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Setting Up a Server for Beginners

G

Guido02

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 17, 2006
Messages
224
Hello, I am attempting to set up a server, and I have almost all of my pictures and videos stored on some hard drives, but I would like to access this stuff from anywhere. What I need is some sort of walk-through or something for setting up sharing files from outside of the network that a machine is physically connected to. I have looked all over the internet and what I'm finding doesn't really go the direction that I am trying to go in, or maybe I don't know what to search for.

Either way, please help.

I want to stream videos to my HTPC from my house, but I also want to access these things from work, or from my parents house 2000 miles away.

Thank you in advance
 
how many hard drives do you have this spread across? Like are all the videos in one place.
What OS are you running?
 
Knowing which OS you're using would be quite helpful :)

The simplest way to acheive this (that I can think of right now) would simply be setting up your server to be FTP accessible (or any FTP derivation), and then either

a) Download an FTP Client (such as Filezilla) on any computer you'd like to access them on
b) Set up a webpage-based FTP client. You'd need to install a web server (Apache?), and forward Port 80, among other things.

You could also simply set up a "website", that allows you to log in securely and access files in a specified directory on the server.

Anyways, that's something to chew on.
 
I haven't decided on an OS yet. I will be using one of three though, it will either be Ubuntu Server, WIndows Home Server, or Windows Server 2008.

THe reason I haven't determined the OS is because I was having such trouble trying to figure out how to set it up. I was originally trying to use Server 2008 though.

The information is right now on 4 seperate HDD's. 1 is dedicated to videos, 1 is dedicated to music and photos. etc.

Let me know what other info would be helpful
 
I would set up a FTP server myself.

I would use Ubuntu Server because its free and adequate for the job.

If you go that route here is a quick guide for setting up FTP:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FtpServer

And here is a guide for setting up Samba for local file sharing:
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/samba-fileserver.html

I would take this route if you are comfortable with the command line and with Linux. Otherwise I might stay away from it as it can get messed up fairly easily if you don't know what you are doing. It is just as capable.

If you like free and not so complex, maybe just try the vanilla flavor of Ubuntu so you get a GUI.
 
Simplest thing to do would be a gotomypc account to your home machine...

Beyond that, you'll need to either have a static IP address or Dyndns.org setup no matter what OS.

Server 2008 includes IIS, so if you can figure it out, everything you need is included with the OS.

What are you really trying to do? Do you want to stream anywhere or just access files? Activity over the internet with consumer level upload speeds can be very aggrivating.
 
Guido02 said:
I haven't decided on an OS yet. I will be using one of three though, it will either be Ubuntu Server, WIndows Home Server, or Windows Server 2008.

THe reason I haven't determined the OS is because I was having such trouble trying to figure out how to set it up. I was originally trying to use Server 2008 though.

The information is right now on 4 seperate HDD's. 1 is dedicated to videos, 1 is dedicated to music and photos. etc.

Let me know what other info would be helpful
Click to expand...

So WHS has a feature like DynDNS you basically use an automated uPnP to setup an address like you.homeserver.com. That bascially is a find a not taken "you" in the url and then let the wizard work for 15-60 seconds.

Logging into you.homeserver.com then takes you to a web page that allows you to access all of the network shares over a browser interface downloading directly from that interface. You can also use add-ins to stream media very easily, and use the web interface to remote desktop into any PC associated with the WHS.

Basically, WHS has wizards/ standard functionality for what you want to do, but it costs $100.
 
+1 on WHS ;)

I set mine up and gave login/passwords to my dad and my wife's parents to share pictures and other files. They just connect to my xxxxxx.homeserver.com from any system with Internet access and can view the folders that I give them rights to.

Streaming is also possible, though they don't use it. Personally, I use SageTV for my TV recording and their placeshifter allows me to stream video that way. The one caveate about streaming is you need a good upload connection (which I don't have using Comcast).
 
I would be very careful when exposing a windows machine to the internet. This will guarantee that some bots / hackers will try to break into your system. Keep all unnecessary services locked down on the firewall. And keep it up to date and protected with antivirus and antispyware/malware protection.
 
drescherjm said:
I would be very careful when exposing a windows machine to the internet. This will guarantee that some bots / hackers will try to break into your system. Keep all unnecessary services locked down on the firewall. And keep it up to date and protected with antivirus and antispyware/malware protection.
Click to expand...

Hello pfsense machine :) I totally agree that you need to watch that stuff, but if you have a decent firewall, you will get an alert for suspicious activity. I've been targeted once in the past 3 months, and it was shut down in about two minutes so not a big deal.

Plus, my typical OS installation lasts a maximum of a few months since everything is in VMs it is just re-attach the base installation virtual disk, install new patches and go.

A typical WHS installation, plus at least some firewall is going to be fairly OK though as Microsoft actually did quite a bit of locking and built on Server 2003 not XP. The scarier thing is people still running XP SP1 with not even a router firewall, especially if they are running services like torrents with generate lots of incoming traffic making it slightly harder to single out requests.
 
So here is what I want to be able to do with this machine. I would like to use it at my office. I run a ballroom dance studio and just like any other business, our lives are on these computers. Here is the problem though, any information in particular is on a specific machine and doesn't play nice with other machines. So I would like to store our daily updated documents on this server. This would also allow the work to be done at different computers.

Why do I want to be able to work at different machines? I just recently built a machine that isn't great but its quite an improvement for us. Our main machine is an intel dual core operating at 2.93 Ghz. It has 4 GBs of ram, and a 640GB HDD. I went with a Saphire video card, but I can't remember what model it is right now(I know it has 512Megs of ram). My hope with this computer was that I could do some of the video and photo editing(we take a lot of video and photos). But I have to make some one unproductive by removing them from this workspace to do anything on it. So if the could access their work from the PC in the back office or from another PC, that would be great.

The other thing that happens is we have something like 30 to 40 thousand songs. I would love to not have to worry about our "Music Computer" crashing and not being able to play any music. If I could hook any machine up and play the songs that would be great.

I would also like to possibly host our website from this server. This may not actually ever happen, but if I could that would be great.

I would also like to play our videos on our tv without fumbling between DVD's of this show and that event. If I could just set up a playlist and let it go that would be amazing.

Now I would also like to be able to work from home and do various other things from home with the stuff on our server.

I would also like to reserve a portion of this machine for some personal use as well. Something like storing my personal photos and music on it and accessing it at my house. Or If I could have this server store videos that could be streamed on my HTPC that woud be real amazing, but I may have to set up a server at my house for that.

I hope that all helps.

Now in terms of the different OS's, I care about ease of use, that is the most important thing to me. To give you an example, I like Linux because when I need help trying to figure out how to do something with it, I have always easily searched and found the solution to my problem. I have not had such good luck with Windows. But if they have a package that makes it all pretty easy that is great.

Thank you all
 
Since WHS was mentioned earlier, I'll add another feature that works well and with an easy to use interface: backups. Given the size of the WHS thread in this forum, I'm pretty sure you can find great support here if you go that way.

I would personally remove the home dependency for the work-related tasks: Every song or video you play at work should be stored at work. Having your home server as a remote backup is great too, but that comes second to a local backup if your business depends on these songs and videos.

Try listing your business and personal needs separately with the dull bullet points, I am a bit confused right now: You are asking about the best OS for a home server in your first post, but in your last post you talk about doing "things from home with the stuff on our (work) server" and you say "I may have to set up a server at my house".

In any case, WHS seems to be the best for both your home and remote needs. I'd recommend waiting a few more weeks, since WHS v2 is due to release this year and the v1 is really old now.
 
The only things that I was talking about for home use was the last thing. I do want to be able to access the documents from home and even possibly some of the videos and pictures, but that wouldnt be personal stuff, just me working from home.
 
Take a look at Synametrics.com - they have a product (free for non commercial use) that puts a web interface in front of a file server for use on the Internet. The product is called Synamon http://web.synametrics.com/SynaMan.htm that might be exacly what you need. Free for noncommercial use. Runs well on Server 2008, don't know about WHS.
 
if your interested I will create a ubuntu server with web front end (website) and ftp that I will host on my website so u can just drop it in VMWare player...

or....

if you use my image you can use VMware vCenter converter to place it on a physical machine....
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

Slayer, i'm not sure what you are offering to me. In option 2, do you mean that you would set everything up and I could take that image and put it on my machine to get the server up and running?

I will be playing with this stuff this weekend, work keeps me pretty busy during the week. Maybe I will set it up as a dual boot for now to help determine which direction I should take between ubuntu and one of the Microsoft products.
 
"Beyond that, you'll need to either have a static IP address or Dyndns.org setup no matter what OS."

Just for reference our service provider (DSL) will not allow access from the outside. Even with Dyndns.org providing an IP address, we are unable to get remote access.

That may be a consideration.
 
@Guido02: What's your internet connection at work and home?

If it doesn't have enough bandwidth (especially in the upload direction), I would not recommend doing any streaming. Especially if you intend on hosting your work website on the same machine and same connection, depending on how many people would be visiting your website and the type of content (e.g. lots of high res pictures and or video clips), streaming content to your home over the same connection may become so bogged down that it is not enjoyable to watch and people visiting your website would get frustrated that the content may not load fast enough!

Just something to keep in mind!
 
So at home I have cable internet that i pay for upgraded speed, and i just tested it on speakeasy and it registered 10.31Mbps down and 2.38Mbps up. So I think that that is pretty good.

Now at work I have a business class internet connection, but I can't give a measured test right now. But I used to be a technician with Comcast, and one thing I learned while I was there was to not play around with your internet connection. So it is extremely likely that at work my speeds are as good as, or better than they are from home.

On a sidenot, is there an easy way to determine if my ip is static or dynamic? I'm I feel pretty confident that it is dynamic at home, but it seems that having a static ip was one of the upgrades with the business class internet at my office.

Thanks again guys, I love this place... everyone is so incredibly helpful!!!
 
Guido02 said:
Thanks for the replies guys.

Slayer, i'm not sure what you are offering to me. In option 2, do you mean that you would set everything up and I could take that image and put it on my machine to get the server up and running?

I will be playing with this stuff this weekend, work keeps me pretty busy during the week. Maybe I will set it up as a dual boot for now to help determine which direction I should take between ubuntu and one of the Microsoft products.
Click to expand...

yes i would build a server and then you would just convert it to a physical machine from a provided image i made
 
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