Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Building a Home Server
In ThIs chaPTEr
A home server is a computer located in a private residence that is dedicated to
providing file sharing and other centralized services to other computers with-
in that residence. A home server may also provide virtual private network (VPN)
service or password-controlled access to allow authorized people to access
server resources remotely via the Internet. Some home servers are configured
as public-facing Internet hosts that run web servers, mail servers, or other ser-
vices open to the Internet at large.
Determining Functional Requirements
Hardware Design Criteria
Component Considerations
Building the Home Server
Final Words
Media Center System Versus Home Server
Although they appear superficially similar, there are significant differences between a
media center system and a home server. Both store files, but there the similarity ends.
A media center system sits front and center in the den or living room and is used in-
teractively in much the same way as a desktop system, albeit usually from across the
room. Size, noise level, and appearance are important, and disk storage is typically
fairly limited.
A home server usually sits in a closet or buried under a desk somewhere, and is
seldom if ever used interactively. Size, noise level, and appearance are generally less
important for a server, and the amount of disk storage it supports is massive. For ex-
ample, our media center system has two hard drives, for a total of 4 TB of disk space;
our home server will eventually host eight hard drives, with a total of 24 TB of disk
space. It may also host several eSATA external hard drives for even more disk space.
You can, of course, combine the functions of these two systems, building a media
center system with lots of disk space, and also using it as a general-purpose home
server. The drawback is that you'll need to use a much larger (and likely louder) case,
which many people would find unacceptable in their dens or living rooms.
By the mid to late '90s, all the necessary pieces were in place for home network-
ing to take off. Many households had two or more computers (and wanted to
share their printers and other expensive peripherals), networking hardware
had become affordable, and Windows 95 and 98 made it easy to set up a home
network. Finally, always-on DSL or cable broadband Internet access was be-
coming common, and many people wanted to share that fast Internet connec-
tion with all of the computers in the house.
 
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