Best multi-use game server/NAS OS setup?

[HeroRareheart]

I have an old Dell R710 which I just bought new HDD's for and I want to do a full clean install and re configuration of the server. I know my best option is to run ProxMox and have an instance for Ubuntu Server to run the Minecraft server and Satisfactory server with each game getting its own interface facing my DMZ and a second instance of something like TrueNAS that has an interface pointed at my personal LAN network, but I can't be dammed to play with partitioning all my hard drives and figuring out the best combo of drives for each utility. I just want to slap them all into a RAID 6 config and install one OS then eat the security implications of such a setup, so my question is do I use Ubuntu Server which I'm highly familiar with to do it all or am I better off sucking it up and learning to use TrueNAS? I DO have a NAS deployed right now with TrueNAS I just need to replace it, built from literal trash picked parts with slow failing drives, so I have some familiarity with TrueNAS but not much.

[Needfuldoer]

Personally, for your use case I'd put Ubuntu Server, TrueNAS Scale, and Unraid on the short list. Just download them and give them a try; it won't cost you anything but time. (If your server has iDRAC 6 Enterprise, you can use the Java virtual console to boot the images without even burning them to discs or flash drives.)

 

If you pick something with ZFS, and you can pass the drives through into a RAIDz2 VDEV, you'll have your big bucket of data.

[HeroRareheart]

On 2/25/2022 at 5:52 PM, Needfuldoer said:

If your server has iDRAC 6 Enterprise, you can use the Java virtual console to boot the images

it has some version of iDRAC but I never use that.

 

On 2/25/2022 at 5:52 PM, Needfuldoer said:

Personally, for your use case I'd put Ubuntu Server, TrueNAS Scale, and Unraid on the short list.

If I just run Ubuntu Server and assigned it to doing all 3 tasks how could I go about the NAS part? I assume a package likely exista to setup a storage pool or something all my Windows machines can access and I've just never heard of it.

[Needfuldoer]

4 minutes ago, HeroRareheart said:

If I just run Ubuntu Server and assigned it to doing all 3 tasks how could I go about the NAS part?

Just share a directory through SMB/CIFS, APFS, NFS, or whichever other file transmission protocol your client machines use.

[HeroRareheart]

7 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Just share a directory through SMB/CIFS, APFS, NFS, or whichever other file transmission protocol your client machines use.

Alright thanks. If I did want to go the hypervisor route though do you think I could get away with the hypervisor being on an SD card on the internal SD card slot in order to leave as much space for the other tasks as possible or should I use the raid card to setup a raid config beforehand and just partition things out so it's all on one drive?

[jde3]

If everything you have runs on Linux then yes, Ubuntu Server is a good call. It's a waste of resources to use Virtual Machines for this. No matter how fast a VM is, two OS kernels are never faster than one. If you want to isolate things for reasons then docker would be better at that then VM's.

 

Ubuntu will install root native ZFS using the experimental install options. (tho you might have to check if this is desktop only installer or available now for server as well) If not.. you can always convert an Ubuntu desktop into a server after the install, the difference is just the default list of packages it installs and some configuration.

[HeroRareheart]

1 hour ago, jde3 said:

If everything you have runs on Linux then yes, Ubuntu Server is a good call. It's a waste of resources to use Virtual Machines for this. No matter how fast a VM is, two OS kernels are never faster than one. If you want to isolate things for reasons then docker would be better at that then VM's.

 

Ubuntu will install root native ZFS using the experimental install options. (tho you might have to check if this is desktop only installer or available now for server as well) If not.. you can always convert an Ubuntu desktop into a server after the install, the difference is just the default list of packages it installs and some configuration.

Given that TrueNAS scale is built on Debian I was thinking of using that to make the NAS part easy, is there anything I should know before going ahead with that instead?

[jde3]

1 hour ago, HeroRareheart said:

Given that TrueNAS scale is built on Debian I was thinking of using that to make the NAS part easy, is there anything I should know before going ahead with that instead?

Well.. It's not terrible for it. It does give you a docker platform.. mmm..

If it were me I'd do FreeBSD with Jails for the server interfaces as they are public and Jails will give you good security and protect your NAS files. I would do it myself and use Bastille to do that but I don't think you'll find anything with a "nice GUI" for doing so.. TrueNAS or XigmaNAS is about all you get here for FreeBSD with a GUI. If that is what you are after.

Ubuntu would be another method and probably has some GUI options like Cockpit. (tho cockpits status I'm unsure of.. it failed my testing for a project a few years ago) If you want to get good at this stuff and do a lot of custom work your going to have to flex the CLI.