Build help and some help planning build please!

[Blue300]

Hi everyone!

 

So currently I'm using an old (read very old) netgear NAS (Netgear ReadyNASUltra 6) with my old gaming setup running linux on it and are planning on upgrading to a new build with unraid. This means I'm completely new on unraid and I've read a lot but there's a lot of me to take in. (Also english isn't my first language so I apologize in advance if anything is unclear).

 

So here's my train of thought as of now:

To buy a cheper startup build with possibly the RAM that I'll be using for the forseeable future and put it in the chassi I plan on using when it is all done. Though I still want a quite powerful upgrade from start so I can use most of my planned usage without trouble.

 

So, what I have in my server pc is this!

 

So either I salvage the parts from the server pc I have for free or I buy an AMD processor with a motherboard that supports as many harddrives as I plan on using, I think the chassi I've looked at (This one) supports 18 total 3,5 HDD + 3 2,5 SSD.

 

So what I'm most confused and worried about is how much I need from the get go.

 

Can I for an example get one 16TB HDD and later upgrade to 18 and put two as redundancy at a later time?

 

Can I also at a later time add 1-2 nvme SSD as a cashe to boost performance or would I need to have them from the start?

 

When the server is completed I have two train of thoughts, one is to have a vm for gaming (idk if there's any issues running a gaming vm, my searches showed a bit of mixed results about it), plex and some smaller vms for utility purposes and maybe some smaller game servers like minecraft etc.

The other path is to exclude the gaming vm and run everything else on it but with a bit less over the top hardware (Maybe a cheaper GPU for hardware encoding) and have a gaming pc, a bit like my current setup is looking.

 

Is this a good way to go or will I have issues somwhere along the way?

 

Also if anyone has any thoughts about the hardware I plan on using I'd appreciate it a lot.

 

Thanks on beforehand!

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Blue300

[trurl]

1 hour ago, Blue300 said:

Can I for an example get one 16TB HDD and later upgrade to 18 and put two as redundancy at a later time?

I recommend only having as many disks as you need for capacity with maybe 10% or more free on each disk. You can add disks later as needed. I also recommend starting with at least one data and one parity disk, but you can add parity later as the first new disk if you want. Each parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk. Without parity you have no redundancy of course, and parity isn't a substitute for backups.

 

1 hour ago, Blue300 said:

Can I also at a later time add 1-2 nvme SSD as a cashe to boost performance or would I need to have them from the start?

You can add these later, but if they are already installed before you enable dockers or VMs those will automatically be configured to use them. If you do it later you will have to do a little work to get things moved there.

[Blue300]

Thanks for the quick answer, I don't think I'll have that many vms or any that I couldn't just remake in an hour before the upgrades is complete so for starters it'll serve as a plex server and nas

[trurl]

5 hours ago, Blue300 said:

plex server

That will be a docker and will be better if you have cache

[Blue300]

3 hours ago, trurl said:

That will be a docker and will be better if you have cache

 

Yeah, I think I'll start out with an nvme ssd as cache and at least one drive and the case and use the existing hardware from my current server even if it's not optimal and last gen stuff it still works and probably a lot better than my current setup