Topic: 5.6 instal OK to P133-32Mb RAM-RAID1

[Ray Mitchell]

Dear All
I see plenty of references in the forums to problems when upgrading to v5.6 to do with memory requirements and speed etc. Thought you might like to hear of  my recent experience loading a fresh instal of 5.6.

I have just done a fresh instal onto a Pent133 with 32Mb RAM and 2x4Gb drives in a RAID1 software config. It went very smoothly. Yes the server manager panel runs a bit slowly but it works. Once setup the config does not get changed much so its not a problem. The machine only has light duty as a web/email/print/PDC/file server, but it runs quite OK.

I know the recommendation now is a minimum of 64Mb, but so far it seems happy to run on 32Mb. I will upgrade the RAM though if it shows a need.

Regards
Ray Mitchell

[Sarunas Bagdonas]

Nice to hear that !

I've some experience with PII266/32/4 and e-smith+postnuke+gallery on the top of that. Quite satisfactory results.

".. server manager panel runs a bit slowly .." - that should be really not an issue for stable system.

What about loading of your current system - how much users use this box?
Does anybody else has longer term expirience with such humble configuration ?

/sarunas

[Ray Mitchell]

Dear sarunas
There are 8 users on the LAN system.
99% of file serving is from a separate XP box.
The sme does all of PDC, email, web access & print server to 2 laser printers (has a steady stream of print jobs and internet access requests throughout the day).
It is not serving a web site to external users though.
Fairly light duty for a sme box I would say.

Regards
Ray Mitchell

[James Shields]

I was running a State sporting organisation on a Pentium 200, 64 RAM, 2.5G HDD with SME 5.5 for a number of months. The SME was doing everything (PDC, Web server, email server, file share, print share), with up to 9 Win9x clients, networked digital photocopier, laser printer. Recents use of awstats show the server was also getting a hiding from external users viewing the website.

Never had a complaint. Ironically, I recently replaced with a new Dell PowerEdge server, and had quite a few teething problems before getting it settled.

My current test server is only P166, 128 RAM, 3.2G HDD running 5.6. Although slow with server manager, it works just fine.

[dave]

It's interesting to read about user setups.  

I have a fairly light duty setup myself.  I had a tyan dual board that I was using as an NT server with dual celeron 533 on slot cards.  The kids were complaining about their slow computers so I gave them each a 533 and put their 233's in my server (they were originally a matched pair).  NT crawled but was functional.  I upgraded my server to Win2K server and it was impossible.  I retired that board and bought a newer board with a higher speed processor to make 2K happy.  Then I started exploring Linux and found SME.  I put that dual 233 board in a big old chassis, stuck some really big (size wise - 20 gig capacity) drives in it with an old compaq 2/P raid card and it runs circles around my internal Win2K server.  It hosts a half dozen web sites, I put Gallery on my family site - about 500 pics so far, email for about 35 external and 4 internal users, it's the gateway/firewall for my home network, file server.  It has run flawlessly for about a year and a half.  The only time I have to reboot is when my ISP goes down (about twice a month).  

I should have done this before spending the $$$ on a new system for Win2K...

[Paul]

I was running a PII 233 with W2k (SLOW!) and needed to upgrade to 20 clients.  I started checking out my options and decided to test the new Windows 2003 Server.  I upgraded to an Athlon XP1600, 512MB and 2X40gig Raid1.  

I proceeded to load the W2003 Beta that MS so kindly let me download/testdrive.  It was pretty nice and simple and easy to configure but it seemed almost as slow as the old server.  After doing some comparing it was no faster than the old server at sharing smaller files (less that 500KB).  Almost all of the files we share on the server are small files.  Larger files and print sharing were much faster but the majority of the use of the server was small files.  I felt shafted!!!  Then I entered the wonderful world of Linux.

I tried 8 different distros until I stumbled accross e-smith.  What a god send.  This is exactly what I needed.  E-smith could replace every MS server out there.  Now let's talk about performance.  WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It's about twice as fast on the PII 233 and Lightning WARP Speed on the Athlon XP1600.  It pulls files as if the were on a local drive.  

Now I'm running it as a File/Print/DHCP/Web/Mail/Samba server and Internet Connection Sharing/Firewall with 20 clients and it hasn't even burped.  My employees think I upgraded every box in the whole place.  I may have spent $400 on the Athlon and other parts but it was well worth it considering I could have spent another $2,000 on W2003 (what a rip off).