What can I use as a starter home web (maybe also email) server?

[The Hollanesian]

Budget (including currency): $300

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Apache HTTP server, Microsoft Exchange(maybe).

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Currently I have a few spare things. Asus laptop ( Intel i5-7200U 2.5Ghz, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HD). If not the laptop, I can try to build something for cheap off of  an AMD FX4300 or FX6300. Also have a 10 yr old Cooler Master 1000w PSU.

 

If none of these work,   any suggestion within my budget would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[MR H.]

The thing is:

what are you gonna use it for?

You can even use a raspberry for a small web server

[RONOTHAN##]

I'm not great with Web servers, but assuming you aren't expecting a ton of traffic you can probably get by with a Raspberry Pi. Get like a Pi4 (I think that's the newest one, double check before you buy) and steal the hard drive out of that laptop to use for storage if you need more than 32GB from an SD card. Connect it to the Internet, setup the Apache server (follow a guide for how to do it on Raspian, I'm sure there's multiple) and call it a day. 

[Eigenvektor]

Depends on what exactly you want to host on the web server and how much email traffic you expect.

 

For basic stuff even a RasPi would probably be enough, as long as you don't insist on using Windows as the OS. Use some Linux server distribution, Apache/Nginx as the web server and Postgres Postfix as email server, Dovecot for IMAP clients.

 

Do you want that reachable from the internet? Do you have a static IP, domain name, SSL certificates?

[The Hollanesian]

Just now, MR H. said:

The thing is:

what are you gonna use it for?

You can even use a raspberry for a small web server

For  creating my own website. I was thinking maybe if possible also to have my own email server instead of using gmail.

[jde3]

Could do a Digital Ocean droplet for $5 a month.

Apache + reverse proxy for mail.site.com

Zimbra for the email. (he meant postfix not postgres above )

Let's encrypt for the ssl.

 

It will take some learning though.

[The Hollanesian]

Appreciate all the feedback from everyone. I currently have a Pi 3b I'm using inside an arcade machine. I am considering also getting a Pi4 or maybe one of those old DELL/HP servers. idk.

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, The Hollanesian said:

For  creating my own website. I was thinking maybe if possible also to have my own email server instead of using gmail.

If you want your own mail server, having a static IP and a domain name is pretty much a must. Otherwise other mail servers aren't going to talk to you. Most also don't communicate with IP ranges from ISPs serving home addresses. So a vserver on some hoster is usually the better approach.

 

Here's a good tutorial for setting up a mailserver: https://workaround.org/ispmail

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, jde3 said:

Zimbra for the email. (he meant postfix not postgres above )

Ehr... yes, Postfix for email and Postgres for the underlying database, oops... getting kind of late here

[jde3]

Yeah, your own email is pretty hard to do in 2021. It's much more than just having a server.. you need proper DNS TXT records and DKIM. Some home ISP's won't let you even communicate over port 25, and you have all kinds of spam problems to worry about.. worse you'll have to have some kind of HA or failover because if it goes down, you won't get mail.   it's not as easy as "installing exchange and watching it go"

 

Sysadmins make their money for a reason heh

[jde3]

3 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Ehr... yes, Postfix for email and Postgres for the underlying database, oops... getting kind of late here

No big.. they are both awesome things.. I'm sure I've confused them myself before.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, jde3 said:

Yeah, your own email is pretty hard to do in 2021. It's much more than just having a server.. you need proper DNS TXT records and DKIM. it's not as easy as "installing exchange and watching it go"

 

Sysadmins make their money for a reason heh

Yep, been running my own mail server for several years now. It*s a fun project to set up, but does take some time and you should have some idea of what you're doing. Also: Do yourself a favor and include a backup strategy.

[jde3]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

Yep, been running my own mail server for several years now. It*s a fun project to set up, but does take some time and you should have some idea of what you're doing. Also: Do yourself a favor and include a backup strategy.

Ah you too.. haha. Yes, we are weirdos. That being said I've worked for ISP and companys that send millions of messages a day, and even I find it complex at times.

 

Oh and exchange, I wouldn't give that to my worst enemy. A new one that is pretty good is OpenBSD's SMTPD but it's a little immature atm.

[kirashi]

26 minutes ago, The Hollanesian said:

Budget (including currency): $300

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Apache HTTP server, Microsoft Exchange(maybe).

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Currently I have a few spare things. Asus laptop ( Intel i5-7200U 2.5Ghz, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HD). If not the laptop, I can try to build something for cheap off of  an AMD FX4300 or FX6300. Also have a 10 yr old Cooler Master 1000w PSU.

 

If none of these work,   any suggestion within my budget would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Even large companies usually avoid self-hosting email these days due to the inexpensive Office 365, Google Suite, ZOHO Office, Rackspace, Fastmail, etc. options out there. It's just not worth your time dealing with all the anti-spam regulations that come with it, including the possibility of getting your ISP's entire IP range (or a subnet of it) blacklisted. (This assumes your ISP even allows hosting of mailservers from a residential ISP connection - most don't.) Not saying it's impossible, of course; just not something that's recommended to run from a residential home IP address unless you know exactly what you're doing.

 

As for the web server, technically anything that boots and connects to the internet can run a small webserver via Apache / nGinx and PHP, so as others have said: you can use a Raspberry Pi for this, or any other older hardware you have lying around that can boot into Linux. There are many guides on the internet that cover installing Apache / nGinx on various flavors of Linux, though most use Ubuntu (based on Debian) as it's probably the most common consumer friendly distribution available.

https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/web-servers/apache/

[The Hollanesian]

For the Pi 4, would the 4gb ram version be more than enough?

Also decided to go with Ubuntu for the Pi 4.

 

Once again appreciate everyone's post on this.