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Monday 15 February 2010

I've been served

Stupid Western Digital. I have quite a nice server, usually. But my 1.5TB Caviar Green drive (an identical one to the storage drive in my desktop) has just failed. Which means I've had to send it away for a warranty replacement. Which means that the main drive in my server is a three year-old WD drive with a whopping capacity of 320GB. With the way my data storage works I didn't actually lose any data as everything that is on the server is on my desktop. (Although the system was designed so that if the desktop ever failed I would have a backup on the server, it's nice to know it works the other way around too!)

My server was going to be my desktop but when I put the Phenom 955 I bought into the Zotac motherboard that I bought I realised the cpu clock speed was stuck at 800MHz per core. After many angry emails with what is certainly the worst customer service team I have ever come across it became clear that, because Zotac falsely claimed that my motherboard supported my cpu when it actually didn't, I was left with a rather underpowered pc. The reason that I bought the Zotac board was that it was the only mini-ITX board that claimed to support that cpu, so swapping out the board for another simply wasn't an option. I was left with the choices of either buying another, much less powerful, cpu or another board in another form factor. That second option would also necessitate a new case and power supply as only the mini-ITX boards would fit in the Silverstone. Obviously I chose the second option (along with some DDR3 memory as it turned out) to build my desktop. The remaining case, power supply, motherboard and memory stayed behind and were joined by the CPU  from my old desktop. Thus, my mini-ITX server was born.

Specs:
Case: Silverstone Sugo SG-05B (With it's original awesome, 80+ PSU)
Motherboard: Zotac 8200-C-E (Integrated GeForce 8200, wifi and lies)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz, Dualcore)
Memory: 2GB Corsair ValueRAM (800MHz, DDR2)
Storage Drive: 1.5TB Western Digital Green (WD15EADS) (Although currently it's the 320GB drive as mentioned)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Shuriken

And the other bits:
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.04
Monitors: Samsung SM226BW
Keyboard/Mouse: Advent ADE-AD2

At least having it offline for a bit allowed me a chance to nab some photos.

 

 



Nominally the server is headless as all of the functions it performs are administered via the network. Having said that, it is connected to the VGA input on one of my monitors and there is a dongle for the wireless keyboard/mouse kit because sometimes it helps to actually use the machine. Why wouldn't I? It sits right beside my other pc in a cupboard in the desk so it's close enough to use the same monitors as the main machine. Switching between my pc an my server is as easy as pressing the 'source' button on my left hand monitor.

The original memory was 4GB of OCZ Platinum DDR2. When I bought the new system I decided that DDR3 was the way to go so I had no use for the nice DDR2 that I'd bought as it would be way overkill for a server. Thankfully a flatmate was more than happy to take it off my hands for a very nice price. This paid 2/3rds of the Corsair Dominator that sits in my main pc. The server's memory was replaced by the Corsair ValueRAM that used to be in my main pc. The cpu is the one from that old machine too. Just to clarify then, the memory in the pictures is the old OCZ, the ValueRAM looks nowhere near as impressive, although for a machine that sits in a cupboard that isn't a big deal.

I have re-installed the image from a backup I'd made and I'm currently deciding what I desperately need to have on the server and what I can live without should my main system fail. I haven't seen that 'home' percentage useage bar so empty in a very long time.

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