Hi Ardbeg, I also have an on off idea of running little server that I might use as a 'skype' meeting alternative with my three brothers who never played mir, I thought it would be fun 'chat with something to do'. However I never got to it even though I downloaded a whole bunch of files in past years from here that might work... one reason that kept me from trying is I am afraid that any mir files from here would be just 'empty game shell', that is just rough bare environment without mobs and npcs and all that (or perhaps just the most basic ones like raking cats LOL). I don't know that any files from here come sort of finished in that sense, from what I read about here, it seems like nobody is willing to share that kind of thing or perhaps I am wrong? I mean I wouldn't expect some polished setup, I realize it would have rough edges if one tried to play on those files seriously, at which point some work would have to be put in.
Anyway, I got this Dell sever idle that I was able to get some years back for a reasonable price, it is PowerEdge T310 model with probably decent quad core Xeon X3450 2.67 GHz and currently with 8GB RAM, can have 16GB and perhaps might be able to make it 24 GB (actually 23GB is the 'ceiling' for the hardware) with the modules I have if I remember correctly, it is some three years or more since I got the thing. I have two SAS 300GB 15k6 Cheetahs inside and two on hand as spare - the server can run 4 HDDs in mirror configuration if the mission should be critical.
My idea was, is, to run Proxmox virtual environment on it, that's free alternative to VMware ESX, and run virtual machines on it, one of which would be some windows with mir on it. Originally I thought mir requires much more serious hardware but perhaps machine like this one could even run official commercial mir with several hundred users? Of course the other sticking point is the internet, I have reliable wifi 6mbps symmetric up/down with no traffic caps and currently I don't have public IP address so pple couldn't connect to the server from outside, but for some money extra I could get one as well as 10mbps symmetric internet or even better (so far I didn't bother with either getting IP or higher speed, I am fine with downloads on those 6mbps which works out to some 760KB/s speeds up down).
What do you think such setup could run, hosting mir? As to OP question regarding server, I got this machine from eBay, you can find servers that Dell dealers custom preconfigured as per customer orders, which then for some reason or other are not sold and I think so called 'third party businesses' buy them from Dell dealers in bulk and sell them off at a discount (you don't get a chance to configure it, its buy as it is). Actually this particular server was from a small place somewhere in Scotland, I got it in part because the shipping cost (within EU) was reasonable, I live in central Europe. Otherwise you can get good deals from USA but shipping costs can be deterrent, the beast weighs quite a lot.
