Hi, You might want to go to this site to check out the whitebox specs for the hardware that people used for their ESXi setup: http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11 Also, if you want to play with RAID, or for that matter, any addon cards that you are going to plug into the PCI/PCIe slots, t...

One interesting point (that I haven't yet posted to the Linux-RAID mailing list) is that if the disks actually spin down (i.e. lowest power state), they will stay that way for more than five minutes; in fact, they will stay spun-down until data is explicitly requested from them. My conclusion is th...

The spinning disks are used exclusively as a data store. All the system files and directories reside on a compact flash card (I'm using one of those PATA to CF adapters). In other words, typical system activity (logging, swapping, etc) should not affect the spinning drives. Ah! Yes, you did mention...

This is a great thread, Matt. Clearly, since the long-term average is closer to 60 watts, it means that when the heads to park, they don't stay parked for long. So now I'm looking at how I can tune the operating system to not access those drives when idle. Since this machine is idle most of the time...

1. MB: MSI K8MM-V 2. CPU: AMD Turion64 MT-32 with Vcore@1.06V and 800MHz during idle 3. Usage: Dedicated home server 4. Power consumption: NA HDD: - 1x120GB 2.5" Western Digital Scorpio (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article630-page1.html) - 1x40GB 2.5" IBM/Hitachi Travelstar IC25N040ATCS04-0 - 3x32...

Came across this interesting article ( http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/370 ) at Hardware Secrets on how to identify the real manufacturer of a PSU, especially PSUs from companies that are traditionally not in this business. Looks like the Antec Neo HE550 and Corsair HX620W are OEM from Season...

I am planning on installing a Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI SATAII controller in order to run 4 Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives Hold the bus!!! There seems to be some problems with the GPL version of the sata_promise driver for this card. Check this out: http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&q=%2Bsata+%2B%2...

There have been some rumblings in the IT datacenter world lately about moving to DC power distribution within the datacenter. A lot of telco equipment already runs on +48V... I guess, under this architecture, you'd have just a few very large AC power supplies, which could be made highly efficient m...

During my last job, we rented racks at an offsite data centre to host our ERP system, e-mail and internet gateways. During the provisioning period, the data centre asked if we'll need DC supplies. As our systems have have it's own PSUs (the AC to DC type), we only requested for AC power to be suppli...

I have noticed quite a few mobos with integtrated LAN that put out a high pitched whine with network traffic, likewise graphics cards, and even internal graphics. Agree. I personally experienced this myself with my motherboard (MSI 865PE Neo2-PLS) that has an integrated 100mbps ethernet port. When ...

nick705 wrote:If you're saving pennies, one possible advantage of using Linux on old hardware...

Agree with nick. Provided you already have 1 Windows 2K/XP Pro license lying around, you'll not only be saving pennies, but hundreds with Linux.

I'm currently still in the middle of setting up a 24/7 file server using a MSI K8MM-V motherboard. This is a Socket 754 mATX motherboard. The processor is AMD Turion 64 MT32. I've got OpenSuSE 10.1 installed. # hwinfo --cpu 01: None 00.0: 10103 CPU [Created at cpu.290] Unique ID: rdCR.j8NaKXDZtZ6 Ha...

Wow! Nice mod for the harddisk enclosure. But have you tried to measure the harddisk temperature with and without the enclosure?

The command in Linux would be: hddtemp /dev/hda

Cheers

Intel is about to release the ULV Core Duo. According to this article , the release date will be 25 June. That's another 3.5 weeks from now. The new CPU will support virtualisation, Enhanced Intel Speed Step, and a low low TDP of 9W. WOW!! Wonder if it will come in packages that can be used on a mAT...

Well written review and the board is good for a low-end HTPC / kioks type machine. Had wanted to use such a solution (ie VIA C3/Eden/C7 + mini-ITX combination) for a 24x7 home file server (with terabytes of SATA RAID 5 based storage). The main draw for me towards this is the low power consumption. H...

if I am going to run software RAID 5 with 4 drives at 250gb each with 1 hot spare, how powerful should my CPU be? and how much memory? I don't want the server to be slow. Frankly, I've not seen any performance tests done which peg to the speed/performance of a CPU. Unless you are going to use your ...

Thanks for the link. I do have the raid cardalready. It is the Promise Supertrak ex8350 which looks like it works. I didn't want to use software raid because I think it would increase the load on the CPU too much,.... This is a good card. I have also considered this card for my homebrew NAS. I have...

The RAID card is PCI Express which is the governing factor, and that is why I am trying to find the lowest power "modern" cpu. Can you think of any boards that have PCI express and run an older processor? Have you purchased the RAID card yet? As far as I know, not all Promise RAID cards works well ...

The VIA Epia boards, although they come with only one PCI slot, you can get a PCI-riser card (it is a special one I've heard) that will let you use two PCI cards in it, when you're using a proper case (it's not likely to work with most cases though). Yes, I've seen the active dual PCI raiser card o...

mhv10 I've been looking to build one myself too. Been doing some research on the hardware for sometimes. It's a pity that, here in Singapore, most motherboards sold in the retail are of the "latest and greatest" meant for the gaming and overclockers' market. Most of these mobos comes with all those...