Hi whipdancer, beernut and other people in Houston.
I'm building a new Unraid server.
I'm pretty familiar with building home PC, virtualization platforms, and enterprise server hardware but thought this would be a cool experiment that I may fall in love with once it is up and running.
Plus the idea of replacing my PLEX server running on a 9 year old desktop PC, having a #h!t load of space to upgrade my PLEX with 1080p content to a PLEX with 1080p & 4K content plus the ability to learn Docker, and other things Unraid would make possible.
Installing Unraid 6.8.0 rc7 was easy...
First off here are the stats:
Precision T5500 running 2 Xeon E5-2620 (6 core / 12 threads)
112 GB DDR3 EEC
PARITY - a 12TB Easystore drive that I plan on shucking (Black Friday deal)
DATA drives:
a 4TB that holds all of my PLEX content.
a 4TB WD RED (started giving me errors so unless I can warranty repair it I'll drop it)
a 8TB Easystore drive that I plan on shucking (Black Friday deal)
I was thinking of using a 128GB M.2 SSD and a M.2 SSD to PCIE 3.0 X16 Expansion Card
as my CACHE drive.
Then I realize that my T5500 only has space for 4 HD. (Up to three 3.5-inch SATA hard drives and a 4th in the 5.25-inch drive bay)
How do I connect more drives?
How have you expanded your Unraid beyond the capacity without going into rackmount server or equipment?
I've seen someone mention building a 8 bay DAS box but before I go that way I wanted to speak with local Houston people.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-Bay-Trayless-Hard-Drive-300-Watt-Enclosure-With-2-SCSI-Cut-Outs/233385173034?hash=item3656d7202a:g:P7cAAOSwOvhax5xd
and a...
DELL LSI COMPLIANT 9201-16E 6GBPS QUAD PORT SAS HBA CARD