What is the point of building home servers?

[CyberFern0]

Is it so you don have to connect to live servers in games, or what?

[Alexzz_]

1 minute ago, CyberFern0 said:

Is it so you don have to connect to live servers in games, or what?

Depends on the game, a lot of games dont allow you to host your own server. Some people have a home server so they can store their own files and access them remotely.

[CyberFern0]

1 minute ago, Alexzz_ said:

Depends on the game, a lot of games dont allow you to host your own server. Some people have a home server so they can store their own files and access them remotely.

Own files?

 

Can’t you just put hard drives in your PC’s?

[TheLaserCucumber]

Mine acts as a NAS, a local Teamspeak Server for me and my friends and as a Gameserver for games that do allow you to host your own server, like The Forest or Minecraft, so that we won't get disturbed by other players.

[CyberFern0]

Just now, CyberFern0 said:

Own files?

 

Can’t you just put hard drives in your PC’s?

I mean it’s just extra money for a CPU, motherboard and other components.

[NelizMastr]

There is more to the world of computers than just gaming  

 

Most people have home servers for sharing files, streaming local media, virtual machines for test purposes etc. Of course, some people host stuff like minecraft servers or other game servers as well, just to have a private environment to play with friends on that you allow to connect.

[TheLaserCucumber]

Just now, CyberFern0 said:

I mean it’s just extra money for a CPU, motherboard and other components.

Not quite. You can build a homeserver out of almost everything.

Like when you have an old PC spare or something.

A C2D would even suffice for most things.

 

But when you have more than 1 PC in your network, it's sometimes better to have your data on a server, so that you can access it from every PC.

[CyberFern0]

1 minute ago, TheLaserCucumber said:

Mine acts as a NAS, a local Teamspeak Server for me and my friends and as a Gameserver for games that do allow you to host your own server, like The Forest or Minecraft, so that we won't get disturbed by other players.

So it’s just for when you have friends over and you wanna play Minecraft and other games, just with them.

[TheLaserCucumber]

 

1 minute ago, CyberFern0 said:

So it’s just for when you have friends over and you wanna play Minecraft and other games, just with them.

No, they can connect from their home via Port Forwarding and a static internal IP.

So we can play together whenever we want.

 

[Pyramiden]

I have a small server at home running Windows Server 2016. It is amazing for storing my data, since I can access it from my phone, my desktop, my laptop and my tablet. The server also automatically back-ups all Windows machines in the network and with 1 press of a button I can install my backups back on those machines.
Apart from that I run a download VM on it, and use Hyper-V to run Pihole to filter all advertisements in all of the network.

A RAID controller is used to make sure the disks are monitored and notifies me when I have to replace disks.

[Theguywhobea]

It can be fun

[tikker]

Just now, CyberFern0 said:

So it’s just for when you have friends over and you wanna play Minecraft and other games, just with them.

Your friends don't have to come over. Do the server magic and they can stay where they are. As others have said there's more than just gaming.

I built mine from my old computer to host my media files and a Plex server. I'm planning on expanding it to hold backups as well once I get larger drives. This way my access to e.g. media content is not bound by my gaming PC being on all the time. If I want to watch a movie, I wake up the server through WoL and start Plex on my TV.

 

So practicality, just fiddling around and learning more computer stuff and finally because it's fun building your own things

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, CyberFern0 said:

I mean it’s just extra money for a CPU, motherboard and other components.

An old server like a Dell is only about $200. More than worth its weight.

 

Also, playing movies from the server rather than keeping them local is much better.

[CyberFern0]

5 minutes ago, Pyramiden said:

I have a small server at home running Windows Server 2016. It is amazing for storing my data, since I can access it from my phone, my desktop, my laptop and my tablet. The server also automatically back-ups all Windows machines in the network and with 1 press of a button I can install my backups back on those machines.
Apart from that I run a download VM on it, and use Hyper-V to run Pihole to filter all advertisements in all of the network.

A RAID controller is used to make sure the disks are monitored and notifies me when I have to replace disks.

 

6 minutes ago, TheLaserCucumber said:

 

No, they can connect from their home via Port Forwarding and a static internal IP.

So we can play together whenever we want.

 

So pretty much, a server is for playing privately, playing movies when your PC isn’t on (still don’t understand how that works), and for storing Windows backups. And these are just some of the main reasons.

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, CyberFern0 said:

 

So pretty much, a server is for playing privately, playing movies when your PC isn’t on (still don’t understand how that works), and for storing Windows backups. And these are just some of the main reasons.

Look into a program called Plex.

The simple explanation is it runs on the server and you store your movies there, then you can play them from any device with the Plex app installed.

[NinJake]

Because it's a great learning experience, and you can have one machine doing all the heavy processing, while you can have any network connected device in your home access this machine for resources. Whether that is a game, media files, or even things relating to a smart-home (security cameras, lights, etc...).

[Hiitchy]

I have a 48tb home nas that stores security camera footage from 5 cameras around the exterior of my house. Different uses for different people.

[tarfeef101]

because not all servers are game servers? some use it for storage, running a website, for development/testing of things they code, for fun, for mining...

even for games hosting your own server is a very popular idea. you can have custom mods, environments, etc. For games like minecraft they are very popular because you can build a community within your little "ecosystem"

[reniat]

In addition to the other reasons listed (plex server, file servers, etc.) there's also the ability to store stuff efficiently without adding clutter to your main PC. For example, my PC is very aesthetically oriented: https://i.imgur.com/sInZKnS.jpg and adding a bunch of bulky HDDs would not only look ugly, but actually would be difficult with the radiator/reservoir setup i have in there. I can add tons of large drives to my server without any hassle though. This reason in particular is pretty vain, but it's still a valid reason to me.

 

Also as a software developer, it's pretty nice having a dedicated piece of hardware for some projects.

[Zodiark1593]

46 minutes ago, CyberFern0 said:

Is it so you don have to connect to live servers in games, or what?

If someone has a hobby for building PCs, but doesn't care for gaming, what else is there to build but a home server? 

[kerradeph]

12 minutes ago, reniat said:

In addition to the other reasons listed (plex server, file servers, etc.) there's also the ability to store stuff efficiently without adding clutter to your main PC. For example, my PC is very aesthetically oriented: https://i.imgur.com/sInZKnS.jpg and adding a bunch of bulky HDDs would not only look ugly, but actually would be difficult with the radiator/reservoir setup i have in there. I can add tons of large drives to my server without any hassle though. This reason in particular is pretty vain, but it's still a valid reason to me.

 

Also a software developer, it's pretty nice having a dedicated piece of hardware for some projects.

Yeah, now that I've got a proper server to get rid of the drives in my computer, I'm starting to contemplate getting a tempered glass case and all the bits to actually make it look nice.

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, CyberFern0 said:

I mean it’s just extra money for a CPU, motherboard and other components.

 

This is my server.  Why build it?

 

1) The case holds more drives than my desktop PC.  Up to 16 3.5" drives and it'll also do four 2.5" drives on the back.  As it's configured right now, it holds 58TB.

 

2) It consumes less power than my desktop.  Since it's a slower CPU that is dramatically undervolted (You can REALLY undervolt an i5 2300!) it idles at only 65w power consumption and more like 90w-130w if it needs to spin up all drives.  So it consumes less than my i7 4930k system would if running 24/7.

 

3) It runs 24/7.  It automatically downloads and sorts content, runs a 24/7 torrent client also provides a MySQL database to my two HTPCs.  If I used my desktop PC then all of this would be dead in the water if my desktop PC was offline for some reason.

 

4) It runs independently.  As stated above, being a 'dumb' server it is rarely offline and mostly just sits there doing it's job which allows it to have better uptime than my desktop PC does.

[AbsoluteFool]

The point of home server? Jeez where do i start? Well i guess i need a place to keep all my porn and other videos. I also need my amature videos somewhere. But seriusly i have it just because i can.

 

But from joke to a bit more serious. I self have a gigantic plex server with thousands of movies, i have gitlab server for development. FOG server for cloning, security servers, survilance servers, NAS boxes, Mass storage, Hadoop, Game servers, standard webservers, sync servers, hey i even have torrent server and torrent tracker. Streaming servers and everything inbetween. 

 

The reason you get them depends on what you want to achieve, along with what level of expertice you are on when it comes to server management. And to not forget the security issues alot of people get because they don't know networking

[Razor Blade]

There are many reasons to build or buy and deploy a home server. These are just a few.

• A home server allows someone to take a lot of load off of their main PC. CPU intensive tasks you could shove off onto a separate PC to chew on while your main computer can do something else.
• A home server allows someone to relocate their data and/or backup their data onto another machine.
• A home server allows someone to run media services like Plex on a machine that (if you spec it right) could consume less power than their main gaming PC.
• A home server allows someone to virtualize computers which means you have multiple PCs running any sort of OS on a single hardware box. Saving power and cost over buying a bunch of bare metal computers.

In reality you could do a few of these or all of these things. You don't need a $10,000 server either. You can use anything from buying something brand new, using an old PC, or even buying old enterprise grade hardware. Really depends on what your needs are and what you're really into and what is available for the money you have.

 

As for security. Unless you're putting your server on the internet for all the public to see, security is not going to be any worse than attaching any other home PC on your network.

[CyberFern0]

Can you have one server that functions as a dedicated game server and a Plex media server?