Out with the old...

OK, so what is in the basement rack now?  Here goes:

Server # 1:

               This machine is an old Solid Modeling workstation from Intergraph.  Real old, probably 1998 or so.

• Dual Pentium II 333 MHz processors
  
• 256 mb RAM
  
• One internal 8gb SCSI system drive
  
• Four internal 160 gb IDE data drives
  
• Windows 2003 Server, free license from a launch event
  

Server #2:

               This machine is an old Gateway server machine.  It was a faithful Exchange server for years...

• Pentium III 600 MHz Processor
  
• 512 mb RAM
  
• Three 9 gb and one 18 gb internal SCSI hard drives
  
• Two 160 gb and three 400 gb external USB 2.0 Hard Drives
  
• Windows 2003 Server, free license from a launch event
  

I know... pretty pathetic.  Neither one of them even has a video card that I can get full resolution out of, but who cares, they are servers!  I don't need a fancy graphics card!

At my quick count, that is 2,204 gb, or 2.14 tb.  But most of Server one is empty... server two was supposed to replace server one a while ago, but I never migrated all of the home automation programs (Caller ID tracking, mostly) off of it.

In the next post, I will detail the items that I have ordered from NewEgg for my new Windows Home Server, and maybe a little about why I bought what I bought.  I did a lot of research, and I can't wait for the stuff to arrive.

Am I really blogging?

Not sure why I decided to do this, maybe just as a journal or changelog to help me keep track, but here I am.

My name is Bushman, and soon I will no longer be a WHS virgin.

I am an IT professional of 15 years in Massachusetts, primarily a network administrator, but a part time programmer as well.  I love my job, and take pride in the things I do.  I run a large network of 350 or so windows based machines at work, and quite a few at home as well.

As every IT professional knows, when you are a "computer guy" at work, you also become many people's defacto "computer guy" in the off hours.  It's a pain, but I've gotten used to it.  One of the distinct side benefits is that people tend to give you their old computer stuff... just about everything that I have running at home is someone else's hand-me-down.  It all works, and works fairly well, and I have augmented it as much I could on the cheap to serve my needs at home.

But I bought a Kill-A-Watt meter and hooked it up to the stack and saw that I was pulling 380 watts average, and decided that I had to do something to save some money on electricity.  Some research on the web brought me to such sites as homeserverhacks.com and mswhs.com, and I decided that I would try the WHS route.

The next post will detail what I have in the basement stack now, and what I intend to replace it with.  All the parts should arrive within the next couple of days, and I'll detail the build and install experience as I go along.