Planning for Uni: Server needs to run for 4 years

[burnttoastnice]

Currently, I've got a server at home that serves as both a webserver and fileserver. I have university next year and I'm not too sure how often I'll be able to journey home to maintain it, so I'll need some guidance on what precautions and preparations to make in-case something happens during that time.

 

Here are the current specs:

• Core 2 Duo E6320
• ASUS P5VD2MX-SE Motherboard
• 2GB DDR2 RAM (Not ECC)
• 250GB Seagate Barracuda (Raid 1)
• 250GB WD Blue (Raid 1)
• 8GB Sandisk Cruzer Flash Drive (Boot only, logs are saved in RAM and on Raid 1 array)
• 250W FSP Power Supply
• 3.5" Floppy drive, unused

Currently I can access and manage the server remotely using SSH so that hopefully doesn't become an issue. However, I'm concerned about cooling and general hardware failure. This is what the server looks like (top panel removed) the UPS underneath (link) needs new batteries and was taken out of service a while back

 

Overall view:

Spoiler

 

Cooling:

Spoiler

The fan kinda fell off its budget 'glue and tape' mount

 

 

Currently there are only 2 fans running in the system (CPU fan and PSU fan). I turned off the front fan about a month ago, removed a fan I had cooling the hard drives, removed the original CPU heatsink fan replacing it with the larger 120mm fan shown above. The new larger fan is manually controlled using a switch outside the server, and is always on the lowest setting, seeing as the server is in my bedroom. CPU temps have gone up about 6º because of the larger fan, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make given the much lower noise output. I'm considering getting one of those passively cooled Atom motherboards to completely eliminate fan noise though.

 

 

 

Now, this is the part where I need you guys' input. What things should I change, parts to add/replace etc?

[mineblaster]

you could hunt for a bigger psu maybe 400w

some extra storage a couple of 2tb hdds for keeping backups in case someone steals yours stuff at uni

q6600 cpu its a 2.4GHz quad if your feeling like going the extra mile

[Electronics Wizardy]

If you want reliable, get a cloud vm, like aws.

 

Flash drives aren't that great, and id install the OS on a raid 1 hdd/ssd/flash drives.

[mineblaster]

yeah run the os on the RAID 1, dust fillters and not a stock cpu cooler

[AshleyAshes]

It looks all hacked together, I like it.

Honestly, if the components are all still working it should mostly be okay.  You have only a few major concerns: The PSU could blow up.  It may be worth swapping that for something with high reliability.  (My semi-junkyard built server runs a brand new Supernova P2 650w for this reason.)  The caps on the mobo could fail, but if they've run for ten years they could last another ten years.  If the USB flash media you're using is a concern, you could use a CompactFlash card.  CF cards are electrically compatible with IDE, a PC with IDE support can't tell a CF card from a mechanical HDD.  A passive pinout adaptor and you could be running an 8GB CF card for your OS in place of a USB key.  (Also useful if you want to refurb an old arcade machine that originally used HDDs for storage! :3) 

 

I'd say your real, biggest concerns would be HDD failure, but that's a concern with ANY build, and dust build up in the machine.

[burnttoastnice]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

It looks all hacked together, I like it.

Honestly, if the components are all still working it should mostly be okay.  You have only a few major concerns: The PSU could blow up.  It may be worth swapping that for something with high reliability.  (My semi-junkyard built server runs a brand new Supernova P2 650w for this reason.)  The caps on the mobo could fail, but if they've run for ten years they could last another ten years.  If the USB flash media you're using is a concern, you could use a CompactFlash card.  CF cards are electrically compatible with IDE, a PC with IDE support can't tell a CF card from a mechanical HDD.  A passive pinout adaptor and you could be running an 8GB CF card for your OS in place of a USB key.  (Also useful if you want to refurb an old arcade machine that originally used HDDs for storage! :3) 

 

I'd say your real, biggest concerns would be HDD failure, but that's a concern with ANY build, and dust build up in the machine.

Thanks . I've been watching the caps around the CPU, as the heatsink comes really close to some of them. Hopefully they're fine with the larger fan - likely gonna up the speed some more before I go. Defo gonna hunt down a better PSU though, I got an XFX one for my desktop and they literally scream quality when you're holding them.

I haven't really considered using a CF card in place of the USB, but if the flash drive fails I'll defo be popping in a CF card instead.

 

2 hours ago, mineblaster said:

you could hunt for a bigger psu maybe 400w

some extra storage a couple of 2tb hdds for keeping backups in case someone steals yours stuff at uni

q6600 cpu its a 2.4GHz quad if your feeling like going the extra mile

Yup, literally just got told the same thing so a new PSU is the first thing on the shopping list. A new CPU isn't really a requirement at the moment as the current one is fast enough - but if I find a c2quad I'll defo be putting that in.

[Mikensan]

If the bios/NIC supports it, turn on Wake on LAN. Assuming you can log in to the router remotely/securely, it's a nice feature to use in case the house loses power. Else call a family member to go press the power button ^_^.

 

C2D don't usually run very hot, you could even under-volt it if it's already more than enough processing power. Though since you're leaving soon now might not be the best time for trial and error lol.

 

You could get fancy and install some monitoring software that'll send an email your way in the event of the cpu or ambient temperature going beyond a point. Not being an ubuntu guy I have none to recommend but something to look in to.

[Questargon]

If this box has to run 24/7, set "State after power failure" to "on" or at least "last state" in your mobo BIOS unless you haven't done so already. This way your Server will come back online after a power loss.

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Questargon said:

If this box has to run 24/7, set "State after power failure" to "on" or at least "last state" in your mobo BIOS unless you haven't done so already. This way your Server will come back online after a power loss.

I would go with 'On'.  'Last State' has gotten confused a few times on my server if the power ever so briefly blinks back on but right back off prior to it coming back on again.  'On' ensures it should almost certainly come back up when ever it detects power.  If you're going to be away from home probably for months at a time, better to be safe than sorry.

[Questargon]

By the way: If this solution turns out to be too instable, you might consider transferring your data to an university server and host your website and data from there. There will be helpful computer enthusiasts (universities tend to breed them ) that help you with setting up all this and it will be a more stable and performant solution than having all your data at home on your rig. You will be able to access that data from home as well.

 

Contact your university to learn more.

[NelizMastr]

Just to inform you: while a core 2 quad would be a lot faster, they also require more power. The Q6600 is 95-105W TDP. More power = more heat = more wear on components like the VRM. If it's not absolutely necessary, leave the Core 2 Duo (your board doesn't support quad cores anyway). I would consider upgrading to a faster Core 2 Duo instead, like an E6700. More clock speed is more important than more cores in typical workloads.

 

What are you using it for? Just basic (ftp) storage and webserver?  In that case, the most likely components to fail are to be honest the harddrives. 24/7 operation on these consumer drives is a bad idea. They're not designed for that. You might want to add some more fault tolerance there.

[mariushm]

The major failure points of that system are the mechanical ones, the fans. After fans, the power supply would be a concern and then you're looking at the hard drives (which are probably very old already considering they're 250GB ones. Last, the motherboard could be a concern, considering it uses electrolytic capacitors in the VRM circuits (which power the CPU and memory)

 

My suggestion would be to open the power supply and inspect it to see if there's swollen electrolytic capacitors in it (which can happen if the power supply is old and hot all the time). If there are, you should either replace them if you're good at soldering, or buy a new power supply - the system doesn't use more than 60-80w under load, so even a 300w of good brand power supply will be good.

If it's going to be hard to access this system during those four years, if you decide to stick with that 250w power supply, I would change the fan either way. It's probably 80mm or 92mm fan and you just connect the two power wires and you're done.

You should install a proper cooler on that cpu, heatsinks+fans for socket LGA775.

Clean the dust filters on that case.

 

During the course of four years, there's a good chance one of those 250 GB drives would fail, I wouldn't rely on drives older than 6-8 years. However, I wouldn't trust a new drive until it's working 24/7 and accessed daily for at least 3-4 months. That's pretty much the "infant mortality period" for new hard drives, if an average drive lasts for more than 3-4 months, statistically the chances are very high it will last for years without issues.

 

Yeah, in all honesty, the system is so old, that you can replace it with newer things that don't even need active cooling yet be more powerful.

For example, for 50$ you can get a board with an embedded J1900 cpu and passive heatsink that's probably 30-50% faster than your current setup, just add a SO-DIMM DDR3 and you're done: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135391&ignorebbr=1

 

Or you could get something like this, with a J3160 that's about 2x as powerful as your current setup, and in those $105 you also get a 19v adapter to power the whole package: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157714&ignorebbr=1

 or Amazon UK since you're in UK : link

 

So you get a fully passively cooled system, just add the two hard drives. PS. And since it would run 24/7 you'd probably save about 30w an hour or about 10-15kWh every month, which means in 4 years you're probably get back about 20-30 uk pounds or more in saved electricity costs.