Edubuntu Server

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007, Uwe Geercken wrote:

> actually I do not need a grafic card on the server but I though it  
> would be good to have a cheap basic one, just in case I would want to  
> work on the server or use an attached beamer or so.

You definitely need _a_ graphic card, I just don't think you need an
expensive one -- particularly not if it's going to require you to run a
proprietary driver.  I imagine there may be a basic one built-in on the
motherboard but perhaps not.

The first review I found of that card suggested it was £300 which seems a
lot.  On reflection, I can now see cards by that name for £30 so I'm not
clear where that came from :-)

> to your other point. can you recommend a brand of raid controllers  
> that will work fine? what about the disk. any basic recommendations  
> for it (brand/size)?

These are worth a read:

	http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
	http://linas.org/linux/raid.html
	http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Gentoo_Install_on_Software_RAID
	http://ashtech.net/~syntax/blog/archives/53-Data-Scrub-with-Linux-RAID-or-Die.html

Personally, I mostly use linux's software raid (also called md).  Compared
with a cheap RAID controller, I'd say you'd be better off with md.
However, a good hardware RAID controller which 

 - has battery backed buffers (little RAM modules and a watch battery) on
   it
 - has proper monitoring tools on linux so it can tell you when a disk
   fails 

is probably better.  This may not be cheap though.  I'm not up-to-date
enough to recommend a controller I'm afraid.  There is some debate over
whether hardware or software raid are more reliable.  I doubt performance
will be an issue with 10 machines.

	http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008696.html

Gavin