[clue-tech] Linux on a Dell PowerEdge 2300?

[William]

My employer just practically donated an older Dell PowerEdge 2300 server to me.  It has a couple
things I have to fix before it's usable (one of the SCSI drives is bad and it's missing one of its
hot-swap drive thingamajigs -- I honestly have no idea what they're called, but they hold the SCSI
drive such that it can lock into the case and mount onto the SCSI RAID backplate).  After I get
the hardware issues figured out, I'd like to put Linux on it.  I favor RedHat, but I also need to
stick to the "free" route.

When I get the hardware figured out, the system will have 6 drives, 2 CPUs, 2 NICs, and about a
Gig of ECC RAM.  I'm going to use the machine as a dedicated Apache+TomCat (probably with PHP,
Perl, and FTP on it, as well) server -- no GUI -- at home.  Can I get Linux and this desired
configuration onto this box?

Notables:
1)  I'm never installed Linux onto multi-CPU boxes.
2)  I've never dealt with SCSI drives, and know very little about them.
3)  I've never dealt with RAID systems (or hot-swappables, but that seem self-explainatory).
4)  I already have to pay plenty to solve the hardware issues, and I am just a home user, so I
really can't dump thousands of dollars into Enterprise Linux offerings.
5)  I'm tenacious and willing to experiment, if necessary.
6)  I have 6 other servers already at home, most of which are RedHat Linux, so I'm not a _total_
noob; I'm just doing research before potentially wasting a lot of time.

Thanks!


=====
William Kimball, Jr.
"Programming is an art form that fights back!"  =)


		
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