Webserver inna box?

We have just been discussing our web hosting over lunch and I offered Webboy
the possibility of putting a server on-site rather than remote hosting. At
which point I was looking at my Lacie office NAS and it struck me that
people may have come up with a boxed solution. A simple integrated unit
with memory expansion, embedded Linux and running Apache or somesuch. Can
anyone <open door> point me in a useful direction?

 

The famous DealExtreme NAS is a tiny box that cost some $43, has a
processor running Linux at a a few hundreds MHz, and offers an
Ethernet port and a USB port for plugging a disk on the web. Not sure
whether it runs Apache, but it does execute PHP. May be not the best,
but you won't find a cheaper/smaller solution, I guess Some guys
are further developing it, look for SnakeOS Google Group.

I don't see your need for memory expansion, however.

 

It needs to be reasonably capable in terms of disk/memory and will be
running Joomla.
I'm surprised I can't find anything but I guess people mostly host out.

 

I'd at least want something capable of running a full and current
standard linux os, so it's patchable/maintainable. Anything less is a
potential security risk.

 

Not quite what you are after, but http://www.ebuyer.com/product/237003 for
£200 could be worth a look

 

Now that looks ok, needs a bit of upgrading, but ok.

As it is in part to let the young webby bucks experience proper IT I'm
tempted to buy a PowerEdge 2850 from a local reseller, there are plenty on
the market. Twin Xeons, scsi and reduntant power. Rack mount the fecker in
one of our data rooms then let them install VMware, CentOS then Joomla.
That will grow them up quickly enough.

 

Why do they need VMWare?

 

I use a Mac Mini (PowerPC version) running Ubuntu. It works just fine.

 

There are plenty of rackmount solutions... But hosting the thing on-site
opens a big can of worms: bandwidth, security...

 

Depends if it's for internal or external acccess, of course.

 

Just for the exercise plus if they want to move it later makes it easy.

We may start to virtualise hospital apps next year.
As they are going to have to move away from Netware, Novel being close to
evaporation, and also upgrade from 98/XP (Vista was ignored) and I wonder if
they will consider virtualized desktops/apps (there are over 10k). I'm
certainly going to suggest it.
Interesting that the current state of play in MS licencing is DoH have
binned the national agreement (which was a steal) and Trusts will have to
re-licence individually. Unless something central is (re)done

 

It gives them some interesting new things to think about you mean.....

 

It's just a bit of PHP & a database.

Copy the files, then a SQL dump, copy that, import.

I'm a big fan of VMs, but even I wouldn't bother if that's all that's
going on the box.

 

Your assignment: "The corporate web server as a pastime for the BOFH".

You have two hours.

 

In that case, just use a cheap box that will take a linux install. Spec
1-2 GB of RAM and however much storage you need.

On a Debian based server system: Debian, Ubuntu et al:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

will do it in one fell swoop. [1]

[1] this cam be done automagically during server version install if you
don't skip past the prompt.

 

?"Hog" wrote in message
We have just been discussing our web hosting over lunch and I offered Webboy
the possibility of putting a server on-site rather than remote hosting. At
which point I was looking at my Lacie office NAS and it struck me that
people may have come up with a boxed solution. A simple integrated unit
with memory expansion, embedded Linux and running Apache or somesuch. Can
anyone <open door> point me in a useful direction?

This is very impressive: http://www.zybert.co.uk/