Win Server 2012 Guides

Google for guides. Microsoft TechNet is probably the best place for all things Windows Server (at least to start).

Server roles and features is where you set up what you want the server to be.

1. You will have to right click on the folder and change the security settings to give everyone read access, or create a local user account for your father and set that account with the appropriate permissions. Or your third option would be to install the Active Directory Domain Services role (along with DNS) and create a domain user account for you and your father (and anyone else who will access the files). AD DS is the backbone of any Windows environment, as it provides you with a Single Sign-On experience. I don't think you want to deal with this at home, so setting the everyone permission to read would probably be the easiest. That would mean anyone on your LAN could read the files from it, but only you could log in to the server and make changes. Or set everyone to full control if you want to let anyone read, write, and modify and and all files/folders.

2. To set up an FTP server, you would do that with the Web Server role. The Web Server role in Windows uses IIS (Internet Information Services), and you could create a FTP through there. Problem is, FTP is insecure (in the terms of whats being transfered) and I would highly recommend using FTPS or SFTP instead. SFTP is not possible with IIS, because Windows doesn't have SSH built in (SFTP uses FTP transfer over SSH and is the defacto standard when it comes to FTPs). FTPS is FTP over SSL, requiring a certificate be generate from your local Certificate Authority (if the certificate was only to be used on your domain) or from a third party trusted CA, such as godaddy.com. SSL certs will cost you a few hundred a year, and will not be worth it. So after all that, go with FileZilla or some other software capable of SFTP.

3. To stream video, you will need some kind of software capable of transcoding. Chances are all of your media is not in a simple format, that is easily streamable...such as flv. Most of my videos (TV and movies) are in MKV containers, and I use a combination of Plex Media Server, Serviio, and SubSonic to stream my TV, Movies, and Music over my LAN and WAN. SubSonic is definitely hands down the best at streaming music over LAN/WAN. They have mobile apps, and it's free (if you use the modded MadSonic that is).

4. Hyper-V 2012 is awesome. It has 99% of the features that a company needs/wants when looking at a virtualization solution, and is now a serious contender to VMware vSphere...and I use it at home. If you have the resources and need multiple servers, use Hyper-V 2012.

5. Yes, but not that easy. You would use the Remote Desktop Services Role to install the role component RemoteApp, which provides a Citrix Xenapp style application streaming over LAN or WAN, using the resources of the server. This requires self-signed (or third party) SSL certificates being imported to the client that will do the app streaming, as well as installing the app on the server once the role is configured properly.

6. If it's a USB printer, just connect it to the server, set it up, and share it out. That will be the easiest way to do that.

Outside of an AD environment, Windows file permissions are not fun to mess with.

If you have a static IP it's very easy. The first thing you'd need to do is setup the computer you want to remote into with a static IP address and turn on remote desktop in your System Properties. Next you'll need to go into Windows Firewall to configure an except for allowing Remtoe Desktop or just turn Windows Firewall off completely. Next you'll need to forward whatever port you'll be using for RDP in your router. The default port is 3389 so if you don't change that (you'll need to do this if you'll be remoting into multiple computers/severs from the outside unless you want to remote into one computer from the outside and then use that computer to remote into others on your local network), you would need to forward that port for whichever local IP address you'll be RDPing into.
Edited by PuffinMyLye - 1/9/13 at 9:36am

To create a local user account, you actually do that from Computer Management (Start>Run>CompMgmt.msc). Create a local user, and assign that user permissions on folders as needed. Or create a local group, add any local users you create to that group, and assign folder/file permissions for that group.

As previously stated, this is not fun if you have a lot of granular permissions to apply.

As far as logging into your Hyper-V VMs from your PC, you have two options. First is to RDP into the machine over your LAN, and second would be to install the Hyper-V Management tool on your PC. You install this from the Add Features section, in Add/Remove Programs.

As far as RDP...if you end up using RemoteApps, with that you will also have to install the Remote Desktop Gateway role service, which is awesome. Instead of forward port 3389 to a specific computer, you forward 443 (HTTPS) to your RD server, and you can remote in to any of your internal PCs over the internet. I love my RDG.

Good luck with all of this! It's a lot to do, but it's a great learning experience.

I would check out AirPlay It Server. Free and pretty cool. Allows you to stream just about anything to mobile / Internet on the fly.