[GRLUG] Net-top as server?

[Michael Mol]

Benjamin Flanders wrote:
> My server at home exploded this morning.  Pretty sure it was the power
> supply, but I just unplugged it and went to work so I'll know more
> when I get a chance to look at it.  Exploded is a bit of an
> exaggeration. It went pop, loud enough for me to hear it from one
> floor away, and died.
> 
> Anyway the question is would a net-top be powerful enough to setup as
> a file and media server.  I had plans on setting up Apache as well,
> but I hadn't around to it yet.  I used sockso, but I might setup a
> more powerful media server in the future when/if I setup an
> entertainment PC next to the tv.

The internal hard drive won't be worth crap, if it's a classic spinning 
magnetic disk drive; You'll want to go with an eSATA or IEEE1394 
external drive if you can.  Otherwise, as long as you're not doing any 
transcoding, and as long as its connected via a wired NIC that can keep 
up with the rest of your network, you should be fine.

But I'm not kidding about the internal hard drive.  My current laptop's 
drive overheated when I put it under heavy I/O loads, and my old 
laptop's drive couldn't reasonably handle the activity from one or two 
concurrent users when serving up files at a LAN party a number of years 
back.

> 
> Those small, power sippin' little boxes really look appealing as
> compared to what I did have, which was a full mini-tower scrapped
> together with the remains of past desktops.  I would put ubuntu server
> on it, I wouldn't need X.  How powerful are those little atom chips?

Fast enough to run lighttpd, or even Apache, when serving up static 
files.  Even Apache2 ran fine on my old 750MHz Duron desktop.

I wouldn't plan on a database, though.