moonman

Ah thanks. I didn't realise that you can't just swap drives in and out of the cache pool. I did a new config and reformatted all the non-array drives. Luckily I made a backup of my docker.img and my most-used VM. I'm transferring them back now. Fingers crossed.

I'm having issues mounting my drives. The option to mount is greyed out and no matter what I do I can't seem to find the solution. What am I doing wrong?

This drive went into the red after I'd been poking around in the case and moving things around. It's quite possible that I just bumped a cable. The data is currently being rebuilt onto a new drive but I'm considering adding the old one back to the array if everything goes fine with the rebuild. The only thing that makes me slightly hesitant is that it's not the newest drive in the world. But it has been fairly lightly used throughout its lifetime so it might have a bit of life left. SMART report says "passed" but I'm wondering whether there are any obvious issues that I might be missing? WDC_WD30EZRX-00AZ6B0_WD-WCC070210971-20171016-0905.txt

Is it possible to just cable tie the A9s to the back of the enclosure where the plastic bit normally clips in, and just leave the plastic bit off? I'm considering NF-A9s for my case and that was going to be my plan.

Hey mate, sorry for the late reply, just wanted to make sure that all the hardware for my new build would fit together before committing to buying anything. Yep $100 posted sounds good to me. Any decent postage method with tracking is fine, doesn't necessarily need to be express as I will be waiting on other components. Though I sometimes find that express is cheapest for small items anyway.

Thank you for the detailed response, I've had a good read around over the last couple of days using your post as a reference and feel like I'm on a clearer path now. I found an eBay supplier for the CPU that's one step up from the 1270V2, so I'm going to go for that one. Ditto for the highest RAM the motherboard supports.The cheapest way to get a SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B into Australia seems to be through Newegg at around $125 + $40 postage. All the eBay listings seem to be priced higher, including one hilarious listing for $436. Also just a clarification, at least under Option A of my plan, I'm not currently looking to run Windows or do any gaming. The VMs will just run Linux and be used for HTPC duties and web browsing primarily, with light Photoshop use if I was to install Windows at a later date. If I need to do anything more strenuous I think I'd build a new dedicated PC. Also it's fairly unlikely that I'll have more than 2 or 3 VMs running concurrently, and certainly not more than 2 being actively used at once. The question I had going into this process was: are there upgrades that I can put onto the board I already have in order to get decent enough VM performance for HTPC/desktop use without spending so much money that I would be better off ditching the whole lot and just building a new server with newer gear? The answer would appear to be it's worthwhile to upgrade what I've got. If the motherboard dies on me tomorrow, then I will have sunk $280 into a CPU that I probably can't use elsewhere, the rest of the components can be used on a future build with the possible exception of the RAM. Contrasted with Option B which would require $400+ for a new motherboard and at least $XXX for a CPU. So with that in mind, here's what I've come up with for my "new old" build: Current hardware: Motherboard: Supermicro x9scm-f PSU: Seasonic X-560 80Plus Gold 560W Case: Antec 900 HDDs: WD Green 3TB*4 FLASH DRIVE: Kingston Data Traveller 8GB RAM: Kingston, 1333mhz 2x4GB kit Hardware to be added: CPU: Intel Xeon E3 1280 V2 $280 AUD RAM: Samsung 2X8GB DDR3 1600MHz PC3-12800E ECC Dimm server Memory CL9 Unbuffered $160 AUD DRIVE CAGE: SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B $125 AUD HDDs: WD Red 8TB * 3 = $1050 AUD Expansion Card - $100 AUD GPU: undecided, choosing between the following: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti $196 AUD EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti $216 AUD EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB $260 AUD EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC 6GB $352 AUD Hardware to be retired: CPU: Intel Core i3 2120 As far as I can tell, what I'm saying makes sense, and everything here is compatible with everything else, but I would appreciate any input or critiques. Cheers

Oops! How did I miss those? The CPU Intel Core i3 2120, and yeah I'm currently running 8GB RAM - I would need to dig around in boxes to find the exact model number but it's a single Kingston, 1333mhz 2x4GB kit.

Absolutely mate, I'm in Newcastle but I'd be happy to pay for postage. Out of interest, are you still selling the RAM kits you listed a month ago?

Hey mate, I'm in Aussie too, how does one go about verifying serial numbers? Do you ask sellers to provide those details before you purchase or do you just buy it and hope? Also do you call the companies or is there a site you can plug the info into?

Background I previously built an Unraid server in 2012. Since then it's done a champion job, with very little in the way of hardware changes apart from a couple of drive replacements. I recently lost my parity drive and I'd like to take this opportunity to make some upgrades. I have laid out a two possible upgrade paths that I think make sense and would appreciate any suggestions or critiques particularly for Part One as that is the most important now. CURRENT HARDWARE: MOBO: Supermicro x9scm-f PSU: Seasonic X-560 80Plus Gold 560W HDDs: Western Digital Green 3TB x 4 (plus one parity drive, currently dead but not removed from enclosure). CASE: Antec 900 FLASH DRIVE: Kingston Data Traveller 8GB I also have a couple of old SSDs lying around that I would like to add in for cache/running VMs/apps. PART ONE: Things That Are Essential To Do Now/Soon Step i: Purchase hard drives to restore parity protection and prepare for the increase in demand. WD Red 8TB NAS WD80EFZX $353 * 3 = $1050 AUD plus postage. (Two for dual parity, one for data) Step ii: Install hardware into a newer case that has bigger "out of the box" drive capacity. Fractal Design R5 $165 AUD plus postage. Drive bay adapters suitable for the current case are nearly as expensive as a new case so I'm just going to upgrade and use the Antec for something else. Step iii: Install a PCIe expansion card to accomodate more drives. Very few retail options in Australia that aren't ridiculously overpriced so eBay seems like the the best idea. Ideally I would get a card that I don't need to cross flash, as I don't really have any computers that I could do it in, but any recommendations are most welcome as I'm a bit lost on this. LSI SAS 9211-8i HBA $85ish new OR IBM ServeRaid M1015 $86 AUD OR LSI SAS 9201-8i $90ish new OR Dell Perc H310 $90ish used within Australia, other sellers also ship new stock from China CABLES FOR THESE: 75cm SFF-8087 to 4x SATA Cable With Sideband OR SilverStone CPS03-RE 50cm Mini SFF-8087 to SAS/SATA Cable $50ish PART TWO: Upgrades For Improved VM Performance The second part to this is that I'd like to start running one or two VMs with Linux Mint for light desktop/HTPC use - i.e. web surfing, Netflix, movie watching from server, Kodi, occasionally office applications. This needs to work alongside a couple of dockers - i.e. Transmission, Ubiquiti Unifi Controller, Plex Media Server and probably one or two more in the future. OPTION A - keep current motherboard and upgrade CPU and RAM, add video card. Step i: Upgrade the CPU with a second hand eBay buy that supports Vt-d Intel E3-1220 V2 can be purchased for around $100 AUD, while the E3-1270 V2 can be found for around $200 AUD (will need to upgrade BIOS to 2.0 or above). As far as I understand this will be the single thing that contributes most to better performance. Step ii install a video card for better video performance on most commonly used VM Potentially not needed, but would boost performance. This part has me a bit confused though. Any recommendations for something that's still available and would work on my current hardware? Step iii: upgrade RAM if necessary Could add a pair of 1666mhz Kingston 8GB sticks for a total of 24GB, and potentially add another pair down the road to replace my current RAM and max out at 32GB. OPTION B - upgrade motherboard, CPU, RAM etc with newer tech I understand that I could get much better performance and probably lower electricity use from current tech, however this would essentially mean I was putting together a new build aside from the drives. I'm still trying to figure out what would provide better bang for buck though. Any suggestions?

They haven't yet hosted their Linux binaries. They are available through a thread that is sometimes updated but there's no guarantee that they will continue to have it up since it's just hosted on a drop box account at the moment. That also means my plugin won't be able to tell what version it's downloading. I am working with the Devs about getting the binaries hosted on their website but they are currently only working on a docker install. Without binaries pure compiled for Linux, there is nothing to download. I'm waiting patiently for this one too. Thanks PhAzE for committing to making the plugin, when it becomes possible!

Well normally it's illegal to advertise a price to the public without including GST, although I guess it makes sense because most of their customers are businesses. I'll post back after I've bought it to advise of the price. Their office in Sydney is about 5 minutes from a friend's place, so I will just drop by and pick it up when I'm visiting next. Looks decent. What about that new processor, is it compatible?

Motherboard is from digicor. They were pretty helpful on the phone and via email.

Bump. Second page, no responses. Please?!!

After posting a thread a few weeks ago I realised that I needed to do a bit more research. Now I think I've put together a great little setup but I just need a confirmation that these components will play nicely and do everything I want them to. What is your budget? Even if you don't have a strict budget set out, at least give us an idea if you are pinching pennies or splurging on your build. Not pinching pennies, but I'm not made of money either. I want it to work well, but I'm not going to throw money down the drain on components I'll never use. How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? Starting with two 3tb data drives, but eventually adding more as I rip my blu rays, etc, to the array. Let's say less than 10 data drives though. Is expandability important to you? If so, what's your long term goal? Yes. Adding a few new drives in the next few months. Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)? If so, which ones? Be specific. Yes. Needs to support transcoding for Subsonic music server. Needs to support uTorrent. Probably others as I experiment and expand. Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives? If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives. Green drives. Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? This includes drives. No. If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up. CASE: Antec 900 - $112 PSU: Still not 100% sure. It's a toss up between the following: Seasonic X-560 80Plus Gold 560W - $169 Seasonic X-400 Fanless Gold 400W - $169 Both gold rated, but I am leaning towards the 560W one, obviously has the potential to support more drives. Any advice? CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 1155pin - $116 Is this CPU good for transcoding? MOTHERBOARD: : Supermicro x9scm-f - $248 from local supplier. RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 4GB - $25 Is this compatable? FLASH DRIVE: Kingston Data Traveller 8GB - $6 PARITY/DATA DRIVES: Western Digital Green 3TB x3 - $175*3= $525 Total cost excluding drives: 112 + 116 + 169 + 248 + 25 + 6 = $676 + cost of drives = 676 + 525 = $1201 Cache drive and unRAID licence will be added later when I start expanding.

Emailed one supplier, still pretty expensive. If I order from overseas, do I need to worry about different voltages etc? Also, you guys mentioned that I would need to change my power supply and RAM. Would any of the ones available at MSY be compatible? RAM http://www.msy.com.au/default.jsp?category=4 PSU http://www.msy.com.au/default.jsp?category=94 Still not 100% sold on the necessity of the more expensive board, but I'll entertain the idea as I'm going to receive my tax return in the next couple of weeks. Thanks heaps.

It will be on 24/7, but it's absolutely not going to have more than 10 drives and will be starting with only 2. And I simply cannot find anywhere in Australia to buy Supermicro boards. Is there something that offers similar performance, for less drives, and preferably less money?

It's more than 4 times the price and fairly hard to come by in Australia. What reasons do you recommend it?

Sorry to bump the thread but the next 10 hours or so is my window of opportunity to grab these parts, does anyone have any recommendations?

Hi guys, I'm looking to build my first home server and it will be my first time building a computer also. I'm gonna be in Sydney this weekend, and there are a few MSY stores there. MSY being generally the cheapest computer parts shops in the country. Just looking to check that I'm on the right track. What is your budget? Even if you don't have a strict budget set out, at least give us an idea if you are pinching pennies or splurging on your build. Minimum hardware necessary to run the addons I want competently. This server will serve a HTPC running XBMC, transcode and stream music to my phone and laptop over 3G when I'm out of the house, handle torrenting and hold all my work/uni/personal files. How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? Starting with two 3TB drives but rapidly expanding as I start to put my blurays, CDs etc onto the server. So more than 2 but less than 10 drives. Is expandability important to you? If so, what's your long term goal? Yes, see above. I will be adding media all the time so the ability to easily add a new drive to the server would be preferable. Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)? If so, which ones? Be specific. Yes. uTorrent, Subsonic music server (with audio transcoding of FLAC to mp3 and mp3 to lower bitrate mp3). Possibly Sickbeard etc. Possibly video transcoding for Subsonic (but probably not right now 'cause my Internet isn't quite fast enough to stream movies on the fly). The server needs to be handle all of these competently. Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives? If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives. Green drives. Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? This includes drives. No. If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up. Feel free to critique as I simply stole this list from another thread: CASE: Antec 900 PSU: Antec Neo Eco 520C 520W PSU CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 1155pin RAM: Kingston KVR 4GB SINGLE DDR3 1333 Maybe add a second stick later if I desperately needed it. MOBO: : Not sure ? ? ? Something from this site, or maybe this? DRIVES: Western Digital Green 3TB x3 (1 for parity, 2 for storage, later adding a cache drive). FLASH DRIVE: Kingston data traveller Thanks in advance.