and grief. It did take me many hours of research, analysis, troubleshooting, hunting, buying, and building to put together my servers. It’s difficult for them to justify that amount of time and grief when you can buy a new Dell server (with an operating system installed) advertised nowadays for under $1000, instantly—or as long as it takes to pull it out of the box and put it together. But it’s just not the same thing. If you “customize” a configuration closer to what we’re about to build, you’re talking about $2500 (without an operating system). There are also the smaller, entrepreneurial companies that decide to pick up a PC and use that as a “file server.” What they don’t understand is that when they buy a PC to do a “server’s” job, the underlying technology is still that of a PC—not a server. It lacks security, tools, administrative components, and functionality to really perform as a server. What we’re building here is a server, not a PC. There is a lack of the necessary memory, limited space, and no expansion capabilities. Most of your inexpensive PCs today are the smaller, micro-ATX towers, with only two or three PCI slots, and one or two expansion drive bays for sharing CD-RW, DVD, or tape drives. Our goal here is not to build a PC, but rather to build a box that can effectively use either Windows 2000 or .NET Server. Why invest so much money on a machine that may shortchange the operating system to operate effectively? I’ve done most of the research, hunting, analysis, and hair pulling for you, and with these components, it’ll take you about an hour to put it all together. First, we need to find those pieces of our puzzle. The hunt is on! Wrap Up The value of using a client/server environment includes scalability, better security, shared resources, and centralized administration. I explained how a Japanese manufacturing company increased production and shipments by upgrading a legacy Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) system to Windows 2000 Server, and opened up information to foreign satellite offices and inventory information to their customers. My goal is to show you how to build your own server for about $400, with helpful hints about the components you’ll need and which of those you can salvage from older computers.
Midtower computer chassis or cases with six bays for CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, floppy, and hard drives are available at $20 to $30 at computer shows and wholesale outlets (more on this in Chapter 2). The Motherboard and CPU have coupled form factors, and you also need to be aware of the different types of the same brand and speed processors, as well as the various types of RAM for your motherboard.
There are two different kinds of hard drives—the SCSI and IDE—and you need to be aware of their different flavors and compatibilities with your choice in motherboard and operating system.
The server exists not to serve one person as a workstation but many as a server. To avoid having someone sit down at the server and slow it down for the rest of the network, I’ll show you how to use Windows 2000 and Server 2003’s Terminal Services to administer the server without any peripherals and from any Internetworked computer, anywhere.
 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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| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
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