Server Operating System advice...

[LucasJohn]

Hi all,

 

I have a new home server and have quite a bit of things I'd like to do with it of course.

My previous home server was just a simple file server, plex, and minecraft. Now, I want to do more with the new server. And I need some suggestions on the base OS for the Server itself. I was thinking CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu... I'm fine with command line use too. I use Linux rather a lot. The specs are okay I'd believe. Cpu is my older FX 8350 (I know, I'm looking into a different CPU currently I can't afford much right now), 32GB of RAM, 4x 4TB Iron Wolfs (got super cheap, new, all my place of work had), my old GTX 960 for hardware transcoding (there'd only ever be 2 maybe 3 Max streams happening at once, mostly 1080p and once in a while 4K)

The new main things are:

- NAS and file server

- Plex

- minecraft
- steam game cache

- potentially backups

- PiHole

- Reverse Proxy

- Music server

- and of course some other things that I'm sure I'll think of later.

 

Any recommendations of how to lay this out software-wise would be awesome!

Also, I've looked into Hypervisors not sure if that'd be good for NAS. FreeNAS doesn't support gpu hardware transcoding (unless I'm very wrong). unRAID probably not cause money is tight currently too.

If I do not respond right away to your awesome insightful responses, forgive me, I'm on nights shifts.

 

Thank you so much guys!

[WereCatf]

16 minutes ago, LucasJohn said:

Any recommendations of how to lay this out software-wise would be awesome!

I'm not really sure what advice there is to give; any of the most popular Linux-distros will do the job just fine -- I use Ubuntu myself on all of my servers -- and e.g. Docker makes it easy to set up the software for various services. Or, if you go with Ubuntu, Snap-packages may be an option¹. Nextcloud is a nice cloud-storage system you can run on your system and will do well for automatically backing up some files and keeping them in-sync between phones, laptops, desktops etc.

 

^{1 Before using any snap-packages, I'd advice to check that they're actually being kept up-to-date. There's a ton of them that someone kinda-sorta whipped together and abandoned. The Nextcloud-snap, on the other hand, is literally the easiest way of setting up Nextcloud that I've seen so far and totally recommended.}

[Dutch_Master]

Any of the distro's you mentioned are a solid server-grade base, but if I'd had to pick one it'll be Debian. Their Stable branch is just that, rock stable and they have the reputation to confirm. You want the bare-metal server OS to be rock stable, so your VM's will run seamlessly and won't crash. Docker is a good choice, but be aware there's more options, including kvm and lxc/lxd to run VM's and containers. It's fine running a mix of Docker and non-Docker VM's, so select the best hypervisor for the task allotted to the VM.

1 hour ago, LucasJohn said:

If I do not respond right away to your awesome insightful responses, forgive me, I'm on nights shifts.

Sleep tight then

[LucasJohn]

Hi, thanks for the replies. Yeah debian seems like a more clear and stable route. The only thing is I'm not sure about NAS cause I've only ever used freeNAS. I'm sure a quick google later would be able to answer that for me. Hahahaha

thank you for the confirmation.

[Mophead]

7 hours ago, LucasJohn said:

Hi, thanks for the replies. Yeah debian seems like a more clear and stable route. The only thing is I'm not sure about NAS cause I've only ever used freeNAS. I'm sure a quick google later would be able to answer that for me. Hahahaha

thank you for the confirmation.

Shame you can't pull $$$ together for unRAID. 

 

If I was limited to a singular system, I'd be rocking an unRAID build, but I do way more in my home lab. So I have bare metal Debian boxes, Hyper-V boxes, etc. 

 

unRAID is a fantastic no-frills solution for everything you want out of a file server OS. I really like how flexible it is, when I get close to running out of space, I just add another drive. It ofc has native Docker/VM support as I'm sure you're aware.

 

I've heard great things about SnapRAID, though I've never personally used it, but that could be your answer. Bare metal Debian box with KVM, Docker and SnapRAID could be your ultimate all-in-one box / DIY unRAID solution. 

[LucasJohn]

On 11/29/2020 at 7:12 AM, Mophead said:

Shame you can't pull $$$ together for unRAID. 

 

If I was limited to a singular system, I'd be rocking an unRAID build, but I do way more in my home lab. So I have bare metal Debian boxes, Hyper-V boxes, etc. 

 

unRAID is a fantastic no-frills solution for everything you want out of a file server OS. I really like how flexible it is, when I get close to running out of space, I just add another drive. It ofc has native Docker/VM support as I'm sure you're aware.

 

I've heard great things about SnapRAID, though I've never personally used it, but that could be your answer. Bare metal Debian box with KVM, Docker and SnapRAID could be your ultimate all-in-one box / DIY unRAID solution. 

unRAID was definitely in the cards unfortunately due to some costs and family matters I can't afford it at this time. I hope to have a home lab one day but I am limited to what I can do at his moment due to space, time, and money. (I went to college for System Administration and Networking albeit not the best student ahaha. currently brushing myself up on knowledge) so yeah a singular system is the best I can do at this moment. I am leaning towards a Debian KVM environment with Docker as you mentioned. But I've never considered SnapRAID really. I inquired mainly because I'm curious to what's going on and filling some gaps.

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 hours ago, LucasJohn said:

unRAID was definitely in the cards unfortunately due to some costs and family matters I can't afford it at this time. I hope to have a home lab one day but I am limited to what I can do at his moment due to space, time, and money. (I went to college for System Administration and Networking albeit not the best student ahaha. currently brushing myself up on knowledge) so yeah a singular system is the best I can do at this moment. I am leaning towards a Debian KVM environment with Docker as you mentioned. But I've never considered SnapRAID really. I inquired mainly because I'm curious to what's going on and filling some gaps.

If you want debian kvm, id go proxmox, gives you a nice web interface for running vms and makes it easy to manage.

[NelizMastr]

I agree with @Electronics Wizardyhere. I wouldn't run everything in one OS install, but virtualise each task if possible.

 

Docker would do, although it's not "the docker way" to run containers long term and updating is not really that convenient,

often requiring to redeploy the container. Perhaps best to make configuration and log exports to a path outside the container

in that case.

If you have the disk space, just go Proxmox and run each task in a VM. Perhaps it's best to only do Plex directly on the Proxmox host, as GPU passthrough for Plex on Linux is a bit hit and miss (it works great for me on ESXi, but it's a hassle on most other hypervisors).