Server and Gaming Pc together or two separate machines?

[Redtigercod4]

I'm looking at setting up a server for my flat. I don't know if to use my gaming pc as a server using unraid and have it pull double duty or would I be better having two seperate machines

[NelizMastr]

Use separate machines. Consumer grade hardware, like used for gaming PCs, isn't meant to run 24/7 so you'd need to invest in more resilient hardware. 

 

What kind of server are we talking here? Just file sharing or what?

[Redtigercod4]

Going to use it for files, streaming and running game servers

[Peskanova]

Server must priorice uptime and its performance, so making a gaming rig also server its going to be bad for the server and bad for the rig, no matter specs

[Crypod]

It's very inconvenient to have them both as 1 machine. I've tried it before. Sometimes I just want to shutdown my gaming PC when I go out but that means I can't access my plex/files/vm. I ended up making a separate server. In fact, I split up everything into:

 

- Main PC

- XenServer PC (for deploying VMs & messing around. Plex in an ubuntu VM)

- FreeNAS PC

- PfSense PC

 

It's is so much better and if one goes down, the rest are still running.

[Redtigercod4]

Okay I'll do that then

[Xplo1t]

Have tried that in the past, but the necessity of rebooting the gaming PC, making hardware changes or updating software got in the way too often.  

[jde3]

On 8/3/2018 at 6:05 AM, Crypod said:

It's very inconvenient to have them both as 1 machine. I've tried it before. Sometimes I just want to shutdown my gaming PC when I go out but that means I can't access my plex/files/vm. I ended up making a separate server. In fact, I split up everything into:

 

- Main PC

- XenServer PC (for deploying VMs & messing around. Plex in an ubuntu VM)

- FreeNAS PC

- PfSense PC

 

It's is so much better and if one goes down, the rest are still running.

I see a lot of people virtualizing FreeNAS, it seems like an odd concept to me (being that it is a hypervisor itself) You want ZFS to be on the actual physical disk volumes so you can benefit from it's features and ZVOLS make a fantastic storage container to host your other virtual disks. I mean it will run ok like that.. but.. just why?