DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

My webserver suffers from annoying and fatal flaw: it sometimes refuses to boot up. This problem has existed since March, and I’ve lived with it since then because the machine, typically, never has to reboot… I powered it down in March (after several months’ worth of error-free operation) to remove a fan, and then it crashed two weeks ago when a power outage lasted longer than my UPS. Those are the only two times the machine has had to boot up in 2001 — such is the stability of Linux.

Both times, due to some as-yet undiagnosed hardware glitch, the computer refused to boot: fans and drives would spin up, but the SCSI card’s LED would show a bus error, and the system would not beep, POST, or display video. Both times, reseating or removing components had no effect on these symptoms. And, both times, after perhaps a dozen attempts, the system eventually booted up as if nothing had ever been wrong.

Which proves to me that x86-class hardware is basically crap. I was tempted to migrate to a RISC platform, and may regret not following through on that temptation… I decided to stay with the x86 platform because it is familiar, and well-supported by my OS of choice, which means I have a wider selection of parts from which to construct the new server.

Which brings me to the question I asked a handful of engineer friends a few weeks ago: what to do? I needed a server but was basically 2 years out of the loop on hardware news. I’m capable of building a server from components — although maybe not capable of building a server that won’t develop mysterious hardware problems 18 months from now.

“Buy Dell,” one friend said. I rejected that idea immediately, convinced it would be more expensive and provide only a cookie-cutter solution that would not meet my needs. As it turned out, this conviction was only half right.

So I read, and researched, and read a lot more. I spent a week of evenings poring over reviews of CPUs, motherboards, cooling technologies, and the like. I decided that the most important criteria is that the system be quiet: after three years I can say with certainty that I am tired of working in a room that sounds like a heliport.

(There is a difference between “quiet” and “silent,” and I was definitely opting for, or settling for, the former: this server will have two high-end SCSI disk drives, which will generate more noise than would qualify as “silent”.)

Quiet- and silent-PC information and tutorials:
Piotr Mitros’ silent PC, Silent PC Guide, The Silent PC

Vendors of quiet fans, PSUs, etc: QuietPC, Directron, Plycon, A Conto

My performance needs are moderate. The current server is a 500MHz AMD K6-2, and is idle 99% of the time. I had no reason to upgrade to anything faster (except to take advantage of related technologies that might accompany a newer CPU). I am a big fan of software-based RAID, though, and plan to install a zippy Ultra-160 LVD SCSI-3 chain.

The only other requirement was that the whole mess fit into a horizontal case. Tower-style cases are more common, but for my purposes a lot less efficient.

With this statement of my needs, I was ready to begin shopping. The details follow in a future installment.