gambcl

Thanks for the explanation, I think my earlier high rpms were because it was breaching the upper critical/non-recoverable threshold, so it all went to max speed. After a few power-cycles I have raised these thresholds and now the fans do seem to be controlled by the plugin OK. I currently have the min speed set to 12 and the CPU fans are now running at 600-700rpm and CPU is at 29-30C idle. It is so much quieter now too. Thanks again, I will play around with it some more once I start using my array.

You could try raising the low temperature threshold to 25 or 30. Thus pushing the scale higher. You also need to set the fan speed minimum to a value the makes the lowest fan speed greater than the speed set for that fan's threshold in the sensor config editor. Basically if your fan spins too slow or stops the bmc will kick it up to full speed. Thanks @dmacias, I guess I'm just not quite understanding what these values actually do. Is there a description somewhere about what each value actually means? Are the upper/lower thresholds the values that this plugin tries to keep the temps between? So it will react by raising fan speeds if the temp reading reaches above the upper threshold? I will try adjusting the minimum value, as you said, and will report back.

Hi folks, I'm a complete unRAID newbie, just setting up my first server. I have the SuperMicro X10DRi-T motherboard and I have installed the beta version of this IPMI plugin. I have read through this whole thread, thanks to all who posted and @dmacias for doing such great work. I am using Noctua F12 and A14 fans in my case. I seem to have cured the fans revving up/down by lowering the fan alert thresholds, so that's much better already, however my fans are still running really fast. My CPU is at 26C, PCH at 35C, yet the FAN1 is running at 1700rpm and FANA at 1200rpm. Surely they don't need to be anywhere near that fast when the system is so cool at idle. I have enabled Fan Control in the IPMI plugin and chosen the CPU1 sensor for FAN1234, and PCH sensor for FANA, but I have left the other values at their defaults (thresholds: 20-80C, minimum speed: 1). Can anyone help slow these things down? Thanks, Charlie

Thanks, that's just what I was looking for, and answers 2 and 3 above. I'll go with twin SSDs for the cache-pool and single disks for Unassigned Devices usage, backed up nightly. I know there is a plugin for backing up to the array, can it handle multiple drive backups? Any thoughts on filesystems for the single-disk SSDs? I had thought that BTRFS was optimised for SSDs, but would XFS on the SSDs be more reliable?

While I am waiting for my new system's hardware to arrive I am trying to sort out what configuration I will need. I would like to separate my dockers,VMs and Plex database from my cache-pool. As I understand it, I can setup two 1TB SSDs as a cache-pool and Unraid will automatically use BTRFS and give some kind of mirroring/RAID1 across the two SSDs for protection of the cache. Then I can use the Unassigned Devices plugin to mount some extra SSDs to use for dockers,VMs and my Plex database. My questions are around this area: 1) What is the best filesystem to use on SSDs used in this way? (i.e. NOT part of the array, only used as Unassigned Devices) Do I have to worry about TRIM? 2) Can I use pairs of SSDs for these Unassigned Devices and get the same kind of mirroring/RAID1 that the cache-pool gets? 3) Or is it better to just use a single SSD for dockers,VMs via Unassigned Devices, and then get that SSD backed up to the array overnight? If I can do the mirroring for the Unassigned Devices then I would happily buy the extra SSDs for the protection, but if it just isn't possible then I can save some cash. I have been reading the forum looking for this info but many of the posts were quite old, and talked of BTRFS corruption, etc. So I'm just looking for some up-to-date wisdom. Thanks for any help, Charlie

Thanks @Lev it is certainly something I hadn't thought of, however I think I will try the Lian Li D8000 first because it ticks more of my boxes. I have been researching those server rack cases and they all sound very noisy to me, they are built to be running their fans at high rpms, some of them are real screamers. Also, from a practical point of view, if I can't wheel my rack through the door, then whenever I want to tweak the hardware I will have to manhandle the server case out of the rack and onto the wheeled base you mentioned. I can imagine how heavy these cases get once they are loaded up with drives, so I think that is just an accident waiting to happen. To start with I will try the D8000, which I'm hoping will be easily moveable and also allow good, quiet cooling. I'll do a build log if anyone's interested, with photos, so others can see this case in action. If I have any problems with that case then I'm open to trying a proper rack, but for the weight/access reasons mentioned above I might try to put the drives into a separate JBOD chassis, and the motherboard/CPU in its own chassis, because that is the one that I would be likely to need access to and it should be much easier to get in/out without the drives in it.

Ah Startech, I have spent much time reading their specs these last few weeks :-) Unfortunately I can't see anything that would fit through the door AND allow me to position it inside the space, i.e. they are so wide/deep that there won't be enough room to turn the rack. If there was something that was no deeper than 58cm then I could push it through the door sideways, and once through the door I can slide it left into the available space without turning it, but I haven't seen a rack that would fit, and the server chassis themselves are usually longer than that too. The Startech 12U "adjustable depth rack" looked promising, but it is still 590x600 footprint, so it won't go sideways and not sure if it would rotate. I did search for "short-depth" server racks, found some iStarUSA stuff. I thought I could have a JBOD style chassis just for the data drives, and then a separate short-depth chassis for the main motherboard, but the empty JBOD chassis was hideously expensive for my needs. What case did you have in mind? Getting late here, so I'll catch up with replies in the morning, thanks all.

The location I will be keeping it in is an under-stairs cupboard. It's kind of like a half-height closet, it's about 2m wide, 0.75m deep and has a doorway 120cm tall and 58cm wide. There are some narrow shelves on the back wall, which I may take out if I really need to. This is kind of centrally placed in my house and it's where I have my network switch, with cables going off to various rooms. So the case won't be visible day-to-day, unless I have it out for maintenance, but noise is a concern because if it has screaming fans they will be heard all over the house, especially at night. I did first want a 8U or 12U rack and a server rack case but the cases I saw were all very deep (and very noisy) and I really want to have something on wheels that I can move in and out when I need to work on it, and I was concerned that with such a long server chassis (many were around 70cm long) I would not be able to get it through the door and positioned inside. The Lian Li D8000 is only 572mm deep front-to-back and it comes with wheels, and will fit through the doorway and take a E-ATX motherboard. I did read quite a few reviews of the case and many people loved how spacious it was inside, making it easy to work on, and it has lots of places for fans, giving good & quiet cooling. So it sounded like the best tower option for me once I had ruled out the long server cases because of the size/noise. I guess I'm not seeing the issue with the cabling, yes I completely agree that using normal cables directly into the back of the drive will cause problems, but in this case I will have a backplane behind each drive with cables attached to that, so the drives just push in from the front. I thought it looked fairly safe and low-maintenance. I should point out that I don't see me taking drives in and out very often. I will be starting out with 2 parity drives and 5 storage drives (all 8TB), which is a big increase in storage for me (currently using a 5-bay Drobo with 5x4TB drives), so I will only be adding a new drive when necessary and replacing dead drives. The case and system is really specced to allow for easy future expansion with plenty of space for extra drives, as and when I need them. Regarding the controller, @bjp999 did warn me that the 9305's might not be supported, so I have started a new thread asking for anyone with success stories with that controller, and none so far, so I will probably be using 3 of the 9207-8i instead, which gives me enough to cover the 20 HDDs in the 3.5" bays and I can still put a 4in3 drive cage in the 5.25 bays if I want to. Thanks for posting, I was really wrestling with the decision of rack or tower for a few weeks, but I just couldn't see how the deep rack would fit, so this case seemed the best option for my wishlist of size, noise, easy movement, and future expansion.

I listed the 9305-16i in my new build post and someone has mentioned that it might not actually be supported in Unraid. Digging a bit more, all I can find is some troubling posts about the 9305-24i not being recognised, which I assume could mean that the 16i version is also not going to work? Has anyone used this 9305 controller successfully? My fallback is the 9207-8i, which I have seen mentioned a few times with success. Thanks, Charlie

tdallen: Thanks for that, I will be pre-clearing, so I guess that should give everything a workout. I would also like to use dedicated SSDs for my VMs, etc, and just leave the cache-pool purely as a write-cache. Hopefully not too hard to do. bjp999: Thanks again, I forgot to mention in my component list that I am also getting the BP2SATA backplanes for this case, so there will be no fiddling with cables. I chose this case because where I am putting it, it is not convenient for the longer server rack cases (in terms of front-to-back depth) so I wanted a large case with wheels, and one that could take hot-swap connections to drives. Not sure which controller to buy yet, I was looking at the 9305-16i because it is up-to-date, fast, supported, and will only need 2 slots to support all the drives. However they are expensive in the UK and seem hard to find at the moment, so I might get 3 x 9207-8i cards instead.

Hi folks, I am just in the process of ordering components for a new system and would love any advice from more experience Unraid users. This will be my first time using Unraid, I was weighing up between Freenas and Unraid, but I think Unraid is a better fit for my needs. The system will be replacing an existing Drobo 5N and a small server, I am trying to consolidate into a more powerful machine that can be upgraded well into the future and give me more options to play with in terms of dockers, VMs, etc. One of the main uses will be as a Plex media server, but that is not the only use, I would also like to play around with VMs, etc. Here is my list so far: Lian Li D8000 case 10 x Lian Li BP2SATA hot-swap backplanes (2 drives each) Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000W Supermicro X10DRi-T motherboard 64GB ECC DDR4 memory Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 14-core CPU (one to start with, can add another later) Noctua UH-12S CPU cooler Noctua case/drive fans 3 x LSI 9207-8i SAS controller 2 x 1TB SSDs for cache pool SSDs for appdata, Plex WD Red 8TB for storage array parity, data drives I think that lot should handle my needs pretty well, with plenty of power and room for extending in the future. I have been reading as much as possible, but I still have the following questions: 1) Anything obviously wrong with the above components? 2) What happens when the cache-pool is full? Does it just slow down to the speed of the array, or does it error? 3) I was planning to separate my cache drive from the storage areas used by dockers, VMs, etc. and maybe also put my Plex database on its own SSD. I know the SSD cache pool will be using BTRFS across 2 SSDs for safety, but what filesystem should I use for my appdata SSD drives? Can I create a separate drive with RAID1 or something for my appdata? Or should I just use single SSD drives for appdata (with no protection) and get them backed up to the array overnight? 4) Burn-in and testing, what should I be doing as soon as I set the thing up? Thanks for any help, Charlie