So by now our home server is sharing files to our home network, acting as a media server via Plex, it’s managing all our downloads AND we’re sharing our personal doucments on our own personal cloud. What else is there?
Well, we’re about to set our server up to act as a VPN node, so that we can access it and other resources on our home network while away from the house.
Services like Dropbox are great, but I always recoil slightly at the use of the term “The Cloud” when really all that means is “someone else’s computer”.
Now that we have our RAID array setup and working it would be nice if we could actually STORE some data on our home server. In this part I’m going to show you how you can setup some folders on your array from the command line and then share those folders across your network.
Once this is setup you’ll be able to drag and drop your files from any other Windows, Mac or Linux machine.
In Part 1 of this guide I showed you one way to put together a home server using off-the-shelf PC hardware.
In this part I’m going to discuss the various options for operating systems before making a recommendation and then taking you through the installation.
Because most home servers will operate “headless” (with no monitor or input devices attached) I’ll also take you through the process of accessing your server from another device on your network so that you can make changes to it.
Setting up a RAID array is an important step in setting up any home server. Doing so will ensure that your data is protected if one (or more, in some circumstances) of your hard disks fails.
What’s more there are usually some performance benefits to a RAID setup as data can be sourced from multiple drives, effectively increasing performance beyond that of a single drives normal read speed.
Many modern homes could benefit from having some sort of personal server to house files and run things like a media server, private cloud, IP CCTV or download server.
For a long time I would have suggested using a pre-built NAS system from the likes of Synology. I reviewed an awful lot of their devices on the old Tech Made Easy site and I still think they make some of the best NAS devices on the market.
