Xeons, NAS & game server - What Do I Even

[Dubba]

Hi!
Long time LTT lurker reporting in o/

I came into posession of some old workstations (z800 with dual xeon and z400 with W3565), and I've been wanting to build a NAS for a while now.

I'd be using it for backups of two users and as an external library for my audio recordings and sound design works. Gigabit ethernet and HDD speeds are fine in my case. The other use would be to host some light game servers. I'm quite tech savvy, but I don't have much knowledge about server(-ish) stuff.

 

- I want to utilize that dual xeon-pc but is it an overkill for combined NAS/game server (for Factorio)? Would a single W3540 or even W3530 be enough?

- I have 6GB of Hynix ECC DDR3 and 12GB of Kingston ECC DDR3. Factorio would need maybe 2GB.

- What kind of a software would I need? unraid/freenas, VM, windows 7(got the license)?
 

I was going to google but suddenly I've been suffering from lack of free time and some deadlines. At least I finally got myself to sign up for the forums

[Mayaa]

I've ran some factorio servers before and they are very lightweight both on cpu usage and ram. Im not too familiar with the older xeons but from checking the ark page i think they will be plenty, so you will probably only need one, although probably a little power hungry. And regular NAS usage also isnt very intenstive.

 

Operating system is up to you, personally i just run a regluar linux server distro.

[Dubba]

Thanks!

I ended up with the dual socket workstation build with one cpu removed, X5650 has slightly lower TDP than the rest of my options. (95W against 130W)
I've been trying to google about the software but I can't figure out how would I set up the NAS and the little game server.
 

[onehentaiboi]

23 minutes ago, Dubba said:

Thanks!

I ended up with the dual socket workstation build with one cpu removed, X5650 has slightly lower TDP than the rest of my options. (95W against 130W)
I've been trying to google about the software but I can't figure out how would I set up the NAS and the little game server.
 

For setting up NAS I would recommend to use Ubuntu Server cause its not that memory and CPU demanding.

To setup NAS in Ubuntu Server install ZFS filesystem + Samba File Server.

For game server you will need steamcmd for linux.

I would also recommend to make your life easier during install setup SSH server so you can remote into it from your rig.