Basic help with servers and mass storage

[jdbnsn]

I know this isn't a tech forum persee, but I was wondering if anyone can help me understand the basics of what a server is and how I could take many hard drives and compile them into a data juke-box of sorts. In the end, I would like to connect two computers, my main PC and a second server or storage machine. Get anyone point me in the right direction or explain the basics? Thanks so much!
Jon

[opengswede]

for server storage space look into RAID or LVM (google is your friend).
LVM might be a problem (theres been reports of system crashes with too many disk access process simultaneously) but if it's a server for storage only (ie only upload / download) i think you'd be fine with that.
look into small linux systems for the server, samba would be a good idea if you're using windows for your other comps. Not sure if you know all this already, or if it's this information you want?

hope it helps anyways.

-.erik

[jdbnsn]

It's gives me something to start with, thank you!

[opengswede]

oh, forgot.
make sure you use a journaling file system such as ext3, jfs or xfs depending on your needs. These systems records what it is doing shortly before executing the command and keeps records of what the system looks like. This means that if there is an error and the system crashes, not only is there a log of what went wrong, there is also no need to scan the disc for errors, since the only point for probable error is recorded (no more lengthy scandisks which is not a pleasant thing to do on a 300+ GB disk).

If you're new to linux i'd recommed fedora core 4 or 3. the graphical installation is neat, easy and fairly quick, especially if you're looking into a server system and not lots of fancy graphical stuff.
for a smoother and more slick system go for gentoo, their installation documentation is good, but require some knowledge (on the other hand you learn a lot of disk and file management), or at least knowledge of terminal experience. Gentoo also takes an awful lot of time to install, it compiles everything for your system... (i did this on a C3/Ezra eq ~ p3-500, compiling kde took bloody forever, we are talking days here).

anyway, need more help and i'm sure there are lots of people here that know more on this than I.
-.erik

[jdbnsn]

So what about in terms of hardware setup? How does one go about connecting many hard drives together physically? I have looked at server motherboards and they don't have that many IDE attachments. Do you need some sort of special boards or case or something?

[Myrdhyn]

you use ide/scsi expansion cards/raid controllers

i would recommend reiserFS as a files system if you do linux....i use it for everything i do in linux and its never treated me bad