Building a storage and vpn server on the cheap
 

I am trying to figure out the best server configuration for the following:

• Low power (I want to plug the server in and forget about it)
• High redundancy of data (I don't want to loose my music and documents!)
• The ability to stream music + movies to laptop (maybe subsonic or Jinzora)
• VPN server with IPsec or OpenVPN
• NAS
• $800 budget
• 2TB with ability to add more drives

My idea:

• Unix Server with software RAID (maybe RAID6)
• VPN setup on virtual OS via VirtualBox
• NAS setup on virtual OS via VirtualBox

My Questions:

• What would be the best raid configuration if I wanted at least 2TB of data and the ability to add more disks when the space begins to add up?
• What would be the best OS to use for setting up a software RAID (is a FakeRAID a better solution)?
• Does it make more sense to separate the VPN and NAS with different OS's?

My goal will be to access my data from any computer from anywhere but mostly just my Laptop from work. Suggested Hardware and Software for this configuration or better ideas for configuration would be greatly appreciated!

You might consider FreeNAS. No VPN support but you likely have support for that already in your gateway/router.

You can enable SSH (maybe on an unusual port) in FreeNAS and use it to create a tunnel for certain ports, while blocking the additional services on the default ports by a firewall rule in FreeNAS. So one must use an SSH tunnel to access a service.

I've become a big fan of zfs. It's working well for me on Fedora machines with 4+ storage drives and it's just so much easier to deal with. Want to add another drive, one command to run and you're done, no more mucking around resizing lvm volumes and the like.

Google search "zfs linux"

Just one side note:
A RAID is not a way to securely store data. It is intended to reduce downtimes. A faulty disk-controller, a bug in the controller driver or OS, or just an user error can easily cause severe data-loss. If you don't want to loose your data the you have to back it up to a different medium/machine.