markboler

Those are all really great replies. Thank you to everyone. This helps me a lot. I will use everyone's suggestions.

I am about to buy a new mini-system, and I intend to use UNRAID for it. I want to buy a rack mount intel 13 or 14th gen system. I am thinking of that CPU with the integrated graphics, 2 nvme SSD pci4 (or5) drives, DDR5 64 gig of RAM, 2 NICs etc. I want this server to host 10 or more Docker containers and some VMs. I only want to use this system to do that. Host Docker and VMs. I have a synology NAS with 70 tb of space to store stuff into. My primary use of this new server will be to host Plex in Docker along with some of the ARR docker apps as well. My thinking is to have 2 NVME SSDs of 2 tb each, 1 to host the images on, and the VM virtual disks, etc. and not sure what to use the other one for. I have no room in the case for spinning disks on this one, but I suppose I could expand it to 2 nvmes of larger size and 2 SATA 2.5 inch SSds for other things if I need it. It has integrated UHD intel grpahics so that I can use it for transcoding with Plex. So I figured the 64gig of DDR5 RAM would help with that too. So my question is, what would be recommended for me to set it up? What drives should I use as array disks? Parity? Do I need parity since I can always host my images in the NAS and copy them back and forth if needed. Should I have some parity set up for config info for the containers, etc.? Should I have a cache disk? I think I will only have SSDs in this system so not sure I need that. What does everyone recommend? I am new to UNRAID but like what I have seen so far. But I have not purchased the hardware yet so I could change the specs on that as long as I keep it within a reasonable budget. Given that I am not going to use this thing for anything except hosting VMs and Docker containers, and that I want to put my Plex on it. I also have to have it fit in a 1U rack with only 12 inch depth to fit in my home rack. And I don't want it to consume too much power - hopefully not more than 200 watts or maybe 300. My current thinking is a micro itx board sitting in a 1U mini rack enclosure. Thanks