I currently have 90Tb of libraries shared via a Windows server. I've been using Mediasonic hard drive enclosures with 8 or 16Tb drives and Windows/Intel storage spaces for 4 drives for the "Movies" library, 8 drives for the "TV" library, and another 4 drives for "Photos" and other random NAS. I literally only share with family, but, that's still about 12 users across the US due to school. I have a stable 1000/1000Mb fiber connection that has been working perfectly for the past few years. So, my issue now is, I want to host my own Lemmy, Matrix, and NextCloud servers, but they all seem to need a Linux-based server. I've read in the past that Linux Plex servers run into a lot of issues since it was designed to run on Windows. I'm not averse to buying yet another computer, but, before I do that I thought I would seek some advice if I should combine everything into one Linux server, or leave Plex as its own Windows server and put everything else on a new device.
Running everything via docker solves both problems no matter which OS you choose since the underlying OS doesn't matter.
Also recommend this because you can have a single docker compose file that will boot all your servers automatically instead of having to boot them individually on restarts.
Since you mentioned Plex, you can also incorporate your *arr stack/torrent clients (more complicated depending on which) into this if you're using it.
Yes, but also no.
Long story short: you can't run Windows containers on Linux. And to run Linux containers on Windows requires essentially running Linux on Windows, and then the Docker engine on Linux. (See also: running Linux containers on OS X.)
There do exist multi-arch container images, but that's the result of proper planning. One example: https://hub.docker.com/_/hello-world
More info: https://hackernoon.com/how-to-run-docker-linux-containers-natively-on-windows-ti1i3uxr
Did not know you can't run Windows containers on Linux interesting. Immediately assumed it was available but such a rare niche case.
I will say this is far easier than it sounds, it's essentially just enabling WSL2 aland configuring volumes properly. I was trying not to intimidate someone who's newer to a more complex hosting architectures
I installed Docker for Windows and spent weeks trying to get a NextCloud server running, with no luck, reading everything I could find. I finally signed up for a turnkey server in the EU for a reasonable price but the lag was unbearable, so I thanked them and canceled. I'm a complete newb with anything that is non-local. I've spent weeks finding workarounds for closed-source, out-of-business P:OS systems
I've got Plex running on 2 non-Windows systems: Raspberry Pi (Linux Docker container) and TrueNAS (FreeBSD jail). No issues.
If I could suggest something....
Try setting up a Linux VM on Windows. I'm not a Windows guy, so you might need to research how to do this. My go-to would be VirtualBox; I don't know if Hyper-V supports non-Windows VMs, and I'm not intimately familiar with setting up WSL.
Going the VM route will let you kick the Linux tires without committing to more hardware. Or, you could get a Raspberry Pi. External USB drive optional, since you should be able to configure Windows to share your library over the network and just have your Pi mount it.
Hyper-V is absolutely the way to go here. Linux is quite well supported.