[darknight670]

Cheers for the links guys.

Will checkout Astaro & Untangle as I think they will give me the usage information I require.

Does anyone know of any software like Astaro or Untangle that will cache images on the server to increase browsing speed & save bandwidth?

Ideally I would also like to be able to look at the images as sometimes just seeing the website address is not enough to monitor web usage as there are alot of websites with an ok sounding name but they serve adult material not meant for children.

Or if it can save images of the webpages that are visited and keep copies of any files that are sent and received?

Both Untangle and PfSense ( I do not know astaro ) have a SQUID Proxy addon which does exactly what you want

[jackh]

If you are concerned about the type of content your kids watch, you may want to consider OpenDNS (again, free for home use) for blocking unwanted categories and malware.
It's basic, but a great first line of defense. Highly recommendable.

[ThickHead]

Ditch Windows and install ESXi

+1 for ESXi, that's exactly what I'm doing to build my own "Home Cloud"

I recently installed VMWare's vSphere 5.0 (free ESXi hypervisor) on a 2008 vintage Rackable Systems 2U server that I bought on eBay for $125. It has 2 dual-core Opteron 275's, 16GB ECC RAM, dual 550W power supplies, and I'm currently in the process of moving 6.4TB's worth of SATA disks onto an Adaptec SAS RAID controller.

My first VM is a Debian 6 64bit SAMBA file server, it will soon replace my 11+ yr old AthlonXP PC running Debian 6 / SAMBA that serves up 2.3TB's of media for XBMC. I've created some experimental VMs: Debian 6 workstation, Ubuntu 11.10 desktop, VMWare vMA (SLES 11), and next up is CentOS 6.2, my goal is to be all free/open source, no M$ Windows. I want to ensure acceptable performance when running multiple VMs on a GbE home LAN, as these Virtual Desktops could someday become the free replacements for aged, out-of-support WinXP desktops. All of us married/co-habitating types know that poor network performance is a sure way to negatively impact WAF and quickly discredit all prior proclaimed prowess of your expertise in computing which guarantees you will never again enjoy harmony in the ol' homestead.

My HTPC (Win XP) runs XBMC and BeyondTV as a PVR, which so far has worked out extremely well. But Snapstream stopped developing the consumer version of BTV a few years ago, so I'm developing my plan to someday run MythTV in a VM as the PVR back-end to XBMC PVR running the front end on my HTPC.

The OP asked about other uses for his server, and I'd suggest that running a hypervisor opens up more opportunity to finding all kinds of free VM Appliances that others have already created.

[blaqdragun]

saitoh183 Im running WHS2011 with Stablebit Drivepool (8TB of drive space) and Flexraid for redundency (using a 2TB as a parity drive)

Not to hijack this thread, but as a new member I am unable to contact saitoh183 via PM. Hey saitoh, would you be able to elaborate on your setup? I am about install those same programs on an HP Proliant N40L and I would greatly appreciate your input.

-Blaq

[dry_flood]

+1 for ESXi, that's exactly what I'm doing to build my own "Home Cloud"

I recently installed VMWare's vSphere 5.0 (free ESXi hypervisor) on a 2008 vintage Rackable Systems 2U server that I bought on eBay for $125. It has 2 dual-core Opteron 275's, 16GB ECC RAM, dual 550W power supplies, and I'm currently in the process of moving 6.4TB's worth of SATA disks onto an Adaptec SAS RAID controller.

My first VM is a Debian 6 64bit SAMBA file server, it will soon replace my 11+ yr old AthlonXP PC running Debian 6 / SAMBA that serves up 2.3TB's of media for XBMC. I've created some experimental VMs: Debian 6 workstation, Ubuntu 11.10 desktop, VMWare vMA (SLES 11), and next up is CentOS 6.2, my goal is to be all free/open source, no M$ Windows. I want to ensure acceptable performance when running multiple VMs on a GbE home LAN, as these Virtual Desktops could someday become the free replacements for aged, out-of-support WinXP desktops. All of us married/co-habitating types know that poor network performance is a sure way to negatively impact WAF and quickly discredit all prior proclaimed prowess of your expertise in computing which guarantees you will never again enjoy harmony in the ol' homestead.

My HTPC (Win XP) runs XBMC and BeyondTV as a PVR, which so far has worked out extremely well. But Snapstream stopped developing the consumer version of BTV a few years ago, so I'm developing my plan to someday run MythTV in a VM as the PVR back-end to XBMC PVR running the front end on my HTPC.

The OP asked about other uses for his server, and I'd suggest that running a hypervisor opens up more opportunity to finding all kinds of free VM Appliances that others have already created.

+1 for the ideas guys.

I spent a couple of days trying to install ESXi 5 without success and then realised Dell have there own 'tweaked' version available that has been configured to work out of the box which installed without a hiccup once I found the correct software to make an ESXi 5 bootable usb stick within windows.

That is now installed so I just have to decide what VM's I am going to install.
Originally the OS was Windows 7 Ultimate and trying to run VM's in Virtual Box but I had a lot of issues trying to correctly configure the NIC's to work so i'm glad you guys suggested ESXi 5.

I am thinking that to start with I will run the following VM's:

1. PfSense with squiq proxy for my firewall all internet browsing traffic is routed through that.

2. minimal linux install for sickbeard, couch potato, sab etc.

3. Freenas as a file server with Rsync for backups (i'm not saying this is the best but I have experience of using it)

4. XBMCBuntu - Although my linux knowledge is non existent, I belive that XBMCBuntu has a desktop environment so I should also be able to install Mysql on it as well and since it is running xbmc, I should also be able to have it auto scan and update the Mysql library so my other installs dont have to scan they will just read the shared library? Maybe I could also consolidate sickbeard etc onto this VM as well?

Thanks for reading, any comments or tips would be appreciated.

Cheers
Gaz

[sab0fro]

3. Freenas as a file server with Rsync for backups (i'm not saying this is the best but I have experience of using it)

I wanted to know how you planned to configure storage in Freenas; would you use a sub 2TB vmdk, RDM, or a combination? I stopped using ESXi (3.5) to host my fileserver VM when my media storage needs started to grow immensely. I would like to return to ESXi if a good solution exists to host a VM that serves multiple TBs of data.

Sab0Fro