What OS were you thinking of using?

@CUDAcores89 it also is at least twice as big and a lot more power hungry

@Windows7ge either FreeNAS or Unraid, leaning more towards Unraid for Docker (yes I'm aware of the vulnerability, it will be patched), and VMs for anything else that can't be ran in Docker containers

Hmmnnn...UnRAID costs money. Under these circumstances I'd use something like PROXMOX, are you familiar with it?

I pretty much know the name and that's it. From the brief reading I did just now, I'd have to nest Docker within LXC which, while secure, sounds like a pain to fully setup and manage. I'll think about, still a ways off before I start putting it together.

I don't know how badly you require docker itself but PROXMOX effectively uses containers as a replacement. Containers share the system kernel and resources effectively running natively and VMs can be created for complete isolation from the host.

PROXMOX also uses ZFS as its primary file system and containers such as Ubuntu server, Turnkey File Server, etc can be used for local SMB shares & SSH/SFTP access, PROXMOX can also be installed on a thumb drive but I'd recommend a minimum of 32GB if not 64GB+ as the OS saves the container templates to the boot drive and these eat up space.

So depending on how important docker is this is the best of all world's. It's free, runs ZFS natively, allows for VMs, can act as a local/remote file server, & comes with a very user friendly WebUI + CLI. The host OS can also be accessed via SSH if desired.

If you do decide to try it out I'm open to helping you get it up and running. Setup up does take some steps and aren't totally strait forward.

Power is more than just the bill broski, it's also the heat. I have my server in bedroom, I don't need extra amounts of heat. I wanted a low power solution, get over it.

@Windows7ge I might PM you some questions about it later

That's fine with me. I'll be around. I'm on the forum almost every day because #NoLife

Unrelated to PROXMOX but related to the little debate going on here. Buying used I could have picked up a HP ProLiant DL560, picked up four Intel Xeon E5-4650s, and at least 64GB if not 128GB of Registered ECC memory for about the same cost of that MoBo/CPU.

...but hey that's just me don't pay my ramblings any mind...

Good for you

If I had my own place, yes I would run a rack server, but I don't and I don't want that in my bedroom so I'm not going to get something like that.

Hey that's fine I just felt like throwing in my 2 cents. I saw you said it was going in your bedroom. Quite frankly even that small server 24/7 will cause a noticeable increase in room temp if your room is of average size and doesn't have constant airflow so I get why you made your decision. It makes sense.

Space heater in summer too

My multi-socket servers are in my basement while I'm on a different level on the other side of the house. Going into the room with the servers the room temp is quite a bit higher particularly when the servers are under load. Wouldn't be fun dealing with that in my room in the summer.

@CUDAcores89 I could easily see that equaling a dead server in not too much time. Computers + water = bad. Especially since elements like salt would be involved it'd hyper accelerate the rate at which the iron degrades in the metal chassis causing mass rusting.