Re: [PLUG] Small/cheap PCs for home server/storage

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:08 AM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:
> On a cautionary note, our (entirely subjective) experience is that the
> quality of customer support from System76 has deteriorated over the last
> year or two.  They're perhaps not as bad as some other vendors, but
> certainly not at the level they used to be.

Honestly, both of these systems seem to be cookie-cutter systems to
some extent, and I'd think that most people running Linux would want a
more tailored experience anyway.

For example, as anything but a media front-end that system76 desktop
seems underpowered.  However, as a media front-end it has an 80GB
7200RPM drive.  I'd either have it boot off of some kind of flash, or
by PXE.  The drive generates unnecessary
heat/noise/cost/complexity/etc.  I am using an ITX-based system that
is right on the border between operating fanless (no moving parts at
all), or with a single tiny fan just to move some air around.  On a
media front-end hardware support for various codecs is also going to
be a prime concern.  If you want seamless 1080p video that is going to
depend on hardware support unless you install a very beefy and
power-hungry motherboard/CPU.

For a server needs are also going to vary considerably.  If I were
building one from scratch I'd probably have a small SSD for the OS,
and a big raid5 of 7200RPM drives for storage.  The SSD could be
backed up to the RAID for quick recovery in the event of drive
failure, and of course critical data should be backed up offsite all
the same.

Rich
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug