[Wylug-help] Server upgrade

[Roger]

Hi all,

I have a server (file, web [apache] and IMAP email) that's 'just growed' 
until it's a mess: a pair of 200Gig IDE drives (split into multiple 
partitions) plus another pair of 250Gig SATAs, hung on a card because 
the mother-board didn't support those (both pairs set up as RAID-1), 
plus a pair of DVD drives and both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives.  Plus 
it overheated if the HDDs were all in the cage, so one is balanced on 
the floor of the case.  Finally, on the advice of my guru, who has 
unfortuantely moved on, it is running cHaos, on the grounds that that 
has a much longer development cycle, meaning it doesn't need updating so 
often.  Unfortunately, that distro is just sufficiently different enough 
to Fedora (which I have on my workstations) that if I need to tweak 
something unfamiliar, I struggle to cope - the GUI menus and utilities 
aren't quite the same!

On top of being unaesthetic, I'm running out of space in the root 
partition of the smaller disks, and on the bigger ones (lots of hi-res 
photos).

Accordingly, I'm planning to replace it.  My plan is to build a complete 
new box with a single pair of 750Gig SATAs (and make sure it's working), 
transfer the data over the network, then take down the old server, put 
its NIC into the new one and change its IP number (so the firewall 
recognises it) and go.

1 - Does that seem a sensible plan?
2 - Are there any 'gotcha's' I'm likely to overlook?
3 - Any recommendations about which distro to install?  I'm tempted to 
use Fedora because of familiarity on the workstations...
4 - Is there a sensible use for the old box, or do I just de-commission 
it/pass it on to the in-laws (after simplification)?

TIA

Roger

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