Steam games on a nas

[lonely_sata_cable]

So im gonna have a htpc made of some of my older parts ( i3 6100 8GB ram basic stuff) and i was thinking well heck why dont i just throw in a rx 470 thats i have just not being used and play games using the steam controller. but i am in the process of building a custom nas with 10gb networking sooooo as you can tell where im going with this, can i put steam games ( or even the program for that matter) on the nas and access the game from the nas one at a time. maily just save time with the save files and mods and crap i have on games like gta v.

[staubgame]

6 minutes ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

So (...) have on games like gta v.

I like this idea. No idea but I'll follow the thread to see what comes of it.

I got myself the steam streaming thingy (Steam Link) which covers my needs so far for only 16€ (including shipping, was on sale this summer)

[lonely_sata_cable]

i know, i was thinking about getting that but then decided not to because i was gonna build a nas and figured the nas would work

2 minutes ago, staubgame said:

I like this idea. No idea but I'll follow the thread to see what comes of it.

I got myself the steam streaming thingy (Steam Link) which covers my needs so far for only 16€ (including shipping, was on sale this summer)

 

[chiller15]

It depends on Steam's library location compatibility. Whilst you can have libraries on other internal drives, it may not accept mapped/network drives. I don't even know if external USB drives work as a library location.

 

Before investing in this, it may be worth checking that Steam libraries do work with network locations. Maybe by using a cheaper NAS solution or one you already have.

 

I'm also not convinced about the loading times. For the 10GbE to work, you would need to have everything running at 10GbE; from the NAS, to the switch/router and the client computer. Otherwise you'll be bottlenecked at whichever is the slowest link, such as a 1Gb network interface on your computer. Then your loading times would suck.

[Brian Furious]

I was thinking about doing this long time ago and I am not sure if it really worth it.

 

Using 1Gb NIC is more or less enough to cover HDDs and 10Gbit IMO is too overkill. 

 

What if your NAS shutsdown while playing? What if you share your NAS with other proccesses like Plex for example (assuming you have it)? It's just about testing it 

[NelizMastr]

Access times over the network can be pretty poor, so when it has to load an entire game off the network it's going to take its sweet time.

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

So im gonna have a htpc made of some of my older parts ( i3 6100 8GB ram basic stuff) and i was thinking well heck why dont i just throw in a rx 470 thats i have just not being used and play games using the steam controller. but i am in the process of building a custom nas with 10gb networking sooooo as you can tell where im going with this, can i put steam games ( or even the program for that matter) on the nas and access the game from the nas one at a time. maily just save time with the save files and mods and crap i have on games like gta v.

Bandwidth isn't really the issue, it's latency and other things like overhead.

 

It very well might work, but how well will be dependant on each game.

 

I would personally recommend creating an iSCSI share on the FreeNAS server, and then mount that iSCSI share locally onto the HTPC. That way the HTPC will treat it as a local drive.

[lonely_sata_cable]

Ok guys thank you so much for replying imma try to awnser all these questions and settle some statments

So theres 2 nas's one has 4tb of hdds in raid 0 and the other has 20 tb of hdds in raid 10. The first one just backs up to the other at night and all my computers have battery thing (sorry i cant think of the name for it its like ups or something) and every computer and nas is linjed together with 10gb nics and cat 7a cableing. And my main rig has 4 240GB ssd's raid 0. I know everything is over kill but ehh it sure did make a portfolio look amazing. Oh and ive never had the nas just turn off on its own but one time and it was the battery thingys fault not the server. But any ways when i googled can steam library's rhhn on network storage, the break a leg challenge came up. 

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/run-your-steam-library-from-a-nas-break-a-leg-challenge-update/107912

 

Well it pretty much says how to do this lol which is great because as far as i know this is the first forum that solved this question.

 

Any questions

 

[lonely_sata_cable]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Bandwidth isn't really the issue, it's latency and other things like overhead.

 

It very well might work, but how well will be dependant on each game.

 

I would personally recommend creating an iSCSI share on the FreeNAS server, and then mount that iSCSI share locally onto the HTPC. That way the HTPC will treat it as a local drive.

 

3 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Access times over the network can be pretty poor, so when it has to load an entire game off the network it's going to take its sweet time.

 

3 hours ago, Brian Furious said:

I was thinking about doing this long time ago and I am not sure if it really worth it.

 

Using 1Gb NIC is more or less enough to cover HDDs and 10Gbit IMO is too overkill. 

 

What if your NAS shutsdown while playing? What if you share your NAS with other proccesses like Plex for example (assuming you have it)? It's just about testing it 

 

4 hours ago, chiller15 said:

It depends on Steam's library location compatibility. Whilst you can have libraries on other internal drives, it may not accept mapped/network drives. I don't even know if external USB drives work as a library location.

 

Before investing in this, it may be worth checking that Steam libraries do work with network locations. Maybe by using a cheaper NAS solution or one you already have.

 

I'm also not convinced about the loading times. For the 10GbE to work, you would need to have everything running at 10GbE; from the NAS, to the switch/router and the client computer. Otherwise you'll be bottlenecked at whichever is the slowest link, such as a 1Gb network interface on your computer. Then your loading times would suck.

Forgot to quote everyone

[Pixel5]

this gets asked here a few times a month at least.

 

10Gbit ethernet is kind of a must to make this work but even then you are looking at longer loading times for no real benefit.

 

TL:DR from all threads regarding this: dont do it, its a bad idea.

[bcguru9384]

13 hours ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

Ok guys thank you so much for replying imma try to awnser all these questions and settle some statments

So theres 2 nas's one has 4tb of hdds in raid 0 and the other has 20 tb of hdds in raid 10. The first one just backs up to the other at night and all my computers have battery thing (sorry i cant think of the name for it its like ups or something) and every computer and nas is linjed together with 10gb nics and cat 7a cableing. And my main rig has 4 240GB ssd's raid 0. I know everything is over kill but ehh it sure did make a portfolio look amazing. Oh and ive never had the nas just turn off on its own but one time and it was the battery thingys fault not the server. But any ways when i googled can steam library's rhhn on network storage, the break a leg challenge came up. 

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/run-your-steam-library-from-a-nas-break-a-leg-challenge-update/107912

 

Well it pretty much says how to do this lol which is great because as far as i know this is the first forum that solved this question.

 

Any questions

 

open steam

goto settings

select save to location

just type in nas address(//nas/folder/steam)

get this by right clicking on file in nas from pc you want to use 

select properties 

there in location copy that address(create folder called steam on nas then true copy paste)

set firewall and antivirus realtimescanner to exempt/allow this address or latency will come from av scan not actual network nas(if nas on your router its <10ms and if you ever watch hdd it can easily spike 250ms time inside pc) 

[lonely_sata_cable]

4 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

this gets asked here a few times a month at least.

 

10Gbit ethernet is kind of a must to make this work but even then you are looking at longer loading times for no real benefit.

 

TL:DR from all threads regarding this: dont do it, its a bad idea.

 

4 hours ago, bcguru9384 said:

open steam

goto settings

select save to location

just type in nas address(//nas/folder/steam)

get this by right clicking on file in nas from pc you want to use 

select properties 

there in location copy that address(create folder called steam on nas then true copy paste)

set firewall and antivirus realtimescanner to exempt/allow this address or latency will come from av scan not actual network nas(if nas on your router its <10ms and if you ever watch hdd it can easily spike 250ms time inside pc) 

Both of you guys thank you so much much yes 10gb is pretty handy and im thinking about buying a 80 gb or so ssd or nvme drive as a cache and see if that helps with loading times 

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

this gets asked here a few times a month at least.

 

10Gbit ethernet is kind of a must to make this work but even then you are looking at longer loading times for no real benefit.

 

TL:DR from all threads regarding this: dont do it, its a bad idea.

Torn between agreeing and not agreeing. I store all my games on my server and have a 20Gb SMB3 multichannel RDMA connection between the server and my desktop, with this I get faster load times than my SSDs do locally. The reason why I'm torn, I don't expect anyone else to have this setup lol.

 

My main driver was actually the fact I'm still on X79 so only have two actually good SATA ports for SSDs so I went with remote storage with 6 SSDs in my server, I wanted all SSD.

 

Unless you can't put the required amount of storage in the gaming computer it's much better to use local storage.

[Pixel5]

56 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Unless you can't put the required amount of storage in the gaming computer it's much better to use local storage.

yea and this is usually not a valid reason, like the guy who argued for himself that he wants to have less cables in his PC for better airflow so he wants to move the storage to a NAS while both the reason and the execution with a 1Gbit LAN connection is just bad.

[Dark]

Your setup would certainly work but the experience is killed due to the latency (I wouldn't want to deal with it every time I loaded up a game).

I tested this on my home setup:

 

Desktop - 10Gb 

NAS(QNAP TS-EC1679U-RP)  - 10Gb with 8x2TB 850 Pro SSD's in Raid 6 storage pool

Switch - Ubiquiti US-16-XG

 

I copied my steam library over, disassociated the local one, and started a few games (I did not have any transfers going during these tests).

GTA V was awful, I want to say minutes.

PUBG was actually not bad, noticeable difference but tolerable.

DOOM was long and the loading between zones (I only did one) was noticeably longer.

Don't Starve wasn't bad, not much of a difference.

 

 So yes, I would say that it's certainly a functioning method if you don't mind the increased wait/load times.  I would absolutely prefer local storage.  Your mileage may vary.

[lonely_sata_cable]

On 11/3/2017 at 8:57 AM, Dark said:

Your setup would certainly work but the experience is killed due to the latency (I wouldn't want to deal with it every time I loaded up a game).

I tested this on my home setup:

 

Desktop - 10Gb 

NAS(QNAP TS-EC1679U-RP)  - 10Gb with 8x2TB 850 Pro SSD's in Raid 6 storage pool

Switch - Ubiquiti US-16-XG

 

I copied my steam library over, disassociated the local one, and started a few games (I did not have any transfers going during these tests).

GTA V was awful, I want to say minutes.

PUBG was actually not bad, noticeable difference but tolerable.

DOOM was long and the loading between zones (I only did one) was noticeably longer.

Don't Starve wasn't bad, not much of a difference.

 

 So yes, I would say that it's certainly a functioning method if you don't mind the increased wait/load times.  I would absolutely prefer local storage.  Your mileage may vary.

Dude thats awesome that you tried it thanks and i hope i didnt cause any trouble. but thinks for letting me know.

[noodle with crab]

On 2017/11/6 at 8:54 AM, lonely_sata_cable said:

Dude thats awesome that you tried it thanks and i hope i didnt cause any trouble. but thinks for letting me know.

If you don't want lags - use iSCSI with Jumbo Frame Support (including your OS, switch and router).

I'm currently using iSCSI as my game storage. Completely no lag at all. The HDDs can easily reach their maximum reading speed. Since you are using a 10Gbe Network and hdd, it's way too overkill.

[Dark]

On 11/7/2017 at 12:27 PM, noodle with crab said:

If you don't want lags - use iSCSI with Jumbo Frame Support (including your OS, switch and router).

I'm currently using iSCSI as my game storage. Completely no lag at all. The HDDs can easily reach their maximum reading speed. Since you are using a 10Gbe Network and hdd, it's way too overkill.

That is highly dependent on your switching hardware and IO size.  The latency benefit is usually negligible.  

[leadeater]

On 11/8/2017 at 6:27 AM, noodle with crab said:

If you don't want lags - use iSCSI with Jumbo Frame Support (including your OS, switch and router).

I'm currently using iSCSI as my game storage. Completely no lag at all. The HDDs can easily reach their maximum reading speed. Since you are using a 10Gbe Network and hdd, it's way too overkill.

I prefer to use a VHDX hosted on a network share that I mount on my desktop, this requires no iSCSI initiators or configuration. This also allows for the use of the full SMB3 feature set to improve performance like SMB3 multichannel and SMB Direct (RDMA for ultra low latency if NIC supports it) if the server hosting the share supports these features.

 

It also makes it very easy to backup and move the data around because it is in a single VHDX file, you can also mount this on any computer you want easily hosted on any storage you choose at the time. An example of that is you have a laptop and are going to travel, copy the VHDX to either the laptop or USB3 HDD and mount in the laptop OS, when back home copy the VHDX back and any game updates are already installed.