Home Server

KJLai

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MA
Hey All,

Do any of you guys have a Home Server? I just wanna get to know how it works and what are the benefits of having a server at home.

One of my co-workers told me that if I have a old desktop at home (which i do), I should try and make a server.


Please let me know what you guys got.


Thanks
 
I used to serve my website from home from a free bsd server but my isp is to unreliable so I put it on godaddy. I used to use a dns cache server but now the firewall I use (pfsense) has one built in. Im running apache right now on a raspberry pi along with smokeping to monitor some ip addresses.
 
I don't have one either but a server can be useful. It is good for sharing files, Can be setup as a DHCP, DNS and Web server and the list goes on. You can use Windows or Linux. If you just wanted to share files then just simply mapping a network drive on a Windows PC. A good thing about servers is that if you will be just using at home then you can setup an old machine with Windows or Linux and not have to fork out money if you don't want to do that..
 
I've got an older computer set up as a file server running Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS. It's used mostly for media streaming, but also for file backup for all our other computers. I have 4 TB of mirrored storage in it. I use it mostly for streaming files to multiple XBMC installs. I have a raspberry pi with raspbmc hooked up through my xbox one's hdmi in port in the living room and it's installed on my wife's laptop for when I'm using the xbox. The server is also running MySQL to host the XMBC databases so that you can start a show on one computer and continue on another at the same place.

All in all, it's really what you want to use it for (streaming, website hosting, etc) as it can do anything a server can do, since it is a server.
 
Thanks for you guys input. It helped a lot. Most of what i kind of want to do is just file share and maybe remote into it for some thing I need because I do homework on my laptop and my pc at home. so I feel like its good if I build a server for one.


Thanks!!!!
 
What would you guys recommend to have on a home server, spec wise.

I have an old Dell PC tower, Not sure what the specs are since it was my brothers back in the day.

Let me know what you guys recommend, I might even just buy some new cheap parts for it.

Thanks
 
What would you guys recommend to have on a home server, spec wise.

I have an old Dell PC tower, Not sure what the specs are since it was my brothers back in the day.

Let me know what you guys recommend, I might even just buy some new cheap parts for it.

Thanks

For just file sharing and a quick remote connection into your home then you don't need anything more than an old Pentium 4 with 512Mb RAM.

I've had home servers running at various times and I usually use old laptops because they are generally lower powered than desktops and don't take up much space, just stick them on a cooling pad powered by USB and your away.

Of course a P4 with 512Mb will get the job done but it might not be too much fun to remotely connect to and try and operate anything intensive so you may want to look at something newer like a C2D with 2Gb of RAM or so?
Or an i3, i5 literally anything will work for you it just depends on what you think you are going to use it for.
 
Thats good to know! Thanks ssc456!

Im only gonna use this for file sharing and remote access. I recently just lost a laptop, wont turn on for some reason. Gonna try and fix that to see if I can get any of my files back from that laptop.


Thanks for the input
 
For just file sharing and a quick remote connection into your home then you don't need anything more than an old Pentium 4 with 512Mb RAM.

I've had home servers running at various times and I usually use old laptops because they are generally lower powered than desktops and don't take up much space, just stick them on a cooling pad powered by USB and your away.

Of course a P4 with 512Mb will get the job done but it might not be too much fun to remotely connect to and try and operate anything intensive so you may want to look at something newer like a C2D with 2Gb of RAM or so?
Or an i3, i5 literally anything will work for you it just depends on what you think you are going to use it for.

This is how I run my server that I've recently set up. I use an old Dell Optiplex 210L Desktop with P4, 2GB ram and 160GB hard drive and it works fine. I run a little Minecraft Lan server on it and use it to share files and media streaming. I may upgrade the hard drive to a 500GB or 640GB. Anyway like Ssc said a machine like that will do the trick.

About your laptop if you can't remote into it then pull the hard drive and out plug it into a desktop.
 
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