Turn E-Waste Into Servers with Secret Server Club

Materials

Computer Hardware

• Raspberry Pi (Trill or Jeffrey)
• 4th Gen Intel ITX Machine
• Nat NAS
• Mud (maybe)

Drives

HDD:

• 4tb
• 3tb
• 10tb
• 12tb

SSD:

• 128gb
• 160gb
• 1tb

Thumb Drives:

• ~5-10

Cables

• ~6 SATA Cables
• HDMI or DP x3

Input/ Output

• 3x keyboard & mouse
• 2-3 HDMI monitors

Tools

• Thermal Paste
• Screwdrivers

Instructional Sequences:

What is Linux?

• A free and open source operating system with over 600 'flavors'

• Benefits:

  • Free
  • Efficient
  • Highly customizable

• Distros In This Workshop:

  • OMV (Open Media Vault)
  • Ubuntu Server
  • Raspberry Pi Os

How does storage work?

Hardware:

• SSD vs HDD
• M.2 vs SATA

Redundancy:

• RAID
• rSync
• Garage

Used Hardware vs New:

• Leverage redundancy to

What do you need to know about old PCs?

• Motherboard Sizes: ITX, microATX, ATX
• CPU Sockets
  • Determine generation of CPU you can use with your motherboard
• RAM Version
  • DDR3, 4, 5 / frequency
• SATA Connectors
  • How many do you have?
• PCI expansion slots
  • X1 (small ones)
  • X16 (big ones)
• Cooling & Thermals
  • CPU heatsink
  • Case fans

Activity Sequences:

Install Linux:

• Select distro
• Create bootable USB
• Boot PC in bios
• Boot from USB
• Follow install instructions

Test & Prepare Used Hard Drives:

• Run SMART/ CrystalDiskInfo on each drive
• Mark down age & health of each disk
• Distribute fault risk
• Format disks
  • Is this for OS or storage?
  • An OS usually wants EXT4 while storage might want XFS or another format.

Assemble a PC/ Perform Maintenance:

• Replace thermal paste on CPU
• Clean heatsink
• Install PSU
• Connect SATA Drives
  • SSD Boot
  • HDD Storage