Mar
9
Written by:
Chris L Bennett
3/9/2009 10:35 PM
Extrenal drives are so cheap these days that anymore you can pick up a 500GB at Frys for <$70. Like many out there, I have several of them. Rather than have all of these drives connected to one PC. I would rather have a small home server. However, I'm not about to pay what HP wants for a Windows Home Server. Essentially the Home Server is a light weight version of Windows Server. So, I've looked for a long time for a small and inexpensive server that provides more functionality than just your basic NAS (Network Attached Storage).
Last week I came across an article on Slashdot regarding a new $100 embedded device designed to run Linux. The device is called a SheevaPlug. The specs for the device are quite impressive as listed below:
- 1.2Ghz ARM5 processor
- 512Mb Ram
- 512Mb Flash
- 10/100/1000 Ethernet
- USB 2.0
- SDIO Slot
- USB Development Port
Amazingly all this fits into the size of a "wall-wart" as shown in the images below:
Here is a block diagram of the internals
Out of the box you will need to go through a fairly technical process to install the boot loader and the file system image over the development board. Once Linux is installed and running you can run the normal software you would expect in a small server Samba, Apache, PHP, MySQL, NFS, etc. Quite a few Linux distributions support ARM processors including Ubuntu and thus can be used on the device. The development kit is available in small quantities through the Marvell site. I'm pretty sure I'm going to purchase one for myself to use has a light home server and as a remote backup for my virtual server.