File Server & local game hosting?

[uwotm869]

G'day G'day, so here looms my question

 

I recently inherited a Norco RPC-2212 2U and im also sourcing a rack to go with (any recommendations?), now i do plan on smashing all 12 drives into this budget be damned, now i plan on just using this as my home file server (so games saves, movies, my WinPE crap) but i also would like something to host some servers for games that my mates play (mainly tekkit and such).

 

My query is, should i be going for xeon power or core I series cpu?, as well what OS would be a good choice taking into consideration i do plan on hosting simple game servers?

 

Also, I'm under the assumption for this set up raid 6 would be better in terms of redundancy then raid 5? can i get a pointer as to what raid card i should be looking for? I'm looking for reliability so budget be damned

[kachel94]

I don't have that much to do with game servers and local hosting but i'm pretty sure most game servers run on vanilla w10.

You could run a freenas file server for your home storage and use its built in VM capabilities to run a version of w10 just for game hosting.

If you go the Freenas route you can search the freenas forums for an appropriate HBA that can deal with 12 drives.

[Jarsky]

Game servers run on both Retail and Server kernels of Windows, but often Linux VM's are often much more efficient, and more widely supported with scripts etc...in the gaming community.

 

If youre only looking at 1 game, then i'd go a core i7 series - but if youre looking at multiple gaming servers, i'd look at Xeon series as then you can go dual socket. 

LGA2011-0 dual socket boards will run you up about $300, however 8C/16T LGA2011 cpu's can be had for $100 or even less for second hand. 

Keep in mind for Windows you need Pro or Server to support dual CPU's. 

 

As for hardware controllers, best card i've been running so far is the LSI 9271-8i with a SAS expansion card. 

 

Personally I would go for a hardware RAID6 with LSI 9271 running ESXi and then install my VM's. 

The cheaper option is to go FreeNAS with a couple of LSI 9211's and installing your VM's from there. 

[uwotm869]

8 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Personally I would go for a hardware RAID6 with LSI 9271 running ESXi and then install my VM's. 

For the storage side of things (making sure my others computers can transfer between the server and itself) would you just recommend using windows? then installing ESXi on windows?

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, uwotm869 said:

For the storage side of things (making sure my others computers can transfer between the server and itself) would you just recommend using windows? then installing ESXi on windows?

You can't install ESXi on Windows. You install ESXi, login to the management website, then install Windows  (in a VM that is).

 

ESXi is a hypervisor. It controls the hardware that you install VMs on.

[uwotm869]

17 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

You can't install ESXi on Windows. You install ESXi, login to the management website, then install Windows  (in a VM that is).

 

ESXi is a hypervisor. It controls the hardware that you install VMs on.

Ahh sorry i have never dabbled with virtual machines before.

 

So am i correct in thinking that

Install EXSi -> Create virtual machine -> ???? -> Profit?

 

For the ???? should i create a FreeNas VM or just use bog standard windows to handle the nas part of my server? or is there a better alternative to FreeNas that someone can point me to?

[NelizMastr]

Just now, uwotm869 said:

Ahh sorry i have never dabbled with virtual machines before.

 

So am i correct in thinking that

Install EXSi -> Create virtual machine -> ???? -> Profit?

 

For the ???? should i create a FreeNas VM or just use bog standard windows to handle the nas part of my server? or is there a better alternative to FreeNas that someone can point me to?

Correct. ESXi is typically run from SD or USB flash drive since it never needs more than about a gig, so you can dedicate your harddrives (or RAID) to VMs and data storage. 

 

Alternatives to FreeNAS would be OpenFiler and Xpenology among others.