Unsure of proper server configuration

[dubrewski]

If this is in the wrong section or not a valid post I do apologize, let me know and I will fix it. Let me start out by saying that along with this being my first go at setting up a server, I am still fairly new to Linux itself. I have been trying to do this as much on my own as possible with the help of the good old google machine. I've reached a point where Im over whelmed by the amount of different options and at the very least I could use a nudge in the right direction.

What I am trying to accomplish is a server that will function as a local media/file server, a vpn and a personal web server/cloud. I would like to allow for 10 - 15 users to be able to go to my hosted page, login and have access to X gbs of personal storage along with a large shared media storage. I would like the users to have the abilities to transfer files between each other at their own discretion and be able to stream content from their personal storage or the shared media storage. The shared media would also be accessible locally. If I could throw some email in there as well that would be nice but not a big deal. At some point I would like to be able to host a few more smaller sites running on VMs but that's not in the near future. Each component on its own seems simple enough but as I try to combine them I just get a little scatter brained.

Would a combination of ownCloud, Subsonic and openVpn be able to handle all this (minus the email and VMs) or am I going in the complete wrong direction? Thanks in advance for any input, suggestions and criticisms.

-dubrewski

[carlo3]

Hey there, I've pretty much been doing similar to yourself over the past couple weeks and am also new to setting up this sort of machine. I made a thread here and there's been really helpful posts from others, maybe take a look at it and see what information you can use.

My needs are on a much smaller scale than yours, but for the local media/file server I ended up going with ZFS for the file system and sharing drives through Samba. The hardest part was making sure all the permissions were in order, and setting up the relevant users/groups.

I was looking at Zentyal too before deciding that it was a bit overkill for my home use, but it sounds like it ticks quite a few boxes for you.

Carlo

[dubrewski]

Thanks for the response. I wish I saw your thread before, there is a few links in there I hadn't checked out yet. Zentyal looks interesting but being my first attempt I feel more comfortable sticking with Ubuntu right now. At least I know there is a good support community I can reach out to if need be. Do you have any web features with your setup?

[carlo3]

The only things i can think of with my setup that might be web features are phpvirtualbox and the plex web client. I'd like to get ownCloud up and running on my setup too, now I have setup Virtualbox I will probably run a machine just for all the web services to keep things nice and modular.

There's an online demo of ownCloud too, you could check to see it does everything you'd like it to.