Ginz

Check out https://pterodactyl.io/ Makes hosting/managing game servers a lot easier.

If you're interested in the topic, and enjoy this kind of thing as a hobby, then I would definitely recommend learning how to use Linux. It may seem scary/complicated at first, but having a project like this will help you get familiar with the operating system, as well as using containers. Getting some experience in Linux will vastly increase the amount of homelabbing projects that you can take on, and will also give you a lot of experience should you wish to pursue this kind of stuff as a career. If this sounds like the kind of thing you would like to try out, then I would: Look into a hypervisor such as Proxmox (which uses KVM underneath) Storage can be set up in a few different ways: You could have your hypervisor control all of your disks, and then create virtual disks for your VM. (I'd recommend this approach for a beginner) You could dedicate a ssd/hdd for the hypervisor (or even a usb if using esxi), then passthrough a secondary disk(s) to a virtual machine. You could have your hypervisor control all of your disks, create a virtual disk for your VM's OS, and then use NFS to grant your VM access to your hypervisor's disk. Create a VM and install Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS on it. Note that setting up a static IP for your server, or dhcp reservation will be key to making sure that the VM is accessible even after rebooting your modem/router. Learn how to remotely access this VM via ssh. Watch an introductory video on Docker, and then go through a few tutorials to get yourself familiar with it. Read a tutorial on creating a Nextcloud instance via docker (try use docker-compose as you can easily see what container configuration that you have defined) Try accessing your Nextcloud instance over local lan. Don't expose Nextcloud to the internet unless using https. Some considerations and more advanced topics Learn about ssh keys, and set them up to increase security around remotely accessing your server. Learn about dns, and consider getting a domain (there are some cheap/free options) Learn about https, certificates and reverse proxies before exposing Nextcloud to the internet. Traefik, caddy, nginx, and haproxy are all examples of reverse proxies. Letsencrypt is a service which you can use to issue https certificates to your sites (requires a domain) Some other cool things you can deploy via docker: pihole bookstack emby/plex wordpress

What kinds of things do you want to manage? Do you just want metrics/monitors/alarms? Do you want package/update management? Automation? Do you need to monitor applications on top of OS's? Zabbix could be a good choice, but can be complex for an inexperienced user. You could also use cockpit for your Linux servers.

Can you share your /etc/samba/smb.conf?

What is Object storage (and S3 api), how does it compare to file storage? Iaas, PaaS, SaaS, DaaS (VDIs, thin clients) What is Git, and how is it used by online (remote) Git repository hosts? Maybe add in DevOps workflows? Directory Services (such as MS Active Directory, FreeIPA), what they're used for, and how they can be used by other services with LDAP. What are shells (DOS, Powershell, sh, bash, zsh etc) Reverse Proxies and load balancing Representational state transfer (REST) and HTTP methods What are Ansible, Chef, Salt, Puppet, Terraform and how do they differ? Databases (Flat vs Relational, SQL, NoSQL, Distributed databases) Who is the Apache Foundation and what do they do? (HTTP server, Hadoop, Tomcat, Kafka, Cassandra etc)

Try to check eBay or your local equivalent for ex-lease/decommissioned servers. You can find deals for a lot cheaper than buying brand new hardware. I managed to build a server with dual Xeon L5640 with 48GB of RAM for about $250-300USD from parts.

Try port 53, as DNS uses both TCP and UDP so both are unlikely to be blocked. Edit: just read you aren't connecting to your vpn, but a vpn provider.

Tried public dns servers? E.g 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

Thanks, that's the approach I'm using at the moment, but it's not very efficient and I may miss out learning some things.

I just bought a Junpier EX2200-24T-4G to learn how to use the Juniper CLI. Are there any recommended tutorials/guides/courses on learning Junos?

You could always run ZFS on Linux (ZOL) and spin up some containers or vms to handle file sharing, vpn, reverse proxy, media streaming, cloud storage. Proxmox would be an easy solution for this, and it's fun to learn how to do all these things.

If you're heading down the networking path, I'd definitely recommend learning and using Linux for your home server

Not sure then sorry , I run my OpenVPN server on linux

Have you added firewall rules allowing traffic between your LAN and your OpenVPN interfaces?

Add a route in your OpenVPN config