LANCache Questions

[ArmedAviator]

Hello LTT.  Long time viewer, first time poster.

 

I'm working on a portable mostly-all-in-one LAN Party ("LAN Protest") network and server setup.  I have a few Brocade L3 10G switches for core and access network and am sourcing my server and rack needs next.

 

Right now I have three questions and I'm certain more will follow.

1. How much available storage would be appropriate for a LAN Party setup expecting 20-30 players (XBox, PlayStation, and and PCs) meeting once a month?
2. Is there a way to extract the LANCache docker image settings so I can set up Nginx, the DNS, and SNI-Proxy services without Docker?
3. Is there a method to load-balance LANCache with HAProxy?  If running two LANCache servers at the same time with shared storage, would there be file conflicts?  Maybe a warm-standby approach would work better with keepalived?  I'm a big fan of redundancy.

 

Further information that may be useful...

 

I intend to use this portable setup at home, at friends' and at a local brewery that wanted new ways to get locals to fill up the place.  Many people in the small city I'm in are gamers and want social interaction and beer.  The brewery wants to run it once every month or every other month depending on success.  The brewery has 400/35 Mbit business internet.  I'd run pfSense on a VM behind the business router but I'd try to convince them to get a dedicated IP to dedicate to the pfSense server when in use (prevent double-NATing and make firewall rules easier).

 

If anyone has recommendations on a small-ish, transportable rack and a server/storage setup that would fit it, I'm open to suggestions.

[Zando_]

10 minutes ago, ArmedAviator said:

I intend to use this portable setup at home, at friends' and at a local brewery that wanted new ways to get locals to fill up the place.  Many people in the small city I'm in are gamers and want social interaction and beer.

... Why do you want to fill up a place and socialize mid-pandemic

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, ArmedAviator said:

How much available storage would be appropriate for a LAN Party setup expecting 20-30 players (XBox, PlayStation, and and PCs) meeting once a month?

How many games are you needing to move? Id proably say a few tb.

 

8 minutes ago, ArmedAviator said:

Is there a way to extract the LANCache docker image settings so I can set up Nginx, the DNS, and SNI-Proxy services without Docker?

Not easily or fully supported. You can modify their souce code if you want.

 

9 minutes ago, ArmedAviator said:

Is there a method to load-balance LANCache with HAProxy?  If running two LANCache servers at the same time with shared storage, would there be file conflicts?  Maybe a warm-standby approach would work better with keepalived?  I'm a big fan of redundancy.

I wouldn't bother at your scale, as one server can fill 10g, so I don't see a reason to bother with multiple servers here.

 

There is also lancache fill a program that can help fill the cache for you.

 

 

[ArmedAviator]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

... Why do you want to fill up a place and socialize mid-pandemic

I'm here for tech advice.  If I wanted virtue signalling with a side of tech advice, I would still be on Reddit.

 

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many games are you needing to move? Id proably say a few tb.

It's tough to say.  I have 90 games on my Steam account and XBox Game Pass so I go through alot of games in a few months.  Not sure what other peoples' game libraries look like or how often the latest, big AAA games publish multi-GB updates on multiple platforms (I'm looking at you, CyberPunk 2077).  With my current setup, I have provisioned 3TB for the LANCache VM on my R710 (SAS RAID5 drives) and it filled up in under a month between a tenant and myself.

 

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I wouldn't bother at your scale, as one server can fill 10g, so I don't see a reason to bother with multiple servers here.

I'm certain it's overkill.  I was more interested for pure curiosity reasons.  This is primarily a service for my friends and community and secondarily a real-life learning experience for my new career path.

 

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There is also lancache fill a program that can help fill the cache for you.

I just discovered this today which is fantastic, however it only supports Steam.  Hopefully someday someone will figure out Epic Games, UPlay, and others.  I'll definitely get the top games pre-cached, though.  I guess that may tell me how much storage I need.