[darkside]

Hi guys, long time no see. Thought id drop back in and see what words of wisdom you can offer up to me for my next project.

Ive just bought a house (yay!) and am planning on getting network cable wired round before we decorate. Few behind the tv, some in the office, some wherever. I just wonderd if you guys could help me out a little with any ideas on what hardware i will need.

Im planing on running a server from the office which will:
1. use as a home lab. I want to play about with virtualisation and also other OS without messing with my 'main' setup.
2. be a small time web server (nothing more than personal use)
3. keep all my files in one place/backup
4. act as an ubuntu repositry to update pc's on the lan
5. act as a media server so i can stream stuff direct to my tv (its not a smart tv so DNLA it is)

Im thinking of running an SSD (or two in raid1) with a hypervisor installed and then running all my OS from this.
1. Ubuntu server to act as a file server/media server/update repo
2. Ubuntu server with LAMP stack
3. Any other flavour of linux/windows I want/need to test

The server also needs plenty of sata connections for HDD that I can Raid 1 also, to actually store the data/backup config files from my various OS. This will probably start off with two 1 or 2 TB drives but room for expansion would be useful.

So im going to need at least a server, a switch & a modem/router I think, possibly more, possibly less.

Now this is where you guys come in..... Do you think this would be the best set-up for what im trying to do? Do you think i would be better off trying to build my own server or buy a pre-built from someone like HP? Do you have any recommendations on router/switch kit? Could I use the server as a router? Is there a better way to store my data other than raid 1?

Any ideas what else I could use something like this for?

Thankyou for reading, and advice or input is greatly appreciated.
Nathan