3

I have an old ASUS Eee Pc 901. Not much use as a portable PC nowadays with tablets and 5" mobiles. So I'm thinking of using it as a simple 36W whisper-silent home server. For a skype-to-sip bridge, for instance.

However I have never used a low-powered or solid state computer as "always on" server before.

What kind of risks or gotchas can I anticipate for an old Eee PC?

2 Answers 2

1

I wouldn't use android, it's really not suited as a server OS. Debian or Ubuntu server, run headless, would be your best bed (or any other headless server variant, if you prefer slack, centOS or Gentoo etc). Most of the time it stayed fairly cool, but under load it got 'uncomfortably' hot - not so hot that I couldn't touch it, but warm enough that I had to do a couple of test touches to be sure that was the case.

I'd definitely recommend booting from a fast SSD card.

(Apologies, this was intended as a comment to my other answer.... I'm in my first hour with the StackExchange iPad app.)

1
  • At current, I'd have to agree with you on that. I tried Android x86 (eee-specific build) but about the half apps I use glitched badly or worse, subtly. That might change in later builds of Android x86; but as the original Eee PC line fades into the past, I'm not holding my breath. I did have good success with Puppy Linux. I'd highly recommend it for netbooks expect its "distance" from the main forks and distros of Linux make application currency less and access to proprietary apps harder. Sep 26, 2014 at 23:48
2

I used my 901 as a basic home server for a while - it certainly worked fairly well... until it didn't. My issue was the SSD lifespan - unless your 901 has a Hard Drive (which I believe was only on the 900), these old 901's had two SSDs, neither of which has a particularly long lifespan, but particularly the larger MLC unit. Certainly not the number of read/write cycles you get from a newer SSD.

Other than that, your basic problems are performance and heat if you run much above idle - they weren't designed to be always on, nor run flat out, and can get fairly warm after a few hours of use. I believe this may have contributed to the death of my SSD.

As for performance, they don't have much RAM, what they do have is slooow, and the early Atom processors don't have much power. You're limited to 100Mbps ethernet, too.

Storage is definitely an issue - the internal SSDs are slow, at around 20-30Mbps read speed. The SD card and USB slots are all USB 2, so are really no better.

I very quickly moved all my media and file storage use away from the unit, and never even attempted to do anything really intersting with it, as it was quickly obvious that it wouldn't work although if you're just wanting it to be a basic VPN, DNS etc unit then it will do the job.

And finally, they really aren't that low power at 36W considering how puny they are. I ditched mine for a HP Microserver, which is significantly more powerful, much more flexible and only a little more thirsty at 50W.

1
  • Interesting. I might install Android for x86 for a RAM and SSD friendly OS; perhaps with Debian installed onto the Linux kernel substrate or offloading the system drive to one of those disposable USB sticks. Maybe underclock it. How warm did it get? If kept in a cool ventilated place, would it be ok? Sep 25, 2014 at 22:45

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .