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Best Setup for Backups, Media and Gaming


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Posted

Hello everyone and thanks in advance for all of the great info provided on this forum.

 

I am new to all of this and after falling in love with DSM and realizing the specs of Sinology's hardware was pretty weak, I decided to build my own machine with Xpenology.

 

So here is my setup

 

Fractal Design Node 304

8GB RAM

3.1GHZ Quad Core i5

ASUS H87i-Plus

Seasonic 360w 80+ gold

2x 2TB WD RED (will be adding 2 more 4TB)

 

My goal is to use this system for backing up two MAC's and my photography HD which has about a TB of photos on it and currently growing. I would also love to use the system as a HTPC streaming media from Plex and lastly a gaming PC if possible using Steam on Ubuntu. I understand I can install Plex on DSM but I am unsure how to stream the movie right from the system using the HDMI input in the back. Currently I have only been able to use it as a Plex server and then still need the client. Currently I used the USB method and am booting from the USB to run DSM 5.0

 

My question to all of you is...

 

What would be the best setup to achieve everything above? Should I start over and install Ubuntu for gaming and streaming media and then install Xpenology using ESXi for my backups? If this is in fact the best setup, will everything run smooth with the setup I have? I remember running VM's on older machines and it was always a sluggish process.

 

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

Posted

Do do everything listed you don't need DSM. Just install Ubuntu for your gaming and video streaming, share some folders for desktop backups and skip virtual machines and DSM.

Posted

Right I understand this could be done with just Ubuntu but I like have the backups on a RAID.

 

If Ubuntu can do all of this and more, why would one install Xpenology at all?

Posted

You can create RAID on Ubuntu.

One would install NAS (DSM, FreeNAS or similar) if they only need dedicated storage with easy management, not full gaming or video playing system. Quiet, low power, headless network storage with possible some limited extra network features like web serving, rsync etc...

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