JoeTourist^® InfoSystems

April 1999 - The original web server

I originally intended to host my JoeTourist web pages on my Shaw@Home webspace accounts, however it soon became apparent that there simply wasn't enough space available through those accounts to do the JoeTourist approach justice.  There are hundreds and hundreds of photos stored on the site, and I ended up splitting up the JoeTourist web pages among the various accounts I had available on the @Home service, since each account allowed only 5Mb of web space each.  This quickly became awkward, so I started looking for another solution, and the concept of running my own server hosting my own web site appealed to me.  Not only would it meet my requirement for more web space for the JoeTourist website, but it would allow me to gain some experience running an NT-based server, operate a network, and just generally have some fun!

Strickly speaking, Shaw@Home customers are not supposed to run websites from their Shaw IP connection, but  Shaw has little control over how the Internet connection is used once they have installed it.  They can (and occasionally do) monitor the traffic going to/from a particular assigned IP address they host, so I suppose if the JoeTourist website were to become hugely popular, the Shaw people could ask me to convert to their @Work service.

So after deciding to operate a server and connect it to the Shaw@Home service, I wanted to keep my budget to under CDN$1,000 for the whole system.   A couple of years ago, this would be unrealistic, but with today's computer prices being so low, spending this (relatively) small amount of money to set up a server wouldn't be hard to do, providing I was willing to keep my expectations reasonable.  Obviously, I wasn't going to get a dual processor Pentium III with RAID disks for that price, but I could get a server going that would allow me to get my feet wet, and serve the needs of my JoeTourist clients.

On to the technical details...

Hardware - As I started shopping for hardware, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to get much for $600-$700.  Most new computers start at about $1,000, which would put me over budget, since I also had to buy software and various other bits and pieces.  Paradon Computers had some new (but out of date) IBM PCs for sale which would do the job.   They were Pentium 90-100MHz machines with 1GB hard drives or smaller, and 16Mb of memory (or thereabouts).  They were very inexpensive initially, but would require upgrades to run the NT4 operating system, which is the OS I had planned to run on my new server.   These upgrades pushed the price up too high.

Back to square one.  Next, I shopped around at the various computer discounters around town - the Future Shop, Staples, Office Depot, and various independent discount dealers.  None had what I was looking for at the price I was willing to pay.   Not having to purchase a monitor, keyboard or mouse helped a bit, but didn't go far enough to keep the cost down.  Finally, I decided to give my budget to my good friend Greg Hansen, who is a principal in G.H. Business Machines Ltd., my computer dealer of choice. Greg came up with a deal I couldn't refuse.  He had a Pentium 150MHz computer with 64Mb of memory and a SCSI fast/wide 2Gb hard drive which he had been using as a fax server in his office for the last year.   The price was well within my budget, so I purchased that computer as my new server.

As mentioned previously, I didn't need a monitor. Since the server was going to sit under my desk, I purchased an inexpensive A-B monitor switch to allow me to use my current monitor for both my workstation and server computers.  I had a spare keyboard and mouse laying around, so I could reuse those components.  I purchased two 10/100 generic network cards - one for the server and one for the workstation, and I was ready to go!

Software - I then hired Rick Macmurchie of Great White North Technologies to come in and configure the network for me, and install the server and proxy software.  As it turns out, Microsoft had sent me (gratis) a subscription to their Developer Network (MSDN) a couple of years ago.  I had both the 1997 and 1998 complete CD sets, which included just about all of the software Microsoft makes - including all of the Back Office components I would need for my new web server:

It also included other Back Office components I could add later, when I wanted to expand my web server's capabilities, including: Transaction Server, SQL Server, and others.  So the cost of the software was essentially free, thanks to Microsoft!  Bet you haven't heard that statement too often before.

The installation of NT4 Server was a problem right from the start.   We would get to the point where we were selecting the various components to install, and the NT installation would freeze and the machine would require a hard boot.   No recovery was possible, and we quickly ran out possible sources of the problem: bad memory, SCSI driver/device problems, etc. When I finally took the computer back to Greg, he found that the video card was causing the problem...not something I would have suspected as causing problems.  After NT4 Server was installed, Rick quickly installed the other components required to run a web site, and configured the Proxy Server to use the two network cards (one for the local network, the other for the connection to Shaw's cable modem).  This two network card setup allows the Proxy Server to isolate the local network I am running to my workstation from the Intranet that Shaw runs for their @Home service.

It only took me a couple of days (one lost weekend) to migrate my website over to the new server, and as you can see, it runs like a charm!

FrontPage

FrontPage has made my whole website possible. These server extensions to IIS make it possible to easily manage the 1,700 web pages on my website. FrontPage 2000 allows me to impose a consistent look and feel to the various sub-webs I host, and generally makes life so much easier as a web content developer and administrator.  Over the life of this web server, I have migrated through FrontPage 98, 2000 and now finally 2002 (Office XP).

June 2000 - JoeTourist Weather Station

The JoeTourist Weather Station is a fun project, which uses both my web server as well as a  Radio Shack WX 200 weather station. The WX 200 has a serial output which streams telemetry into a host computer I use for this task.  This Weather Station computer is a Pentium II 233MHz computer running Win 98, and is connected to my internal network.  This computer runs the Virtual Weather Station (VWS) software from Ambient Software, which produces dynamically-generated web pages, which displayed on the wx.JoeTourist.net website.  This is how I can display real-time weather readings on my JoeTourist Weather Station website.

June 2001 - Weather Cam

I have added a webcam to my weather station setup.  The webcam host software streams images from the webcam over USB through the weather station computer's network connection to the JoeTourist Weather Station website on my web server. This updates every minute for the still image of the SW sky.  I also generate time lapse video of the sky, taken at one frame every five minutes.  This generates a 30 second video covering the previous daylight hours.

July 2001 - Web Server Upgrade

As mentioned above, my original web server computer was a 150MHz Pentium system.  As software upgrades are loaded, and features added, it soon comes time when more horsepower is required.  I recently arrived at this milestone, but again, I established myself a modest budget.  As it turns out, I had two spare parts on a shelf which formed the core of the server upgrade: a 9Gb EIDE drive and a 600MHz PIII cpu.  I added a new motherboard (since the old one was 6 years old), a new ATX case and power supply, a modern keyboard (my old one was over 10 years old), and increased the memory to 256Mb (from 64 Mb).  As before, I retained the services of Rick Macmurchie of Great White North Technologies to do the upgrade for me, and he spent an afternoon building and configuring the new system.  Total cost of the upgrade was about CD$500 (parts and labour) - a modest cost, considering I have mostly a new system that should last for several years.

August 2001 - Upgrade Update

A couple of months after the upgrade, I decided to add a 40Gb drive to my server, mainly as a share for my other two computers on my internal network to use.  I also decided to establish a RAID 1 Mirror Drive of my 9Gb C: drive on the new drive, to establish better security for my server.  That left me with about 30Gb for my internal network share.  The mirror appears to be working flawlessly.