Have a Test Server Ready

If we are trying to take advantage of free hosting, how did we happen to have a test server ready? Motivated by an excellent article, Build a (Very) Inexpensive Solaris 10 Workstation, I built a server out of spare parts and $150. One of the things that kept the cost so low is the long list of compatible hardware for OpenSolaris. We re-used a case (including power supply), optical drive, and hard drive. Newly purchased for the project were motherboard, CPU, CPU cooling fan, and memory. The easy-to-use package manager made installing GlassFish and MySQL a breeze, even without much experience running Solaris. Configured with a static IP address instead of using NWAM and an account at DynDNS the test environment was a lot less expensive then paying monthly hosting costs for a virtual server with similar specs.