Creating a Server Computer

[Bhavik]

Hello

I go to college and we have a sick connection. We are allowed to run anything we want. Me and a friend of mine want to create a Bit Torrent Seeder Box.

We scrapped up parts we owned and and going to throw these parts together.

PII Dual Processor I believe (2) 450 Mhz Chips. (We will later upgrade to (2) 800 Mhz Chips which will be the max.)

I believe it has 1 GB of Ram.

It has atleast 160 GB of HD space.

It has a PNY 128 MB Video Card (Only space card we had)

It has a Audigy 2 ZS Audio Card (Only space card we had)

I believe it has an internal SCSI port on the motherboard.

What I'm trying to get to is. I want to Install Windows 2003 on it, but not sure which verison to install.

After we install it we want to disable everything that isn't needed for serving as a BT Seeder.

If you know of any guides online or if anyone who already runs one of these would be willing to help me once we get this setup that would be great.

Thank You for your time and I await your response.

[pawan]

Windows 2003 Web Edition is the lightest one.

Pawan

[thebrad13]

I'm running Windows server 2003 Enterprise on a 450MHz machine with 128Mb RAM. And it's running a AD.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Run Standard Edition. Web Edition is the lightest, but it also leaves out features that you may need later. You also can't create an AD using Web Edition (should you decide to do so later).

Also, leave out the Sound Card since you won't need it. Not only is it a good idea to disable any software features you don't need, but it also helps not to add hardware that's not required. It's one less thing that can cause problems.

[-I-]

Use Web Edition,

Since you seem to be a scollar (right?) and you dont seam to be that teachy to actual want a windows domain controler, -

Also buying the student license for 2k3 web (instead of standard) wil save you about 50+ dollar -

nmX.Memnoch is right about the soundcard though -

Lose it, its not a thing you'd want on a server (maybe a small tip is to put it on ebay and trade it for a raid controller card - so youd' be able to add more disks in the future, (promise is a good - and not to expancive brand for raid devices)

if you actualy want raid - you probebly want a ATA133 based (raid 0 / raid 1 / or preferably raid 5) enabled device,

also keep in mind that youd want to disable as many services as you can...

Edited December 18, 2005 by -I-

[tommy_vercetti]

Hi,

He just wants to run a Bit Torrent Seeder Box, nothing else. You can use Web, but I would recommend Standard as it does not have the ten concurrent connections limit.

[-I-]

webserver doesn't either.

to explain a bit more, on web edtion this only aplies to remote conections with (ms remote desktop) and the <shared folders> IIS or windows versions of apache seam to work just fine, also things like IRC of Bittorrent seaders can have more than just 10 conections, -

at least i never encountered any problems at all..

[tommy_vercetti]

Hi,

"-I-" great work with the USP 5.1

I suppose from what I know Web edition can not be used as a proper server, they put this restriction otherwise everybody would go and get the Web which as I know is cheaper.

It does have 10 connections limit, In the sense that at any given time only 10 ppl can access it. Since it's on a University there are going to be ppl trying to access it, so thought I'd give my 2 cents worth

P.S. Correct me if Im wrong

Edited December 18, 2005 by tommy_vercetti

[nmX.Memnoch]

The 10 connection limit is just like that of Windows XP. It only applies to accessing shares on the server...it does not apply to 3rd party software as there is no way Microsoft can impose that sort of limit. I don't believe that connection limit applies to IIS though...it'd be a waste to pay for a Web Edition license if it did. You can compare the differences between Editions here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003...turesorter.aspx

One thing to also note is that Web Edition is limited to 2 CPUs and 2GB RAM. This is more than enough to host a BitTorrent seeder, but it's also something to think about in that the hardware support is much more limited than even the Standard Edition.

I still say go with Standard Edition. It'll offer you more options in the future. Setting up a server like this always start out with one intention but then as you become more familiar with things you start to realize "Hey, I can do this with it, too"...Web Edition will limit those possibilities.

[Bhavik]

Thank You everyone for your imput. I have decided to go with the Windows 2003 Standard Edition. My friend won't have access to the parts till the end of this term due to some low grades (C-) so We will be just collecting parts. I have a 14" monitor which I think will be more than enough for the server and takes up very little room. I have a full tower case which gives us a lot of room to put in many hard drives.

Any more suggestions would be great.

[TravisO]

I should point out that if you just want to seed torrents, you won't see any difference between this being a 2003 server box vs an XP box.

[Bhavik]

Well it is going to start out as a BT Seeder Box, but later on might get used for storage and etc...

The storage might actually get done sooner than I thought so what is a good application for having a storage place. Also giving out accounts and managing them and also limiting space for certain accounts and etc...

[cluberti]

If it's server 2003 and the drives are NTFS, you can use the built-in NTFS quota management, or, if you've got Server 2003 R2, a much more robust Quota Management tool that can do file and folder quotas as well (rather than just user quotas on a drive or folder tree).