Ubuntu on a Dell PowerEdge 1900 as a Homelab Server

Server Hardware

Currently, my home server is running on an old Dell Poweredge 1900 Server. The hardware as configured in my server is a dual, quad core Xeon processor running 32 Gigabytes of Ram. The RAID controls offers over 3 Terabytes of RAID 5 storage. The server chassis is bombproof and my “little” server tips the scales at an impressive 90 pounds.

This server comes equipped with six very loud high speed fans to keep it from overheating. It is not possible to reasonably run this server in the home unless you quiet the fans a bit. Fortunately, I found a great article on exactly now to do accomplish this task. I would not do this normally, however as a seldom overworked server for my purposes at home I do not see the harm.

https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/01/how-to-make-a-dell-poweredge-quieter/

Once I performed the quieting operations by replacing the six cooling fans and a firmware update, I am able to easily work all day next to the server with any noise issues. At some point in time, I would like to pull the spindle based drives from the server and configure it with SSD’s. For now, it is good enough and the hardware was given to me by a friend. Eventually, it would be nice to update to Ubuntu 22.

Operating System

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is the operating system of choice for my home server. I would have preferred to use Debian, however I was not able to get it installed properly due to a driver issue. I don’t recall exactly the issue, but the Debian OS simply would not boot. I have the home server nestled in a server cabinet and connect to it primarily using ssh. Ubuntu does have one of the best Linux desktop, however it does not compare to Windows or Apple. I do have a monitor hooked up to the server but this is solely for boot up purposes.

Services

The server runs a few websites for some domains I own, including Destination4x4.com and this website. Both sites are built using WordPress running on Apache2, PHP and MySQL. Running my own server means that I can have unlimited file storage and or configure anything as I see fit. I also have my domain email running on the server using the postfix mail program suite and a variety of spam blocking services.

My Ubuntu server runs DNS for the internal network. Domain Name Server (DNS) is a simple service which allows an admin to map and domain name (www.jamesrathbun.com) to the appropriate IP Address for the computer. A private DNS server allows me to map non routable DNS names which I own to the internal IP addresses of the server. Additionally, the server will cache commonly used domain names, which means once I have lookup a record, subsequent looks will be cached locally and theoretically a little bit faster for me.

Often forgotten, I am paranoid about loosing my documents and photos graphs. My home server allows me to store everything I need, securely backed up on a redundant storage system. I don’t trust gogle and facebook for anything and would hate to loose a file.

Over the coarse of my life, I have acquired a solid CD collection of music. I have ripped these CD’s into MP3 file and stream them on every media player within my house. I love apps such as Pandora and Amazon Music, but if I don’t need download them, why should I do so?