I wanna make a server and I'm not sure what to do

[Sir Dude]

I have an old computer that I ran Minecraft servers off of and I have some files stored on it, but I want to upgrade to something more "professional". I want to make a server that I can access remotely to quickly and easily transfer files to and from, and I want it to have network access so my friends can do the same. I've been reading into things like FreeNAS/TrueNAS but my brain glosses over with reading so I was wondering if anybody here has any advice on where to start or can point me in the right direction.

[Electronics Wizardy]

How much storage do you want in tb? Do you want it to be upgradable later on easily?

 

Do you want this to be a tower or a rack?

 

Id probably start with unraid. Easy to use and expand.

 

Do you have a budget in mind?

[Hexenhammer.]

10 minutes ago, Sir Dude said:

I have an old computer that I ran Minecraft servers off of and I have some files stored on it, but I want to upgrade to something more "professional". I want to make a server that I can access remotely to quickly and easily transfer files to and from, and I want it to have network access so my friends can do the same. I've been reading into things like FreeNAS/TrueNAS but my brain glosses over with reading so I was wondering if anybody here has any advice on where to start or can point me in the right direction.

Check Unraid forums, they have all the info you might need with builds and what used hardware to buy

[Sir Dude]

19 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much storage do you want in tb? Do you want it to be upgradable later on easily?

 

Do you want this to be a tower or a rack?

 

Id probably start with unraid. Easy to use and expand.

 

Do you have a budget in mind?

I've got several hard drives laying around that I can use and I don't have space for a rack, I was looking more for the software side of things. And I'd prefer free if possible.

 

12 minutes ago, Hexenhammer. said:

Check Unraid forums, they have all the info you might need with builds and what used hardware to buy

Will do!

[Electronics Wizardy]

26 minutes ago, Sir Dude said:

I've got several hard drives laying around that I can use and I don't have space for a rack, I was looking more for the software side of things. And I'd prefer free if possible.

 

Will do!

What hdds are these? 

What specs are the pc your using or is this new parts?

 

You can also go proxmox, and setup your own storage and seutp vms on there for different things you want to do, but I'd really go unraid as its a nice simple package.

[Sir Dude]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What hdds are these? 

What specs are the pc your using or is this new parts?

 

You can also go proxmox, and setup your own storage and seutp vms on there for different things you want to do, but I'd really go unraid as its a nice simple package.

The PC I'm using is an old office PC my friend pulled from a dumpster. It's an old AMD Athlon II 64x with no graphics card (as of right now anyway) with 8 GB of new memory. I did buy a new 1 TB hard drive for it as it was intended for file backups but I've collected more older and smaller hard drives as I've gone through our old computers and consolidated them. I realize it's a trash computer (literally) but I'm not asking a lot from it and I do intend to upgrade when I have the money for it.

[jde3]

Keep in mind only LTT ppl use Unraid. It's virtually unheard of in the industry. They kind of have a circle of users here due to their videos.. It's like those barracuda network things.. great ad's but nobody uses it.

Proxmox and FreeNAS are far more popular globally. (and completely free) FreeNAS marketing goes to Linux conferences that experts attend, I believe that gets them some tread in the industry, and it's based on FreeBSD.

 

I should note here Enterprise uses none of the above. Usually they use NetApp, DDN, EMC-Dell, Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances or FreeBSD with ZFS those are the large players for real storage. Proxmox or Unraid knowledge will never get you a job (you may even get laughed at).

[Tydfil]

Ive been thinking about building a tower rack but no idea where to start got some ideas now thnaks but still a scary beast

[Ubuntu is love]

Just install all off them and try them out. That's how I learned way back. Try to install Proxmox and click around a little then move to freeNAS/TrueNAS or install that into a VM on proxmox. Then try ESXi with the opensource license (Still the IT standard for type 1 virtual environments). maybe even try the 30 day trail for vcenter when you have a host installed. I would stay away from platforms where there is no opensource or trail license. Untill you figure out what you need and what you can do with it.