In the picture above is pididu.com . See it? It’s the little netbook on the desk, which I got for $60 on craigslist. Previously, the site ran from the tower computers below, but those are now unplugged.
I love my little MiniServer. It takes only 6 watts when running, even with the mouse and keyboard plugged in. Unless I’m actually working at the station, the monitor goes into standby, taking only 0.3 watt. And since the netbook lid is closed, there is no display there to drain power. So the whole setup can be left on 24/7 without costing a lot. It also never gets hot. This is a far cry from the giant servers I worked with at work, but for the purposes of this website, it’s enough. If you notice any slowness, what you’re seeing is our internet connection, not the server itself. The server can deliver several hundred times the speed of our upload internet connection.
Specifications:
HP Mini 110 with N270 Atom processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard disk
Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS
Apache2, MySQL, PHP5, Sendmail, Samba, FTP, ssh
Wordpress multisite
I replaced the hard drive with an SSD, so now the server draws even less power. 03-APR-2017 Update:
The original netbook is still the server, but I also configured a Raspberry Pi (original model) with 8 GB flash card as the fallback server. In the rare times that I’m doing hardware maintenance on the netbook (like changing the battery, or upgrading the hard drive), the Pi takes over.