Page 6 - February_Newsletter_2021

Installation

The first thing to trip me up, plugged it in, a light came on but nothing else! I eventually found that
there is an intruder detection micro-switch, so it won’t start up without the cover on. Put the cover on
and then it sprang into life.

As you might imagine, the BIOS settings are rather more extensive, there are options for RAID
(redundant array of inexpensive drives) which I decided to avoid for the time being, and several other
things which I left as default.
I downloaded Ubuntu Server 20.04 to a USB, plugged it in and, with a keyboard and monitor con-
nected, I installed it. Once the OS was installed I could log in to it from my desktop, so keyboard
and monitor no longer needed. I then moved it up into the loft, out of the way and that is where it
lives. I have installed software for sync with my other machines and a few other things.

Observations

◆ Generally when you get a new computer one of the things you notice is how fast it is to boot.

Not so with a server! My desktop takes about 32 seconds from power to asking for a pass-
word, my new superfast server takes 4 minutes 38 seconds! Although that is not really a fair
comparison. Looking at the screen when the server boots most of that time is spent doing
hardware and configurations tests to make sure that all is well before it starts the boot se-
quence, and it must be remembered that whilst it is normal for a desktop to be powered off at
night at least, a server will typically run for months between re-boots. So the additional time
to start up is well worth it for the extra hardware checks.

◆ It has 5 small but powerful fans inside for cooling. On power up these fans run a full speed,
the noise level is similar to a large vacuum cleaner, however after about 30 seconds, when it
has done some of its internal checks they throttle back to a much more reasonable level, but it
is still not quite quiet enough to keep it in the living room.

◆ There is no HDMi port, the only way to connect a monitor is with VGA. No need for fancy
graphics on a server!

Conclusion

I guess the real questions is – am I happy with it?

Well time will tell on the reliability aspect but it looks good so far, very solidly built which gives con-
fidence. I haven’t done any benchmark tests but from what I have seen it seems to run considerably
faster than my old server.
Value for money I think it is outstanding, I believe because companies generally would not consider
second hand computer equipment, so stuff like this is very reasonably priced.

So yes, I am very happy with it!

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Mick Sulley 24 Jan 2021