Greetings everyone! I’ve run a separate file/ftp server for a LONG *** time, and it’s always been one of my old PCs, running windows 2000, just attached to my switch – old, slow and LOUD! But the time has come for something more serious. I was hoping some of you might have some ideas and suggestions! My requirements are as follows:
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Fileserver. Right now I have about 500GB of storage on NTFS volumes. I’m willing to buy new disks and copy my files if it’s worth a significant performance upgrade (raid?) or OS change (Linux filesystems?), but if possible it’d be nice to keep my current disks.
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Web development. I do enough dev to need a decent http daemon with php and mysql.
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Administration. I’d love to be able to VNC or equivalent to the server. Ideally I’d be able to login remotely from any client OS (RealVNC doesn’t seem to have an OSX client
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FTP. I’ve run an FTP server for an equally long-*** time and it comes in very handy for a variety of purposes, so I’d like to have a solid server with a good admin GUI (if possible). I used to use WarFTP for a long time, tried Serv-U (blech!) and Bulletproof FTP and they all suck in different ways.
What do you guys think? In general I could use any old PC, including the one I have now, but the big problem is noise. I don’t have a closet I can put this in, and honestly I can’t sleep with a loud computer running.
I’ve thought about getting a barebones rackmounted server, which would be good space-wise, but the one at my office is LOUD, so now I’m not sure.
My best idea now is to build a new super-small format computer running as passively as possible, any fans need to be super-quiet.
And I’ve thought about going to Linux for the OS, but I’m not sure which distro would be 1) the LEAST fraught with difficulty to set up and 2) easy enough to administrate remotely (am I lame for wanting a GUI to admin with?) but also 2) the best and most lightweight for server purposes.
Any ideas? Thanks so much in advance!!
–Ted
