How to turn an old PC to a reliable server?

[smbsmb]

I have some old PCs and I’d like to use them as servers
for 2 small office networks.
The main goal is to make the solution as cheap as possible.
All of these PCs have CPU ~ 266..300MHz, RAM ~128MB, but with USB 1.0.
I have many IDE CD-ROM drives.

So, is this a reliable configuration and the replacement scenario?

I’ll use 2 (not one) CD-ROMs, one per IDE cable,
and put a CD with the same version of Zeroshell.
If one of the drives will be broken, or the CD will be unreadable,
BIOS will try to boot from another CD.

I have many Flash-sticks of 128MB each,
so I can plase them somewhere inside of PCs, and use as configurations storage.
However, is there a way to use 2 Flashes as RAID-mirror?
Is there a way to save the config periodically, for example to a FTP site in Internet?

If a server will be totally broken, I can always bring another old PC,
and simply use a Flash with current config!

What else should I pay my attention, to make the routers more reilable, but very cheap?

[ppalias]

You don’t need to periodically backup the ZS. Once after you make a change is enough, unless you want to back up some logs too. For the later you can also send them in a remote syslog to save the usb disk from the writes.

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