Hardware choices

First, I’ll look at the hardware choice. Server hardware for this kind of project will not be particularly special. Bear in mind that it won’t be running a GUI, so you won’t need that 128MB 3D graphics card. Sound is also irrelevant beyond a system beep, so no sub-woofers are required either. CPU, RAM and hard disk will be crucial as will removable storage if you are implementing an on-site backup solution.

Exactly how fast or how big this all needs to be will vary. However, as a guide, I have recently installed two such servers. One serves five people in a small office and is a Pentium II 700/256 MB RAM/40GB IDE HDD. The other serves about 50 people and runs a lot of services. It is a Pentium 4 3GHz/1 GB RAM/2x160GB SCSI RAID array. The first has a USB DVD writer and the second an AIT-2 tape drive. The first was an old desktop PC which was no longer required and the second was custom-built and rack-mounted. Of course, neither have a (permanent) monitor, keyboard or mouse attached. You can also go, if you like, for a dedicated hosting, which will give you more choice and bandwidth. But it's totally up to you.

It’s unlikely you’ll have any hardware issues specific to running free software. Especially considering the advances made by GNU/Linux distributions and the BSD options. If anything, I would be careful of older network cards and devices mounted on motherboards as some of these can use peculiar chipsets. If you do have an issue then you can buy fairly cheap GNU/Linux compatible alternatives on-line.