Home server

[TeamOhioFC]

So I currently have a decent computer with a 250gb hard drive and windows 8. I am planning on buying a raid array and wanted to make a home server for data and to play videos. I am not sure what is the best operating system and configuration would be since windows home server is discontinued. Any recommendations?

[DacStugly]

checkout -> http://www.openmediavault.org/

[MG2R]

Your options are basically these:

• Windows 7/8 with Flexraid: tutorial
• As mentioned above: Open Media Vault
• FreeNAS: tutorial
• A Linux distribution with the right packages installed: tutorial

Depending on your familiarity and/or willingness to learn one of these will suite you best.

[omniomi]

If it's Windows 8.1 Pro continue to use that because you can run Hyper-V and setup multiple smaller Linux VMs. The way I have mine setup:

 

• Windows 8.1 Pro host machine
  • Plex Media Server - Accessible from all of my mobile devices, other computers, and two ChromeCasts.
  • File Sharing - Two volumes X:\ and E:\ are shared with varied permissions on my network using simple Windows File Sharing... Some volumes are for storage/backups from other machines, some are attached to Plex's auto media discovery and new files are added to Plex, etc.
  • Hyper-V -
    • Linux VM #1 - MediaWiki used as a personal notebook/document/attachment store, Gallery3 used to store and sort photos I want easily accessible everywhere but with manageable permissions.
    • Linux VM #2 - Apache/nginx sandbox for testing websites I'm working on without having to constantly FTP everything to live servers.
    • Linux VM #3 - PowerDNS which I've been playing with but am not using yet. [usually off unless actually playing with PDNS actively.]
    • Windows 7 VM #1 - Was toying around with multiboxing in ArcheAge although I have since stopped playing. [usually off unless I need to test something in Win 7]

Another option is ESXi from VMWare which is free and in which you could run VMs for various tasks.

 

If you use the machine as a plain old server and don't run a hypervisor you'll be limited to running software the OS you choose can run...Personally I'd recomend VMs in some form.

[yippy3000]

I have Windows Home Server 2011 and love it.  I think it is still worth a consideration.  Right now it runs its normal services plus Plex Server and Crashplan.

 

The next easiest would be Windows 7 or 8.  For RAID you have a few options:

- Hardware RAID: Most expensive and hardest to manage but fastest.  All disks must be the same size

- Flexraid as mentioned (never actually used it)

- DrivePool https://stablebit.com/ only $20 and gives you file level data redundancy plus drive pooling.  From my very brief look at the Flexraid website it seems to be the same thing for 1/3 the cost.  You can mix and match disks as needed plus add and remove them from the pool over time.

[MG2R]

<VMs>

 

Plain old Virtualbox runs pretty fine as well

[yippy3000]

Plain old Virtualbox runs pretty fine as well

 

Another vote for VirtualBox.  I like it more than Microsoft's virtualization in fact.  It is even cross platform so you can move the VMs from Windows to Linux host if you need to.

[omniomi]

Plain old Virtualbox runs pretty fine as well

 

 

Another vote for VirtualBox.  I like it more than Microsoft's virtualization in fact.  It is even cross platform so you can move the VMs from Windows to Linux host if you need to.

 

 

There's really nothing wrong with VirtualBox but if you already have 8.1 Pro and can run Hyper-V or don't need Windows so can run ESXi there's no reason to use a type 2 hypervisor over a Type 1. Although Hyper-V runs with Windows it's actually a native/type 1 hypervisor and installs below the "host" OS not on top of it.  On the other hand if you don't have Windows 8.1 Pro and need to keep your host copy of Windows/Linux/Mac OS X on the machine VirtualBox is a great choice as a free Type 2 hypervisor.

[ekv]

Most os server are on Linux usually because Linux is best option for something like that, and you can use MyCloud and make good home storage server, if you are looking for something like that, if not there is lot of options for video streaming and things like that.