Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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Today I removed the dying C: drive from my home server and have just set up a RAID array using the two 250Gb drives that were already in use, setting up the RAID array was a bit fiddly but got it all sorted in the end. Performance is MUCH better than Windows XP Pro that I used to have as the server OS before! Copying across all the backed up data back on to the RAID drives now from my Vista PC and it's actually copying everything across over at just under 10Mb/sec. - before it would only managed a few hundred kilobytes/sec. which meant file copying took forever!
Anyways the point of my thread is if you are considering setting up a server at home or work and don't have/want to spend loads of cash on Microsoft shite, go for Ubuntu (it's free) and you can run it on pretty much any low end PC... My server is only an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (which is 1.4GHz) with 1Gb RAM.
I'm now thinking of buying a PC case and using some PC bits I've got lying around to set up a HTPC with some flavour of Linux so we can watch and record HD stuff on our flat screen telly! 
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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P.S. use Samba if you want Windows based systems to connect to file and printer shares on your Ubuntu box!
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Rob_Quads
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: southampton
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You can't really compare XP on a single disk to Ubuntu on RAID.
To give you a comparison I am able to get around 40-50MB/s from my WindowsHomeServer to my Office PC
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Sam
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Location: West Midlands
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On the XP system the OS was installed on a 20Gb HDD and obviously the RAID was set up on the 2x 250Gb HDDs.
Current Ubuntu system is just using the 2x 250Gb HDDs in a RAID array.
Edit: how can you have 40-50Mb transfer speeds? What sort of ethernet setup do you have?
[Edited on 03-01-2010 by Sam]
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Rob_Quads
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: southampton
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WHS is an Atom MB with onboard, Office PC also has onboard Gigabit.
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Sam
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Location: West Midlands
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That would be why then I guess... Only on 100Mbit here (for now). 
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pow
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Registered: 11th Sep 06
Location: Hazlemere, Buckinghamshire
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Willay will be pleased 
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob_Quads
WHS is an Atom MB with onboard, Office PC also has onboard Gigabit.
Whats so special about the atom motherboards that make it that much quicker?
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Andrew
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Registered: 5th May 04
Location: Skoda Octavia Estate, Ford Puma
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Agreed Sam, Linux is the way forward. Customers do not want to pay out for expensive hardware for faster speeds that Windows requires and they also don't want to be paying out for an OS. The user does not have any interaction with the server 
[Edited on 03-01-2010 by Andrew]
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Sam
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I would like to set up a WHS at some point (when I have a spare machine) but for now Ubuntu serves my requirements well and frees up a Windows XP Pro license I can use for another PC 
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Ubuntu is a nice O/S. My laptop used to boot into it up until about 10 mins ago when I wiped the partition to make way for my 7 installation 
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Andrew
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Registered: 5th May 04
Location: Skoda Octavia Estate, Ford Puma
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Windows 7 is a pile of shite i'm sorry to say. Cannot change IP ranges without having to reboot and takes an age to authenticate with SBS 2003 and 2008. Works brilliant with 2008 R2 and the responce of TS is outstanding.
Hopefully they will sort this with a service pack or 2..
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Wrighty
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Registered: 28th Feb 04
Location: Howden
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long time since i played with ubuntu but its good
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pow
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Registered: 11th Sep 06
Location: Hazlemere, Buckinghamshire
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quote:
Originally posted by Andrew
Windows 7 is a pile of shite i'm sorry to say. Cannot change IP ranges without having to reboot and takes an age to authenticate with SBS 2003 and 2008. Works brilliant with 2008 R2 and the responce of TS is outstanding.
Hopefully they will sort this with a service pack or 2..
Errrmmm, Windows 7 is far far far far better than Vista and I prefer it to XP.
The RADIUS and PEAP/EAP authentication is far better with 7 with more options (computer/user authentication).
Windows 7 authenticates fine with S2003 at work and works pretty much flawlessly!
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Andrew
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Registered: 5th May 04
Location: Skoda Octavia Estate, Ford Puma
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Authenticates fine with no errors reported in the Event Viewer, just slow when compared with XP. Tested on a fresh network build using gigabit switches.
I prefer it over XP, it's just no good when onsite and plugging into VLANs as it requires a reboot 85% of the time when switching IP ranges.
I'm considering using uBuntu as a dual boot option to get around this networking issue.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Andrew
Windows 7 is a pile of shite i'm sorry to say. Cannot change IP ranges without having to reboot and takes an age to authenticate with SBS 2003 and 2008. Works brilliant with 2008 R2 and the responce of TS is outstanding.
Hopefully they will sort this with a service pack or 2..
Never had issues with authetication with 03 or 08, and rebooting after VLan changes?! again never had that issue. Sounds like a PEBKAC issue to me 
Agree with pow on Win7 being ace! I easily think it's the best OS MS has knocked out (Vista was wank, use to have it fall over all the time and was actually slower than XP. XP was good but XP64 was better. 2000 was solid though!)
Edit - and back to topic, Ubuntu is pretty good although i found it a right ballache installing drivers and having to recompile the kernel if i needed to do anything remotely-serious on the driver/hardware side. And the fact that it's mostly commandline is toss as well....(SSH'ing into boxes to do SQL/apache changes is hardcore enough for me).
However, once it's running (and it's stable) then you can leave it for weeks/months without touching it. 
[Edited on 03-01-2010 by Dom]
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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I installed the desktop version of Ubuntu on my server, CBA with command line nonsense - although I had to install the 'alternate' version due to setting up software RAID partitions.
Still got a problem with trying to get the server to talk to my UPS though (but then it's a cheapie Plexus 500VA UPS so I'll probably get a nice APC unit when funds allow). Printing works great too on it.
Will probably get round to installing NXServer on it at some point so I can remotely administer it from my Windows PC rather than having to keep a seperate monitor on my desk for the server.
Re. the Windows arguments, yes I would agree that 7 is miles better than previous MS offerings. Vista works quite well for me on my PC though but then I've tweaked it a lot so that it's as speedy as XP.
I would install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu as KDE is nicer than Gnome desktop IMO) on my PC but I'm unsure how Photoshop and other web dev type applications I use would work under it through a virtual box or whatever...
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Andrew
Windows 7 is a pile of shite i'm sorry to say. Cannot change IP ranges without having to reboot and takes an age to authenticate with SBS 2003 and 2008. Works brilliant with 2008 R2 and the responce of TS is outstanding.
Hopefully they will sort this with a service pack or 2..
That's a pretty obscure reason for it to be a pile of shit.
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