Review: Excito Bubba Two home server

Running a home server has plenty of advantages, but can be a little daunting on several fronts. The Bubba Two is easy to set up, wonít take up much space or use much electricity and will store and share music, video and photos to everyone on the network as well over the internet. It can also serve as a web server, internet gateway and firewall.

The Bubba server differs in many ways to the range of Windows Home Servers, not least because it runs Debian Linux. The Bubbaís chassis is also small to the point of being mistaken for an external hard disk and is barely audible, even when the hard disk is accessed.

The back features pairs of USB A, gigabit Ethernet eSata ports along with an input for the power adapter. Since this device is not intended to be turned off on a regular basis, the power button is recessed. If past performance is anything to go by, reliability should not be a problem as our first-generation Bubba has been running for over a year without any crashes or other problems.

The Bubba Two has a 333Mhz PowerPC chip with 256MB of Ram and the hard disk is available in a variety of sizes – 80GB, 500GB or 1TB.

There is no monitor output, so most of the setup guide is devoted to explaining how to connect using a web browser – simply typing http://bubba into a browser address bar will take you there.

Once you've got it up and running, the first task is toset up some users. Each user has their own home folder that contains all of their files and emails. A public storage folder can be accessed by any user account and is also used as the source for the media streaming.

The web interface has been greatly improved from the previous server. There is still the slight disappointment in that there are no links to the media servers running on the Bubba. The webmail interface has been upgraded to use the Horde software, which comes complete with an address book, calendar and notes. Files on the server can be accessed through the admin interface.

For those considering upgrading from the previous Bubba server, there are no specific utilities to help you, but this does not mean the process is complicated. It is simply a matter of recreating the user accounts on the new server and copying the user folders across.

Emails are saved as files in a folder so they can be moved too. This is not just relevant for moving, but also for backups; since everything is folder-based in this way, it is easy to create and restore backups. The settings can also be backed up onto a USB key.

There are also no problems with running more than one Bubba server on a network at the same time; they'll obviously need different IP addresses and the name should be changed so that it can be accessed easily accessed via a browser.

If your ISP provides you with a dynamic IP address as opposed to a static one, Excito helps out by providing a DDNS (dynamic DNS) service with the Bubba, meaning you can access it from any PC even if your home IP address changes.

A source of worry in these days of online threats is making sure that all software is kept up-to-date, especially if the server is communicating directly with the internet. There are no automatic updates, instead the server is updated via the web interface with a simple update button (or via the command prompt). One thing we noticed with the first generation Bubba is that updates were more infrequent than with other operating systems.

Excito explained that it has two repositories of its own for software, and these are the source of updates; software not installed on the server on arrival can be downloaded from the Debian stable repository. This enables Excito to keep a stable and tested system without limiting the server. For example, MySQL is not installed but can be thanks to the Debian repository.

The Bubba server is a great little server that is far more powerful than its diminutive size would suggest. A certain amount of knowledge is needed but the included documentation will help.

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