A few questions about FreeNAS

Operating Systems & Open Source
1

Hello everyone,
I have recently been watching the FreeNAS videos and subsequently have a few questions about its functionality.
I am interested in turning my current computer (which has a sandy bridge i3) into a home server which I would like to have many purposes. I'm thinking of building the FreeNAS when I update my computer using the older computer to be the server. Currently it has 8GB should I upgrade it to 16GB for the server?

Firstly, does FreeNAS have the capabilities of hosting a server or can it just be used for multimedia? Say I wanted to host a game server, (e.g. Minecraft) would I be able to set it up in FreeNAS then go onto it and execute the server or is FreeNAS strictly multimedia only?

My second question is to do with backups. For snapshots, in interest of saving space on the server, would it be possible to only backup everything on my computer but leave out game files? I think I may have misunderstood how the snapshots work. Do they make a complete backup of the computer or just the changes from the previous snapshot?

Say I had a folder on the FreeNAS where I placed podcasts/music or something; would it be possible to get the server to automatically sync up that specific folder onto my phone? Would it require an app or could it be done over the phone's browser when it is on home WiFi?

I am grateful for your time and thank all who answer my questions.

2

RAM requirements depend on the amount of storage. A rule of thumb is that you need 1GB of RAM per 1TB of storage, but I'm having half that (16GB of RAM, 32.75TB of storage) with zero issues.

There is a plugin for FreeNAS that allows you to create and host Minecraft servers in FreeNAS, so I reckon that's possible. If you want to host a server for another game, you may want to do a quick search to see if it's possible.

No idea on the snapshots or the syncing TBH, I'm kinda oldschool when it comes to these things. I prefer to do them manually.

3

Thank you very much I will have a look to see if the other things are possible

4

The minimum recommend RAM starting with FreeNAS v9 is 8GB which you have and should be fine as long as you don't through a ton of drives in it with 10 people all using it at the same time. There's also a plugin for bitsync which has an iOS app and android app that will sync selected folders between devices. I run a murmur server for Mumble VoIP on mine as well but there's no plugin for it. There's a pretty good guide on youtube for installing it from command line though.