Hmm. Home server/router pondering
Right now the home network is pretty simple. I’ve consolidated all of the server functions (web, dns, email, blogs, database, VoIP, etc) into a single Debian box, behind the Linksys RV042 router/firewall. Wireless is provided by a couple of Apple Airport Express boxes (one for G, one for N) and there’s also a gigabit switch as a backbone. Other than the Debian box, the rest are fanless and silent, which has been a continuing goal once we moved to a much smaller house!
(There’s other gear on the net, but it’s not relevant here.)
The Debian box has 4 drives in it right now, 1 for Linux and 3 250s in a RAID5 hardware array:
This works, and is stable and quiet-er. Or ish. It’s definitely not silent, though it’s hard to measure noise in any useful way. (I have a decibel meter, and I tried, sorry. Too many variables.)
One idea I’ve been kicking around is this: Other than disk, everything served by Debian now could run on much smaller machine, perhaps even (gasp!) one without fans.
Check this out: It’s an Asus EEE Box, a Atom-based PC for under $300:
(Wikipedia page is here for more info)
I was just reading a bit about IPv6 and researching what it’d take to add it to the home network, when I found smallnetbuilder.com. It seems to be a really good site for material like this, as well as NAS, wireless and router reviews. S/he likes the Untangle software bundle, which is a polished firewall/filter/router system. I personally prefer OpenBSD for firewalls, as pf can still do the most tricks, but I gotta admit that the GUI polish of Untangle is compelling. Here’s a screenshot from the Untangle site:
The files currently on the Debian RAID have mostly migrated to the iMac now (iTunes is quite nice for music management), so losing the RAID array is do-able. I’ve also got a co-worker with a hand-me-down NAS RAID that might work. So perhaps Untangle or something Debian-based on the Eee Box might work.
From what I can find, the Linksys RV042 I’m using now lacks IPv6, so something like this is compelling.
Amazing times that we live in, eh?
