tdallen

Hi - You can remove the drive by doing a New Config. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/Shrink_array

Yeah, the eagle sight was cool - but if you remember the name of the eagle you are way ahead of me!

Since it's a beast, there was an early 80's movie called The Beastmaster and the lead character was "Dar".

Just to be sure we are on the same page - if you want to have 5 users you will need 5 GPUs and a machine big enough to handle them... along with associated CPU and memory. Even if you run a used E5 this still won’t be cheap.

Hello - When you say 3-5 users, would they be using unRAID as a file server? Or VMs?

Hello and welcome. That system should be fine for unRAID and your plans. 4GB is a little light, it’s fine to get started but that’s the one thing I’d keep an eye on. Preclearing is recommended for new drives - it stress tests them and prepares them to be quickly added to the array. It isn’t strictly needed though and I’d probably skip it if they are existing drives you have confidence in.

Hi - I'd start by upgrading your parity and one data drive via the usual rebuild process. That should give you a data drive with lots of room to spare on it. Then, you can look at the unBalance Plugin or the diskmv/consld8 scripts to consolidate your data. Parity remains intact with this strategy. Once you have a few 8TB drives with lots of data on them and a bunch of unneeded 1 and 2TB drives, it's time to shrink the array. To prevent unRAID from writing data to the old drive, you may want to temporarily (or permanently) set the Include parameter for your user shares to use only the new disk(s).

Hello and welcome. Unfortunately the 4770K doesn't support VT-d, so it will never be the all-in-one solution you are interested in. I agree it would make a fine unRAID/Plex server, though. So is it worth going to X99/Socket 2011v3 to build an all-in-one gaming/NAS machine? It's certainly possible and a good number of people are doing it though I definitely consider them "enthusiast" level techies. Make sure you are looking at the CPUs for that board, it's not just the board that will cost more. The Skylake-X chips cost a lot more than Socket 1151 chips. Why the two 1080i's by the way? Are you trying to support one gaming VM or two? Also how much Plex streaming and transcoding do you do, and is it at the same time as gaming?

unRAID (generally) requires JBOD. Motherboard ports can be used, just don't set any RAID setting if the motherboard supports it. If you need to support more disks than the motherboard can support, an LSI based HBA (flashed to IT mode depending on the model) is recommended. Examples are the LSI-9201-8i, IBM M1015, and Dell PERC H310.

Sounds like a good plan. The newest Intel chips have 6 cores, though, which can be nice. They only come in Core models as opposed to Xeon unfortunately.

Interesting card, but since it's made for QNAP enclosures you may have trouble with unRAID having the appropriate drivers. I don't have any direct experience, though.

FYI, it is generally recommended to install apps on the cache drive rather than the storage array.

And once you install "Community Applications", you will have access to try all the applications under your trial key, the trial is fully functional.

You can run unRAID 6 in a very basic setup, but since it's capable of so much more it's worth throwing more hardware at it. Frank covered a lot of good information but here's a few more thoughts: For a CPU, a Pentium is a good basic starting point with Core i3/i5's as upgrades to allow you to run more Dockers and Core i7/Xeon E3 as the higher end option. There are people who run even bigger boxes but it doesn't sound like you want to go there... Warning, media applications such as encoding and transcoding like lots of CPU. For RAM, 4GB is Ok for a very basic NAS only setup, 8GB is the much more common starting point and 16GB is where you start to get some flexibility. ECC RAM is nice and always appropriate for an always-on fault tolerant server, but not strictly needed. Mobo? A good name brand that has the features you want, preferably without Marvel SATA ports and with an Intel NIC. Asus, ASRock, Supermicro, MSI to name a few. BTW, one of the best things you can do for yourself is upgrade all those 1 and 2TB drives to bigger, modern drives. Nothing smaller than 4TB or 6TB drives is my recommendation, and 8TB is usually the best price/performance point. As a side benefit, you might not need SAS/SATA expanders if you go with 8TB drives...

If you are willing to spin up all your disks it's getting closer. Using Turbowrite I get a minimum of 70MB/s and more typically 90+MB/s. Under optimal conditions (say copying a large BD rip) I frequently get full 1Gb line speeds That's using a mix of 3TB and 6TB disks, and as boniel points out disks are only getting faster.

I like @Zonediver's suggestion because the newest Intel chips have 6 cores. Threads are nice but when I hear "tons of containers and VMs" I think something more than a standard 4 core Intel chip is warranted. Other options - a used Xeon E5 can be a great value, and since you're AMD already I'm sure you're reading up on Ryzen/Threadripper.

It shouldn't be a problem. If you just want to dabble, then a motherboard and CPU with VT-x support is fine - and don't skimp on the RAM. If you want to use hardware pass-though then VT-d support is required for both, and the newer the hardware usually the better. You might want to clone a setup someone else is successfully using.

I'm glad you found it. Even 2GB is fairly minimal these days, 4GB is more common as a starting point.

Sounds like you’ve got the right approach, good luck and let us know how it goes!

Hi - These older boxes can work, but they can also be a pain. It will have enough horsepower to run unRAID and 4GB of RAM is sufficient. You could definitely stand up a basic NAS with it. But, these old boxes tend to be heavy, loud, power inefficient and run hot. And if it only takes SAS hard drives then that further limits your options. You can give it a try (it's free with an unRAID trial license) and I'm sure you'll have some degree of success - but it may also inspire you to try something newer, more efficient, quieter, etc.

You might also want to look at the Silverstone DS380/CS380/CS381 - they built in hotswap bays at a reasonable price and have a door to make them look sleeker. I wish there were more options with internal hotswap, Lian Li makes the only ones I know of. The reason for this recommendation is that cabling issues are the most common cause of array disruption at some point in the future. In other words, you go to add a drive or replace a failing drive - and inadvertently cause another problem by dislodging a cable to a good drive. I run an IBM M1015, flashed to IT mode. There are different kinds of cables, but I use it with an 8087 forward breakout cable. This type of cable has a SAS connector where it attaches to the card, but then breaks out into 4 standard SATA connectors at the other end. This allows you to attach to standard SATA hard drives or hotswap cages, your call. The card has 2 ports so you can connect 8 drives. The LSI based cards are the current recommendation, there are lots of threads about them here on the forums.

Hello and welcome. That build should be fine for your requirements. Both the Define R5 and the NZXT H440 have been used with lots of success, but it is worth considering buying a case like the Antec 900 and adding hotswap bays like the SuperMicro CSE-M35T. Get an LSI based sata expansion card, the IBM M1015 and Dell PERC H310 are popular on eBay, as is the LSI 9201-8i and similar - search here, there are lots of discussions.

Hi - An E5-2603v4 would in fact have a "bit more umph" than the C2750. It has 5,473 Passmarks vs. the 3,344 Passmarks of the Avoton. On the other hand that's a really low end E5; a CPU with 5,473 Passmarks and 1.7GHz cores is nothing special these days - even a 2 core Pentium can beat that. If you're getting a great deal on this setup then it may be worthwhile, but there are lots of other options that might either cost less or perform better...

Have a look at the Silverstone CS380 and recently announced CS381.

I agree with jonathonm, this just got problematic. 6 cores, 2 gaming VMs and 1 software development VM = really challenging. Both games and software development like CPU cycles and are much better suited to the responsiveness of hardware pass-through rather than remote access. You've got plenty of RAM, but you're going to run out of cores and PCIex lanes with the current setup - not to mention the compatibility issues of multiple pass-through VMs. How much of a challenge are you up for? And don't forget - unRAID is an OS - it needs resources, too!