AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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Seen this advertised..... http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305
With £100 cashback seems like a decent enough deal.
How difficult would it be to turn it into a wireless server? Presumably just whack in a wireless network card yes?
Would plan to use it to run apache for local web development and NAS. Should be easy to set up right?
[Edited on 08-07-2011 by AndyKent]
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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What will you be running on it? Linux?
Yes a PCI or USB WiFi card will be OK.
As for setting up a web server... "involved" is probably the word I'd use rather than easy...
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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Huge thread on OCuk - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18216324
I've been spec'ing and installing them for a few clients (mainly SMB SBS 2008/2008 installs). They are decent little systems and performance isn't too shabby but i'd recommend running at least 4GB ram (8 if you can) and if you need any serious disk throughput you'll need a dedicated raid card (onboard is very limited for raid). Would make for a decent Esxi dev box which i was thinking about doing (few debian + lamp/lnmp VMs and Freenas/unRaid).
And yes, just get a decent low-profile wireless card.
Edit - If you use Dos/Windows command then setting up LAMP is pretty straight forward. If you need a free control panel for LAMP then SysCP/ISPConfig are worth looking at. Perhaps Webmin/Virtualmin, although Webmin is mainly a linux server control panel. Can get a 30day of cPanel though.
[Edited on 08-07-2011 by Dom]
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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I'll run whatever OS is easiest to get along with. I've never used Windows Server but I'm thinking it'll be the
I've fiddled with linux in the past but wouldn't say I particularly know what I'm doing....
For the web server side I was thinking of WAMP, which I already have installed on my laptop. It doesn't need to serve stuff up to anything other than the local network so I'm thinking as little effort as possible involved.....
Cheers for the link Dom, I'll have a read through 
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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Is it just you that's going to be using it or several people?
If it's only you, I'd probably suggest just installing Wampserver on your PC/laptop (or something similar for Linux/Mac) TBH.
If you wanted a dedicated machine, just buy a cheapie box with XP on it and install said web server software above if you need LAN or Internet access to your web server.
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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Just me. I was going to buy a dedicated NAS (which is the bigger need) but the idea of rolling everything into a single box is appealing, especially if I can turn it wireless etc.
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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I would just go down the secondhand XP based PC route TBH.
You could even buy something like a Dell SX280 I think it is (the really small micro PCs that use AC adapters for power instead of built-in PSU like normal desktops) so it'll be small, quiet and won't use up much electricity. You could pick one up for about £50.
Get a USB WIFI stick for it or a PCI one (£20 either way).
If it's got an XP COA on it then you won't have to buy a copy of Windows for it as well.
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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I'll get on ebay and have a look, see whats around 
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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Noise and the fact they're around 50w under load (around 20w idle) is the reason i'd personally go with a £120 Microserver over any old Dell/HP server (or Whitebox). Also a Dell SX280 wouldn't make a very good storage system.
And getting a LAMP setup going is a doddle (just google and there are plenty of tutorials) and if you don't want it to be CLI then you can install a GUI (like KDE, Gnome). I barely know *nix and i managed to get a Debian LNMP (Using Nginx instead of Apache) running in about 15mins.
MS Server is ok on these but i wouldn't recommend it for storage as you never get the max throughput; better off using Freenas/unRaid.
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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Would you be happy enough with one sat in a living room Dom? (in terms of noise?)
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Ian W
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Registered: 8th Nov 03
Location: Wirral, Merseyside
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Brother bought one of these last month, he's running home server on it and it seems spot on.
A lot quieter than my D-Link NAS box.
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Nismo
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Registered: 12th Sep 02
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Check out the HP G6's ive been using alot of these and there spot on
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/219937
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Are you all adding masses of memory to these? SBS 2008 wsus would kill these within a month, if something else hadn't first.
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pow
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Registered: 11th Sep 06
Location: Hazlemere, Buckinghamshire
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I was thinking anything intesive like WSUS or even System Centre Essentials would murder it.
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