Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
These early home networks were almost invariably peer-to-peer. All or most
of the computers in a home network shared disk storage and other resources
with all of their peers. Almost no one used a dedicated server, because PCs
were still relatively expensive and setting up a server-based network was
much more complicated than simply sharing resources on a peer network.
That started to change, almost by accident, as more and more people bought
new PCs to replace older models. Some people donated their old comput-
ers to charities or simply discarded them, of course, but many decided to run
those old systems as dedicated home servers, perhaps installing larger hard
drives to provide more shared disk space.
Even today, a repurposed older system is by far the most common type of
home server. That's unfortunate, because an old system is about the worst
possible choice for a home server. Granted, a typical home server doesn't re-
quire much processor horsepower, but that's about the only way an older sys-
tem is suited to be a home server.
Think about it. You'll probably load up your home server with gobs of data
that really matter to you: irreplaceable digital camera images and home video
footage, your pr0n collection, all of your documents, your old tax returns and
business records, and so on. Do you really want all of that precious information
residing on a system that's near the end of its design life, with a five-year-old
motherboard and power supply? That's a disaster waiting to happen.
Fortunately, it doesn't cost much to build a new home server, one that uses
new components and is designed for reliability. You don't need much in the
way of processor performance, so even a budget processor will suffice. You
don't need a motherboard with high performance or a lot of features, so again
even a budget model is suitable. You don't need much memory. You don't
need a fancy case—in fact you can even recycle that old case (but not the
power supply). You don't even need a display, keyboard, and mouse, because
you can run your new server headless (without a keyboard, mouse, or display).
Even an optical drive is optional.
You will need to spend some money on the important stuff: a good power
supply, an extra case fan (or two or three…), a large hard drive or two (or three
or four…), and a good
backup power supply
(BPS) or
uninterruptible power sup-
ply
(UPS). You may also need to spend some money on backup hardware. But
in return you'll get a rock-solid reliable data repository that you can trust to
keep your priceless data safe.
Determining Functional Requirements
We began by sitting down to think through our requirements for a home server.
Here's the list of functional requirements we came up with:
Reliability
First and foremost, the home server must be reliable. Our server will run
24/7/365, and yours probably will, too. Other than periodic downtime to
blow out the dust, upgrade hardware, and so on, we expect our server to
Just Work without us having to think about it.
