Friday, Sarah told me her workplace was having a surplus sale. I decided to take a look and was shocked when I found a 1U server for $20. I looked at the specs and was shocked even more. The system was a Pentium 4 3.2 processor, had 2 gigs of RAM, 2x gigabit ethernet ports and built in sata raid. Sarah ended up buying it for me which I appreciate. I was hoping to move the hard drives over from the previous server, but the IDE ribbon cable wouldn’t quite reach and it only had one IDE port to begin with. The motherboard however has 4 SATA ports, so I thought it would be a great chance to try two SATA drives in a RAID 1 setup. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the onboard RAID to work with Ubuntu. I found out that it is pretty much the same as a software RAID anyway and I would have to get a RAID card for true hardware RAID. I decided to try a software RAID with Ubuntu itself and it seems to be working flawlessly. Here is the guide I used for anyone interested.
I’ve got the whole system transferred over now and it appears to be working great so far. The really only issue is that being in a 1U case it has a 5,000 rpm blower fan to keep the processor cool and is really noisy. I think I woke up the neighbors last night when I powered the thing on the first time. 🙂 I’m hoping to move it into the closet in the office, but it will require a major clean out to make the room. Hopefully that will quiet it down some.
Here are a few pics I took of the system. The first shows the insides, the second shows how thin the case is comparing it with a key, and the last is it actually running on my desk.
