Mini ITX Server Build

A few months back I decided to build a small HTPC for the living room. I picked up an Atom based mini itx board with cpu integrated and added an iStar case to my Christmas list. My new iStar case arrived defective and required RMA'ing, a smooth process through Newegg (as usual). By this time I changed my plans for the little board. Lacking HDMI and a powerful enough GPU, I decided to use it for a small form factor home server or NAS device and perhaps retire one or two of my aging servers in their giant Antec cases (Performance Series circa 2001).

Still needing a case, I decided on the Chenbro ES34069, a nifty little design well suited to my desired application. The ridiculous price aside, I am happy with the purchase and find the new case to be well built and faily easy to work with despite its diminutive size.

The machine is up and running temporarily. I basically wanted to make sure my memory and board were not DOA, since I have had them sitting around for some time still in their packaging. I used a 2.5 inch HDD pulled from an old laptop as a boot drive and loaded an OS from a bootable USB drive, as I have yet to aquire a slim optical drive as required for the case.

Unless I change my mind again, the specs will look something like this...

• Chenbro ES34069 Mini ITX
• Intel D945GCLF2 w/Integrated Dual-Core Atom CPU
• Crucial 2GB DDR2PC2-5300
• Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
• Panasonic CW8124 Slotload Slimline Combo CDRW/DVD
• Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II Controller Card ** or perhaps a Highpoint 1740
• 1TB HDD x4
  

I'm not sure if I will go with the straight SATA controller and use all 4TB of the drives or go software raid with either the Promise or Highpoint controller in a raid 5 or raid 10 configuration. I've read some negative reviews of the Promise controller but these seem to be from Windows users. Linux users running newer kernels seem to have no problems... and since I plan to run Ubuntu LTS server in a LAMP/Samba/Bind setup, I don't foresee issues should I choose the Promise card.

More later....

Things Change

I have dumped my Wordpress blog that I was hosting on my own web server here at the house and opted to keep all this crap somewhere less volatile. I can now keep my primary home web server as a development platform that I can work on remotely without having to VPN into my home network and work on a box that is only on my LAN.

So right now my old domain will still point to my web server but you will see a testing environment for a content management system I am developing for work rather than my personal stuff.

This is all of no consequence to anyone other than myself. Carry on.