[SGVLUG] Linux based web-server appliance

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message----- Of Joel Witherspoon
>
> I work for a school district and we are looking to host
> our own website and many years and dollars with an provider.

(I presume you meant "and SAVE many dollars instead of paying a
provider...")

> Besides the Cobalt servers, what other type of linux based
> web server appliances are out there?

Any cast-off PC for starters ;)  [Well, maybe not the ones David is
using if you expect a significant amount of traffic -- then again,
serving plain static pages doesn't take much effort...]

I've been running a really trivial site(*) for many years out of my
house [I got DSL when it was first introduced to our area, and as such,
the only plan available was for a "static IP" ;) ] The server was
originally a 486-dx100 (or was that my firewall?) and has moved up the
ranks to it's present incarnation as a dual-PIII (at 500mhz each) which
I suspect is moderate overkill for what my site requires.  (however I
got a great deal on it due to a "fire sale" from the dot-bomb era...)

The point being that building a system specific to being "a web server"
doesn't take much -- practically any distro will get you started -- and
unless you are seriously constrained on power requirements (physical
wall power, not computing power), you can use "old" equipment in most
cases.  (though "old" equipment often uses quite a bit less power than
what most people "demand" as their desktop PC...)

Do you have any metrics from your current site?  [pages and/or bytes
transferred per month, day, hour]  Is the site heavy with server-side
"stuff" [java/perl CGI's, databases, etc.]  Do your site developers use
proprietary design tools (ASP) [I presume not, since you're asking about
linux based servers, but it never hurts to check...]

Tom

(*) on my site [http://osnut.homelinux.net] I'm using Movable Type for
the (cob)weblog portion.  (which is Perl based if I remember correctly)
I also have an instance of joomla!/Mambo on it, but it isn't really
active, and I run Awstats to track traffic (which, nowadays, is
basically from search-engine robots categorizing my site and spammer
scripts trying to fill my blog's comment/trackback entries with pointers
to their site for online poker, viagra/drugs, and basic body
modification...)