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

I have stumbled into a problem which I cannot solve. I am currently having ping spikes to my second server (2x Xeon L5640, Genuine Intel I350-T4 NIC) which is running Proxmox (Debian Jessie). I am currently connecting through the I350, and only 1 VM is online at the moment, which is a pfSense VM. The I350 is not using PCI-E passthrough, just bridged ports. This setup used to work fine (for months), but now I am getting random ping spikes which I can't figure out where they're from. C:\Users\jonny>ping 192.168.1.3 /n 12 Pinging 192.168.1.3 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=158ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=260ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=169ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.3: Packets: Sent = 12, Received = 12, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 260ms, Average = 54ms C:\Users\jonny>ping 192.168.1.1 /n 12 Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1: Packets: Sent = 12, Received = 12, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms Pinging other devices on the network works fine and is not spiking. Pinging from another device to the server still spikes. My other Proxmox server (Xeon 1225v3) doesn't have this issue. I've tried rebooting, and tried using my SuperMicro Intel network interfaces, but it hasn't fixed it. CPU usage is at 1-2% out of the 12 cores, 24 threads. Load average is at 0.5 I'm only using 2GB/32GB RAM. Almost no I/O usage. Network traffic is low (like ~2mbps). Ports are connected at 1Gbps

Hey, I have a pfSense set up so that I can route specific hosts/networks through a VPN connected on the pfSense router. When the VPN is disconnected, these hosts/networks have their connection blocked. I also have it configured so that these hosts/networks are still able to communicate between local networks. All other traffic goes through my Default Gateway (my WAN connection). Do you want me to explain how this works?

Wow that's pretty impressive projection size for such a short distance away

I would suggest using ECC ram with a ZFS filesystem (I am using ZFS on Linux atm) with raidz or raidz2 (note that for raidz, I would recommend using 5 drives, and 6 drives for raidz2). You can run a hypervisor such as Proxmox and then virtualise your different servers in separate VMs or containers.

Try sudo apt-get install openssh-server If that is already installed, then try connect the vm to itself using ssh. ssh 192.168.1.128 Edit: Ignore me, didn't read properly, it's probably your ISP blocking it. What you can try do is set your router to port forward a different port, e.g. 45000 to port 22 on 192.168.1.128 and then ssh to your external IP with port 45000

Thanks for the generosity

OpenVPN Squid Proxy You could learn how to use Linux on a virtual machine BTSync/OwnCloud for personal cloud

Yes, just turn DHCP off (on the new router)/put the new router in bridged mode and you'll be good to go.

Call your ISP?

Got Intel Quick Sync? If you do then maybe use OBS to record at a bitrate suitable for your network conditions?