Server OS Advice Needed!

[rarifiedbovine]

Here is my hardware:

• Xeon E3 1240v5
• 32 GB (2 DIMM) Crucial ECC RAM
• 6x8TB Seagate Iron Wolf HDD
• m.2 system drive

I am CURRENTLY RUNNING WINDOWS 10 with about 13TB of data used in my BIOS RAID6 array. I chose Windows 10 at first because I needed to run HD Home Run. Now, that's no longer relevant and I'm free!

Use cases are:

• Media server for Windows, Kodi, and Mac, and iOS devices
• Home server for files and such
• Torrent seeding and download
• ROM server for HyperSpin/emulation
• Potentially as server for my D&D game? Maybe not...

Note that I have to figure out some way to incorporate all the data I currently have on my Windows drives in the machine, so please take that into account!

All that said, which direction should I go, OS-wise?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you have a backup of the data, if not get one. Most of the time your gonna have to wipe the array.

 

Do you want the drives easy to upgrade?

 

Freenas?

 

Or go proxmox if you want to run vms better.

 

Or jusst keep windows 10, it works fine for this.

[intertan]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a backup of the data, if not get one. Most of the time your gonna have to wipe the array.

 

Do you want the drives easy to upgrade?

 

Freenas?

 

Or go proxmox if you want to run vms better.

 

Or jusst keep windows 10, it works fine for this.

unraid, freenas or proxmox is the way to go these days. Myself I am currently looking at moving from unraid to proxmox. looking at multiple zfs2 pools in proxmox.Might have some time on my hands soon.

[Dutch_Master]

Most (but not all!) NAS s/w is Linux based anyway, so you'd do fine with a standard/basic Linux install and get lxc/lxd for various virtual machines. Other NAS s/w actually does the same (except for FreeNAS, that uses a BSD) but charge you for the privilege of easy installing. As stated before, get a full backup of your data before you begin. You could use a (new) 16TB drive as intermediate measure during installation of the new system and copy your data back once set up properly. After that, use it as safe backup offsite.

 

HTH!

[rarifiedbovine]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a backup of the data, if not get one. Most of the time your gonna have to wipe the array.

 

Do you want the drives easy to upgrade?

 

Freenas?

 

Or go proxmox if you want to run vms better.

 

Or jusst keep windows 10, it works fine for this.

I do want the drives easy to upgrade!

 

What do I want to run VMs for?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, rarifiedbovine said:

I do want the drives easy to upgrade!

 

What do I want to run VMs for?

Then something like freenas is what you want then, very easy to upgrade storage.

 

vms are for running other tasks like media servers and torrent boxes, and let you seprate tasks and run different oses in those vms.

[rarifiedbovine]

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then something like freenas is what you want then, very easy to upgrade storage.

 

vms are for running other tasks like media servers and torrent boxes, and let you seprate tasks and run different oses in those vms.

Thanks! Why is that preferable to using plugins?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, rarifiedbovine said:

Thanks! Why is that preferable to using plugins?

Oops, you want unraid for easy to upgrade storage, freenas is not easy to upgrade.

 

Depends on the use, plugins ar enormally easier.