Building a Mega-Server with RAID, LAMP, Media, and File Serving

Preface:

Many months ago my wife’s computer blue screened.  I tried recovering the data with Ultimate Boot CDs and other traditional methods of data recovery, but was never able to pull anything off her drive.  Obviously, I’m kicking myself in the head for this since I should’ve known better – but the fact is, I realize the mistake and need to take preventative measures for the future.  To that end, I’m attempting to build a server to protect all of our information.

I’m pretty good with computers, though I’m by no means an expert in this particular arena.  Building a server is something I’d love to put under my belt, though, and so in that spirit I’d like to show you all the following project I’m challenging myself with.

The Foundation:

I’ve got a box built out of spare parts in my basement, sitting next to my TV.  It has a video card with DVI output, two 500 gig IDE drives, a DVD burner/player, and ~2 gigs of RAM.  I’ve installed LinuxMCE on top of Ubuntu 7.04 (for reasons of compatibility), but have slowly come to the conclusion that this is not going to help me accomplish my goal…

The Idea:

I want a box that does it all.  First, and most important, I need RAID running to back all my data up.  It’ll have to be a soft RAID since I don’t have a card in my box.  From what I understand, since I only have 2 drives, the kind of RAID I can run is limited.  I also want a partition set aside for a LAMP dev. server.  I do quite a bit of programming (especially lately), and would like an environment that’s backing up all of my work.  On top of that, I’d like some sort of media & document management system set up on this box to protect my videos, music, and (in best Mitch Hedberg voice) documents.

The task I’ve given myself is to build this entire server using all Open Source – and free – software.  LINUX seems like the most logical route, but the rest I’m not sure about.  Is LinuxMCE the best way to go?  Should I be using MythTV?  How many partitions am I going to need?

I suppose these are all questions I’ll have to find answers for at some point in this process, but if you want to drop me some helpful hints in the comments, I’d appreciate it!

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I’ll keep you all updated on my progress.  With a four day vacation coming up, I’ll surely have plenty of time to tinker and post the frustrations and mental & psychological breakdowns that will ensue.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.