Home Server 101

Hi all, I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction for a noob's guide to getting up and running with building/configuring a home server.

I've been building computers for quite a long time but this would be my first attempt at getting a home server running. I just finished building a new desktop and would like to re-purpose the old parts to a home server for my wife and I. The hardware is an i7-4770k, 32 GB RAM, 250 GB OS SSD drive and I plan on putting four 3 TB disks in a RAID10 config for data hosting. Still haven't decided on using Ubuntu or Fedora for the OS.https://www.spanish55.com/blog/spanish-lessons-for-beginners-the-best-way-to-learn-spanish

My main goal behind this is mainly to act as a file server for my family's photos, videos, etc and to add in capability as a backup host. As I've began looking into this however, I'm seeing other capability that I find useful as well. I do a lot of home hobby 3D print designs so I was thinking about hosting a PDM server for my desktop, laptop and 3D printer to manage data through. Running some LAN party type game servers occasionally would be nice. Having a central location for our financial documents would be great too and that also has me looking into the security and network management features in a lot of detail.

I don't have a clear idea yet on exactly how I want to tackle the project but complicating that is that I don't really know what the different building blocks look like yet and was hoping to see a 1000 foot level view of a road map or something to get me started on reading. Can some one send me the right direction?

Thanks

Tray2

6 years ago

Level 73

I would go with a headless Ubuntu server. This is the toc I followed setting up my server

## Table Of contents
 1. [Bootable USB](#bootable-usb)
    1. [Download Ubuntu](#download-ubuntu)
    2. [Format USB drive](#format-usb-drive)
    3. [Copy files to USB Drive](#copy-files-to-usb-drive)
 2. [Copy vital config files](#copy-vital-config-files)
 3. [Install Ununtu 17.10 Server](#install-ununtu-1710-server)
    1. [Boot from USB](#boot-from-usb)
    2. [Install Ubuntu](#install-ubuntu)
    3. [Login remotely (SSH)](#login-remotely--ssh-)
    4. [Updating Ubuntu](#updating-ubuntu)
    5. [Installing the necessary software](#installing-the-necessary-software)
    6. [Configure auto mount for raid and virtualbox](#configure-auto-mount-for-raid-and-virtualbox)
    7. [Create the necessary users and groups](#create-the-necessary-users-and-groups)
 4. [Configure Samba](#configure-samba)
 5. [Create symlinks for the users](#create-symlinks-for-the-users)
 6. [Configure transmission-daemon](#configure-transmission-daemon)
 7. [Configure duplicity](#configure-duplicity)
 8. [Configure minidlna](#configure-minidlna)
 9. [Configure virtualbox](#configure-virtualbox)
 10. [Manually create virtualbox VM for the perfect server](#manually-create-virtualbox-vm-for-the-perfect-server)
     1. [Commands to remeber](#commands-to-remeber)
     2. [Connect to VM with remote desktop](#connect-to-vm-with-remote-desktop)
 11. [Install the perfect server](#install-the-perfect-server)
     * [LAMP Stack](#lamp-stack)
       * [The Perfect Server - Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) with Apache, PHP, MySQL, PureFTPD, BIND, Postfix, Dovecot and ISPConfig 3.1](#the-perfect-server---ubuntu-1710--artful-aardvark--with-apache--php--mysql--pureftpd--bind--postfix--dovecot-and-ispconfig-31)
     * [LEMP Stack (Only 16.04 but should still work)](#lemp-stack--only-1604-but-should-still-work-)
       * [The Perfect Server - Ubuntu 16.04 (Nginx, MySQL, PHP, Postfix, BIND, Dovecot, Pure-FTPD and ISPConfig 3.1)](#the-perfect-server---ubuntu-1604--nginx--mysql--php--postfix--bind--dovecot--pure-ftpd-and-ispconfig-31-)
 12. [Open port 80 in the router](#open-port-80-in-the-router)

Please or to participate in this conversation.