What should I do with this server?

[kleinma]

Ok in our office, someone bought a dell server, but as of yet, it has not been used for ANYTHING.

So I want to put it to some good use, but I don't really have a good idea as to what I can use it for to help me out here in my development.

It currently has 2003 sever installed on it.

There are a few things I can't do with it

Those are:
1) It has to stay windows 2003 server (althought not nessesarily the current installation of it)

2) I can't give it to you, so please don't ask

3) It will not be used in any sort of production environment, but can be used for dev environment


I thought about installing IIS and using it for my development of asp.net apps, thus taking away the need to have IIS and ASP.NET running on my dev box taking up memory and CPU. That is about all I came up with though...

If you guys had a similar server, what good use would you put it to?

The system is an Intel Xeon 3.4Ghz with 2GB ram and SCSI 15000RPM Hard Drives in a RAID 1 (mirrored) array.

[sevenhalo]

You can give... Oh wait... Nevermind.

If you can "slip" it into production (let it run along side, not in the middle); I've always loved having state machines. They have been my saving grace when it comes to debugging and tracing errors (and monitoring usage, locking applications). You'd have to make some changes on prod to get it working with your curent apps, but even for "going forward" development; they're God sends.

[kleinma]

Well the only reason I said it won't be for production, is because the only server we currently have an need for in this business is a webserver, and we have that hosted by a 3rd party, and do not plan on bringing webhosting in house.

[sevenhalo]

Ohh ya, you probably won't gain anything from a state machine then... I would assume your host takes care of everything for you.

Since it sounds like everything else is external, the only other suggestion I can think of is a music server (house mp3's and such for everyone at work). Either that, or cut down on a couple terminals and make them thin clients (for other inhouse operations)?

[kleinma]

There are only 4 of us in the office.

I may just use it as a means to learn more about 2003 server and what I can do with it

[gigemboy]

Hire a Fifth person in the office so the machine can be better utilized.. *cough cough* *me* *cough cough*

Use it for a print server, a file server, move everything you can onto it... try to get something out of it... Active Directory server (to play around, since you dont really need it for 4 peeps....)

[kleinma]

You are a little far away all the way down in TX. You wouldn't like the cold weather we have right now

[gigemboy]

I hate our cold weather we have now.. and its like 60 degrees...

[kleinma]

yeah well my car told me it was 25 today, which was better than when it told me it was 20 yesterday...

[-TPM-]

If you need to test your software on different OS's you could use it to host virtual machines.
If you want to be able to connect from home you could use it as a VPN end point/ RAS server.
If you do any 3D animation you could use it as a render server.

[kleinma]

Now that I built my new dual core machine, I will soon be retiring my P4 2.4HT PC to be a testbox/virual machine host. (my current testbox is a 1.0Ghz machine that you would laugh at if you saw it)

The HDs aren't that big in the server (only 25GB) so running multiple OS installations on a virtual machine would cause it to run out of space rather quickly. (even though I know this would be a better host machine than the one I am going to use)

the VPN might be an idea, I currently log into my system via remote desktop which I know is not as secure. I did change the RD port and I did set the encryption level to high, but I know its still not the same as using a VPN. Sadly I know little about VPNs or how to implement them. Got any good tutorial links?

I don't do any 3d animation. I do render some video (adobe premiere Pro/encore), but I dont know if I would be able to install them on the box. I have to check licensing.

[-TPM-]

Check out 'configue Your Server Wizard' under admin tools you can set it up from there. You can import and export VM's so you could just store your active machines on the HD.
I wrote a tutorial for setting up a client connection if your interested.

[kleinma]

are you saying windows 2003 has the ability to host virtual machines? Don't you need software like virtual PC or something?

[-TPM-]

Yes you'll need host software, but you can get that for free...

[kleinma]

I have virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server (i think 2005)

[-TPM-]

You should be set then (if you wanted to use it)
Something else I just thought of, you could make it a cd-rom server. Wishing I had one of those right now, I seem to have misplaced my XP cd :S

[kleinma]

I generally mount ISOs using alcohol 120, or using microsofts ISO mount utility. I get most of my stuff via MSDN download, and I dont generally spend time burning CDs... using ISOs is sooo much better (unless you need to boot to CD of course)

[-TPM-]

It'd be a good place to keep those ISO's then.

[visualAd]

I have one word for you: vmWare

[kleinma]

I have one word for you: vmWare

was discussed above

[visualAd]

If you want to sample some opf the VM's without buying a license you can download some prebuilt ones and run them in the player. They are limited to free operating systems but none-the-less, can be useful for testing. The webbrowser applicance is one of the most useful and the Oracle 10g data envrionment.

[RobDog888]

Install SQL Server 2005 w/Reporting Services (I know you have it) for use with either winform apps or web site backends all in the name of learning and testing. You wont have to bog down your new local system with SQL at all.

[kleinma]

Rob that actually isn't a bad idea. I will consider that.

Although I am 1 step in that direction already. My SQL Server 2000 is installed on a different box than this PC. Its on this ADM 2800+ machine next to me. That machines only job is to be our sofware processing server, and my dev SQL Sever

its hooked up to a rimage CD duplicator/printer, which is a pretty cool piece of hardware, it picks up CDs and writes them and prints them for us. And it came with .NET librarys to interface with it

[kleinma]

If you want to sample some opf the VM's without buying a license you can download some prebuilt ones and run them in the player. They are limited to free operating systems but none-the-less, can be useful for testing. The webbrowser applicance is one of the most useful and the Oracle 10g data envrionment.

I have MSDN so I get all the operating systems (microsoft anyway) through there.

I heard VMWare was going to start offering some of their software for free