Cheapo Homeserver?

[ha966]

Hello,

I have a HP Probook 430 G2, with an i3 4th generation and i was wondering if this could make for a decent homeserver?

I got it for free and i never used it, is freebsd a good option, or is the laptop too slow for the task? I already have a few external hard drives, 2x5TB.

 

Is this a good idea or should i just use my PC for this task? I have some pcs on my network.

[beanhubbleday]

Ermm, by server - what type?

 

Fileserver, printserver, webserver, minecraft server?

 

It depends on the above

[ha966]

Just now, JackHubbleday said:

Ermm, by server - what type?

 

Fileserver, printserver, webserver, minecraft server?

 

It depends on the above

File and Webserver.

[beanhubbleday]

Just now, ha966 said:

File and Webserver.

Okay, webserver - nope. Not enough power really or storage and also a laptop wouldn't be that reliable and then for storage again, reliability is an issue and you may find using external HDD's to cause an issue.

 

If i'm honest I'd buy a NAS or use a dedicated PC.

 

If you need setup help, I'll help - free!

[cyrryanc]

2 minutes ago, ha966 said:

File and Webserver.

Yeah it is fine for a home file server. It depends if your laptop has USB 3 on it because that will be a main factor in transfer speeds. Its not usually recommended to use a laptop as a server but i have seen people use a raspberry pie as a file server so you should be okay. 

[ha966]

1 minute ago, JackHubbleday said:

Okay, webserver - nope. Not enough power really or storage and also a laptop wouldn't be that reliable and then for storage again, reliability is an issue and you may find using external HDD's to cause an issue.

 

If i'm honest I'd buy a NAS or use a dedicated PC.

 

If you need setup help, I'll help - free!

I still have a Core 2 Quad Q6600 without ram and hard drive in my attic, would it be a better option?

[beanhubbleday]

1 minute ago, ha966 said:

I still have a Core 2 Quad Q6600 without ram and hard drive in my attic, would it be a better option?

Add RAM and HDD to it and it'd be far far far better to use that rather than a laptop, trust me

[AshleyAshes]

5 hours ago, JackHubbleday said:

Okay, webserver - nope. Not enough power really or storage and also a laptop wouldn't be that reliable and then for storage again, reliability is an issue and you may find using external HDD's to cause an issue.

 

If i'm honest I'd buy a NAS or use a dedicated PC.

 

If you need setup help, I'll help - free!

 

5 hours ago, JackHubbleday said:

Add RAM and HDD to it and it'd be far far far better to use that rather than a laptop, trust me

Your reply here seems very short sighted and you are willing to give the OP 'assertive answers' while working on minimal information.  You outright say that a laptop would have 'not enough power' but his laptop mentioned should feature an i3-4030U with a CPU Mark of 2688.  You then champion a Q6600 which has a CPU Mark of 2982.  That's only 11%  faster (And I had to round UP to get to 11%) and the Q6600 loses out in single threaded performance.  Not to mention with TDPs of 15w vs 105w, there's a distinct power consumption advantage for the i3.

 

The HP also features two USB3 ports which could be split up with a USB 3 hub easily.  I'm sure most people would scream 'BUT THE BANDWIDTH' but that's only if you ignore that the vast, vast majority of home setups don't hit the network storage very hard and are usually only accessing one file at a time.

 

While the OP may have the money and interest in building a more proper 'desktop server', that's up to them.  By declaring 'not enough power' and the laptop 'wouldn't be reliable' is fiction.  A laptop in a corner with external USB HDDs spidering out of it would be ugly but for typical consumer workloads and what little webserver load he could be running, it would very much get the job done without any extra cost as he already owns all the components.  It would also be recycling a laptop that's out of use and it'd be remarkably power efficient compared to a Q6600 build.

[beanhubbleday]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

 

Your reply here seems very short sighted and you are willing to give the OP 'assertive answers' while working on minimal information.  You outright say that a laptop would have 'not enough power' but his laptop mentioned should feature an i3-4030U with a CPU Mark of 2688.  You then champion a Q6600 which has a CPU Mark of 2982.  That's only 11%  faster (And I had to round UP to get to 11%) and the Q6600 loses out in single threaded performance.  Not to mention with TDPs of 15w vs 105w, there's a distinct power consumption advantage for the i3.

 

The HP also features two USB3 ports which could be split up with a USB 3 hub easily.  I'm sure most people would scream 'BUT THE BANDWIDTH' but that's only if you ignore that the vast, vast majority of home setups don't hit the network storage very hard and are usually only accessing one file at a time.

 

While the OP may have the money and interest in building a more proper 'desktop server', that's up to them.  By declaring 'not enough power' and the laptop 'wouldn't be reliable' is fiction.  A laptop in a corner with external USB HDDs spidering out of it would be ugly but for typical consumer workloads and what little webserver load he could be running, it would very much get the job done without any extra cost as he already owns all the components.  It would also be recycling a laptop that's out of use and it'd be remarkably power efficient compared to a Q6600 build.

laptop. Is. Unreliable.

[AshleyAshes]

19 minutes ago, JackHubbleday said:

laptop. Is. Unreliable.

Because?  Witchcraft?  Voodoo?  Egyptian Mummy's Curse?

[beanhubbleday]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Because?  Witchcraft?  Voodoo?  Egyptian Mummy's Curse?

Because it's not meant to deal with that kinda load...

[Mikensan]

@AshleyAshes hits the nail on the head. 

@JackHubbleday Something tells me this wont be the backbone of a fortune 500 company. It's not going to die on him overnight...

 

I've used Centrino based laptops for various "server" needs. People are using the Raspberry Pi for NASs and are content. So if OP is wanting to us an i3 laptop for some basic needs, I'm sure he could make it work and be happy for years to come until he wants to invest more.

 

@ha966 In regards to the webserver, the laptop is plenty powerful. There are a lot of solutions, the easiest to start with is running windows + WAMP/XAMP.. Depending on the audience (who has access to the website) and content (videos / wiki / forums) you may have other constraints than the laptop itself - like internet speed etc...

 

In regards to the NAS, if you're just looking to have a central place to put files for all the computers in the household, it will happily meet your needs and then some. You could again just use Windows + plain Jane windows shares (SMB).

 

Unless you're wanting to learn more about different NAS solutions and get a little fancy, I would say keep it simple. Maybe invest in an additional hard drive (can be plugged into a 2.0 port) purely for backups. You can use an xcopy bat file or download SyncToys (Free) to backup files to an external disk overnight.

[Mikensan]

Also, might I recommend installing Plex / Kode?  It'll happily transcode+stream your movies too.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, JackHubbleday said:

Because it's not meant to deal with that kinda load...

That's not an answer.  That's just mysticism.

 

A laptop is entirely capable of 24/7 operation at 100% load.  They are computers, they do this, it's the reason they exist.  Now, some poorly designed or malfunctioning laptops have issues with thermals while under load but this is an issue with the specific units themselves.  (And far to many people are willing to accept that as NORMAL behavior of a laptop rather than getting the units repaired or returning them) A laptop that can run at 100% load for one hour can do the same for ten thousand hours.

 

Not to mention that we aren't even talking 100% load.  A file server in a home spends the vast majority of it's time idle and when serving data they barely use the CPU.  This is why consumer NAS boxes are powered by the same Atom or ARM chips that are built into tablets.  Web server?  That's going to VASTLY depend on the load.  If someone is just tinkering, literally any piece of garbage can handle that. Maybe someone is launching the next eBay, and yeah, that's not going to run off a Laptop... But it's not going to run on a Q6600 either,

[beanhubbleday]

If you're sure, test it..

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, JackHubbleday said:

If you're sure, test it..

I have.  I have a lovely i7 2630QM laptop and when doing visual effects rendering I run the Cinema 4D Team Render client on it and it will chew work at 100% load for days and days.  ...It'll also run laps around a Q6600.

[beanhubbleday]

'i7' the other laptop mentioned by OP was 'i3'...

 

[Mikensan]

2 minutes ago, JackHubbleday said:

If you're sure, test it..

I have 2 Toshiba laptops that run off of centrinos (Pentium M) from about 2003/2004 era, as of August 2016 they both bootup without error. I used 1 for 3 years for pfSense, and I used the other for a NAS for 2 years. On 24/7 and in a closet with no ventilation or care. I don't think I even made space for them to cool properly.

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, JackHubbleday said:

'i7' the other laptop mentioned by OP was 'i3'...

 

Yes, ,the i3 is SLOWER than an i7.  If we're just going by raw CPU power, again, the Q6600 you championed was 10.9% (Look, I stopped rounding down!) faster than the i3-4030U, so I don't see your point.  Or do you believe that the 'secret sauce' somewhere lies within that 10.9%?  If so, for clarity, could you point exactly where you think that magical threshold is?

[beanhubbleday]

Jeez, single access NAS, maybe but more than one device you'll be lucky

 

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, JackHubbleday said:

Jeez, single access NAS, maybe but more than one device you'll be lucky

 

So do you think that a measly two clients accessing files will just be 'too much' for a laptop?  Do you understand how EASY it is to serve files to even a dozen computers?  It's all I/O with a minimum of CPU.

[beanhubbleday]

Yes, I get it. But you ahve to look from outside of your little box and at expandability. He emntioned webservers. Imagine 2000 clients hitting a laptop. nevermind the laptop, his internet too. they'll both be maxed.

 

simply put OP use the pc

[AshleyAshes]

5 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

I have 2 Toshiba laptops that run off of centrinos (Pentium M) from about 2003/2004 era, as of August 2016 they both bootup without error. I used 1 for 3 years for pfSense, and I used the other for a NAS for 2 years. On 24/7 and in a closet with no ventilation or care. I don't think I even made space for them to cool properly.

http://www.advantech.com/products/68ccaea2-9ff5-4f85-97f2-3d11244b0a08/aimb-272/mod_15a5f387-eec8-48b5-863e-59c41953ff70

 

I picked up this nifty ITX Socket G2 motherboard off of eBay for $75 USD.  Socket G2 being the same socket as my current laptop.  It uses the same mobile Intel chipsets and SODIMM RAM.  It's literally a laptop board in ITX format... Even a LVDS connector.  Once I retire this laptop, it's getting re-built into this.  

[Mikensan]

Making some big assumptions on what @OP is trying to do @JackHubbleday. I think a majority of people on this forum are going to agree the laptop is sufficient for a lot of home use case scenarios. $0 investment on the laptop, and if he outgrows it he can very very easily migrate data and OS to a new system.

 

You're over-hyping the reliability of a desktop compared to a laptop.

 

I don't know why you're hell bent on suggesting a desktop when others are using laptops without issue. Doesn't seem like you've ever tried to use a laptop and just wrote them off. Or maybe you did and the laptop was a lemon?

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, JackHubbleday said:

Yes, I get it. But you ahve to look from outside of your little box and at expandability. He emntioned webservers. Imagine 2000 clients hitting a laptop. nevermind the laptop, his internet too. they'll both be maxed.

 

simply put OP use the pc

If you are going to have 2000 concurrent web clients, your desktop PC won't be handling double duty as 'Desktop PC' and 'Not-So-Dedicated Server' because those 2000 users are all gonna be super upset when the server lags cause someone wanted to play Grand Theft Auto.

 

2000 users is not in this equation.  2000 concurrent users is when you need a dedicated webserver with a lot more than a consumer internet connection.  Your situation is basically saying 'Sure, the Prius is neat, but what if you need win the Indy 500?' ...Only instead of suggesting an Indy car, you suggested slightly Ford Taraus for some bizarre reason.