HPE Microserv 10+ any good for the usecase?

[Voronko]

Budget (including currency): € 1200

Country: Spain

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for:  PiHole, Home Assistant and game servers (Minecraft, Space Engineers, Empyrion Galactic, etc..)

 

Hi all, crosspost to reach a different audience,

 

Ive been thinking a lot recently about upgrading a setup of QNAP nas (ts 231p) + a server out of an old laptop (i5-3317U 8GB ram) to an a bit more consistent/manageable solution with more storage. 

Initially I considered building a server in a miniATX case, but with all parts sold separately and having to start from scratch i was getting to 1k euros price tag rather quickly, and thats without the hard drives. Then I noticed HPE MicroSvr Gen10+ being sold for ~500 euros, which seems to tick all my boxes:

(config ‎P16005-421 with G5420 Intel Pentium and 8GB ram)

- Processor better than current

- 4 drives setup minimum

- relatively low power consumption

- room for expansion with another RAM and PCIe slots. And i think its possible even to swap the processor later on if needed? By default they are sold as configurable and the processor is a "standard" socket. I assume i can take it out.

 

The job for this system would be to stream content, serve as file dump with redundancy and hopefully run several services in parallel. Specifically id like to have PiHole, Home Assistant and a Minecraft server running at the same time (also perhaps switch to other game servers like Space Engineers or similar). 

 

As I never really had experience with dedicated server hardware Im looking for advice on whether you think this system ( HPE Microserv link) will serve its purpose or it would still be more effective to build something ground up?

 

Id like the total budget not to go over ~1.2k, considering that 4 6TB refurbished drives will go for about 550 euros.

 

Bonus Questions:

1. The spec sheet for the server says that supported OSs are Microsoft and Red Hat Enterprise. I would still assume I can install any linux distro i want, right? Or enterprise hardware can prevent me from doing so? (Some special HW with no free drivers, etc...)

2. How would one normally go about installing an OS on a server system where all drives are planned to be in RAID (10)? Get a separate drive for it specifically? There is no convenient spot to add another drive in the case, so the options seems to be internal USB2.0 port (worst case) or external USB3.2 drive.

 

Thanks in advance everyone for your help and suggestions!