I want to replace my Synology NAS with a more powerful home build server. I relay like the Synology software and Web interface so something similar and easy would be great.
My new system should also be able to stream films and games to my home cinema Pc hooked up to a projector. If I could use iTunes server too that would be great. We have like 8 PC that should be synced all the time even over the Internet. With the Synology I used cloud station something like that is a must.
My server specs:
i7 2600
4GB 1600 DDR 3 Ram
1x 3TB Seagate HDD
1x 1TB Seagate HDD
1x 1TB Samsung HDD
1x 80GB Seagate HDD
R9 280x (for streaming)
700 W PSU Gold form Flowerpower
Asus MB (soon Asrock when it returns from warranty service)
The 80GB is for OS and additional programs (may be replaced by USB stick or SSD)
I'd use FreeNAS with Owncloud, Plex, and any other apps you need. Plex can act as a DLNA server, and almost everything plays nice with DLNA. Plex also has a web interface, and a very good mobile app. OwnCloud is also amazing. I can't say enough good things about OwnCloud. Its so easy to set up, yet so awesome to use.
That would have to be done with windows but non-server windows is trash at being a server. So you would have run Linux/BSD as the NAS, web services server and run Windows as para virtualized with hardware pass through
Linux steam client can also stream, Valve's In House-streaming is platform independent.
Game streaming with the Steam client works better than any other in-house game streaming application out there. It works remarkably well. Because the video feed of the game is rendered on the main PC with the strong GPU, and then compressed, the stream client only needs very little rendering power, in fact, it only needs a decent enough codec acceleration, so even a netbook can stream FullHD games, even when it's not capable of playing the animated landing page of the steam client itself lol.
Can I run Linux Steam on Freenas or is this only possible on a debian server. I realy like the looking of freenas but I want to use my R9 280x somewhere.
I don't see the whole problem though to be honest.
You already have a NAS capable of reliable DLNA operation to any client, which works for music an video. So the only thing to add is game streaming, and that's something you can do from a gaming PC, that doesn't have to be a server at the same time. By integrating all functionality into one single gaming PC (which are more complex and therefore less reliable, and which would probably need to run windows in some form for games so will also put your files in danger), you're basically building a single point of failure for yourself. I would just keep the NAS, and add a gaming PC.
Agreed. I would use FreeNAS for the NAS, and put the R9 270X in another rig. You would need to do to much to combine those into a single machine. Plus the FreeNAS would become significantly less reliable, like Zoltan said. You would be using a LOT of your drive space for games as well. Just build a seperate gaming rig for your games, a NAS rig wouldn't be good for that.
Well is a i7 not a bit overpowered for a NAS? I already have a Gamer PC but my pc hooked up to the Projector is not able to play BF3 or similar. I don't want to waste my good old hardware on a system that dose not need it. I still have plenty of Pentium 4 rigs around so I could use that for a NAS.
It depends on what you need the NAS for exactly. If you're going to be using it to transcoded media to tablets and phones, send and receive large files from multiple clients at once, do fancy RAID stuff, and all that, then I'd use the i7 for it. An i5 would be ideal but if you have the i7 use it. ZFS (the filesystem that FreeNAS uses) eats RAM and processor power sometimes so it might be good to have that, a Pentium IV machine is going to SEVERELY fail at handling multiple clients at once, as well as transferring large amounts of data like movies or big music collections.