iTunes Library on 'dumb' computer as server

I'm heading to uni soon and am looking to mirror my current iTunes setup whilst there. I currently have a desktop that has all of my media on, and from which I can stream all of my content using Home Sharing. However, at university I will not have a home network as I do now. Finding a way to create one is my first problem - my second problem, and the reason for this post, is how to then create a 'dumb' computer on that network that will serve as the server, and to have it back up a copy of the main drive to an external drive so that they are always in sync.

Thank you in advance.