Total beginner - questions about build for Unraid as storage-only

[Hastor]

Sorry if I should be posting this elsewhere. I have seen a lot of beginner guides etc. and build discussions, but nothing has led me to figure out where to start for the solution I'm going for. I've never used Unraid, but need something to put it on before I can.

 

I want to build a machine for Unraid, just for storage using a single drive for redundancy only - just a protected storage device. I'm currently using a Drobo, but they seem to have abandoned their consumer market, and this looks like a better solution. I want to move these drives over, and have room for expansion. It sounds like Unraid can do what I want, but the build discussions I've seen aren't going for the size I'm using. Currently my Drobo has 3x10TB and 2x16TB NAS drives, for a total of 41.6TB of storage, as one 16TB is reserved for redundancy. This appears to Windows via USB as an NTFS 64TB volume, but would give an error if I used more than the actual free space. It also has a 512GB SSD for additional cache, which I understand Unraid would support as well.

 

I'd like to start with this, and add/replace to increase further over time. I'm sure I can follow guides to install Unraid, but for this type of thing and amount of storage - what kind of CPU/RAM would I need? Any recommendations for cases that would hold the drives either internally, or in a separate enclosure without sacrificing speed? My Drobo acts as a USB drive, but it does sound like an Unraid machine would need to be NAS, which is totally fine with me. I just won't be able to use some USB devices with it directly. I'd like to go as small as possible while getting the most out of my drives and keeping them cool.

 

I understand I'll need to move the data off these drives and back onto them, as the discs would be reformatted.

I'd appreciate any advice, and if I'm in the wrong place, please let me know where I should be asking beginner stuff like this. Thanks!

[Energen]

Well it sounds like you essentially already know what you need..  I'll provide you with some of my thoughts though.

 

So before even getting into the hardware I would caution you on only expecting to limit yourself to NAS type storage with Unraid.  I thought that as well and ultimately ended up spending 2x more money later to buy new hardware that was more capable for what I was doing with Unraid.

 

Do you have a price range in mind for hardware that you were expecting to be at?  You may get the best of both worlds through your budget.

 

For a legitimately storage only Unraid, you don't need much CPU power.  I was running a dual core G4560 for the longest time, lower power cost efficient.  And it actually ran a lot of stuff without any problems .. I just wanted an upgrade for better performance, which led me to what I have now.  You also don't need much RAM for storage only.. RAM would come into play with more docker containers and such.  Storage ONLY -- 8GB I'd bet is sufficient, but if you were playing with Dockers I'd say 32GB should be the minimum.

 

Your drive configuration would end up like this:

 - 512GB SSD as cache drive

 - 1x 16TB as parity drive

 - 2x 16TB data drives

 - 3x 10TB data drives

 

62TB data capacity.

 

I know you said you keep one 16TB as a backup drive but you're wasting it by not using it.  I don't know the reliability statistics for the large drives but I'd take a guess at the chance of a failure is somewhat low.  You might as well use it.  This disk setup would give you one parity drive for a single failed disk at a time, you could use dual parity drives to handle double disk failure if you wanted with the 2x 16TB drives.

 

The fact that you have an empty 16TB drive is going to help you initially as well with data transfer.  Setup Unraid with the empty drive and start moving data off of it until you clear another drive, move that drive over, and repeat, until all drives are added to Unraid.

 

As for the case to use -- well, there's literally thousands of cases out there so I can't recommend anything to you off the top of my head.  You say you want small so it's your preference as to the style/design of the case that you want.  You just already know you need a case that will hold at least 6 full size drives and 1 ssd.  If you want to add drives later you need one that can hold 8+.  You move further away from "small" cases with these numbers of drives.

 

Do you want a tower case?  Are you open to a 2U/3U/4U server chassis? All kinds of options.