Server OS

[scottish]

Basically needs to allow;
- Sharing filters across network/media center
- bittorrent downloading
- web server
- any other servers i need (for lack of examples, say ts3, irc, old cod servers)

It would be 8GB RAM, 2x 2TB drives in RAID1.

FreeNAS wouldn't allow other servers (and require a bit of work for web server apparently)
Would prefer to stick away from virtual machines (so ESXi etc - no)
Would WHS allow all of these?

Any recommendations?

[HarrySX]

Windows Server 2012, not WHS. WHS is dead, has been for a while.
Get it free from Dreamspark.

[scottish]

Still seems one of the favoured OS's though even with no future updates

Standard or Essentials would you recommend?

Assuming essentials is more aimed at home office/small business?

[Chippiewill]

Windows Server 2012, not WHS. WHS is dead, has been for a while.
Get it free from Dreamspark.

WHS2011 is only two years old.

[HarrySX]

Still seems one of the favoured OS's though even with no future updates

Standard or Essentials would you recommend?

Assuming essentials is more aimed at home office/small business?

Get the data centre editions, the license is free to students via Dreamspark.

But yes, Essentials is a watered down edition.

---------- Post added 18-04-2013 at 11:13 AM ----------

WHS2011 is only two years old.

Dead as in - WS is the superior Windows server OS.

[scottish]

Every license is free

[HarrySX]

Every license is free

via Dreamspark yes, so you may as well go with the dc edition

[Chippiewill]

Dead as in - WS is the superior Windows server OS.

WHS2011 is literally WS2008 R2 plus extra utilities for the home. It's the same core OS.

[Recursion]

But why use an OS that is dead and has nowhere to go? Granted, we use WHS2011 in our house for our backups, media etc etc but I'm looking to move it.

For everything you said I'd go with what @HarrySX; said, WS2012, any version you can get your hands on will do the jobs you want.

[Agnostic Bear]

FreeNAS wouldn't allow other servers (and require a bit of work for web server apparently)

FreeNAS is FreeBSD, I'm sure most of the servers you want could run on that and getting a web server set up like apache/nginx is super simple on bsd.