Last night I purchased the hardware to build two new servers that will replace my 7-8 year old HP Netserver. Graeme from work is buying the HP Netserver from me. I've been planning on buying two servers and their uses for almost two years now. They are part of a long-term master plan. A couple of weeks ago I started to price them out. It was going to cost close to $1000/each including taxes and shipping. I refined my plan several times, even switching online stores to pay less taxes (ncix.com in Quebec). Here is what I ended up buying:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor Socket AM2 Orleans (2.2GHZ)
• ASUS M2N-E ATX AM2 motherboard
• Crucial Rendition 1GB PC2-4200 memory
• Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache 5YR warranty
• LG 16X Black DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM IDE UDMA33 INT OEM
• SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5IN FLOPPY DRIVE
• This case

Total: $560 + shipping & 6% GST. That's just under $640 each. I have a couple of old ATI video cards in a box (Rage II+DVD) that I'll use in these. These new servers will likely last me another 5-7 years.

Both servers are going to have Solaris 10 installed on them. Today I downloaded Solaris 10 and the Java Enterprise System which is all of Sun's middleware products such as a message queue (JMS), directory server, access manager, mail server, calendar server, web services registry, application server, etc etc.. several gigs of software.

Server #1 - Directory server (central administration of users and web service privileges), file serving (don't know what Solaris has, maybe Samba or a similar Sun product), subversion, trac (bug ticket system), Sun Application Server, Sun Message Queue, Sun Portal Server, SOA Registry, Postgres DB, and in the future central tape backup. This server will be for internal use only. I'll need other things on here to support trac such as Apache, Python and several libraries.

Server #2 - Sun Message Server (pop/smtp/ldap/webmail), Sun Application Server, Sun Message Queue, Sun Portal Server, Postgres DB. This will also live behind my router/firewall but will have it's services accessible on the Internet (websites and mail server). It will be the future home of my website and other sites I host.

My laptop is being used for Java programming using Sun NetBeans 5.5 and a local copy of the Sun Application Server (of course). It's for serious stuff only. My desktop PC is web, mail, IM, music, Outlook (to access my calendar on IJW's Exchange server), PDA stuff, etc.. just for general use.

I remind myself of Marco, who can't live without at least 5 computers. I didn't mention my BBS computer, which makes it 5 for me too. I think if I had a 6th computer I could make use of it, but don't need it. A 6th computer would replace my ageing desktop, and the old desktop would become a machine that I could try new linux distros on, and do whatever I want to without worrying about having to format one day.

I've also got several new books to read. Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 is the first book on EJB3 available. Until now I've been working with EJB 2.1 and am looking forward to moving into EJB3 and Java 1.5. I also bought a book called Refactoring Databases to enhance my existing skills in database design. Lastly I have Beginning J2ME, to get me into programming for PDA's and cell phones. I probably won't get into that book until fall. What else? I might start the Sun Java certification process in September. It's been almost a year since I started to get serious about learning Java. I look forward to seeing how far I've come along over the next year.

Something worth mentioning is that all of Sun's server software is based on standards. That means you can pick and choose some but not other Sun products. You could use BEA Weblogic Application Server and Sun's Message Queue, Sun's Access Manager and Windows 2003 Active Directory, Sun's Calendar Server & Microsoft Outlook, etc etc.. Sun's products do not require you use other Sun products, but they all work well together if you choose to use them together. They run on Solaris, Linux and Windows. They are available for use in development and production at no cost, with the option to purcahse support contracts if you want.