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How to set up a server

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Rezman5

Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2001
Location
Philidelphia, PA USA
Hey. this is Cypher720 under Rezman's account. We have a website (not done yet) at www.CyphersShack.com. We want to build a server, but know close to nothing (im not totally ignorant. I know a lot, but not when it comes to ACTUAL servers :). We will want to host the page and have an e-mail server with e-mail accounts etc...

Our questions:

1.) What hardware is the best (not too pricy)?

2.) What software to get and where to get it?

Please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected], or PM Cypher720.

Thanks in advance.

Cypher & Rezman
 
First you need to make 100% sure that you really need a server. Most of the time it is better and cheaper to use your ISP's equipment, at least it is here- they rent servers for busy pages.

If you do decide to build one, you'll need to bring it to your ISP which may or may not be anywhere near you. If it breaks, you'll need to drive over and fix it. You'll also need to lease rack space from them. See, it can be a pain! Give em a call and see what they offer!

If you are serving from home, just about any PC will do- your connection will be the bottleneck long before your server is. Unless you have the fat T3 at home, but not many do:)
 
i heard about the Cobalt Qube 3. that looks great. we want something like that, but that we can build on our own. I dont really need the hardware specs as much as we need the "how-to's"! like, how to set up an e-mail server and such. we just want to host the webspace with an IP from the server. so we only have to pay for domain.
 
ah, you want the full monty on it, it seems!:)

You'll have to decide what kind of server you want first. They really only do 1 thing, pretty much. Lemme ask my web designer buddy and see what he has to say, I bet he knows a bunch of good sites to check out. I have some server experiance but only fileservers, i'm pretty limited.
 
Big time loaded question.

99% of the people here are going to point you towards freeware for the mail and webhosting and in my opinion that's not the way to go.

Hardwarewise. Build a cheap dual CPU Intel system. (Abit VP-6 and twin 1 gig's, even 800EB's.) AMD if you prefer, but I would rather see it be Intel because the solidity is there. Go with a ton of memory. Put at much memory as you can possibly afford. I don't care if you use SDRAM, DDR, or Rambust, just max it out. You will be happier, and so will your system. Too keep the price to a minumum, look for something with IDE RAID. Get 4 identical drives and set one pair in RAID0, the other pair in RAID-0 and mirror them. But your email system and the webpage on those drives.

Think about some kind of removeable media for backups. And no, a CDRW isn't the way to go.

Softwarewise...simple. Microsoft. Get Exchange server 2000 and Windows 2000 Server at the minumum. Sure you can go Linux, keep in mind that Linux had MORE security flaws than Microsoft did in 2001, and the way things are going it's going to be the same for 2002.

There is one thing to keep in mind. You can do it cheap if you want, and it may work for your LAN box, or your normal desktop machine. However, when it comes to servers, you WILL get what you pay for.

If you are going to go Microsoft for the email take the time and learn exchange before you throw up an email server. If you don't you will be open to relaying other mail and it will only be a matter of hours before you are blacklisted for spam that you dont even know is running through your system. Trust me on this. Also take the time to learn how to secure a Windows server system. There are great tools on Microsofts site like urlscan.exe. That program alone is needed to stop nimda.

You're going to need an antivirus capable of scanning both the email and the local machine. Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition is the way to go. As much as I hate Nortons I run it on my domain server at home. It's one of the few, if not the only one that can scan both.
 
How much do you think something like that would cost? It seems expensive...I dont have that much money to spend seeing as how my friend and I are going to do it and we are only 16!!!
 
Well an ABIT VP-6 will run you about $150. If you go with dual 800EB's, those will run you about $150 each. (and they overclock to 1002Mhz quite nicely, but this is a server, overclocking BAD) It comes with plenty of room for memory. (SDRAM) Comes with on board IDE RAID (HTP370).

Now all you need is a cheap 8 Meg vid card and some hard drives, and of course the operating systems. Windows 2000 server is expensive and so is Exchange. However, seeing you guys are only 16 it will be a great learning experience and help you get a job in life.

I hate seeing people run freeware servers and mail clients. The software is pathetic, the security is worse, and they don't learn anything common place. I'm sorry, but big companies dont use freeware mail servers......

Try www.compluplus.com I have had good experiences with them. They have just about anything you can think of to build a machine like this. It will give you an idea of the cost.
 
At my company we use both Linux and Windows servers. It really depends on the clients budget and needs.

You could probably get away with a single CPU sys with 512MB of ram, but I cannot say how well it would handle HEAVY TRAFFIC.

You will need to do some research. How hany hits do you expect a day, how many email accounts? How many emails will be sent per day... Etc...

We setup smaller clients (around 50 users or less) with linux. We run postfix for mail, bind 8.2 (I think) as the nameserver, and run ipchains with a pretty strict rule set as the router.

If the client wants a webpage, we will also setup an Apache server.

If the client is larger, or would benifet from a MS Exchange sys, we will set that up as well... Sometimes we setup a Linux mailserver to pass all mail to the MS Exchange server....
 
Kingslayer, are you telling me that sendmail isn't popular or robust? I can't see 2 16 year olds buying Exchange and win2k server. They could do a bit of learning and use Mandrake 8.1 out of the box and save a ton of cash. Postfix, sendmail and Apache ARE used in industry and the knowledge alone to setup and configure them IMO is much more valuable than setting up Exchange and IIS.

But everyone knows how I feel about Billy and his software.
 
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