Right now I run Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard on my home server that is really just a media/file server. I was hoping to turn this into something more with Linux but wanted to see if there were any solutions out there that simplify everything with a web interface or something before I go the manual route with Debian. My goals for the system would be to have it serve up media to another computer that runs Kodibuntu, as well as act as a file server that I can access in Windows. I was also hoping to run virtual machines on it as well.
Right now the hardware is pretty limited No GPU - headless Core 2 Quad Q9400 4GB DDR2 80GB Seagate - boot 3TB Seagate - media 1TB WD Black - files
All drives are formatted as NTFS. My hope is to have something that runs smoothly where I can boot the machine up, wait a couple of minutes, and instantly have access from other machines. I am pretty familiar with Linux already, so doing everything manually won't be much of an issue, but I would like to avoid it if there is something out there that does the same thing but better.
Personally I'd just set it up manually but if you want a webui you might have a look at open media vault. It runs on top of debian so you can still do anything with it that you can do in debian. It comes as it's own distribution but I'm pretty sure you can install it on top of debian if you want to do something more custom.
Not much of a Linux guy so IDK if there is something better there. But FreeBSD in the form of FreeNAS served me well. That being said it takes some pretty beefy specs to run well (especially RAM) so I'm sure someone could suggest something Linux based that'd be better for you.
Another ready to go server that's a bit sluggish on older hardware, but is an excellent overall package is Zentyal. Look for the Community Development Edition.
This looks very interesting, assuming it works the way it seems to based on a first glance at their website.
Hopefully within the next month I will be upgrading the server to an i5-2400 (not a huge upgrade, but they are free parts). That should better handle anything I throw at it, as well as VMs with hardware acceleration.
Run proxmox, it has a web interface and is a vm and container uh thingy. Very easy and is exactly what you are looking for. You can run linux and windows vms. as well as turnkey servers. just upload your iso, create vm, start vm, done.
once you have the iso just burn a disk or put on a bootable usb. it installs like a regular linux install such as debian, Ubuntu or Mint. it runs ontop of debian btw so it is stable. once it is done you just use a web browser and go to the serveraddress that it shows on screen and everything is done in the web interface.
I actually tried Open Media Vault in a VM and I do like the way it handles the filesharing aspect I was looking for. Proxmox also looks great (saw Wendell's video on it). I might try and run them both on the same server somehow. Maybe with OMV as a VM which has access to the two hard drives which then get shared over my network that way. I do worry about performance going that route, if it is even possible.
I did some more googling, and thought of just running OMV with virtualbox installed to run my VMs. I'm very familiar with how Virtualbox works and will easily do what I want to. This way I can easily RDP into the VMs I need access to. The big question is managing Virtualbox over a web interface. After some googling, I found a couple of projects that will manage Virtualbox, but they all seem older and out dated (meaning no clear 5.0 support). There could also be a better way of going about that all together. OMV virtualbox plugin is also an option. Any suggestions off the top of your head? (feel free to tell me i'm an idiot that I have it all wrong, that's cool too :P )
I've tried to use them before with Fedora and its Boxes program, but never really figured it out. Probably a stupid question, but I assume when looking at a GUI there isn't some kind of a guest additions and that everything sort of works once it is installed in the VM? I need to do some reading on KVM/QEMU I suppose.
Yeah there's no guest additions, everything just works and the performance is good. I haven't run in to any problems using KVM and virt-manager. I'm pretty sure there are webuis you can use as well but I gave up on trying any of them once I figured out you can run virt-manager remotely.
Totally depends on what you proficient at. Things like FreeNas have out of the box user ease of use. But if you're a BSD, Linux or even Windows expert you might do well with DIY.
I am running Linux Mint (XFCE) with PS3 Media Server, Plex Media Server, Spideroak, Owncloud, Webmin, and X2GO Server (Q6600, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, 500 GB HDD) and loving it.
You can do anything in any distro. if you want something easy just run Openmedia vault. If you want something proper with enterprise level packages and have a web control interface, do it manually in OpenSUSE 42.1
I just loaded up an old HP with Ubuntu Server. I am mostly using it to stream music, pictures, and videos throughout the house and so far it has worked pretty well.