Nicolai

Hello all of your wonderful people. I'm "about" to pull the plug on making my only and primary PC an unraid machine with VMs and Dockers for my home entertainment and databank. Currently I'm in the process of learning and understanding arrays, how they work and what would be best for me. First question and reasoning I would prefer to eventually migrate and upgrade into an SSD based array, 2.5" SATA SSD array to be exact, due to both power use benefits and due to the increased performance over mechanical drives. However, I don't know if it's actually possible, as I've come across information stating it is possible and information stating it isn't possible. So that would be my first question, am I chasing a pipe dream here? Second question and reasoning Currently my "databank" consist of a couple of 1TB WD Green drives and a 500GB WD Green drive. I can understand this isn't ideal for a databank solution, which is part of the reason I want to upgrade. I am aware, that the first drive I buy will be used for parity data, and as such not provide any additional space or performance, but can it be an SSD in an array with mechanical drives? I'd prefer to do it this way, and in time replace the mechanical drives with an SSD, one by one, as I can afford them. I've had good experience with WD, and for that reason I'm planning on replacing with WD Red SA 500 NAS SATA SSDs, if this is a bad idea, let me know. Edit: Noise and power consumption is also a concern, as I'll be having the machine located in my living room. Third question and reasoning Since I'll be running Windows 10 and/or 11 as my primary VM, I do want that to be on the NVMe SSD already install in my system, for the best performance for when I play videogames. I understand, it's possible to create back files of your VMs, would that also be the case for one located and installed on an SSD in this fashion? The reason for this question is, if that's the case I was going to create a fresh install, and once the configuration and personalization is completed, I would create a backup, so if anything goes bad or when performance drops due to windows trash files, I could just replace and be back running in no time, thus avoid making another install, setup and personalization. Thank you all in advance, both for reading and possible answers.

Aside from everything i need to learn before even starting to understand what you said before this, I do have some old mechanical harddrives in it, but they're used for storage (movies, pictures, ebooks and more), these are the ones are wanted to protect from bitrot. My plan was to eventually get some 2.5" SSDs, nas rated, and migrate the data to those somehow. Got my eye on a bay from silverstone technology, which would allow me to hotswap them in, although that's just for the geek factor, since I won't really be needing it. I have also been looking at NVMe options for a pcie slot, but as far as I understand, I'll be struggling with pcie lanes with my current hardware?

Hello to all of you capable Ladies and Gentlemen. The why I have come across unraid from a tech related video on youtube a while ago, and I've been fascinated with it ever since. I still don't know too much about it, for reasons that'll become obvious, but I'm very interested in playing around with it! Why? Because I'm that kind of geek, that just like to play with toys, just to learn and try. I cannot for the life of me explain why it's unraid that caught me, when there's several other home server solutions, but to my untrained and newbie eye, unraid looks like it's the best all round playground for a tech interested dork like me. The what I mainly use a PC to play videogames, so running a windows VM to play my videogames on is a no brainer. I'm imagining this will end up being auto loaded, and yes, I do need to shut it down every single night. But I'd also like to be able to install other OS and load those up in a VM in time, so I can have a chance to learn those too, maybe learn about dockers for a movie night or making my own website or anything that I can do with unraid. The parity option for data security is also a big plus for me, as I do like to protect my drives and files, and as far as I can understand, unraid has some system to protect against bitrot too (?). The toys I will be running unraid on my only PC. I'm not fortunate enough to be able to afford another system "just" to play around and learn. This will be going on my only PC, and that's what's been holding me back from pulling the plug and getting a few things I would need to invest in for this project to even allow me to take any kind of advantage of it. My current PC is running the following hardware; - Asus Z590-P Prime motherboard - Intel Core i7-11700K - Corsair Vengeance 32 GB DDR4-3200 - Samsun 980 1TB M.2 NVMe - Asus GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8GB TUF I know this will probably be far too much for most tasks this system would run, but as state I do enjoy playing videogames too, and I've come to learn there's a few complications with playing on a VM and some anticheat software too, which I'm hoping to find a solution for too. The how The entire idea will result in getting a rack chassis, but installing it as a drawer in my living room, as I do live in an apartment with limited space. This would solve the aesthetics and allow me to use it with my TV using either Steam Link or direct connection. I've also learned about USB-DOM devices, but if they're worth it for this project I don't know, but I do believe it's a neat little option to have. So, with all of that, what do you educated people think? Should I just stop this idea as it is, or is it actually worth moving forward with, even though it'll only be limited what I do use unraid and it's functionality, due to my working ours and other factors in my personal life? Best regards and thank you so much for your time and advice.

Ah, I see. I wanted to move it as a WM, because it would be easy to create a back up image of that VM, and should the W10 install go wonky, it would be easy to just fire up the back up image and continue from there.

Thank you for the quick reply! Move the whole disk, what does that entail?

Hello everyone. I'm looking into the possibilities of running unraid for some data reasons and some security/fail safe reasons. I would like to hear, if it's possible to take my existing installation of windows 10 and create a VM from that, or in other words "move" my current installation into a VM in unraid and continue running it from there? Best regards

Was planning on an array of WD Red WDS100T1R0A, as far as I know buying hardware made for NAS use is the better idea?

Write performance would still perform better than a spinning platter, even with the time "penalty", correct? I've chosen a Supermicro X11SSM-F motherboard as the base for my build, because of it's 8 SATA connections and relative low cost compared to a C246 based motherboard, such as Supermicro X11SXH-F, as I don't plan on running more than 8 drives in total, along with an Intel Celeron G4900 for low power consumption and Intel Quick Sync for hardware accelerated transcoding when needed, it doesn't have an M.2 slot at all. I've decided to opt out on that, because saturating a SATA SSD array will be quite something and I don't need speeds that can do that. I will also be running 8-16 GB of ECC memory, since it's supported by both the C236 chipset and the G4900. I'd like to protect myself against a failed disk. Should more than 2 fail for what ever odd reason, the way unraid manages it, I won't lose all my data, only the failed drives. That's my reason for choosing unraid as the platform for a server. I also need it to be able to access data when I'm at locations with clients and carrying 10 USB keys and 3 external harddrives just isn't an option. That's for sure a higher risk of data loss, and not through hardware failure, but rather through a "hardware missing" problem. I have a 1 man business, I cannot afford an offsite backup of my data, it's simply outside of my price range, even this unraid server is, but I've gotten to the point, where I have to do something to manage my data and the hardware I bring along for when I go and take pictures or shoot timelapses for clients, this is the best possible solution I can think of, to protect myself against both data loss and still allowing me to have somewhat of a practical solution for the amount of hardware I bring. I'm all ears if you have a better idea?

Unraid is the OS that suits me the best. It's parity is what I'm most interested in. I'm a one man business and having external harddrives everywhere is just not an option. You can disable TRIM in Windows 10, is that not an option in unraid?

Hi everyone. I've spent the past week looking at hardware and I've found something that's both in my price range and should give me reasonable performance for a storage server for my little 1 man business and me and my wifes movies, pictures and what not we'd like to keep safe. Now I find out I probably shouldn't use SSDs for my array, did a bit of googling and the only posts about it is from last year. So is it still the same situation, don't use SSDs for an array and go with mechanical drives? Thank you for your time and your help with every other unraid question I've had

Thank you for clarifying that. I've spent some time reading on intel.com about their chipsets, but I'm none the wiser about how to know if a chipset got iGPU passthrough or not. To add insult to injury, I'm finding it harder and harder to tell the difference between a high end consumer grade chipset and a server grade chipset. Apart from ECC support, what is the differences?

I need the integrated gpu for hardware accelerated transcoding in plex mate, it's a must in the build. I want to use integrated gpu because of the lower power consumption compared to having a dedicated gpu. That is also the reason I'm looking for a board with on board lsi sas3, since it'll consume less power (might be only 1 watt, but with an ocd mindset it matters). Unfortunately they're a bit outside my price range. Otherwise I'd be happy to get one.

And apparently also no SAS3 controller. If I want an onboard LSI SAS3 controller and an APU, it seems I'm stuck with i3?

Bugger. It does support i3 on supermicro.com. Sadly only 6th/7th gen. Is that down to the BIOS or the chipset?

Hello everyone. I've found a SuperMicro X11SSL-CF, which I think will cover my needs, but I'm having a hard time understanding the server specs (I'm new to servers). Since I will need to have my server in my living room, because of limitations in my current housing situation, I've chosen a SilverStone Technology SST-RM400 as my enclosure. This is from a need to use silent fans (Noctuas) and a silent PSU (Still to be chosen). It will also allow me to run 10 Hot-Swap bays, when expanding with a SilverStone Technology SST-FS305B-12G. This is where the suggested motherboard will be suitable, it comes with an LSI3008 sas controller, but I don't know if it can run in IT mode or if I will need an add-on card for this? I'm also planning on running an i5 9600T APU because of it's ability to be used for hardware encoding transcodes in Plex Media Server. Hopefully this can be done in Docker?