I created my first server in August 2018. It’s a storage server that’s actually a desktop computer. There are a few reasons I chose a Dell PC to one of my real rack-mount servers.
- It’s Quiet: This might seem unimportant, but my other two servers sound like jet engines. I set this server up near the TV, and It’s on all day so having it be really loud would be an issue
- Disk Space: Although my Dell PowerEdge 2950 has many hard drives in it, it’s set up in a RAID configuration, meaning it really only makes use of one of the hard drives (read about RAID here). My Dell PowerEdge 750 only holds one hard drive. Since this is a storage server, that wouldn’t work. I chose this computer because it has six SATA (minus one because of the CD drive) ports. That means I can put five hard drives in it!
- Automated Startup: The biggest issue with my real servers is they take lots of power and are made to be on all the time. Most computers have an automated startup build in to the processor, but real servers don’t have that. This computer did, meaning I could have it off at night.
- Floppy Disks! This computer has a floppy disk drive connector, and I like floppy disks.
The server (/computer) only had two spots to store a hard drive, so I had to squeeze them in wherever. One is above the floppy disk drive, and one is zip-tied to the back of the computer. It worked pretty well though.
I used task scheduler to give the computer an automated shutdown, and I also created another task that would run when the computer started up. This task was for running a little program I wrote that would log every time the computer turned on. The shutdown program I wrote also had a log (for shutdowns), just it was a bit more complicated because it also had to shut down the computer.
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