Tomorrow I am receiving an older business level server that was not needed anymore and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to some ideas i could use it for. I am very keen to learn and experiment with some uses either for home use, sharing with friends, or maybe even host some local business websites to gain some experience.
From what i have been told it sounds like it has reasonable specifications for what i would be using it for as far as i know just to play around with. I have been told it has 4 x Xeon processors, 6 x 18gb hardrives and another 9 x 18gb harddrives on a RAID controller, and is running windows server 2003.

Can anyone suggest some practical and useful ideas i could look into for home use or anything else? or giving permission to friends to upload files for each other to share between each other etc?

Any info and/or links would be greatly appreciated.

Make a big ass website

You could make a webserver or something, however, you have to remember that if you are going to plug it in to your home internet connection, and you decided to host some local businesses, your internet connection would get pretty slow.

If you went down the colo route, it'd be very expensive.

I'd use it as a file server and indeed give your friends access to it trough ftp or something. You can store a lot of stuff on 2 TB

Maybe also run BOINC on it? As you've got 4 Xeon's that are doing nothing most of the time probably, might as well use it for something good like BOINC

GIVE IT TO ME

a firewall?

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Originally posted by Voldemort
a firewall?

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To be honest... A quad Xeon is enough to turn it in webserver+fileserver+firewall+whatever all at once. Certainly if it's running at home without much users. Joining some nice grid computing project where you can waste your unused CPU cycles on would be cool too.

But be sure to put it at a place where you won’t hear its noise too much .

Server hardware is designed for top performance at the time (which doesn't mean much when it is several years old), reliability and massive expansion -- but other than that, it's still just a PC.  It will work fine for any of the uses you mention (as would any PC with appropriate software installed on it).  Although, once you see it, you may decide rather quickly that isn't anything you want running in your home 24/7.   It is going to be huge, heavy, loud, and heating up the room.

Windows 2003 Server OS is the same Windows you are used to, except for additional components.  Play around with it, decide what you want to have it do, post any specific questions you might have.  You can find almost everything you'd want to know about it at http://support.microsoft.com/.  If possible, try to get a CD and licence key for it along with the hardware.

Ok so today dad bought home the server and hard disk controller and boy can i say they are big and very heavy. We have decided to keep it in the garage possibly on a bracket so that way the noise should hopefully not be a problem. (i had a quick look inside and the size of the fans are absolutely huge so i gather they would make a bit of noise).
The hard drives have been wiped so currently there is no operating system on it at all. I have access to a legal copy of the most recent windows server edition if i wish to put that on there, otherwise open to suggestions.
The ftp idea sounds like a good one and granting access to friends to upload/download stuff does anyone have any links to information regarding setting up accounts with passwords etc so that way its restricted to private use? also for them to download anything is still going to be limited by the speed of my upload connection right? and that is pretty slow so maybe its not the best idea..
I will definately be dedicating some of the space for storage of files in home use i just want to come up with something else useful as well. I just had the thought while writing this post for using it for video converting and downloading instead of having to leave my room computer on overnight.

Also is there a way (possibly ftp) where if i got to uni one day and thought oh shit i forgot to bring in something or email that document to myself. and i could go into the library and access my home documents (without having to have uploaded them previously cos that kinda defeats the purpose of remembering) and then download it, without installing anything on the uni computers.

Thanks very much for the interest and replies. If anyone can think of anything else that has not been mentioned dont hesitate to suggest as im open to learning and looking into anything.

You could use Windows Server, or you could try out a server-oriented version of Linux. Both will support FTP.

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I have access to a legal copy of the most recent windows server edition if i wish to put that on there, otherwise open to suggestions.

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The ftp idea sounds like a good one and granting access to friends to upload/download stuff does anyone have any links to information regarding setting up accounts with passwords etc so that way its restricted to private use? also for them to download anything is still going to be limited by the speed of my upload connection right?

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I will definately be dedicating some of the space for storage of files in home [...]. I just had the thought while writing this post for using it for video converting and downloading instead of having to leave my room computer on overnight.

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Also is there a way (possibly ftp) where if i got to uni one day and thought oh shit i forgot to bring in something or email that document to myself. and i could go into the library and access my home documents (without having to have uploaded them previously cos that kinda defeats the purpose of remembering) and then download it, without installing anything on the uni computers.

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Originally posted by Adeptus
Tip: don't bother with the IIS FTP service that is part of Windows Server unless you need Active Directory integration.

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Hi,

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Originally posted by RaceProUK
Or you want to run both webhosting and FTP, in which case just stick with IIS (or Apache).

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I thought Apache did include FTP?
* RaceProUK checks
Meh, ah well.

Unless he has good upload speed running anything will be awful.

i have about 512KB upload speed(max download speed from me 70kb/s)

large files via FTP pretty pointless i guess, Websites well ok if they get busy pointless again.

Personally i'd fine a nice place to put it Co-location. then you could run anything easy.

In my opinion i'd be looking co-lo for my dedicated game server if i had that server.

Running it from home with out a good upload speed in my opinion is waste of what seems like a pretty neat machine

I guess if you want to learn your best of installing windows 2003 server

then download WAMP(apache mysql php) http://www.wampserver.com/en/ that will sort you for your web server. pretty simple and easy. learn your stuff and then go co-lo is my opinion.

Sell it on eBay. It'll probably be worth something. Then maybe you can use the money to buy a PS3/ NWI/ 360, or anything else that is useful to you. (Obviously you can also donate it to Patchou!)