On Thu, January 8, 2015 5:40 pm, david wrote: > At 01:54 PM 1/8/2015, John R Pierce wrote: >>On 1/8/2015 11:32 AM, david wrote: >>>The price point of Intel's NUC unit makes it attractive to use as a >>>server that doesn't have significant computational load. In my >>>environment, a USB connected hard-drive could provide all the >>>storage needed. I wonder if anyone has had experience with it, and can >>> answer: >> >>IMHO, its totally unsuitable as a server, there are many better choices. >> >>A) there's no ECC, and servers tend to keep data in memory for a >>long time. soft bit errors in gigabytes of memory are a more >>frequent occurance than you might think. With a file server, that >>corrupt data stands a good chance of ending up back on disk, where >>it becomes permanent silent data corruption. >> >>B) a single USB drive is a very poor choice for any sort of server, >>there's no redundancy whatsoever. When (not if) that drive croaks, >>you lose everything. >> >>something like an HP Microserver is a much better choice for a SOHO >>server. Been running one of the older N40L models here for 2+ >>years, running FreeNAS, although it certainly can run CentOS. >>supports 8 or 16GB ram, with ECC, and has 4 SATA drive bays. Mine >>has 4x3TB in raidz (like raid5) for 7.3TiB total usable storage, I >>have no trouble reading or writing at near gigE speeds. >> >>Another good choice would be one of the mini-ITX "Avoton"/"Rangley" >>Atom C2xxx family of boards (don't let the 'Atom' branding fool you, >>these are low power high performance server processors). These have >>2-4-8 cores at 1.6-2.4ghz, support ECC RAM up to 32GB, and have 6+ >>SATA ports and 4 gigE ports onboard. A variety of people make >>mini-ITX chassis that hold 2-4 disks, and a few with 6-8. >> >>>... >>>3) Is it possible to add an additional NIC for possible use as a >>>home router/gateway? If not internally, then via a USB connected NIC? >> >>for a home gateway/router, I would suggest looking into an APU1D4, >>such as are sold by Netgate. This little 6x6" board draws less >>than 10 watts TOTAL ACTIVE, has 3 GIgE ports and a dual core 1Ghz >>CPU with 4GB ram, it has SD card slot, miniSATA slot (for a SSD), >>and 2 miniPCI-E slots (for expansion boards such as wifi), its >>fanless (convection cooled via a heat spreader to the aluminum case, >>and basically rocks. >> >>I'm using one with pfSense (a freeBSD based firewall distribution) >>and its very slick. routing tons of connections (bittorrent) to >>my 30Mbps internet, it uses only 3-5% of its CPU, I've been told it >>can handle AES IPSEC vpns up to about 100Mbps, and 400-500Mbps >>simple NAT routing. >> >>-- >>john r pierce 37N 122W >>somewhere on the middle of the left coast > > John > Thanks for your comments. In the particular application, I used the > word "server" only in the sense that GUI is only rarely used, and CPU > speed isn't an issue. The data the server holds has other "primary" > copies elsewhere, so if some corruption or damage occurs, it can be > restored within acceptable time. Thus, I am not interested in ECC > memory or RAID for this situation, although I do appreciate the need > for servers with mission-critical data. As a former employee of > Tandem Computers, mirroring, backup, check-everything, dual > everything is in my blood. > Still, John, thanks for your brilliant comments (I bet there are many people for whom they are very instructive), and for pointers to small footprint/ small consumption units, - these are particularly interesting for me! Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++