*help* complete network design overview; home server vs NAS box vs ?

[Theizzardking]

hey, first real post here so go easy on me, I've been out of the loop for a long time and i'm looking to get back into it and my big problem as it stands it trying to organize all of this information i have into something useful, i guess i'll start with what i want this thing to do ideally, then move to what i currently have and on to what i think will work best and the issues i see, then you all can tell me how stupid i am and the right way to go about this is. lol, seriously though, thanks ahead of time!

so basically, i'm wanting to do it all, i want to have a centralized system where i can play my steam games on any TV in the house and i want to have it so my wife and kid can also access our media seamlessly anywhere in the house...outside/ remote connections would be nice but not something that i care all that much about, i also want it to work as a back up so my wife can dump all of the kid pics on there and not clog up the storage on her anemic surface book and android phone..all in one nice little package that isn't going to upset the wife by having towers in every room....

so here's the bad part, at this point in time as far computers go, all i have is 3 laptops and a server chassis with a switch and APU in it. the laptops i have are fairly competent but don't really have a place in all of this, on the plus side though i already have a cat6 ethernet wired network in my home with a cat6 cable running to every TV in the home along with a few open lines floating around here and there....

the way i was thinking about getting this done was buying a 4U server case and building a fairly powerful PC in it, then run it dual boot, one for steam and one for media, then from there through a hdmi matrix with ip out to the TV's directly from the server box pc.....hopefully with the right software i can remote in and control the whole thing from my office and just having this running out in the garage and never really fool with it, i like this idea as it's a single box solution that will allow me to upgrade parts as i move forward and will allow me to expand as my budget allows....

so yeah, that's kinda what i was thinking, is it a completely stupid idea and what's a better cost efficient option that will do the same things essentially? should i just buy a prebuilt nas box and build a separate PC, wouldn't i also have to buy a dongle of sorts and a steam link for each TV? i really don't know and am struggling getting my thoughts in order on the best way to do this with what i have.
 
honestly, what's the best way of getting this done with what i have and what i am wanting to do?

i have like 2k to get this done and i'm fairly resourceful, i got the server chassis, apu, 28 port switch and a bunch of fans for a six pack, my thoughts are even if it's roughshod to start because of my budget, i want to be able to grow it into something rather impressive and honestly, deeply, the main reason i'm doing this is not because of some real need, but because i want to learn more about networking and i want to build something. i like building stuff. i'm a ME it's what i do, now i want to build IT things. lol.

thanks again for the help, i really appreciate it, i'm a bit out of my element here and am trying to make heads or tails of all of the different ways of doing this and which is right for me. thanks! thanks! thanks! 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

The thing with the dual booting is you have to have a hypervisor OS like something from VMWare or Unraid, otherwise you're doing only one or the other OS. That may or may not come cheap for a home user. From a cost perspective, I think it would be best to have two separate machines. A file server doesn't have to be powerful. Mine runs on a dinky Celeron. I don't use it for transcoding stuff on the fly though, so if you need it to do that you'll have to adjust the hardware accordingly.

[Jarno.]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The thing with the dual booting is you have to have a hypervisor OS like something from VMWare or Unraid, otherwise you're doing only one or the other OS. That may or may not come cheap for a home user. From a cost perspective, I think it would be best to have two separate machines. A file server doesn't have to be powerful. Mine runs on a dinky Celeron. I don't use it for transcoding stuff on the fly though, so if you need it to do that you'll have to adjust the hardware accordingly.

VMware Hypervisor (esxi) also has a free version i believe (its missing some features ofcours)

[AnonymousGuy]

I have a dedicated storage server and a dedicated compute server.  My sig has the specs, but my opinion was the storage server should be tasked 100% with just storage.  For max reliability I didn't want to be "trying stuff" on it.  The compute server is my "do whatever" server.  VM's, Plex, IP camera streaming + recording,  HTTP(S)/FTP file server, etc.

 

Prebuild NAS's suck IMO.  They're expensive as hell and can't be expanded.  You can throw together a Pentium/Celeron last-gen box with some older Areca Adaptec Intel raid adapters for not that much money.