Need help buying sever/networking components

[NeedHomeServer]

Hi all, 

 

I am looking to create a home server which I can, run my philips hue lights (I think with home assistant) and additional smart home capacity in the future, be used as a NAS, media server, and game server what will I need to do this?

 

For the gaming aspect I just want to store the game files on the server but run locally on my desktop. 

 

I currently run a gen 2 starlink as my WAN and have the ethernet dongle but that is limited to 1Gbit. (This is the only ethernet option on starlink)

 

Im looking to add a ubiquity access point as well to increase the wifi coverage in my home amd think may need a switch to make all this work. Any advice? 

 

 

[Wh0_Am_1]

Welcome to the LTT forums! Haven't the foggiest about the the Phillips hue, for everything else though, assuming that you don't want/need breakneck SSD speeds an old or cheap pc paired with an HDD of the desired volume it should be able to do the trick (preferably with windows unless you feel like learning Linux or another solution, and *window is really easy to set a NAS up with), as almost anything remotely modern (Core 2 duo or later) come standard with a gigabit ethernet.

The real issue comes down to the game server, as I imagine that you want to run a dedicated server, in which case the requirements come down the game you wish to host, otherwise if you are looking just to store your files that falls under the NAS function listed earlier.

 

Regarding network you are likely going to want an unmanaged network switch like this one, as well as an access point of your choice Ubiquity or otherwise, though if you are looking for a consumer based solution I personally recommend taking a look at ASUS routers (such as this one) as they have the ability to be turned into a mesh network when you wish to upgrade your setup.

 

*Regarding the setup of a Windows based NAS I am going to reference this reply I made previously :

Quote

(Find or) create a folder, right click, select properties, select the sharing tab, select share, select who you want to share to (users, everyone, and/or etc.), disable sleep in power and sleep of control panel, then enter in file explorer of the PC you want to access the folder from and enter in this format

\\NASIPADDRESSHERE\, if everything is not quite running right then you open control panel then > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Advanced sharing settings. And then turn on network discovery in settings of both PCs, ( then if you wish to make it readily accessable; select the folder you wish to use for your NAS, right click, select "Map network drive", then select the drive letter of choice). And just like that you pretty much should have a NAS/ all purpose server that you can run random other software you may want or need to remain static.

 

[aurelienVIE]

Hello 

I am not sure samba(nas files protocol for windows) will be fast enough to confotably play games directly from the nas especially if you connect through wifi. 

 

I think the best would be to store the game files on your nas and when you plan to play the game copy it to your computer. 

 

 

I have a 40Gbps connection between my nas and computer I can try to test it when I get time to confirm it. 

[Blue4130]

8 hours ago, aurelienVIE said:

Hello 

I am not sure samba(nas files protocol for windows) will be fast enough to confotably play games directly from the nas especially if you connect through wifi. 

 

I think the best would be to store the game files on your nas and when you plan to play the game copy it to your computer. 

 

 

I have a 40Gbps connection between my nas and computer I can try to test it when I get time to confirm it. 

Storing files on the nas can work, but iscsi is much better than samba. LAWRENCE SYSTEMS on YouTube has a few old videos about it.

[m9x3mos]

32 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Storing files on the nas can work, but iscsi is much better than samba. LAWRENCE SYSTEMS on YouTube has a few old videos about it.

I agree. This is better for iscsi in this case. The performance will be faster than smb and I have seen a number of things you just can't install on a network share. Not everything though but the stuff I tried most wouldn't. 

The only downside is it can't be accessed by multiple machines at the same time. You probably don't want that for games as files get locked while running to their processes on many cases as well. 

[aurelienVIE]

I managed to test it on my nas and it work OK for the game I try (steam and epic store) but I would still advise for a wire connection. 

On wifi6 it double/triple the loading time compared to 2,5G wire connection. For the fps it didn't seem to have a big inpact maybe 1-3 fps less but can't be sure it is due to the nas. 

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, aurelienVIE said:

I managed to test it on my nas and it work OK for the game I try (steam and epic store) but I would still advise for a wire connection. 

On wifi6 it double/triple the loading time compared to 2,5G wire connection. For the fps it didn't seem to have a big inpact maybe 1-3 fps less but can't be sure it is due to the nas. 

The issue isn’t “entirely” the connection speed, it’s the network stack you’re going through. SMB is not meant for this and many games just will flat out not work. 
 

If you use iSCSI, everything will work perfectly fine, then the only limitation is network speed which will impact loading times.