Anthony McDonald

Home Network Project

Sunday, 18. January 2009, 20:21:08

Home Server, Linux, Networks, Home Network

I was given 3 computer systems (1 AMD, 2 Intel).
Trying to figure out what type of home network to build to learn IT infrastructures.

Currently contemplating

1 Linux server (Unknown purpose)
1 Windows 2003 Server 180 day trial software (Unknown purpose)
1 File server (OS not determined) (Store install files, music, movies, photos)

Maybe 1 should be a media server (shoutcast, etc)

Any suggestions would be warmly welcomed. I have no money so everything has to be free.

Extremely BusyPining for Northern Kentucky

Comments

Antero Hytönen # 20. January 2009, 19:18

As for the fileserver, you could try FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org) or OpenFiler (http://www.openfiler.com/), which both are complete solutions. If you want mediaserver, you can give GNUMP3d (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/) a try. Natural place to install it would be the fileserver.

As for typical IT infrastructure, one machine could be firewall and maybe web proxy. There's at least m0n0wall (http://m0n0.ch/wall/), Shorewall (http://www.shorewall.net/) and IPCop (http://www.ipcop.org/). Though at least network interfaces are good for that kind of purpose.

Other simple choice is web server to see how long it takes before someone tries to hack it

To share it outside world, you would have to get domain name and set up DNS server or buy the service from somewhere.

I don't know about the Windows server. Maybe quite common case would be to set up Active Directory, though it's not really useful without any clients. After the trial period, you can put it to better use