Laptop as a server.

[KingDaveRa]

Laptops as servers = it WILL die.

I've seen it done countless times, and after a while something on the motherboard dies, and it's dead, good and proper.

Your best bet (IMHO) is to get a Mini-ITX system. You can get one of the older VIA chipsets, which can be passively cooled. Add to that a quiet HD (Seagate 7200.10s are VERY quiet), some RAM, and shove it in one of the little cases (they tend to have 'brick' PSUs, i.e. passive cooling) and you're laughing. Whack Linux or Windows on, and you have a nice little box, and they will run 24/7 quite happily. AND, they don't pull a lot of power. I've just built a little machine with this board in this case, and it pulls around 50 watts - and that's with three HDs in it. Admittedly, the fan on that board is horribly noisy, so I've replaced it with a different fan, and put a resistor on it to slow it down by about half. It's now pretty quiet. You could easily make something silent, or as near as.

[Jon T]

Originally Posted by Rob

If they are still running now, they will probably not have that issue. We've got around 15 of the GX270/280 here all at least 4 years old and only one failed, and that was virtually after delivery sorted under warranty so don't know if it was HD and / or motherboard.

That's be the blown capacitors in the voltage regulator section of the motherboard. We still have the odd one of two go with blown caps. They're all due to be replaced this year with 755's anyway.

I've got a SFF GX270 running here now for my weather satellite receiver, can never tell if it's switched on or not.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Do not spend your money on a netbook for a web server. They just are not intended to be used in such a way.

Get a cheap and cheerful desktop and stick it in a corner somewhere out of the way.

[Matthew]

Avoid GX270s and GX280s, you never know which have been fixed. The 270's have the capacitors that go and the 280's have the faulty board/processor and fan. You can pick up a GX520 cheap enough now, that would be ideal.

[funkyCable]

Any thoughts on Shuttles are they really quiet? I have an xbox and I want something that does not sound like its going to take off in my living room and it will be running 24/7 and it needs to be small.

[Graham M]

It depends on the model, some have 1 big fan that draws all the air through the CPU cooler and these tend to have big 120mm fans which are quite quiet, but then there's others with a standard CPU fan and a fan on the back which are obviously smaller and can be a bit whiney, are you intending to run this server headless or will it have a monitor/mouse/keyboard?

[funkyCable]

No, I was hoping to just remote to it from my main pc but if need be if it is near my tv I can plug into into my 37inch and use my my pc usb mouse+keyboard.

[Graham M]

No that's fair enough easily doable, what i was getting at is that assuming there's adequate ventilation, you could hide it in a cupboard anyway which would minimise noise

[funkyCable]

Looking at spending about £200. How easy is it to remote from windows to ubuntu on the same network? Acutally now that you say that I surpose I could get a normal pc put WIFI card in it and place it in another room.

[AbyssUnderground]

People who are saying "You can't run a laptop 24/7 its not designed for it" or "laptop as a server, it will die", have you ever actually tried it? Of course laptops aren't designed for it, but then no PC is either, but my point is if a laptop was going to overheat its not going to suddenly do it when its been on for 24 hours, its going to do it after being on just 10 or 20 minutes, if that. Think about what you're saying before you say it!

I have a friend who is running an old pentium II laptop (600Mhz) and has for over 2 1/2 years now and the worst he's had is a hard drive failure.

I run my laptop for 16 hours every day then its put into standby, and its often left on my bed with poor air circulation. Its never overheated yet.

When I visit my friend in Liverpool I leave my laptop on 24/7 at his house. Again often left on a bed or something with poor air circulation. No overheating yet.

If I'm downloading I leave my laptop on 24/7 at home, sometimes for days.

Laptops as a server are perfectly fine if you give them plenty of air circulation. I'd much rather use a laptop as a server because of the reduced power consumption, but unfortunately I need more than a few hundred GB of space (more like 3.8TB...).

[funkyCable]

Thanks Abyss, I was starting to doubt myself. Any thoughts on using a netbook as a server?

I'm looking at spending no more than £200. I'm trying to get my head around it before splashing out on something that I might regret. I would like a laptop because if I do need to use it remotely it should not be a problem. Plus I dont need to worry about unpluggin or plugign in keyboard and mice .

SO things I've thought about

1. Should I get a 2nd Laptop on Ebay or should a get a new netbook?
2. Maybe get a shuttle because it is small.

I'm seriously confused and just need some help.


Thanks again to all the post so far.

[AbyssUnderground]

Netbooks really aren't designed for long term use, since they're mainly for web use, but I have a friend who leaves his on 24/7 for msn and such and he's done this since around October last year with no issues. The only drawback is the small hard disk size.

A shuttle would be a nice compromise so you can add hard disks, but then you could with USB too, but they do add a lot of power consumption. I actually replaced my externals with internals and reduced power consumption by about 20%.

I'd say go for a regular laptop and a large hard disk. Thats a compromise between the shuttle and the netbook. If you need more disk space, you can add external disks if you need to and the laptop would take up less space and reduce clutter too.

One thing I will say though is don't use wireless if its intended as a server. I don't find it reliable enough so you're better off using it on a cable. After all its a server and doesn't need to be wireless anyway.

[funkyCable]

Abyss I've seen the Acer Aspire ONe with 120gig and another HP one at dixons that had 120gig for £189. I would never get one that has like 16gig or 8gig hdd.

All thats going on my server is family pix and photos. The only thing I can think of where the netbook might be a problem is its ATOM processor. Not sure how this competes with other pc/laptops cpu.

If the shutlle/laptop/netbook is small enough and quiet enough I can sit it right next to my router and just use the wired connection. I know this would be ideal.

[MovedGoalPosts]

If you are serious about a laptop as a server, and it's clear you don't want to hear anyone who says "don't", then before you buy do check out the laptop design. Is the case efficient for cooling? See it running under load in the shop first.

I've had cheap laptops before now where the case was extremely warm especially where your hands would rest. I really wouldn't want that running 24/7. On the other hand the Dell Inspiron I have now, which cost over £700 a few years ago, seems much more robust and at times has successfully stress tested by running distributed computing stuff which pushed the CPU to 100% use for a few days.

Personally I wouldn't buy a budget laptop for this task. I'd be much happier with a budget desktop.

[AbyssUnderground]

The Atom CPU is quite nippy for what it is, and for a server its more than adequate. I ran a web server on a 166MHz Pentium I once!!! Ran a little slow but it was usable

The bigger the HD you can get the better obviously, since a server is supposed to have more storage than normal.

Also remember to backup those photos. Don't rely on a single hard disk to keep them forever. I did that once and I almost regret it. Thankfully it came back to life long enough to get the valuable photos off.