Best OS for new media server

[ross87 9]

Hey,

 

I've just bought a HP Microserver Gen 8 which has been upgraded which has been upgraded with the following:

 

*Intel Xeon E3 1265L v2 2.5GHz quad-core CPU

*Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333) ECC RAM (2x8GB)

*120gb Kingston SSD boot drive

 

I'm just wondering what you would recommend as an OS for this? The server is solely being used as a media server (3 x 4tb HDD's, 1080p and 4k content), using Emby, Sonarr, SABNZB etc.

 

I do have a windows server essentials licence, but I've been hearing about FREENAS and unRaid, so wanted to hear people's views, seeing as Emby will be the main software on the server.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Cheers,

 

Ross

[Jdiesel 1114]

Personal preference but my vote goes to Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS. As long as you don't mind setting things up via CLI.

[ebr 14959]

The one you are most comfortable working with that supports everything you want to do.

 

All opinions you get from a question like this will be just that .

[ross87 9]

Thanks for the replies.

 

To be honest this is my first venture into servers since, Windows Server 2003 and that was only for printer / software / file sharing, many, many years ago. So in fairness I am well out of date and everything will be a learning curve. I'm just looking for simplicity, with low power usage .

Edited April 14, 2018 by rosslee

[CBers 6795]

If you're happy with Windows, then either Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016.

[adrianwi 238]

It's an interesting question though, and one I was thinking about a few days ago.

 

All hardware being equal and assuming a good understanding of any OS, which will provide the best performance for running emby?

 

I'll start off by saying it's not FreeBSD

Edited April 14, 2018 by adrianwi

[hellosri 1]

I recommend freenas. I have used many windows servers over the years - WHS/ sever 2012/ 2016 and mainly used them for document & media storage, starting at 4TB growing to 20TB.

 

I tried Freenas 11 once & never looked back. The stability with all my apps/ services - Plex, Emby, remote access etc and storage reliability is not in the same league. I don’t ever reboot to fix any problems & I have a simple web interface to take care of everything.

[adrianwi 238]

I'm a big fan of FreeNAS, but really not sure it's the best OS for running emby.  Too many dependancies on other packages that don't get updated often enough and jails that can't be updated between FreeNAS releases.  Hoping iocage might improve this moving forward, but I can't imagine FreeNAS offers the best performance for emby, or at least given my experience I hope not.