media / game server questions.

[TrenchGoat]

Hi, a group of friends and I used to have LAN parties all the time but we've since moved apart and can do it less and less frequently.

 

During a conversation, someone brought up the idea of a server / NAS that can:

 

  -Host private games (to try and cut down on all the game server rental/accounts we have going on)

 

  -Stream the same music to all of us at the same time like internet radio, but in a way that we can all add to the playlist from our own machines remotely (i.e, a friend in another city could upload a track from his library and it would be added into the playlist / conversely if someone stuck some Bieber on there someone else could remove it)

 

  -Host permanent VOIP

 

  -Allow us all to upload files, screens etc so we can share while gaming or even leave files there for people to pick up when they come on.

 

I know these things are doable on their own, but is all of it possible from the same machine? If so, which OS / programs am I looking at here?

 

any help is greatly appreciated

[ShadowCaptain]

Yes this is possible I do those sorts of tasks on my home server, I run windows home server

 

(though mine is not that powerful for game servers, its just a ivy bridge pentium)

 

I host a VOIP server, run a plex server for music, run a "dropbox" style service for friends and family, and use it to backup everyones pc, including 1 friend

 

Not ran a game server yet but only because I have no need to, though it might not run well on my pentium

[Vitalius]

I actually have a somewhat similar setup at my house. I use FreeNAS to do it. 

Basically, I use Plex Media Server like Shadow does above to share media. Plex requires you make an account on their website when installing/using the server, which you can then share with friends who can access the media there. This would be the music streaming service basically. You could also stream photos (screenshots) & video if you wanted (avoid video, too much bandwidth). 

You can just add a plugin called ownCloud to FreeNAS, which has it's own auto-installing PBI (so you don't have to deal with manual installation), that basically makes your server a cloud, which your friends can access if you set it right and drop stuff in/take stuff out so they can alter the media Plex can see.

Or you can then give them FTP or similar access to the server through the internet thus allowing them to add/remove media at will. You'd need to know about file permissions on a FreeBSD system (it's very similar to Linux) such as setting the user, group, & access permissions (for example, for music, you'd want the user to be the owner of the server, the group to be all your friends, and the permissions to be 770 so that the user & group can do whatever they want while "Others", aka anons, can't do anything). You can add another folder to the FTP thing so that everyone can share screenshots & such freely. 

That'd be harder, but either way, FTP or ownCloud, will work.

You can host a Teamspeak server through FreeNAS, as well as game servers if you know how to set them up. I have Minecraft installed on mine, for example. There are guides out there to help you along in this process. 

Things to consider when considering FreeNAS in this situation:

• To use FreeNAS' plugins (which you require to use Plex, Teamspeak, & game servers), you must use ZFS in FreeNAS. This usually requires fairly strong hardware, which you'd need anyway to host the game servers I think. I recommend buying cheap & old server hardware off of Ebay from trusted sellers. I got two Xeon 6 core CPUs with 32 GB of RAM & a motherboard for $235 or so which is an amazing deal and all of it works fine, though I had to request another motherboard because the first one I got was damaged. It was like $35, so they just sent me another one no questions asked. 
  
  I had to pass up some of the best deals because they were UK only, so it should definitely be possible where you live to get a server like this for under 150 BP.
• Whoever will host this server will need good internet. Specifically, you'll probably need a minimum of 20 Mbps upload speed so that the game server won't suffer with the streaming of music. You'll probably want to set up QoS to where the music can only take up a small portion of the upload, such as 3-5 Mbps at most, leaving the rest for the gaming part to prevent lag. 
  
  One other thing about that is the file transfer. If someone is uploading music or screenshots, that needs it's own QoS setting too, so you'd want to give that 3-5 Mbps as well. Depending on how many friends you have, 10 Mbps should be plenty for gaming. Just to be safe.
  
  Teamspeak's VoIP should be negligible imo.

So yeah. It's entirely possible, but you'll need to do some research and work to make it happen. Specifically, buying the server hardware, learning how to install plugins manually in FreeNAS, and such like that. But FreeNAS has tons of guides, so that should be fairly easy. Especially if you are used to using Ubuntu with the Terminal (it's somewhat similar). 

Here's the Teamspeak plugin install guide, and the Minecraft server install guide. The point of the MC server install guide is to use it as a base to install other game servers depending on their needs. Note that it's going to be different though because MInecraft runs on Java, so that's all you need. Other game servers might have other dependencies besides Java since they don't run on it. You'd have to deal with that no matter what OS you chose, I think. Like DirectX, OpenGL, and such.

[TrenchGoat]

This is excellent news, thanks guys!

 

We were all going to chip in for the hardware so cost there isn't really a problem and one of us has insanely good internet so we'll store it at his house

 

I'm looking forward to doing a shit ton of research now re: hardware, plugins etc. Love research.

[Vitalius]

This is excellent news, thanks guys!

 

We were all going to chip in for the hardware so cost there isn't really a problem and one of us has insanely good internet so we'll store it at his house

 

I'm looking forward to doing a shit ton of research now re: hardware, plugins etc. Love research.

Enjoy. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here.

[TrenchGoat]

Absolutely I will. I'm always lurking around in this forum but every time I've had a question there's always been a quick and detailed response.

Not really seen any elitism or noob-bashing, either.

 

LTT = tech forum of choice these days