I am running out of room for my backups. I use backuppc and I have almost
filled a 150GB drive with backups from 7 computers, and I need to add
another 2 computers to the set. I have an old Dell Poweredge 1300 server
(Pentium III 550 Mhz, 500 MB RAM, PCI 33.3Mhz) that I could turn into a
backup server. I am looking for suggestions/thoughts on how to set this up.
I need to keep the cost down as much as possible; under $150.
My initial thoughts:
* Keep current 72 GB drive for OS (debian testing, about 68% full)
* Add two 500 GB SATA drives and a PCI SATA controller ~$130
* Software RAID and LVM for the two drives
* Move current 150 GB of backups to the RAID
* Backuppc now runs on this machine and slowly fills up the RAID
My questions:
1. Should I keep the 72 GB drive for OS, or put it on the RAID?
2. I can add another CPU (P III 550 MHz) processor to the box - is it worth
the effort to find one? I found one source for $5/CPU, I just need to find
the heat sink and mounting hardware. Will this improve performance?
3. The box has a built-in SCSI 68-pin Ultra2/wide bus/controller, but SCSI
drives are more expensive, at least from a cursory google search. Is this
correct? I don't think I can use SCSI drives within my budget constraint.
4. Would upgrading the memory to 1GB improve performance - top shows:
Mem: 646676k total, 639300k used 7376k free, 64548k buffers
This would add another ~$60 to my cost.
5. Should I look at hardware RAID cards - they seem very cheap, so perhaps
software is better?
4. Does this plan make sense, or is there a better way to proceed for about
the same cost?
Thanks!
Mark
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