Server & Media PC OS Suggestions?

Mysterae

New member
I have some old computer bits that I'd like to put to some use and my first thought is to build a mixture of a server and media PC if that's at all possible. My existing QNAP NAS is long in the tooth, slow and limited in storage space.

The parts are Gigabyte P67A-UD7-B3, Intel i7 2600K, 8GB RAM, an old Tagan 580W PSU, OCZ Revo 2 120GB PCIE SSD and a few 1TB hard drives. The case I'm intending to use is an old nondescript thing suitable for up to 4 hard drives.

I'd like the pc to handle the light backup duties of the house over the network, store and play back music, connect to the telly to watch movies, Amazon, iPlayer etc, be a duplicate storage for IPcam feeds. The NAS could be re-purposed to some of those duties if needed.

The selection of what operating system has me stumped. I have Windows 7 that I could put on it but not sure of the server capabilities, would Ubuntu be better suited? Would a RAID card be necessary or overkill?

All help appreciated :).

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A little thread bump :) . Anyone any ideas or suggestions? I'm going to install Ubuntu to have a play and see if it'll do what I need. The idea is to install the OS on the PCIE SSD and have the mech hd's do the storage. I had thought about installing Win7 and MySql (if possible) or something for the server duties.
 
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My server was built around a RAID card for the main storage array and an SSD for the os. I tried ubuntu at first and had trouble with it so i moved to opensuse with a gnome shell as it's similar to ubuntu or debian. The yast2 part of opensuse made setting the system up as a server a breeze. It has been handling teamspeak server, plex, sftp and handbrake/ffmpeg conversions over the net using ssh. (Been running permanently since the start of october) Transferring files to it will happily saturate a gigabit ethernet connection. (not tried more than one machine at a time, but i reckon it might handle it quite well if i team the adaptors) If your preference is ubuntu, give it a go. I find i prefer debian as it is essentially the same thing without the extra bloat.
 
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I use a pc running windows 7 as our family media server, but i havn't set up any automatic backups to it (not sure if you can even do this to a win7 pc). It works really well for streaming movies to our tv using Plex.
Over the weekend I'm having a play with Windows Server 2012 r2 to see if it would be worth upgrading the server to it, but I've ran into some problems running it as a VM so I can't tell you much about it
 
I was using Windows Server R2 on my home server on a SSD, and had a RAID 6 array setup on a 9260-16i

Using Plex for media, my Smart TV has an app for it so it was easy.

Im kind of a stick to what you know man, if you know Linux use it, if you know Windows use it, nothing more annoying than media downtime when you want/need it most
 
You could find someone that would pay you in order you to get a windows vista from them... Would give you basic functionalities almost for free if you find that guy with a spare license
 
I'm actually halfway through writing a guide for setting up your own FreeNAS home server for media and/or file sharing purposes. So if anyone is interested then look it up when I post it :)

M&P
 
Cheers guys for the info, lots of options. I have many versions of software available; a spare win7, Vista, XP and of course Unbuntu.

Because I want the pc to be a media pc of sorts too I've read that Windows 8.1 may be my best bet. The interface is something the other half will appreciate rather than the geeky Ubuntu or clunky Win7 environment.

I'll let you know how I get on. Which leads me to another question that I'll post in a second.
 
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