Shahmatt

I want to install pfsense VM on a motherboard which has two LAN ports. Is this sufficient, or would I need to buy a PCI card with more LAN ports?

I am very much a noob to the technical nuances of UNRAID, VMs and hardware requirements. So I would greatly appreciate some help. My old headless UNRAID NAS is showing signs of hardware failure. So I want to prepare for the worst by building a new system. The current functions provided by UNRAID are as follows: Immich Docker Syncthing Docker SMB shares I run no VMs. In this system I have 5 drives connected to SATA ports (Four 3.5" HDDs and one 2.5" SSD Cache). For the new system, I wish to combine the functions of UNRAID with my regular use Windows PC (i.e. run it as a VM). I would also like to try pfsense to improve the network capability of my home. So the new machine must be able to house 5 SATA drives (from the original UNRAID system) plus two drives from my Windows PC (one m.2 drive and one SATA drive). Therefore the number of storage drives increases from 5 to 7. For the motherboard I was considering some models from China, such as the Topton Mini ITX SOC motherboard with the capability of connecting 9 drives in the link below: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007081838288.html A couple of questions about this motherboard. Will I be able to use the iGPU for a Windows VM, or will I need to buy a seperate dGPU The Audio port just says 2 in 1 Audio interface. Does this mean there is no audio hardware. Would a dGPU have onboard audio which I could use for my Windows VM? Will I be able to make use of the NICs for a pfsense VM? (would UNRAID commandeer all four NIC ports?) Also, would it be preferred to setup this system as Windows in an UNRAID VM container? Or would there be an alternative better method to set this system up? Any help is much appreciated.

I am also thinking about a new build a long these lines. But these CPUs have no iGPU. Do you need a GPU for the initial setup? If using a VM wouldn't you also need a discrete GPU?

I currently run UNRAID on a very old (13 years) i3-2100 Sandy bridge CPU. I only run Syncthing on it as a Docker, and this seems to do a good enough job for me. I also have a, now old, 2200G CPU built in a SFF box. The ITX board only has 8GB of Ram in two slots. At one time this was enough, but of late it does seem as though the system is RAM starved. Since the CPU grunt power is more than enough for my needs (spreadsheets, browsing, playing media), I was considering: 1. Retiring the Sandy Bridge system since board failure is just a matter of time 2. Buying a B450 board for the 2200G with 4 Ram slots. Increasing RAM. 3. Moving UNRAID To the "new" system. 4. Creating a Windows VM, consolidating two systems into one, and save electricity. Perhaps add immich as a new Docker. I was also considering building a router, but that's a separate issue. My question is, is the 2200G going to be good enough for this purpose? It's just a quad core CPU, so would core allocation for VM be a problem? Is APU passthrough to the VM possible, or would I need a discrete GPU?

This worked. Thanks.

unRAID detected a drive problem. SMART could not even read the drive to produce a report. So I removed it from the server. I installed it in my Windows PC. I found that the whole drive was an unallocated partition. I ran checkdisk, and It produced no errors. I reinstalled the drive in the server. unRAID sees the drive. I have run the SMART extended test and it shows no errors. But I can find no option to rebuild the array with this drive. The drive still remains emulated from parity. Is there anything I'm missing here? It seems unRAID wants me to use a new drive. Any advice is appreciated.

I want to use my server to compress images and video into a small size so that I can have it on my phone. I've found jlesage's Handbrake which watches a folder, compresses the video files within automatically, and exports to a designated folder. It works very well. I was wondering if there was an image processing equivalent. Appreciate any help. Thanks.

Thank you kindly. Sounds like what I need.

Thanks very much.

I want to check the maximum reached temperature over a period of time, sort of like what the HWmonitor app shows on Windows. I have the Dynamix plugin but that only shows real-time temps. Is there plugin out there that has the historical maximum feature?

Could it be that the GUI is showing something different from what is in the command line? How would I check this if so?

I am new to UNRAID and paid for my license about 2 or 3 weeks ago. The forums have been helpful. The resources available online are generally very good and relevant.

It's a Biostar TZ68A+. Yes I've now done exactly what you've said. I am waiting to see if it will boot on schedule. But this would be a somewhat inelegant solution after all.

Yes. it is set to GMT + 8.

Switching off NPT did not fix the problem sadly

I have this problem where my BIOS time sets to GMT + 0 from the correct GMT + 8 whenever my UNRAID OS enters sleep mode. The date in BIOS is correct and it's not a motherboard or battery issue because 1. I've changed the battery and 2. The date does not reset. I have set up my server to Sleep at night and use a BIOS setting to wake it up in the morning. However because of the time change to minus 8 hours it doesn't wake. Fixing the time in BIOS doesn't help as after Sleep BIOS goes back to GMT + 0. Could UNRAID be fixing my BIOS time? If so what should I do? I found a setting called NPT in the date/ time menu and set that to off. Will test it overnight. Would this make a difference?

Thanks for the comment. Will look at 6th gen options.

I am only trying to optimize the hardware I already have. I think for additional redundancy and power savings I could look at lower Watt PSUs (which will have higher efficiency within the range). Also will try to source a passive heatsink.

Ignore my question on the cache drive as some reading provided the answer. I've set syncthing share to disk1 and cache to Yes. So any syncing will only activate the SSD and the HDD will spin up only with Mover once a day. I've disabled the case fan and changed the CPU fan governor again to let the system and CPU run a bit hotter. I now seem to be idling at 27 to 30 Watts. I guess this is alright for now. As a last step I will look into undervolting this CPU when I have time. Thanks for the help.

Thanks for your reply. I forgot to mention I do have a cache drive. It is a 64GB Crucial M4 SSD. I have moved appdata and system files to it. Since I am only using the Syncthing docker container I believe this should be efficient. I have adjusted the CPU fan governor. It now runs on lowest speed and temperature is less than 50C. Power consumption still remains in the late 30s. I have setup S3 sleep mode and enabled a scheduled wake event. When in S3 the power drops to about 1.5W. On a previous instance I had BIOS set to S1 sleep and the power dropped from 40 to 20 Watts. So from this I guess the drives 3 HDDs + 1 SSD consume 40 - 20 Watts = 20 Watts of power. Since Syncthing is my only running docker I set it to run a syncronize event every 3 hours. I have also now set the disks to spin down after 15 mins of inactivity. As I am posting I am waiting for the disks to spin down. I am also measuring total cumulative power in kWh. I will do this for a day to estimate my annual bills. Question: I have syncthing running from a cache drive but the share folder used for file sync is on disk1 HDD. Should I set this share folder to Prefer Cache instead? Is the job of mover to update the contents of cache to disk1 according to a schedule?

My recently built UNRAID server has the following hardware: 1. Intel i3-2100 on Biostar TZ68a+ board 2. 4GB DDR2 RAM 3. 1x4TB Toshiba S300 HDWT740 + 2x1TB WD Red WD10EFRX 4. FSP Aurum 400W Gold PSU 5. I run one case fan and one CPU fan With the exception of the Toshiba drive, all other hardware are at least 7 years old. On first setup the idle power drain was around 45 to 50 Watts. I've managed to whittle that down to around 35 to 40 Watts after using Powertop, activating ASPM in BIOS and enabling all C states, and disabling Audio according to this thread: One thing that did not work was the i-gpu driver from CA. The Intel-iGPU-TOP plugin installed (and power draw dropped by about 4 Watts) but I lost my display as a result. I'm guessing the drop in power was simply due to an iGPU no longer operating. I also tried changing CPU governor to powersave but that didn't seem to make a perceptible difference. As a next step I'm thinking about going with a passive heatsink for the CPU. That might save between 1 and 4 Watts, but it's not much of a dent really. Is there anything else I could try doing? 35 to 40 Watts is really too much and could add quite a bit to the power bills.

Thanks. Will give this a try later today. I had not realized that the disks and dockers start running even though the display requires a user login.

Forgive me for this newbie question. How do you set up unraid so that the array starts when booted? In my installation it requires an admin username and password

Thanks for the comment. I found the Jonsbo N1 which has a dedicated PCB for loading and unloading hard disks. A total capacity of only 5 drives though. It's a bit too expensive and I would also need an ITX board to make it happen. But something to keep an eye on I guess.

@Gragorg Thanks for your reply. I only have the one docker running right now. I have struggled a bit trying to find a better use case for this NAS beyond just keeping things in sync (as an always on low-power device) and acting as a backup. I did try installing a Windows VM but that failed due in part I think to old hardware (planned obsolescence), so I gave it up. Ubuntu runs alright but again, I lack a proper use case. Anyway, regarding hardware I am in two minds whether to invest in a more compact case, modern PSU, and motherboard with fresh capacitors. But perhaps I will leave it alone and see how long this old hardware will last.