Building My First Unraid Server Hardware/Migration Help

[Lava Swim]

  

Looking to build my first Unraid server to replace my existing NAS and VM Box.

 

I would like some help with hardware reccomendions and also how I can move all my data accross (maybe need to ask that bit in another thread). I have done a bit of research but the threads I ended up on didn't really answer my questions.

 

I currently have a QNAP TS453a NAS . Unfortunetly the Celeron processor wasn't up to scrath for running Plex.

 

Luckily when I upgraded my main PC to Ryzen I was able to repurpose my old CPU (Intel i3 8100) and motherboard to build a box to run Plex, docker apps and VM's.

 

I want to replace both units with one Unraid server , not really out of neccesity but Unraid looks really cool and I'm a bit of a noob so thought it would be a good learning experience. Plus like many of us, I like wasting money on computers and tech 😀

 

Spec:

I would like to use the existing components from my VM Box, but need to know whether they would be suitable. I want to aim to keep the power and noise low as possible. I currently run around 10 dockers apps (plex, radarr, sonarr, nextcloud, unifi, pihole, swagg ...) and a couple couple of VM's, also host some web apps from time to time. So i need to be able to run all of that plus my storage needs then some headroom for future projects.

 

Components

CPU: Intel i3 8100 (repurposed from current machine)

Will this be powerful enough for the build? If not I was looking at a i9 9900 as I thought this would give me plenty of headroom and keeping my power low (65w) but from having a look around on the unraid forums and other places I have seen people mention not to use hyerthreading as it is a security risk? is this something I need to worry about?

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370N WIFI Mini ITX (repurposed from current machine)

Is this suitable or do i need server grade board?

 

Memory: Corsair 8gb (repurposed from current machine)

Happy to buy more if needed, do i need ECC memory?

 

Drives: 4 x 8tb iron wolf (repurposed from NAS)

I currently run these in raid 5 but while watching a video (link) for my research for this build a guy was saying raid 5 is no good. Is this correct?

I also have a spare 250gb SSD for cache

 

Power Supply:

Assume this doesnt really matter what I buy, was looking at the Fractal Design ION + 560p seems a reasonably cheap fully modular with good warranty.

 

Case: Fractal Desing Node 304

Would like to go with Node 304, always liked the case and it will hold 6 x 3.5 drives (2 more than current). unfortunetly not hot-swappable bays but so far with my current NAS I've not really had to do any hot swapping.

 

Thanks for the help 😀

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by Lava Swim
Updated Link

[morph3us]

Well I am also new to Unraid but I completed my first build some time ago and want to share some ideas:

 

Test it out. Thats the first thing that comes to mind. You have to test if Unraid is recognizing all your hardware. I have a msi mag b460m mortar in my build and I can tell you what doesnt work.

 

-I have no control over Fan Speed at all. I have to set everything in BIOS.

-My 2.5Gb NIC didnt work at all with unraid 6.8.3. But works now with 6.9.0-rc2

-Some Power Saving stuff does not work. My SSD has gone to suspend mode and hasnt worked until I completly shutdown my server and started it again.

-I have an Intel i5-10400 and I cannot use the onboard graphics because my Mainboard does not support running onboard graphics AND a dedicated GPU in Legacy Boot mode. And as soon as I try to switch to UEFI Mode Unraid just doesnt want to boot at all. So I can only use the 1650 Super I installed in my WinVM. I wanted to use the Integrated Graphics for a Grafana Monitor in my Server Room. I cant because of this.

 

So get a USB stick. Flash unraid on it and try as much as you can before you decide to buy stuff for your build or you will maybe regret it. You will need 1 empty drives to start the array to play arround with everything. Because the array HAS to run to get Docker and VM Manager running. No Array, no playing arround. Just saying.

 

To your hardware (from my limited experience):

 

CPU: should be enough

 

Motherboard: Should be good, you have to test it though

 

RAM: Might be a bit short on it. I have 32GB installed and run 3-4 VM´s and maybe 10 Docker Containers. And I used up half of my RAM. But my Windows VM is occupying 8GB alone. So there is that. I would never ever again run Windows 10 with only 4GB Ram. 8GB seems to be the sweet spot. Unless you are using an unbloated reduced version and never surf with the biggest RAM eater on the planet. Google Chrome.

You DONT need ECC Ram. But I advice you to run Memtest on the machine for atleast 24hours. I ran it for a week 24/7 just to be sure. You want to make sure your RAM is in the best condition it can be.

 

Drives: Unraid does not support any Raids. Unless you use unassigned devices plugin and do it yourself. Which I advice you not to do unless you know what you are doing. The new unraid 6.9.0-rc2 has multiple cache pools and can run pools over multiple drives now. You should use that.

The simple reason RAID 5 is bad is because its to fragile. A dirty reboot or a power outage and it has to rebuild. Rebuilding takes AGES and If that rebuild process fails ALL your data is F****D. With unraid if you have the case that 1 harddisk dies and you have no parity drive. Or 2 harddisks die with parity drive, you can simply take out the drives and "rescue" the files that are left. Not ideal, but its better than losing ALL. With 2 parity drives you can even lose 2 harddrives, replace them, rebuild and everything is fine.

 

PowerSupply: You got the right idea. As good as possible because this Server might run 24/7 for quiet some time. I went with Seasonic Gold.

 

Case: Nice Choice. I run my hardware in a Node 804. I had a massive heat problem at first. So keep that in mind. I solved it by populating every spot I had with Noctua fans and I even added a fan between my drives cages because my second drive cage was way hotter than the first. I also slapped heatsinks on every SSD and Part possible. At last I added an AIO Cooler for the CPU just to be sure. Now everything is running fine. Dont underestimate the heat this small cases generate. Everything will be cramped in there and you need good air cooling. I also run everything that cools on 100% 24/7. 

 

Just a short summary of my build:

Case: Fractal Node 804

Mainboard: MSI MAG M460M MORTAR

RAM: 2x16GB Crucial Ballistix 2666 MHz, DDR4

CPU: Intel i5-10400

GPU: Asus 1650 Super (Passthrough to my Win10 VM)

Drives: 6x10TB WD Red+2x12TB WD Red (one Big Array with 72TB+Parity), 1TB WD Black SN270 as Cache Drive, 2x 1TB WD Sata SSD´s (second, slower Cache Pool for Appdata&Stuff), 1TB Sandisk Ultra (temp Folder for crap), 240GB Crucial SSD (Windows 10 VM exclusive, so I can have dual boot)

Network: ASUS Asus XG-C100C 10GBE

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by morph3us