NAS OS where I can store Steam games and keep them updated? (and copy over to a windows 10 machine once the game is needed)

[c0mplexx*]

So right now my NAS is running Windows 10 Pro and I have Steam on it store games on it and keep them updated but I was wondering which other OSes can help me keep my game storage updated? So when I need the games I can just copy them over (to a windows 10 pc) and not worry about reinstalling or updating

If it matters the other usages for it are:
Plex
Radarr
Sonarr
Prowlarr
qBittorrent
Photo & Files (documents, music etc) usages

[OhioYJ]

Steam gives you the freedom to move files wherever you want (unlike many other game stores), so honestly just about any NAS would do. I backup my Steam library to my NAS, and my son's. 

 

We use TrueNAS. In my case the folder is just mirrored. However in your case you could just setup the folder on the NAS to be library folder and Steam will update those files. It would also show them as installed though. 

 

Steam will let you move the files between the drives in Steam. Or you can move them manually. You can create groups in Steam to separate the games that installed in the NAS if you want, so you know which games are on the NAS. You may find some games run fine from the NAS, particularly if they are less demanding. 

[Needfuldoer]

Steam supports peer-to-peer updates over the local network, so as long as it's running on your NAS PC you should be able to pull updates from it at LAN speeds.

 

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43

[OddOod]

24 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Steam supports peer-to-peer updates over the local network, so as long as it's running on your NAS PC you should be able to pull updates from it at LAN speeds.

 

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43

I *just* discovered this. Steam implemented steamcache. Admittedly it's limited to machines logged in with your SteamID so not useful for a lan party, but still SICK. 

Thus, if you open a VM on any NAS server, login and install all your games, you should be able to just nab it over the network when you want to play.

 

36 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

You can create groups in Steam to separate the games that installed in the NAS if you want, so you know which games are on the NAS. You may find some games run fine from the NAS, particularly if they are less demanding. 

I'd actually love to see a video on gaming from a network drive. Submitting... 

[Needfuldoer]

2 minutes ago, OddOod said:

I'd actually love to see a video on gaming from a network drive. Submitting... 

This is kind of similar. You definitely want a faster-than-Gigabit connection between the NAS and the clients.

 

 

[Domrockt]

19 hours ago, OddOod said:

 

 

I'd actually love to see a video on gaming from a network drive. Submitting... 

Soooooo iam there already, lets say its complicated...

 

the Problem with that is manifold..

 

IF shared over smb you cant play all games, alot actually wont start this way.

IF the share is shared between a few PC at once you have corruption issues since your NAS wont be cluster Filesystem aware.

 

So what CAN you do? You can use ISCSI and install all games on a Blockdevice, that works just fine BUT you cant share that ONE iscsi connection between multiple PC easely.

 

You can create of course multiple ISCSI Blockdevices and use any Backuptool to copy one updadet library to another library BUT then you habe double the Data on your NAS.

 

You can use ZFS as a file system and use deduplication with iscsi... eats ALOT of RAM when the library is realy Big.

 

You can use ZFS and use Snapsots as Blockdevices and clone them <---- i do exactly that. This way i use only 1 time the space and shadow copys for my twink PCs.

 

 

i did not investigate much in Clusteraware Filesystems afaik Proxmox and ESXI are quite usable with that.

 

 

 

"This is kind of similar. You definitely want a faster-than-Gigabit connection between the NAS and the clients."

 

not that much of importance, the games should be on an SSD Storage, most of the time we want the smallerfiles be read as fast as possible, so the 1Gbit is quite fine with 4k random reads for most Sata SSDs.

 

But when you use just one ISCSI BLockdevicewith an good ol HDD  with one user at a time, 1gbit speed is fine and wont be big diffrence in loading times.