(This project was inspired by an attempt to get some practice done on Central Force Motion. Don't ask how the two are related.)
Objective
1) Create a general-purpose, low-powered home server/router to serve virtual machines, among other things.
2) Set up thin clients to connect remotely to virtualised machines, for casual use or administration.
Hardware
NOTE: I have not found sources/places to buy the following items yet, most links go to newegg only because I'm using it as a catalogue/speccing site, they don't ship here so buying from them is not an option (and don't even mention VPost).
Section A - Home Server
Parts
Alternatives:
Comments:
Section B - Thin Client
Parts:
Alternatives:
Comments:
Software (Virtualisation)
Software:
Alternatives:
Comments:
This is not a terribly creative or trying project, in that there's not much DIYing or modding involved (just plenty of assembly) and I won't have to write much code or make my own hardware and stuff, but it's possibly the most expensive one I've dared to type out yet. Feel free to drop comments or suggestions (preferably with links if you're recommending other hardware).
[EOF]
Note to vendors: Images are linked to an imagehost so as to reduce bandwidth usage for your respective webservers. If you don't like me doing that drop me an email and I'll remove them or hotlink them instead.
Objective
1) Create a general-purpose, low-powered home server/router to serve virtual machines, among other things.
2) Set up thin clients to connect remotely to virtualised machines, for casual use or administration.
Hardware
NOTE: I have not found sources/places to buy the following items yet, most links go to newegg only because I'm using it as a catalogue/speccing site, they don't ship here so buying from them is not an option (and don't even mention VPost).
Section A - Home Server
Parts
Enclosure: Athena Power RM-4U4064X60 4U Rackmount Server Case (Image link)
Accessories: Icy Dock MB455SPF-B Multi-Bay Backplane Module x2 (Image link)
Motherboard: Tyan S2912G2NR Dual 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce 3600 (Image link)
Processor: AMD Opteron 1352 Barcelona 4X2.1GHz, Socket AM2
RAID card: ARC-1231ML PCI-E 12-port SATAII RAID adapters (Image link)
NIC: Small Tree PEG6 PCI-E 6-port GbE card (Image link)
Accessories: Icy Dock MB455SPF-B Multi-Bay Backplane Module x2 (Image link)
Motherboard: Tyan S2912G2NR Dual 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce 3600 (Image link)
Processor: AMD Opteron 1352 Barcelona 4X2.1GHz, Socket AM2
RAID card: ARC-1231ML PCI-E 12-port SATAII RAID adapters (Image link)
NIC: Small Tree PEG6 PCI-E 6-port GbE card (Image link)
Alternatives:
Antec Mini P180 enclosure
Liantec PC-A59 enclosure
Other Socket 1207 server boards
Clovertown/Harpertown with server board
High-end desktop motherboard with single desktop quad-core
Liantec PC-A59 enclosure
Other Socket 1207 server boards
Clovertown/Harpertown with server board
High-end desktop motherboard with single desktop quad-core
Comments:
For starters I wanted up to 10 hard drives (not all at one go) in the server, preferably swappable. And also the slimmest case possible to go with them. The Athena Power case is no svelte beauty by any measure, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anything smaller (near that price) that fits the bill. The two ICY Docks make hard drive management much easier, and lend some beauty to the setup by virtue of symmetry.
I originally wanted to go with a single-socket board, but most of them had sucky specs, so I decided to go with the dual socket ones instead (dual quad-core sounds pretty spiffy too). Among other Tyan boards I went with this one for the price (always a concern for college students), and for the nice board layout (again, nice symmetry of main components, and optimises airflow coverage from front to back).
Ironic as it sounds, I wanted the setup to use as little power as possible (personal, financial and philosophical reasons; don't ask). In hops Intel's 50W Harpertown to introduce itself. Unfortunately, it's pricey and most (cheap) boards for it are sucky. At almost half the price and with a better selection of boards, Barcelona comes to the rescue.
About those 2 specialist adapter cards... I know they'll cost more than the rest of the system combined (excluding hard drives), but they're what makes a hardcore server a hardcore server. As long as they're obtainable I'm not taking them off the list (unless I get better recommendations).
What's it going to be used for? For starters, virtualisation, fileserving and maybe some benchmarking, mucking around etc. In future I might try setting up a filehost/webhost, get a VPN going, and so on. Plans are not fixed yet, but I like to have room for expansion.
I originally wanted to go with a single-socket board, but most of them had sucky specs, so I decided to go with the dual socket ones instead (dual quad-core sounds pretty spiffy too). Among other Tyan boards I went with this one for the price (always a concern for college students), and for the nice board layout (again, nice symmetry of main components, and optimises airflow coverage from front to back).
Ironic as it sounds, I wanted the setup to use as little power as possible (personal, financial and philosophical reasons; don't ask). In hops Intel's 50W Harpertown to introduce itself. Unfortunately, it's pricey and most (cheap) boards for it are sucky. At almost half the price and with a better selection of boards, Barcelona comes to the rescue.
About those 2 specialist adapter cards... I know they'll cost more than the rest of the system combined (excluding hard drives), but they're what makes a hardcore server a hardcore server. As long as they're obtainable I'm not taking them off the list (unless I get better recommendations).
What's it going to be used for? For starters, virtualisation, fileserving and maybe some benchmarking, mucking around etc. In future I might try setting up a filehost/webhost, get a VPN going, and so on. Plans are not fixed yet, but I like to have room for expansion.
Section B - Thin Client
Parts:
Alternatives:
Single-board computers
Mini-ITX or smaller form-factor thin clients
Mini-ITX or smaller form-factor thin clients
Comments:
Why are thin clients so freaking expensive? All they do is let you access the OS on a remote server - how much should it cost to do that? I haven't found any thin client selling for less than USD150-200, some go up to USD500 or 600, maybe even more. No way I'm paying so much for something that ought to be much much cheaper.
In pops Norhtec, a Bangkok-based company that creates embedded solutions. 5W machine that starts from USD88 - sweeet. With power consumption so low I might even try to power it off LAN and save myself an adapter.
In pops Norhtec, a Bangkok-based company that creates embedded solutions. 5W machine that starts from USD88 - sweeet. With power consumption so low I might even try to power it off LAN and save myself an adapter.
Software (Virtualisation)
Software:
Alternatives:
Comments:
One somewhat-simple task, so many implementations. Ideally I'd like to run the MicroClient even without the CF card (i.e. by PXE boot), but what happens after boot is the question. Typically I would just run a microdistro that logs in to an active session on a VM on the server, but I'm sure there're other, more efficient ways to do it. VirtualBox supports RDP protocol which seems like a much better idea. VNC sounds nice but would probably be bandwidth-heavy for typical desktop use. I just threw in SuSE for the heck of it because I like SuSE, but it's probably not one of the ideas I'll go with.
This is not a terribly creative or trying project, in that there's not much DIYing or modding involved (just plenty of assembly) and I won't have to write much code or make my own hardware and stuff, but it's possibly the most expensive one I've dared to type out yet. Feel free to drop comments or suggestions (preferably with links if you're recommending other hardware).
[EOF]
Note to vendors: Images are linked to an imagehost so as to reduce bandwidth usage for your respective webservers. If you don't like me doing that drop me an email and I'll remove them or hotlink them instead.
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