Best OS for Xeoma

[BamBamm]

I am upgrading my camera system. I have been using Windows 10 to run Xeoma on, but I was thinking of looking at a Linux system.
What Linux based OS would you all recommend? I bought a Supermicro X8DTU-F 1U system, so I will run a RAID 1 system if I can figure out how to set one up.
I have never used Linux before, so I need something easy to work with and well documented. I have two 2Tb and one 4Tb HDDs I need to configure. Since this is a Supermicro X8DTU-F 1U system, everything
is all set up to run a Hardware RAID, I just need to figure out how to set it up.

[skylord123]

I have a very old Poweredge 1900 (built in 2006, so already 12 years old). A couple years ago I used to run Ubuntu on it as the primary OS. I had Xeoma installed on that machine and it worked pretty good.

I eventually came to the road where I wanted raid but didn't want the bad side of raid (losing your data forever in specific circumstances). I started looking into the OS unRAID (it is a linux OS). What I loved about unRAID was that the raid was software raid. This way if I actually do suffer more than one drive failure (or more depending on your setup) I can still recover the files from the hard drives individually (with data loss, but can still get some of it back). I also loved how they use docker and vms to run all the applications on the server. I also loved the idea that the OS isn't stuck to the server and runs of a USB stick. This way if my home server decides to completely fail I can actually move the drives and the USB drive (containing the unraid OS) to a new server (even with a completely new motherboard, cpu, etc) and it will work flawlessly. You can't do that when you install Linux or Windows to the hard drive because of all the drivers that get installed for your specific machine (you have to re-install the OS).

So I made the switch to unRAID. The cost of the OS is so insignificant for what you are getting (plus it's a lifetime subscription so one payment and you are done). Now that I have been using it for a couple years I can say that I honestly love it. I don't have a keyboard or monitor connected to my home server and instead the whole system can be configured through a web interface (which is preferable for me, just stick it in the back room and forget about it).

Before switching to unRAID I hadn't used docker containers at all. It was awesome learning about them. I found an Xeoma docker container from the user coppit (https://hub.docker.com/r/coppit/xeoma/) and have been running Xeoma in a docker ever since.

One of the features I love the most about unraid is that you can have a cache drive (usually an SSD). When you setup a new share in unRAID for your security camera archive you can set it up so it writes to your cache drive then moves to your array at night (giving you faster write speeds and sparing your array until a less busy time). This helps keep my array fast while Xeoma is writing files.

It honestly just depends on what you want to do. I wanted to learn more about dockers, home automation, security, software raid, VMs, and server redundancy. My home server runs almost everything in my house (lights, security cameras, media through plex, matrix chat server for my wife and me, and tons of other crap) so it is nice to have something that makes the server side easy.

Here are some screenshots of my home server unraid UI to give you an idea how how nice and condensed it is:
dashboard - https://www.dropbox.com/s/khl5gt7tzsoesww/goliath_Dashboard.png?dl=0
docker list - https://www.dropbox.com/s/hybyviq9m7n1e00/Screenshot%202018-11-12%2012.30.16.png?dl=0

[BamBamm]

Thank you for the reply skylord123. Unfortunately, my system HAS to run off of a RAID system.
Also, unfortunately, I have had little to no luck with finding an OS that has info on supporting RAID-1 configuration. They all say they support RAID, but I can't find info on how to install to it.

super-X8DTU-F.jpg (39.86 KiB) Viewed 7094 times

[BatteryKing]

I am currently using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with a Megaraid RAID controller. It works. I am finding hardware RAID is a whole lot faster, especially on writes. Also have not lost any arrays yet due to the controller. Even if the controller fails you can put in another one and keep going with the same disks and it should detect your array configuration and keep going like nothing happened.

I am not too trusting of software RAID, at least not under Ubuntu 16.04 as I backed up to a software RAID 5 before attempting to upgrade to 18.04, but the system lost power due to a lose power cord between the system and the UPS (I since put in a tighter fitting power cord) and while the main hardware RAIDs came up fine, the mounted when power was lost software array I backed up to reported corrupted superblocks on multiple drives and would not reassemble, meaning total loss of backup. Fortunately it was just a backup, so I was able to redo it. However if you are doing software RAID for your main array, while you shouldn't lose data, I have found in this case shouldn't and won't are not necessarily the same thing.

[cancam]

I'm running Xeoma on Ubuntu.
If you've never messed with linux, there is a pretty steep learning curve.
Most everything is done through a terminal with text.
I'd recommend installing it on something to mess around with it for a bit.
I've used it for a couple years now and still need to google almost everything I do.