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I realized that it would be good to really put some engineering into this, because there are an awful lot of *variety* in the servers listed on the eBay. Since the current configuration is holding up pretty well, but doesn't have a backup setup right now, the project doesn't have to finish in a week. I can take a bit longer and really make it as good as it can be.
In this price range, looking at two devices, we can probably afford two 4-year-olds. That may sound odd, but servers are quite different from the desktop computers you are familiar with. They will likely have two power supplies, for redundancy. Two network cards, so that one can do interesting things like connect to a remote disk array without using traffic on the Internet network.
Servers are designed to operate 24x7, and so there is more engineering that goes into the fans, the backplane, everything. They're built to last, so a four-year-old has plenty of life left to it. The original Cellar servers have lasted some ten years. These should last us another eight, one hopes.
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