Hosting a server for websites, ftp and random use at home?

Posted by Zolomon on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Zolomon
Published on 2010-04-02T10:29:11Z Indexed on 2010/04/02 10:33 UTC
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server

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webserver

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hosting

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Hardware

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operating-system

I'm wondering what's the best option for me if I want to move all my hosted websites (from a hosting company) to a server at my own home? Basically, the needs I have are:

be able to host websites using PHP/ASP.NET (haven't really decided yet - both would be preferred!)
enable FTP so I can create accounts for my family members to access the server for file handling
SSH
SSL - for secure connections (this is something you have to buy/apply for per domain, not sure if there are any server side settings that have to be made)
be able to stream video
remote desktop
host home-brew applications that can run as services
use either MySQl/SQLite/SQL for relational database storage

What should I think of before I buy a server? What hardware will I need, what will limit my server? I basically want to learn networking better as I'm a software and web developer but haven't had the resources to acquire any serious toys until now. At the time of writing, most of my websites have 60 visits/day so I don't suspect them to be very demanding.

Is there something I haven't thought of that I should have?

What OS would you suggest I run? FreeBSD vs Windows Server vs ?

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