Building your own Home Server [Part 2] - Purpose

We've went through the most basics of getting a Home Server done up by looking at the Client-Server model and how it became the most fundamental model of all applications of today. However, you may be asking what is the use of a Home Server? Why do you need a Home Server? What has got a new Home Server installed for you?Personally, I have a Home Server to manage my files at home. Besides that, it helps me to backup all my files from all my computers at a regular timeframe. It is the core file management system for all my computers. All my movies, music, photos are stored on that single machine and streamed from that machine. Essentially, in my opinion, my home server is a machines which helps me manage and backup my files. If you're someone who is very meticulous with the organization and storage of all your files, a Home Server helps you to attain that, but a Home Server being a server itself, can do so much more things other than organizing files.

File Server Diagram

Depending on the Operating System you are going to install on the new machine, you can start running any kind of services on it. For example, with Windows Server 2008 R2, you can do basically what was said above, as well as many other services. You can run your own web server and host your own website, or even write an application on the server to instruct it to do what ever you want it to do. The possibilities are limitless. However, as this article is going to be a friendly guide to beginners to start a simple server for home use, we're going to focus on home friendly services, focusing largely on file management and sharing as the core purpose. These are however other kinds of services which we let the machine be.

• File Backup Service
  • Automatically backup all important files from your computers to the home server
• File Sharing Service
  • Access files from the server remotely and edit them remotely, not storing anything on a local hard drive
• File Transfer Service
  • Download files remotely out of your home network. Access files / Write files from outside the home networkWeb Server
• Web Service
  • Host your own website at home.
• DLNA Server
  • Allows DLNA enabled devices to play files directly from the server by streaming from it
• iTunes Server
  • Stream music stored on the server to all iTunes across the home network
• BitTorrent Server
  • Download and host bit torrent files remotely.

Careful planning is what you need before building a server for yourself. You will basically need to find out how much hard drive space there should be, how fast the server is going to run, the network interfaces that it should have to support each services. Before that, you should also know what the services the server is going to run too which will allow you to make decisions on which server operating system to use. All these will be discussed on the upcoming article next week. The series of articles will include touch on various points in creating and building your own home server. Here are the main topics