Wanting to set up a server...

sciggs · 13 May 2010

This may be in the wrong forum discussion, or even on the wrong website all together but I figured someone would be able to help me here.

I'm not really sure if this is possible so bare with me. I have an old hard drive laying around from my old laptop. I have an IDE adapter and I want to put this hard drive in my desktop as a secondary drive for all of my music and movies. I'm still kind of confused on setting the master and slave drive settings but that is a different topic. I want to install Windows Server on the 2nd hard drive and created a WLAN in my house for my roommates and I. Is this possible to have both Server and 7 running on the same machine? If not, I could fix up my old laptop and just use it strictly as the server. I realize that I can just set up sharing for roommates but I really want to get a server started. Any help/links with this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

acurasd · 13 May 2010

It is possible to put two operating systems on the same computer but you can't have them running simitanously... only one at a time.

I cant help you set the computer up... I have no problem with that... but if you are just setting up a simple server.. Windows 7 can do just that... Server is more advance.. like setting up domains.

Like how advance do you want your network to be? permissions... umm do you want homegroups ... how many computers do you have in your house? Can you give us a little more detail on your situation on your setup

zzz2496 · 14 May 2010

Install "FreeNAS" in a VirtualBox VM container, plug your old HDD, connect the HDD to the "FreeNAS" VM, set sharing...

zzz2496

sciggs · 14 May 2010

Yeah I'm going to start interning soon under a network administrator so I really want to build a home server so I can get familiar with it and test on it.

zzz that sounds interesting I may try that. I'd like to get Server 2003 running though if it is possible.

pparks1 · 14 May 2010

zzz2496 said:

Install "FreeNAS" in a VirtualBox VM container, plug your old HDD, connect the HDD to the "FreeNAS" VM, set sharing...

You could also try out using OpenFiler as well. That's the NAS software that I have used many times at work and it's pretty straight forward and simple to setup and it offers good performance and features.

But I agree with trying to learn all this stuff in a VM. So much easier to test with, screw up, backup, and restart and try over with. I do almost everything virtually these days.

sciggs · 14 May 2010

Yeah all of the servers we use at work are virtual. We just remote desktop to the console. It's really neat but like you say it would be good for me to backup, test, and restore with no worries.

surfasb · 15 May 2010

You'll have to setup Server 2003 as a seperate VM. Then plug the old HD into into the VM as a Windows File Share. Then voila. It makes more sense to just share the HD from Windows 7 as a File Share. If you want to learn to use Server 2003, I suggest you get a book and run it without any mission critical data connected to it. It isn't all that dissimilar from Windows XP. A LOT of the knowledge is very interchangeable.

More importantly is to shore up your knowledge of the OSI model. That is where the vast bulk of complexity in networking. Server 2003 is cake. Takes a couple days to master. Everything else is documented under TechNet.

zzz2496 · 15 May 2010

surfasb,

I'd stay away from Windows Server if I were you... The system overhead is just too GREAT compared to the service it provided (File server)... Unless you need a specific Active Directory domain environment, I don't see why I'd ever need a Windows server... FreeNAS (FreeBSD) install footprint is less than 300MB, using less than 100MB memory, it super light weight, accompanied by Web interface provided by LightHTTPd... It's all you'll ever need from a file server.

zzz2496

sciggs · 15 May 2010

surfasb said:

You'll have to setup Server 2003 as a seperate VM. Then plug the old HD into into the VM as a Windows File Share.

Could you elaborate on that? Or point me to a link or something. Sorry, this is still kind of confusing to me. Yeah I just really want to set up up 2003 to get used to it and learn a little bit about domains and the active directory.

surfasb · 16 May 2010

zzz2496 said:

surfasb,

I'd stay away from Windows Server if I were you... The system overhead is just too GREAT compared to the service it provided (File server)... Unless you need a specific Active Directory domain environment, I don't see why I'd ever need a Windows server... FreeNAS (FreeBSD) install footprint is less than 300MB, using less than 100MB memory, it super light weight, accompanied by Web interface provided by LightHTTPd... It's all you'll ever need from a file server.

zzz2496

Hard to disagree there. Server 2003 provides far too much functionality for a file share.

sciggs said:

surfasb said:

You'll have to setup Server 2003 as a seperate VM. Then plug the old HD into into the VM as a Windows File Share.

Could you elaborate on that? Or point me to a link or something. Sorry, this is still kind of confusing to me. Yeah I just really want to set up up 2003 to get used to it and learn a little bit about domains and the active directory.

First setup a Virtual Machine. Download something like VirtualBox.

Next, download a copy of Server 2003. Microsoft allows you to run a copy of Server 2003 for 90 days without a product key. Install that.

From there, it just like sharing folders in XP.

I don't have any links. Learning Server 2003 by playing with it is like trying to learn aerodynamics by flying a plane. You currently lack a solid foundation of computer networking that will hamstring you.

Server 2003 and networking in general is one of those things that is best learned from a book. Otherwise, you'll have no idea what 90% of the buttons/programs do.