Suggestions for a cheap little fanless server?

[pointwood]

I plan on building a little server for mail/web/file/firewall/rounter/whatever sometime when I can afford it (which is not right now, but hopefully within the next few months).

My current requirements are:
* No fans - I don't need a lot of processing power and that should (I hope) make it possible to make system that use passive cooling only. The reasons are less noise and fans don't last forever.
* USB support - needed for USB mouse and keyboard (connected through USB KVM switch).
* Two NIC's - I need one for my internet connection (currently cable connection) and to my little lan.
* 256MB memory should be enough I think, but 512MB would be nice (I don't think this will be a problem).
* It's going to run Linux, so of course it's a requirement that it works with that
* CDROM or DVD drive.
* It needs plenty of harddisk space - my current plan is to use a Barracuda V (I'm pretty satisfied with the Barracuda IV I got now and the new V should be even more quiet).
* Size: It doesn't have to be ultra compact, but small is good

I have been searching in this and other forums but I've found very few posts about using the C3 and others as small servers

In regards to board/CPU, I'm currently looking at Epia-C800 which I believe can run with passive cooling? It supports USB, got one NIC and I can add a second PCI NIC and it's cheap What other options exists? Underclocking?

I think my biggest "problems" are what case and PSU I should buy?

I live in Europe (Denmark) so one problem is to be able to find the stuff that you suggest overhere.

Thanks in advance for any replies and suggestions

[seishino]

You're building a Mail/Web/File/Firewall/Router ? Do you know how insecure it is to put your webserver on your firewall?

What is sounds like you're looking for is the pretty darn cool Lex LIGHT. 3 Ethernet Ports, 3 usb ports, 2 serial ports, an external 60 Watt power supply, and not a single fan in the entire thing. The full barebones does take a laptop drive, but your server should be running from RAM anyway . Without the case, the motherboard is quite happy with a full 3.5. In theory you can get the motherboard separately, though these have just hit the market, and don't have a lot of coverage. They're also not strict Mini-Itx, as they are more rectangular than the squarish mini-itx standard, so you'll have to enclose one yourself. It goes up to 512 MB memory using cheap 133 RAM. Barebones have been seen around for 180 lbs and below.

I have no clue about linux compatibility. They're aiming these things towards embedded systems, though, so I would expect that to be a given.

Honorable mention goes to mini-itx.com for catching glimpses of this beauty years ago, and finally nailing the announcement in august.

I thought the C800 was difficult / impossible to run fanless? by spec, only the 6xx and below run without a fan. It also, if I'm not mistaken, takes an ATX power supply. If you go with an ATX powered board, you'll want Mini-itx's 55w wart psu based upon the Morex Cubid. You probably won't need a CD Rom drive full time on a server, so why not just use a USB or Parallel based drive? It would save you some power, and cash.

[pointwood]

You're building a Mail/Web/File/Firewall/Router ? Do you know how insecure it is to put your webserver on your firewall?

No Why is it insecure? So the solution is to have 2 servers?

What is sounds like you're looking for is the pretty darn cool Lex LIGHT. 3 Ethernet Ports, 3 usb ports, 2 serial ports, an external 60 Watt power supply, and not a single fan in the entire thing. The full barebones does take a laptop drive, but your server should be running from RAM anyway . Without the case, the motherboard is quite happy with a full 3.5. In theory you can get the motherboard separately, though these have just hit the market, and don't have a lot of coverage. They're also not strict Mini-Itx, as they are more rectangular than the squarish mini-itx standard, so you'll have to enclose one yourself. It goes up to 512 MB memory using cheap 133 RAM. Barebones have been seen around for 180 lbs and below.

Looks really nice! I don't quite like is that it only takes laptop drives - I would really like something bigger But oh well, you can't get everything.

I have no clue about linux compatibility. They're aiming these things towards embedded systems, though, so I would expect that to be a given.

As long as USB, gfx and the NIC's work, I don't really care about the rest.

I thought the C800 was difficult / impossible to run fanless? by spec, only the 6xx and below run without a fan. It also, if I'm not mistaken, takes an ATX power supply. If you go with an ATX powered board, you'll want Mini-itx's 55w wart psu based upon the Morex Cubid. You probably won't need a CD Rom drive full time on a server, so why not just use a USB or Parallel based drive? It would save you some power, and cash.

It's probably me that doesn't remember correctly - the 600Mhz version it is

How do I boot it and install Linux on it? If I understand correctly it also haven't got a floppy drive?

[tm]

You're building a Mail/Web/File/Firewall/Router ? Do you know how insecure it is to put your webserver on your firewall?

The received notion is to have the server with all the services behind the firewall in some DMZ. But I'd bet that if most people did that they'd setup the firewall rules wrong, and even if they got that right, you're still not mitigating any vulnerabilities a webserver would have, since you would still need to have port 80 open. The main reason why you setup your servers in a DMZ is that if they get set up wrong (ie: you leave services on that you didn't intend), the firewall will protect you in that instance, since it will (should) disallow access to anything but explicitly allowed services. The firewall cannot easily protect an allowed service.

That said, I'd be far more concerned about the file server part than the web server. I'm hoping he meant FTP

Getting back on topic: Being in Europe actually is an advantage if you're looking for mini-itx/C3 systems (www.mini-itx.com has a big listing of retailers, many in europe). Take a look at www.linitx.com. They have a pretty good selection of mini-itx components as well as complete systems which can come with linux preinstalled (they're usually setup to boot from a compact flash memory card). Given that the default currency displayed is the pound, I'd say they're closer to Denmark than to me

[tm]

How do I boot it and install Linux on it? If I understand correctly it also haven't got a floppy drive?

Boot from CD!

[seishino]

No Why is it insecure? So the solution is to have 2 servers?

The theory goes that you don't want your outer line of defense to be owned, and you want all critical infrastructure separated from any other critical infrastructure in case someone gets root on one. Your fileserver might have some sensitive documents on it, your mailserver will have some sensitive documents on it, all of your passwords will pass through your router, and everyone can see your webserver. The most damage seems to be done by rooting your router / firewall, so I'd avoid that first .

Used to work in an ISP. Damage control is far more frequent than you would expect... And your computer gets scanned for vulnerabilities about once every 30 minutes. Plus firewalls do take some clock cycles, and it would be a shame if your network connection went soggy because you were running too many services on one low-power CPU.

tm's right, the fileserver is the really likely-to-be-broken-into part, despite the great work of the Samba team.

Looks really nice! I don't quite like is that it only takes laptop drives - I would really like something bigger But oh well, you can't get everything.

Don't you mean quieter? Seriously, though, it does take 3.5 drives, they just don't fit into the case. You'd have to make your own case, or cut a hole in the existing one and "extend" it. Neither are particularly bad options, esp with the with the setup available without the case.

[jojo4u]

I plan on building a little server for mail/web/file/firewall/rounter/whatever sometime when I can afford it (which is not right now, but hopefully within the next few months).

Barracuda V (I'm pretty satisfied with the Barracuda IV I got now and the new V should be even more quiet).

Cooling a Barracuda without airflow may be a difficult thing. You may have to install a heatsink. What about a Samsung V40 120GB? It runs cool and is even more quiet than the Barracuda (german magazine C't tested). The V is not quieter than a IV with the same platter count. The only drawback is that it has ball bearings. But i asked an owner to compare a new one with a 7 mounths old one and he could not find a difference.

[d_kay]

What is sounds like you're looking for is the pretty darn cool Lex LIGHT. 3 Ethernet Ports, 3 usb ports, 2 serial ports, an external 60 Watt power supply, and not a single fan in the entire thing.

.. but it doesn't have a S/PDIF out !!.

it was so close being my mp3 server....

[pointwood]

How do I boot it and install Linux on it? If I understand correctly it also haven't got a floppy drive?

Boot from CD!

It doesn't have a CD drive either

[pointwood]

I found another board that I think might be my best option:
http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_m_s ... boardId=81

Any comments on that?

Adding a big disk and an extra NIC could be close to an optimal solution for me

I then need to figure out what case and PSU I can put it in.

I may not be able to go completely fanless, but as long as it is just very quiet, I would be able to live with it.

In regards to the security question, I think that if I make sure to lock down the box pretty well (I got a friend that works as a linux sysadministrator at an ISP) then I should be okay.

[Gandalf]

It's not insecure at all.
The idea of the webserver is that people *CAN* access it. If you put your webserver *behind* your firewall you will *still* allow all traffic to port 80 (or .. ) to pass to the webserver .. duh. I can't think of any reason to put a webserver behind a firewall. As long as the box is secure there's nothing insecure about it.

[seishino]

The Epia-M is a nice board. Throw on that powersupply from Mini-ITX, and you should have no problem.

BTW, don't forget you can use a USB based 10-T adapter for your upstream NIC.

[Gandalf]

Another few things:

Firewalls take a few clock cycles?
My eye they do. I ran a firewall/web/file/.. server on a PENTIUM 90 with 64megs of ram (and a nice amount of storage). You don't even notice it when Berkeley IPFW is running on the box.

Samba is perfectly secure. Well it can be made perfectly secure anyway. Yada yada nothing is 100% secure but Samba is as close as it gets. Just tell your firewall to deny everything on Samba's port (don't forget SWAP at 901) when it doesn't come from inside the network. Hell don't make it network based, make it interface based.

Your fileserver might have some sensitive documents on it, your mailserver will have some sensitive documents on it, all of your passwords will pass through your router, and everyone can see your webserver

That's the idea isn't it? What's the point of a router if it doesn't route? What's the point of a webserver that no one can access and what's the point of a file server if you don't have any (sensitive or not) files on it? Whichever ISP you worked for must really love paperwork if they don't want sensitive files on fileservers!
If I install a packetsniffer on this pc I can in theory sniff all my bro's data because it passes through the network to the router. That kind of security is not up to TCP/IP or routing, it's up to the application. The application has to encrypt passwords, not TCP.
Use https, not http. Use ssh, not telnet. Duh.
I don't give a damn if someone would sniff my network and steal the password to this forum account. If I did I wouldn't be using http or I would make my entire network a switched network with very tight security.
*/rant*

[seishino]

Another few things:

*/rant*

lol! OK, I admit it. I'm paranoid. Trenches will do that to you. Still, no box is %100 safe, and not being %100 safe means eventually your security will fail. There is no Yada: Yada about it... Put an insecure box in a public IP and find out how long it lasts. Even when vigilant a box you think is secure will eventually show cracks, and you will find yourself mopping up the mess. Limiting access to IP's on your network simply means someone needs to get hold of one of your other computers to get hold of the Samba box. Or find an attack on Apache or the other services you have running on that box, which is of course what you are trying to prevent by putting them in separate physical boxes.

Perfect security is a dangerous illusion.

The danger isn't really stealing the your password to this forum. The danger is getting hold of your router, reading your logs, and redirecting www.yourbank.com to their mirror.

I'm probably paranoid, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Specialization of servers is a good thing... when one of them gets owned, only one of them gets owned. Makes mopping up much easier.

I admit it, I may be overestimating the amount of overhead for a firewall / webserver / mailserver / shell box, as I'm used to a significantly more multi-user environment than your box will ever see. To me, idle is a few hundred connections. I'd go with someone else's judgement on the power issue.

[TheMuffinMan]

I have both a webserver and firewall in one. There are reasons I don't get owned tho:

1) Never, ever install sharing stuff. Not even the packages for it.

2) Make sure you have a good firewall. The best way to do this is try to own the server yourself, and get some friends to try and own it. If you find problems/vunerabilities, fix them.

3) Don't be afraid to make different partitions for OS, web server software, and the website itself.

I won't go into the others...

[Justin_R]

Hey, if you're in Denmark, maybe you can tell us something about these Power Fluid Fans. I mean, those specs are pretty crazy. If they really are that quiet, then there's little point in making a fanless system.

[seishino]

Wow! I know that's a bit O.T, but if that fan is anything as good as it says it is... That site lists the lo-flo Papst as 12 DB, so it's probably very optimistic, but even if you assume it is only undercutting by the same ratio that makes it 3/4ths as quiet as a Papst, which is a good place to be at for any fan. And it doesn't resemble that other fluid bearing fan, so this might possibly be an entirely new beast .

You can get a VERY rough translation of that page here, and a Danish discussion autotranslated is here. There is some sort of discussion going on about low-airflow, and someone accidently setting theirs to 5 when it can be set to 7 or 12 from the instructions (sounds like a hack...). Someone is even talking about replacing their Papst with it. Thankfully, they also ran an article on the thing on the main site, but don't seem to have any fan air output comparisons. They do *seem* to say that it is quieter than the Papst, though.

We could ask the kids on the board about it, if noone here has used one. One of them must speak english or spanish or japanese.

Ok, maybe not Japanese .

[pointwood]

Hey, if you're in Denmark, maybe you can tell us something about these Power Fluid Fans. I mean, those specs are pretty crazy. If they really are that quiet, then there's little point in making a fanless system.

Short answer: They aren't.

Long answer: I bought a few of them when they started selling them and they are okay, but they are far from as good as they claim. I have just spent some time reading a Danish newsgroup about computer noise and that company certainly doesn't get positive remarks!

In regards to the fans, a different company have gotten Papst to test these Powerfluid fans and the results shows something very different. You can see the result here: http://www.jenk.dk/test_af_fluid_power.htm

The tekst is in Danish, but you should be able to understand the table that lists the primary results.

Furthermore, the fans are actually produced by a company called ADDA (well, the fans are called ADDA) - the guy behind chippen.dk has just "re-badged" them.

EDIT: seishino - most Danish people speak and write english

[Gandalf]

More nagging about security:

I personally work (occasionally) at a hospital. And let me put it this way, security is *EXTREMELY* important in a hospital, because well you don't want people to steal sensitive medical information and such. How we secured the hospital network? We unplugged it from the internet full stop. Problem solved. There is no need for our Sun server (with all patients' medical and financial info etc) to be connected to the outside whatsoever. Our webserver is a completely different box, and so is our mailserver. Our firewall is default to deny. No pc that has access to the Sun server can access the mailserver/webserver and vice versa.
We could spend thousands of dollars on fancy (non-functional) IDS systems or specialised security firms that get h4x0red every ten minutes but instead we decided to use our brain and eliminate the problem rather than solve it.

That being said: don't be too restrictive with security.
There's a simple method to check your security:
if (security > usability)
lower_security();

- Bram

[seishino]

seishino - most Danish people speak and write english

I know, but I didn't want to be one of those jerk Americans that assumes everyone should speak their language. Personally, I think everyone should learn to speak Japanese. At least then programming wouldn't seem difficult.

[NateR]

ive been using a via c3 800 mhz fanless for a while now, and its plenty a power for a server/gateway/firewall. Depending on the software, you could get away with way less than that. For a home server, your limiting factor is going to be bandwidth by far over cpu power, unless you have a residental t3 .

[pointwood]

NaTeR: What kind of heatsink are you using?

And what about the rest of the system? is your system completely fanless?

And no, I don't have a T3 I have to settle with my cable connection currently which is 1024/256kb. That is enough for me currently though.

[Gandalf]

NaTeR: What kind of heatsink are you using?

And what about the rest of the system? is your system completely fanless?

And no, I don't have a T3 I have to settle with my cable connection currently which is 1024/256kb. That is enough for me currently though.

I like my ten mbits/128kbits cable .
I too am running the EPIA fanless (except for very decent airflow in my case) with a modified Volcano7+ heatsink.

[NateR]

check out my page for the rest of the specs: www.it9.net/quiet
The only fan is in the psu--an undervolted panaflo. The air comping from it is cool, so i doubt its even necessary. but since i dont have another psu handy right now, I dont want to take any chances. The major noise from a system like this is from the harddrive--make sure to a get a quiet barracuda.

[pointwood]

So a C3 800Mhz that can be cooled passively is actually available.

Looks pretty nice!

I'm think about using a case that's a bit larger than these very tiny cases because that makes it easier to add a second NIC and I have a feeling it'll be able to handle the heat (from the barracuda disk) a bit better. It would maybe also make it possible for me to use a NoVibes "harddisk frame" too.

When I actually get the money (not looking too good right now) I'll post some pictures of it

[pointwood]

Time for another post

I haven't bought or built anything yet, but I will eventually, when my life gets back to normal...

It seems like a good thing that I haven't bought anything yet though, as some new cool stuff has been announced.

Board with dial NICs: http://www.mini-itx.com/news/cebit2003-1/

Cool silent case: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/subscribe.asp?s=1

Perfect?!

[fancontrol]

Have you considered SBCs? I use one from AAEON with a fanless PS and 3.5" drive. It's tiny; the drive is actually bigger than the motherboard. Advantech makes similar products and is easier to deal with.

It's not much from a cpu power standpoint, but it works great as a file server & distiller. I haven't run Linux on it, but I have run using only compact flash for a disk. Then it was dead silent. Almost creepy.

[pointwood]

Quite nice and cool!

However, with the case and the board I posted above, I would get a silent box too - only passive cooling, so the only noise would come from the harddrive and a Barracuda V isn't saying much AFAIK

Furthermore, I need 2 NIC's, which that board has got

And at the same time the CPU is much faster I believe