How do I build a dedicated gaming server for home use only

Semple · 22 Sep 2016 at 13:08

olu0087 said:
Thanks for your reply

To answer the individual bits of your reply,

#1
The intent of a server is to run programs, office and game applications, from one unit, eliminating the need of installing applications and games, repetitively, on each laptop. What really comes to mind is how these public gaming server work, do the users install the game(s) on their PC or laptops before they log into these servers to play their desired game(s). I dont think so.

So why cant it be done on a smaller scale. I have a number of replies indicating subscription to and membership rates of gaming servers.

As far as office applications are concerned, it would be helpful to run it from a server, as updating will be on the server rather than all the laptops at home.

#2
There wouldnt be any heavy internet usage as I and my wife are the only internet users, at the moment. So it shouldnt be disadvantageous or problematic to run internet through the server. By the way, how does the ISP come into the equation, when all we am doing is basic internet surfing. The gaming server will not have any port forwarding for public usage. In short, the gaming server will not be accessible for outside my home for public use.

#3
This is for remote access to the server in case I am not at home. I should be able to reconfigure, if any problems, the server from my remote location, as an administrator. My family members are not computer buffs, so remote access may be required. Also, I will need to store or upload files on the server from my remote location.

#1 - That's exactly how a client/server game works. You've not mentioned what games your kids play, but lets take Minecraft as an example. You have two options when playing Minecraft, a local game, which effectively is just a single player. You'd install the game on a computer and the game will run from that computer. The other option is to run a portion of the game as a server, in Minecrafts case this typically manages things like the maps etc. However, you still need the Minecraft client installed on your laptop in order to log into the server.

So if the type of games your kids play work in this fashion, then yes you can have a client/server set up, however you'd still need the client installed on your laptops.

If you're looking at more Single-Player games, then that's not really an option for this kind of set up. There's some mentions above about running them over RDP, but frankly unless you're playing some low-end game, RDP just won't keep up.

#2 - ISP doesn't come in to play here, the "ISP Router" which you mentioned everything would be connected to is where my point was going. That piece of hardware is likely going to cause a bottleneck.

#3 - Have a look at some software called Teamviewer, it's free and is pretty much the go to application for remote support. You can transfer files from a remote location to your server over Teamviewer if you wish, but if you're going down that route, might i suggest using a cloud storage provider, something like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive etc.

olu0087 · 24 Sep 2016 at 02:38

Thanks for your reply. Will investigate the stated networking scheme further and came back to yourself

olu0087 · 24 Sep 2016 at 02:39

Steveocee said:
We use something similar at work with an LTSP setup.

OP your issue will be the games, effectively you are RDP'ing in to the server and games just won't play well if at all like that.

A dedicated gaming server is a host in a rack somewhere, each player still has to have the full fat install on their PC to connect to the host.

You'd be better installing team viewer on the server and team viewing in with the laptops.

Thanks for your reply. Will investigate the stated networking scheme further and came back to yourself

olu0087 · 24 Sep 2016 at 02:43

Mujja said:
You want to build a server with VMs which each laptop user connects to.
Something like Hyper-V with RemoteFX will do. A dedicated graphics card for each VM etc. You could also connect to the the VMs using Remote Web Access, so any device with a web browser.

LinusTechTips built just what you need

Thanks for your reply. Great ideas but I dont intend to use Linux as I am not familiar with Linux. I am old school programmer from the Pascal, Fortran and C++ days. Linux is a different ball game for the likes of me which is why I have lived under the guidance of Bill Gates. In short, I prefer to use Windows to run the PCs

olu0087 · 24 Sep 2016 at 02:52

meandu229 said:
I feel OP wants something like PS Now/Onlive/Steam streaming setting up which isnt an easy thing to do for a multi user environment.
If you had a similar setup to the 7 gamers 1 rig (but maybe just 3 gamers 1 rig) so you had multiple (1 per user) GPUs and virtualised the PC into 1 VM per user you could use steam streaming to stream games over the network and use a single storage drive for all game storage not sure how it would cope with multiple people loading games from it though(maybe raid).

This would technically work for most steam games and other games too but this sort of thing is just not mainstream enough to be an out of the box setup yet. Maybe one day but I think it will first be "cloud powered" gaming before we get to that.

Thanks for your informative reply.

I believe this the concept behind the public gaming servers out there. Well, if this is the case, then this is what i want As I stated I want something which is similar to these gaming server but for home use. I did state that it will be a maximum of 3 users, and no more.

So the question is can the stated setup run 1 rig with 3users with GPU already installed on the VMs and enough storage on the rig for each VM

Steveocee · 24 Sep 2016 at 16:06

No it can't. The 7 users 1 rig had hardware to use on all the VM's such as keyboard, mouse and monitor. You're looking at using existing laptops are you not? This would require RDP which will cripple you.