[Cache Pools for a new build]

I'm planning a new unraid box, but there's been so many changes to UNRAID since my last major upgrade (2016?)

 

The new box will have the following drives:

-(5) 18TB Exos

-(2) 1TB NVME

-(4) 500GB SSDs

 

My initial plan was to have the main array using the EXOS, a mirrored 1TB NVME cache pool for apps and another mirrored cache pool using the SSDs for ingestion. 

 

Any recommendations or best practices, ZFS usage, etc? 

 

 

 

[4.5+ Years later... Time to build another Unraid Array]

@WeeboTEch > Oh I travel alot less then my wife, so i haven't consider a board with IPMI.  I currently just VNC to a desktop in the house and access the unraid GUI that way.

 

@garycase > It truly has.  It's one of the better tech investments I made a few years ago.  I restart the servers every 3-6 months due to power outages, dust cleaning etc.  I still haven't decided if i'm going to sell off the old server (wouldn't net much), or just keep it going.

[4.5+ Years later... Time to build another Unraid Array]

First off, I'd like to thank Unraid for fulfilling all of my home's storage and media needs since 2008.  It has truly been a boring and uneventful time, and that's a GOOD thing!

 

I've upgraded a few things along the way: large HDs, move from a tower case to a Rack, but largely my build has remained the same.  I'll even admit that my unraid server is running 4.6-rc3 (lazy, i know).  As a self confessed hardware geek, it was initially hard, not to tweak, upgrade and change settings, but I finally treated unraid as an appliance and not a workstation/desktop and it has been worth the piece of mind for my data.  But its time for an upgrade...

 

Here's my first Unraid build straight from an old Newegg order:

---------------------

1 x AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core

1 x Lexar JumpDrive FireFly (Blue) 1GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model JDFF1GB-431

1 x GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

2 x Athena Power BP-SATA3051B 3 x 5.25" Bays to 5 x 3.5" HD (SATA) Backplane

1 x COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

2 x Open Box: PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card

 

Current Drives:

-------------------

1TB WD parity

7x640GB Greenies

2x500GB Seagates

2x320GB WDs

 

Two years ago I scored an outstanding deal on (2) of these 4U cases and decided to drop the 3x5.25s & tower case. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147155

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132035

 

I also dropped the promise cards in favor or some Cheap Monoprice SATA PCI-E cards (it was a good speed boost)

 

====================

 

Reason's for my upgrade:

-I decided to finally start buying Blu Rays instead of DVDs, so I need much more space!!!!

-I read a few years ago about gigabyte bios issues + unraid and have wanted to get rid of the board for a while

-My wife and I travel more so I'm considering a private VPN tunnel and "light" transcoding (only one of us travels at a time) so we can watch our recorded TV and movies anywhere

-An empty 4U case with no purpose sucks

 

Here's the current items I have on order:

ASRock B75 PRO3

Intel Celeron G1610

(2) SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 SAS

(5) 3TB WD Reds (Starting Capacity)

4GB memory

Intel Gigabit NIC

 

The 4U case I have only holds 12HDs, but I've done some creative cutting of acrylic and old mouse pads to allow for vertical HD mounting of 22-24 drives in two rows (backblaze style).  Once everything comes in I'll post some pics in the UCD forum.

 

Thanks again Unraid...now where did I put that second Unraid USB stick??