Ian
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- Feb 23, 2002
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I've been using a little HP Microserver as VM server for the past year, letting me test out operating systems using ESXi. It's worked really well, but it's an underpowered machine (I used it more than I thought!).
A couple of weeks back there was a very good cashback deal on a much more powerful Dell server, so I bought that and moved over to unRAID 6.1. It's some very clever server software that sets up network shares, docker containers and virtual machine capability. From this single 24x7 server I can run things like Plex media server, download backups to the network shares and then run other operating systems and access them within a browser window (VNC plugin).
I've got Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 Preview, Ubuntu and backup images all as clickable launch icons on the unRAID homepage. A couple of clicks and they're launched, all running smoothly and ready for me to use.
If you're thinking about setting up a home server, I'd recommend checking out unRAID. It's not free (unlike FreeNAS and others), but you'll get a lot more potential - especially if you're going to run VMs. It's a really good all-in-one solution for power users wanting to test stuff out.
A couple of weeks back there was a very good cashback deal on a much more powerful Dell server, so I bought that and moved over to unRAID 6.1. It's some very clever server software that sets up network shares, docker containers and virtual machine capability. From this single 24x7 server I can run things like Plex media server, download backups to the network shares and then run other operating systems and access them within a browser window (VNC plugin).
I've got Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 Preview, Ubuntu and backup images all as clickable launch icons on the unRAID homepage. A couple of clicks and they're launched, all running smoothly and ready for me to use.
If you're thinking about setting up a home server, I'd recommend checking out unRAID. It's not free (unlike FreeNAS and others), but you'll get a lot more potential - especially if you're going to run VMs. It's a really good all-in-one solution for power users wanting to test stuff out.
