[speedwell68]

As in my hardware thread, the reason for my ‘crate’ is that I repurposed my server I bought for my last IT business, and converted it into a home lab, if I was building from scratch I would just use a Pi with a couple of big external HDD, hence the envy!

I would dearly love to go over to FOSS completely too, problem is I need a Mac for a couple of things (final cut pro being one!) Windows for another couple of things (Publisher being another)... problem though.... running RDP via a Mac, then ssh to a Linux server (I’m running VM’s under a hypervisor) my keyboard shortcuts go AWOL!

At present I’m running an instance of Windows Server 2016 as a media server (with the boring name Kodi-Server!) so this is most likely to be converted to something like Open Media Vault, so at the very least I can have my HTPCs front and back running FOSS.

The other VM’s I’m running are a web server, an email server and a Windows 10 workstation, and I can safely say that I’ve been runnng email servers longer than Google!

I thought about a Pi as a media server and was worried that it wouldn't be able to keep up. I actually made the Revo struggle the other day. The kids were watching something and I started doing a bulk download using get_iplayer over ssh and ripping a disc on my desktop PC direct to the same HDD and the playback stalled. I guess that 3 things reading/writing to a single USB 2 HDD was too much for it.