Steam NAS

[SLI_Ready]

Hi

 

I wanted to know if it would be possible to create a Steam server like LTT did, but slightly differently. Instead of just pre-downloading games to it, I'd want to KEEP all of the games on it. So, if both my and my brother own, say, Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, ;) we would only have to update one time, on the server, and then it would update for both computers, and both computers could run the game at the same time off the one NAS. Is this possible?

 

Thanks!!

[Poetic_School]

Yes, but each computer you use must set the library folder to the network location / NAS.

[beersykins]

You can store games on a Samba/SMB/Windows-Share, just mount it as a drive letter and point a Steam folder at it.  Any PC can launch the game over the network, although keep in mind on gigabit it will be much slower than SSD and some higher end mechanical drives (125 MB/sec max).  Slower server storage performance will influence your transfer rate below that.  If both PCs are trying to load resources at the same time you'd halve that rate for the duration of both of them loading concurrently.

 

I've ran similar games off of iSCSI and Samba shares.

[GDRRiley]

14 hours ago, beersykins said:

You can store games on a Samba/SMB/Windows-Share, just mount it as a drive letter and point a Steam folder at it.  Any PC can launch the game over the network, although keep in mind on gigabit it will be much slower than SSD and some higher end mechanical drives (125 MB/sec max).  Slower server storage performance will influence your transfer rate below that.  If both PCs are trying to load resources at the same time you'd halve that rate for the duration of both of them loading concurrently.

 

I've ran similar games off of iSCSI and Samba shares.

10gb network cards are so cheap I'd say grab some and that should help.

[SLI_Ready]

On 2/10/2020 at 8:59 PM, beersykins said:

You can store games on a Samba/SMB/Windows-Share, just mount it as a drive letter and point a Steam folder at it.  Any PC can launch the game over the network, although keep in mind on gigabit it will be much slower than SSD and some higher end mechanical drives (125 MB/sec max).  Slower server storage performance will influence your transfer rate below that.  If both PCs are trying to load resources at the same time you'd halve that rate for the duration of both of them loading concurrently.

 

I've ran similar games off of iSCSI and Samba shares.

Could I possibly use a low capacity m.2 ssd as a cache for games played often?

Also, I'm planning on running 2 2tb Hybrid HDDs in raid for more speed. Is that a good idea?

[beersykins]

24 minutes ago, SLI_Ready said:

Could I possibly use a low capacity m.2 ssd as a cache for games played often?

Is your definition of 'cache' as 'installed game directory'?  

 

I have a 1 TB NVME primary but also a 500G one in one of those USB <-> NVME adapters that has games installed on it and runs pretty well.

[SLI_Ready]

3 minutes ago, beersykins said:

Is your definition of 'cache' as 'installed game directory'?  

 

I have a 1 TB NVME primary but also a 500G one in one of those USB <-> NVME adapters that has games installed on it and runs pretty well.

Similar to how optane works. It caches the most accessed data, so that it's faster. I'm probably just going to get a m.2 ssd anyway, since RAID increases the chance of data loss signifigantly and it's more expensive.