Does CentOS 7 need server grade hardware to run?
 

I have installed CentOS 7 on my home computer to use as a file, media (Plex) and iscsi target server.

I had managed to work through some of the quirky issue for the most part.

The first issue has been with reboots. It's like it hangs or I get some kind of error message telling me to run a certain command to check where the error came from. Next, my system just crashed after a simple memory upgrade. After looking in the BIOS I found that the hard drive boot order had changed....weird.

So, my question is since CentOS 7 is a server OS does it need server grade hardware to run efficiently?

Specs of my system:

• Asus M4A78 PLUS Motherboard
• AMD Quad Core CPU
• 8GB DDR2 800 non-ECC

I have CentOS 7 running in a VM with 4GB RAM an it runs just fine.

Just as an aside, "server grade" hardware is a fuzzy classification. The hardware needed for a home file server is different from the hardware needed for a web server is different for the hardware needed for a business server in a thin-client environment etc.

It might help if you would post the error messages you are receiving, being sure to surround them with "code" tags, which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button beneath the "compose post" window. Since the errors occur during the boot sequence, your best bet might be to snap photos when they appear and transcribe the error messages from the photos.

Note that some error messages are routine during boot, as the kernel probes for stuff that turns out not to be present.

Short answer: No, it doesn't.

My machine has a DH55TC mainboard/motherboard/mobo/whatever else you would like to call it. And it's the desktop version of it, not the server version of it.

In a nutshell: the only real differences between CentOS and other Linux distribution's is that is comes with server applications that may or may not be available in the form of software packages for other distributions, and more precisely, are installed by default, that may not be installed by default in other distributions. It's still a Linux distribution designed to run on the Intel X86_64 hardware platform (among other hardware platform's/architectures).

And also, it doesn't come with the latest versions of various things because it's a enterprise class system, built for stability in mind. Because enterprises need that certainty, that things will work, and won't crash, particularly for mission-critical systems.

You should have a look at the kernel log if you haven't already - this is most likely to give you clues as to what the problem may be.

Similar to this desktop...except mine has a dual-core processor. Runs CentOS 7 and KDE (or Cinnamon...haven't played with Gnome yet) just fine...a tad slower than the adjacent Windows box with a 4 core processor, but otherwise not a problem. I'm guessing your issues are not hardware related.