PCA Forums

....about some technical stuff.....

OK, here the deal..I want to build a small server.....just to store some files/programs/host a website/and maybe even host a game or two like Doom3.......

I understnad that any rig can really be used as a server, as long as It is loaded with a Server OS.

I have an extra ASUS A7N8X on it's way back to me from being replaced by ASus for going defective. I also have an extra AMD 1700+ processor to go with it. I believe I'll need to run dual NICs to help keep down any choking........

I have 512mb of PC2100 , so I think that will be plenty.

I have a copy of Windows 2000 Server to use as the OS.

OK, i have several harddrives, ranging from 4gb to 9 gb....... how would I go about using these mismatched drives to form something useful.... or should I flip the cash for say a 40gig harddrive and not have to worry about RAID......the M/B supports SATA and RAID_0, so I could actually look for a good deal on a set of matching drives and go that route.

I've never worked with a server and I'm heading into new territory for myself, this will be a learning experiancce as well as a functional server for me and a few friends that play on-line games together.....

We'll want to host our website there and probablly a forums section.

Can anyone offer me some advice on wich direction to go from here....or have anything comments/suggestions as to the above hardware/software...or even have any better ideas, keeping in mind that I don;t plan on going enormous with this project...YET!

Also, if anyone has a small server setup that they may be looking to let go of, LMK.....not you Chotto..I've already drooled over the one you trying to sell..I just can;t pocket that right now.

Any and all comments/advice would be appreciated and welcomed.

Hard not to get technical about a technical subject.

I understnad that any rig can really be used as a server, as long as It is loaded with a Server OS.

No, you don't need a server OS. A server OS is optimized to work as a server, and supports more than 10 users, however Win2K or XP Pro will also work just fine as a home server. You'll never go over the 10 user limit and performance will be more than adequate.

Feel free to install a server OS if you want to learn how to administer it, but if you want to keep it simple use 2K or XP Pro.

I believe I'll need to run dual NICs to help keep down any choking........

Dual NICs aren't going to do anything for you on a home server, unless you're planning on using the server as your router which I don't recommend. If you want more bandwidth for file transfers then consider getting a gigiabit switch and NICs.

I have 512mb of PC2100 , so I think that will be plenty.

That's the minimum I'd recommend for a file/game server, but it'll work fine.

I have a copy of Windows 2000 Server to use as the OS.

Seriously, unless you want to learn about administering servers, stick with Win2K Pro.

OK, i have several harddrives, ranging from 4gb to 9 gb....... how would I go about using these mismatched drives to form something useful.... or should I flip the cash for say a 40gig harddrive and not have to worry about RAID......the M/B supports SATA and RAID_0, so I could actually look for a good deal on a set of matching drives and go that route.

You certainly do NOT want RAID striping on a server. You might want RAID mirroring, but on a home server I wouldn't bother. If this was an office file server or the files were mission critical then yes.

I'd recommend just throwing a 60Gb or bigger drive in there. Once you have a server, you will find that you fill it quickly. I have a 160Gb drive on my server and it's 80% full (MP3s, videos I'm editing, Ghost image backups, data backups, etc).

For a file/website server, its true that anything will do

But when you get into something like game servers.....especially if you want to host more than one game simutaniously, ram is key. I dont know the server requirements for Doom3, but most of the time to run a dedicated server, your machine could prolly handle about 12 people max, thats while still hosting files and website stuff. It really comes down to your upstream on your bandwidth and your ram. If you have something like 256k up, your not gonna get more than a few people on there cause they will lag from not enough upstream going to them.


win2k comes with IIS5.0 which is good for starting out for hosting files and webpages. Supports ASP and can be configured for php as well. Just change your default directorys and you can make it secure.

For the harddrives....again it depends on how you want to have stuff stored there. I have my server set up so all the files and stuff for my website are not on the primary harddrive. But then the active programs that would run (Like Teamspeak) are installed on the primary. So figure out what you need more diskspace for, for the programs to run (ie games) or for the files to be stored/webpages. And use the HDs accordingly

OK..so lets say this....I have a rig that I just use as a Bot rig..meaning..it just runs a game char to help my main char along.....I use it for nothing else........it has a 40gig harddive and 1gig of ram..are you saying I can configure this rig to be my home server, to host our website, a forums and file sharing? If so, would it mean partitioning the disk to allow me to maintain my BOT status and still run as the server on a continous basis?

Another thought....look at the specs on my main rig..(below as my sig).......I have plenty of space on that, but it is my main rig for gaming.......would it be fesible to partition that for a server section, if that is even possible? Would you even reccomend doing that due to the stress it may put on my rig, longterm?


[edit] maybe add another harddrive to it to act as the server drive even? I dunno..just looking at options and possibilites......I'm on a slim bufget for this....once I learn what I'm doing and round the forst of the year, I want to build a dedicated server for this..but would like to start learning the ins and outs now? does this all just sound crazy?

the thing I realised when I first started out, is that if you have a second machine, use that to learn your way around setting up a server. Makes things somewhat easier (atleast in my opinion). And then that way you dont have to share your system resources on your gaming system with the server actions.

And you could take your "bot" server and just add IIS (if its already running win2k) and just let it run the IIS process at the same time. Just create a new folder somewhere and make that your default folder for your webspace and stuff

Yea i got a "server" thats a "file server". Its built form a dual 550 P3 and 128 meg of ram and 447 gigs of HD space. It has a NC 3131 Dual NIC (expandable to 4 port) and a raid card. it has 4 160 gig WD running in one big raid 5 array. Its got 2K on it and does what its supposed to do... Serve files. At home the dula nic is useless. it only gets used the 16 hours a month or so when its at a LAN party.. then it really pumps out the files. I need to get a gigabit for it and call it done but the dual nic is good for lans that dont have gigabit becuase its faster then a single card. Aslo not every card can run dual. As far as i know only intell nics can do it. you alos need software to make it work properly. There are also several different ways to use multiple ports... so for home use just forget about running a dual nic. Like it was said before if your worried about it choking then get a gigabit setup.

OK, so if i read right, using my BOT rig as the server is a viable solution for now..... I dont; want to burben anyone here as to giveng me a walk thru...so can you point me in the gerneral area of a how-to or a post somewhere on how to set it up using the current Windows XP install that is on the rig currently?

At home all you need is simple peer-to-peer file sharing. If the server is Windows XP this is easy to do.

Some google searches should turn up tutorials. Here's one I found real quick:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sha ... lesharing/

Look that over and feel free to come back and ask questions. I would recommend you use "Simple File Sharing" in WinXP (I assume your server will be running XP Pro?) so you don't have to worry about setting up user accounts (if you're using WinXP Home you have no choice - only simple file sharing is available). Win2K does not support simple file sharing, but you can enable the Guest account (just make sure you're behind a router which I assume you are).

As far as a game server, this is a bit more complicated. You should do some google searches. The problems you'll have to deal with are:

- Realistically most DSL and Cable connections have too slow an upload speed to use for gaming. If you have 256Mbit upload then 5 people playing at the same time will each have 56K available bandwidth - crappy pings and a crappy game. If it's just you and a couple of friends it's okay, but leave the major game servers to people who have access to T1 lines.

- You may need a static IP or a dynamic DNS service so people can find your server at teh same address.

- You'll almost certainly need to setup port forwarding if you're behind a router.

OK, first of all..thank you for your time and tolerance here...as I said, this is my first attempt at dealing with a server, and is a bug learning experience...

Now, let me maybe clarify a few things, that I more than likely created.

OK, I've basically decided to use teh bot rig to set up by server... with that said...

it has a 40gig HD and 768 memory....i forgot i had a stick of 512 go bad and I replced it with an old 256 I had......

As stated before..I just use it for running a bot account while gaming..and chances are, that will cease as soon as World of Warcraft is released.

Now..I've read a few sites and I just got back from teh book store looking for refernce material..so..... am I confussing networking and a server here??

Forget the game hosting, it really isn;t an issue, just a side thought.....
I have 4 friends I game with regualrly...we use Teamspeak, we have our own Forum site, in which we pay ofr atm, and we have programs each have registered to to get the upgrades as they come out...we currently just mail a hardcopy out to each other..we want to be able to keep them updated and available as a download to each other as it happens.... also, we want to construct a Guild Website, for displaying game Screenshots and events.... so other people on the web will be able to access the site for exposure and such......also, would like to be able to setup our own forums, like what we are using here now.... to save the monthly expense we are incurring now?

If I've confussed any of you, my apologies.... but did I make this more complicated than need be?

Suggestions on how to use the BOT rig to accomplish what I just outline?
It currently has Windows XPHome edition (OEM install..not a bought copy, but legit), I have Windows 2000 Server as well...and partition Magic8 id needed....

Sorry to be so annoying here, but I have been trying to prepare for this for sometime now and I think I got headed in the wrong direction from teh beginning...... of course, I usually do that in preparing a project...but as I said, it;s a learning experience for me..please bare with me?

Thanks again

Have I gone in a wrong direction here?

Okay, if I understand you, what you're trying to do is setup a WEB server?

You want to:

- Put up a web site
- Run a forum
- Post some files that friends can download - possibly off a web page link, or email them the address if you don't want it public

Correct?

Bottom line is you DO NOT want to do this, unless you're ready for an extremely painful learning experience. If you were more technically adept and you wanted to do this as a learning experience, I could understand, but you'd be taking on a major project that would really be beyond you.

You would need a server OS (you could do it on a workstation but you said you had Server 2K), you'd need a web server application like Apache (you don't want the management nightmare of Microsoft's IIS server), you'd need a static IP or a Dynamic DNS service, you'd need to do some port forwarding through your router, your broadband connection would be vulnerable to being hogged (people are scanning and indexing websites all the time, some hacker may want to screw with you, and if someone's downloading a large file off your server your own connection will suck for internet browsing or gaming - you really want your bandwidth to fluctuate while you play?).

How much are you paying for a web server and your forums now?

There's lots of free forum providors out there if you don't mind ads, and for a nominal fee you can get better forums without ads. None I can recommend, but maybe someone else here can. They're cheap.

As far as a web server account, you can get one through Hostica for $50 a year. There's even cheaper ones out there, but I can recommend Hostica because I've personally used them.

ok....to make it simple without having to reinstall or reformat, you will prolly want to use Apache to run the server off that Bot rig.

I havnt used apache so I dont know exactly how to set it up for what you want. But you can use it to run like IIS (ms software). Then you basically have to set it up, so when people connect to your server (which would be [url]http://yourInternetI:Port,[/url] my example http://64.53.220.247:90/ )
Then you just set your router to send any connections comming through your port (in my case is 90) to send it to your Bot Server's internal IP.

If you get a domain name, you can have it forward to a specific file or directory availible on your server. So if you get [url]http://www.yourGuild.com,[/url] just have it forward to your Server ip and file. ([url]http://youip:port/guild/index.html[/url]) and it would send the people who go to your domain name to that index file.


I am somewhat scatterbrained right now...so Im sorry if any of this was confusing.

OK..well...that's not the right answer...try again.... laf, j/k......

So, lets say I just use it for Teamspeak and storing Files for each of us to use to store and download eachothers respective program?

You need to do this over the Internet, right? Your friends aren't in the same house?

You're still back to requiring a static IP (costs extra, but not a lot), or a Dynamic DNS (which is free, but a bit technical to setup - I can recommend DYNdns.org).

You'll need to run some kind of software to share the files so your friends can download them. A web server like Apache, or an FTP server like Serv-U.

I have no idea what the technical requirements would be for Teamspeak since I've never used it.

It's still far easier to use a web server to post files for your friends to download. Chances are one of you already has a free web server account anyway that you can use for that. You usually get one from your ISP along with your email account. They usually give you 2 - 4Mb, sometimes more.

All you need is an FTP client to upload the files.