So basically what I want to achieve with my CentOS 6 server is this:
NAS for Windows clients (I have heard of Samba which looks good)
Game server (Minecraft, possibly others)

In the future:
A small website
Personal cloud storage (as in internet access the the NAS)
Remote desktop connections for others who may want to help manage the game server

I'd like to have all the components I need to run these even if I don't use them until I've learnt a bit more. I also want to have GNOME on runlevel 3 in case I have trouble without a GUI.

I'm installing the system and I am a little bit unsure which components to select.

The system:
Dell OptiPlex 780
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93 GHz (may upgrade to Xeon)
4 GB RAM (may upgrade to 8)
2x500 GB HDD RAID1 for important backups
1 TB HDDs with a 250 GB partition for the system, 750 GB for storage
1 TB HDD for storage
(extra fans, don't worry)
CentOS 6.7 x64

I had this set up previously, but I'm changing it all up.

Thank you

For the web site you'd need a web server. The two main ones in the world are Apache2 and nginx. Either one would do.

For the NAS, if you are only on the LAN then Samba is quite good, especially when connecting from legacy systems. If you want to securely connect over the Internet, as your own 'cloud' as it were, then SFTP is the way to go. There are a great many tools and interfaces that layer on top of SFTP. For example, the file managers like Nautilus can connect over SFTP seamlessly. SFTP support is built into the package openssh-server. It's quite secure as far as such things go, but it is generally recommended to turn off password authentication and use keys for that instead.

For the minetest / minecraft server, you can launch that inside a terminal muliplexer like "screen" or "tmux". My recommendation would be "tmux". That allows you to launch the server and then connect to the 'terminal' if and when you need to, observing the game server in progress along with all previous output. That can easily be shared over SSH, if you want others to be able to monitor or help with the game server.

Okay, thanks. I've installed the desktop, apache and tmux. openssh-server was already installed. I found this guide https://community.spiceworks.com/how...centos-linux-7 on setting up SFTP. I don't really understand it terribly well, but it looks simple to follow. After that would I then install Nautilus?

I just want to mention that I want to be able to access this from clients running Windows 7 & 10.

My drives are set up as follows:
/stor1 - 700 GB ext4 partition on the boot drive
/stor2 - 1 TB ext4 drive
/stor3 - 500 GB ext4 RAID1 volume

Do they need to be NTFS to be able to use them with Windows?

For what I plan on doing, would more RAM or a better CPU be advised? I'm happy to upgrade either.

Nautilus only needs to be on the machine(s) you wish to connect from, using a graphical interface. Or any other modern file manager will do. It is not needed on the server, the machine you are connecting to. Here is a demo of using Nautilus to connect to an SFTP server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S4DV1PluzA

About the guide you link to, it shows how to lock SFTP users into a chroot. That's probably not needed for what you are doing. But you might look for a guide that shows how to work with SSH keys for authentication instead of passwords.

The machines you are connecting from don't need anything more than an SFTP client. For regular machines that would be the file manager or something fancy like sshfs. For OS X, that would mean CyberDuck, Fugu, or FileZilla if you want a graphical SFTP client. For legacy systems, someone else will have to provide details, but I can point in the direction of FileZilla or WinSCP.

All that is for file transfer.

For RAM, run your system under full load and try looking at it with "top" or "ps". But SSH/SFTP itself will draw almost no resources compared to other activities. My guess the game will be the item that tests your resources.

Oh I see. I've already got FileZilla (though haven't used it), so would that be fine?
If I'm connecting when on the LAN, can it work as a network location in Windows? (I just thought it would be easier to use explorer, but when I'm connecting remotely I don't care if I need to use a client software)

So I'm guessing ext4 partitions will work fine?

When I used to run Minecraft it ran poorly but it was modded and likely glitchy. When I go to run it again, I'll try comparing it to running the server from my main system.

If you haven't already guessed, my Windows knowledge is not bad, but my knowledge of Linux really isn't there. I was originally going to use Windows Server Tech Preview but I thought Linux would be better, and thought it would be good to learn, so I'm afraid you'll need to be patient. Thank-you for your help so far.

No worries. Linux may be different from Windows (then again so is EVERYTHING else) but once you get past the differences you will find that it is easier, more powerful and more flexible. It's also a lot less maintenance, though not zero maintenance. It does share a lot of similarities with the BSDs and OS X, so what you invest in learning Linux will pay off also with them as well to a good extent.

FileZilla will be fine for SFTP connections. SFTP is the secure way to connect remotely over the Internet, but it can be used just fine locally, too. In the long term, you'll want to find a way to use SSH keys for authentication because any service that is open to the Internet will get found and hammered on relentlessly. Using the keys will mostly take away that worry. But first thing is working with the passwords to get used to connecting.

I'm not sure if anything default in Windows can recognize SFTP, but if it can then you should be able to connect. However, over the LAN, Samba is good and can be connected natively on Windows but it is more work to set up and not appropriate over the Internet. As mentioned, FileZilla and WinSCP are options.

So, yes, EXT4 will be fine. Only the server will need to worry about the format of the partitions it has. Everything else, like SFTP, will be accessing via the server's operating system.

About the minecraft, there is some question about the helpfulness of the new owner. However, if it still runs, the convenient way is to start a "tmux" session and run it from there. Then you or your collaborators can log in and attach to the "tmux" session and interact with the server, logging in and out as needed.

All the guides I can find include chroot, but I found a very straight forward guide here http://www.linuxtechi.com/configure-...sftp-in-linux/ Could I follow this and omit any ch related steps?

I was quite surprised how similar Mac is to Linux, both graphically and underneath. I never realised the terminal uses much the same commands.

Plain SFTP works out of the box with the package openssh-server. So that's probably why there are no guides for just SFTP alone. If you can connect with SSH you can connect with SFTP and nothing more needs to be changed, except eventually setting up keys.

The chroot capability is only needed if you have certain users you want or need to restrict to specific directories with SFTP and prevent them from having login shells.

The Mac is pretty similar, it's one of the reasons for its popularity in some areas. The OS is Darwin, which has a lot of GNU which is the main project where Linux distros get their main system programs. Thus the label GNU/Linux. The Mac also has a fair number of programs of BSD origin, too, but regardless they are similar enough that they are easy to work with.

This looks like what I want http://www.howtogeek.com/165893/how-...dows-explorer/

I'll try to set it up and connect when I get home

I can mount the 1 TB HDD, but before I (re)try editing fstab, I've been having trouble mounting my RAID1 volume (which shows up in the GUI in Computer as /dev/md126) as /stor3. I tried:

mount /dev/md126 /stor3

It says you must specify the filesystem type. I tried placing ext4 after mount, after md126 and after stor3 but they all just show a help screen.

Try mount -t <type> ... see http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount