TinkerToyTech

just ordered 2 more

I found that SpaceInvader Ones' videos so valuable to my understanding of how unraid, dockers, the kvm, virtual machines, preclearing drives and the rest of his video's so informative I bought him a beer last month and plan on it again in the future. Word of warning though, he covers a lot of material in a 15 minute video, watch it 2-7 times before you start some of the more complicated ones

Drobo was just the name / max datasize that I knew off the top of my head that you could build up storage as you go and that had Plex server on it to offer the place to co-locate your backup for the least hassle and cost. The idea is to get your backup of the data away from your place, just thinking of Texas right now and the disaster situation they have now. Remember, the cloud is just someone else's computer! @TinkerToyTech

ok, had another idea to add to my first: Make a bootable USB key that will boot to a GUI that has the neccessary drivers and software to image the boot drive, and then write that image out to a network share. you could have it setup with a directory on the server per machine, keeping the last 3, then each time you make a major change to the system, i.e. a minor upgrades, before each patch Tuesday, etc, you'll be at worst be a state of no more than a month of lost time, with the OS backing up your machines to their network shares personal directory on a file by file basis as built-in to win10pro... ok, my two cents is up to a nickel idea, because this is solving the same problem I'm having... @TinkerToyTech

How about building a restore disc / usbkey for each client, then setting up a cron (curl?) job backing using control panel (win7) Backup & Restore method to user directories on the unraid? With CrashPlan Home Backup going away it's what I'm going to try. I'm also looking into Retrospect Network Backp for Windows but I don't know if it will do bare metal restore... @TinkerToyTech

Perhaps buy a NAS such a a 5 drive drobo5N2 (max 64TB) outfit it with enough storage for redundancy, and giving them some read only accesses to the Plex server for their troubles and keep it updated with duplicati? If things go bad, goto the family members place, bring the device home, and you will have your data... That's my idea off the top of my head.... @TinkerToyTech

if you have the SATA ports, add the two larger replacement disks, and copy/ merge the data by hand? I know of no program that will o it, maybe someone else does? I keep on a client backup drive library files of each /mnt/disk1 /mnt/disk2... catalog with voidtools.com everything.exe search catalog file to disc for this info if I lose a drive I know what was on it but none of that helps w/o a BACKUP! @TinkerToyTech

on my Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 when I put a NVME Samsung 950 pro on that motherboard I lost half my SATA ports, YMMV I'm running 8TB WD REDs in my Fractal Node 804 no problem My two Cents worth @TinkerToyTech

the Home backup solution which is how I backed up 5 clients plus two drobos plus my unraids. but this is no more. At the end of my annual contract I'm toast. They have arrangements to sign up for their business product or carbonite at an initial discount. We will see. The other set up and forget it is EMC Retrospect, which I beta tested a long time ago on Macintosh and they have Linux support, what I need is one of you geniuses to tell me what flavor of linux would be best or to just setup the server: http://www.retrospect.com/en/support/kb/which_versions_of_linux_and_unix_does_the_client_support This software will set me back some bucks, it will cost me 1 or 2 8TB drives depending on what I get... Perhaps this would be a good thread to cover your backup strategy... @TinkerToyTech

you will need to look up the core pairings for your individual cpu, but if it's similar to mine (3770 4Cores, 8threads ) vm's, one for just the workstation / single gaming, one for gamer1, one for gamer2, one for other multiprocessing docker only duties such as Plex, FileBot, vpn + rutorrent, Krusader. cpu threads 0, 4 Unraid "root" processing minimum cpu threads 1, 5 misc. processing dual gamers: gamer#1 cpu threads 2,6 + gpu#1 + 3/8'ths of the ram gamer#2 cpu threads 3,7 + gpu#2 + 3/8th's of the ram Workstation: cpu threads 1,2,3, 5,6,7+gpu1+gpu2 3/4ths the ram docker "application" multi-processing: 1,2,3, 5,6,7

Sure this is how I helped another i7 dual gamer tweak his setup to work https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/59380-vm-core-assignments/ read through each of the replies, it'll cover the highlights in broad strokes, I can try to help more should you need it, if not me then others.

qBittorrent being a QT app will suck up and be slow from a gui perspective I've found. All of the qt apps that I've used while being portable and all that I'm seemingly always 4 steps ahead of how fast the UI should be running... I personally like rutorrent, I"ve used it on seedboxes back in the day and it grew on me. Look up "SpaceInvader One" on youtube. He has about 100 videos up on various aspects of unraid configuration, including everything that you're looking to run here. I think I've watched every one 3 times and when it came to actually implementing a videos' worth of server tweaks/setup what I did was to watch the ideo through twice, then on my 3 monitors I would run the video on the left, webgui in themiddle monitor and be looking stuff up on the 3rd.a/b inputs being my batttlestation 3rd head or on the vga input the server itself. He'd say add this from here, do this this and this. back the video up and watched those 30 seconds, do it, check to be sure it's perfect three times, then goto the next step. I think you get the idea. Just my newbie 2 cents worth, @TinkerToyTech

Take a look at this thread: https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/59380-vm-core-assignments/ it's how you can fix up your VM's to run t the same time... Have fun. @TinkerToyTech

How are you serving up the files to your clients - the media files? How Many streams to TVs at a time? what are the Plex clients? From reading the forums, I'm seeing that people recommended a PassMark score of 2000 per stream. for secure banking, why not use a Chromebook instead of an Ubuntu vm? Will the streams all be running while you're gaming? Just a few things that would be helpful answered.

Are you trying to add these to mutiple Virtual machines like linus tech tools demo video? or do you want to run 5 monitors off of the Maui Linux? what 6 core cpu? an AMD 1100T? How many potential Hard drives are you going to put in this machine? inquiring minds need/want to know more...

And remove the directory if it's then empty; if this could be used to remove empty directories I'd pay for it. I have a program for windows that does this but alas, I think it might just be for smb1 or has just become abandonware. Remove Empty Directories 2 or red2.exe is what I have for windows that works most of the time for what I'm looking for... @TinkerToyTech

Int 16: noboy cared.

yes, I checked it with piriform speccy, on my win10 machine, in a usb toaster, and it reports all in the Good

Another +1 for @gridrunner's youtube videos, You will find that if you are new to this that watching youtube videos and TV shows or movies are nothing alike. You get so many steps that need to be done perfectly to get things up correctly. look for him under the handle "SpaceInvader One" @TinkerToyTech

Antec 900 gives you room for 15 drives plus areas to velcro SSDs, the 1200 gives you room for 20, etc. My previous server was in a 900, which gave me places for 9 drives, and I sold it foolishly by the time it came to start adding drive cages.

I too would like to thank @gridrunner for all of his videos. What I have found is that after watching them 3-5 times, if I want to fully implement what you spell out in a given video, there's say 5 tips, each with 5 steps, that is at least 25 pauses, rewinds, zooms, etc to be sure I have gotten it perfect. I'm a total noob when it comes to linux, I had some exposure to BSD Unix about 30 years ago but I was mainly playing Hack, rogue, hunt, advent et. al and reading/posting in the newsgroups. @gridrunner, have you joined Patreon, or have a public facing PayPal? If you are, I have a tip for you. @TinkerToyTech

what are the minimum operating specs for this game? if it will run on a core 2 duo, then you'll be set, also, how much ram does it require?. I'm talking Minimum specs now. My thinking would be to put each VM on its own Core/thread pair, assign it ram amount minus a chunk to run the unraid. Another thought would be to put each VM on its own SSD except for the common steam library, again, tied to unshared cpu cores and equal to about one third of the ram in the machine. Now, with the equiv. of a core2duo with 1/3rd of the machines ram and the lower gpu, and run a passmark, see if this setup gives you enough total needed processor(s) (CPU+GPU+RAM) to run the game at the specs you want to play it at according to steam. First: Build 2 seperate VMs, Gamer 1, Gamer 2: Assigning each a cpu1 core-thread pair, gpu1, key1, mouse1, ram1, etc. Try adjusting the game requirements down, try 640x480 for each; This might help with the in-game play....... Those are my 3 cents worth on it. @TinkerToyTech

I'm using a Fractal Designs Node 804 case, search the forums for some of my and others insights on this case. I will be posting pictures next time I go down to install the new 8TB drive that I will be shucking from its case this afternoon. Few things to keep in mind is the cable length and where you route them might require longer cables than originally thought. One set needs to be 6" longer than the other to reach one of the groups of 4 drives on the drive side of the case. @TinkerToyTech

I have 1 open slot on my unraid server for a new 8TB drive, also have 3x 4TB drives with 1TB on each. what the best gui method to migrate the data from these 3 disks to the single 8TB. The idea it toget the discs to the faster card and off the slow ports. could I use a VM (windows10pro) under File manager accessed under rdp from another machine on th inhouse network? Thank you, @TinkerToyTech

Ok, I put a fan on my other 8tb drive I purchased and ran a preclear, but it appears to be 'stuck'at 99% of its out of server still in the enclosure status before I start tearing things apart and putting this drive into the unraid, what do you think? is it safe to keep/use this drive? ############################################################################################################################ # # # unRAID Server Preclear of disk 3753474A45424543 # # Cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64. # # # # # # Step 1 of 5 - Pre-read verification: [14:56:02 @ 148 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 2 of 5 - Zeroing the disk: [14:47:20 @ 150 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 3 of 5 - Writing unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 4 of 5 - Verifying unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 5 of 5 - Post-Read in progress: (99% Done) # # # # # # # # # # # # ** Time elapsed: 14:53:01 | Current speed: 149 MB/s | Average speed: 149 MB/s # # # ############################################################################################################################ # Cycle elapsed time: 44:36:24 | Total elapsed time: 44:36:24 # ############################################################################################################################