changing home network

[Les Mikesell]

Les wrote:
> 
> 	I currently have four systems on my home network.  I have them all
> configured as standalone systems, but the burden of backing them up etc.
> etc. is becoming too much.  I want to set up a full network with server
> and common user directories.  Currently I have 2 Linux only systems, one
> windows only system, and one dual boot.  
> 
> 	I have been monitoring (and sometimes helping, occasionally kibbutzing)
> the mailing list, so I believe I can figure out most of it by now.
> However, here is my question.
> 
> 	I have one older low-end system, and one dual cpu system that is on all
> the time, either of which could be the server.  However, the dual cpu
> system is where I do most of my work, including dual boot to windows.
> This makes it a bad prospect for a network server.  I could configure
> and run XP pro in a virtual setup, but I am leery of making the full
> change to network server, with a virtual windows client and doing work
> on the server (compiling and running programs with occasional resets to
> clean up my big goofs).  
> 
> 	I am leery of using the older system simply because I suspect it is
> approaching mechanical, support, and electrical end of life (over 6
> years old).  Buying a new system is possible, but adding yet another
> 300watts to my system load would be tough.  
> 	
> 	I think I would need to add wiring to the house.  So, the question
> becomes do I trust the older system, make my system the server, adopt
> the remaining system (currently running f8) as a server, or should I
> just throw down the cash and get yet one more system for a server.  Also
> I am thinking that having a common server would make backuppc simpler
> and support, backup issues and so forth would be much simpler.  Could I
> continue to have the mail setup as it is with each system downloading
> email from my ISP?  Setting up a mail server is not something I want to
> do for our home stuff.

I'd add an SATA controller and a couple of new drives to the older 
low-end system, install Centos 5.x so you won't have to do anything but 
'yum update' on it for years, share out one of the drives with NFS and 
samba, and install backuppc on the other.  If/when the box dies (some of 
those old BX chipset motherboards seem to run forever) you can easily 
swap the disks into its replacement.  Or, if you want to save a box, put 
the drives (and Centos) on your dual-CPU system and run both fedora and 
XP under VMware when you want them. File serving doesn't take a lot of 
resources and you can schedule the backups to run when you won't be 
using the machine.  If you think you might want to mirror these drives 
later, you can create a RAID1 with one of the devices specified as 
'missing'.  The md device will work fine that way and at any later time 
you can add another disk and use mdadm --add to start mirroring.  It's 
not much extra work to set that up initially but fairly difficult if you 
change your mind and want to mirror a normal partition.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com