New and First UNRAID Build


Muelz

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For starters this will be my first UNRAID build, so I wanted to come to the forums to get some advice.  I am looking to make this a computer something I can work off of as well as run Plex in the background. I wanted to run a windows and MAC VM. I primarily want to use the Windows VM to work from since I’m not sure how much I want to rely on Mac In A Box(I’ve heard some interesting stories). I do some light gaming and I use CAD programs a lot for work.

 

I am aiming to spend in and around $1,900. So far the parts list below puts me right around that threshold

 

Parts List:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro Wifi ATX

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX (2x16GB sticks)

HDD: 2x WD RED 4TB(one for data, one for parity)(might end up for 6TB drives)

SSD: Samsung 860 EVO Plus 2.5" 256GB(For plex metadata)

SSD: Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 2280 250GB(For all VM’s)

GPU: PNY Quadro P2200 5GB

Case: Fractal Design Define 7 ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2021) 750W 80+ Gold

 

 

 

Something I have been aiming for is to make this machines as upgradable as possible. Naturally, I’ll be adding more HDD’s and SSD’s later on, but I wanted more PCIe slots for future expansion and…well basically just room to grow all around.

 

Somethings I’m worried about right now is sharing cores of the processor between UNRAID, Plex and whichever VM I am running. Do I need to dedicate cores to each VM? Is 8 cores enough for what I am doing or is it overkill? Can I passthrough the GPU to Plex, Windows and MAC or only one?

 

 

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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  • 2 weeks later...

You have gone with an interesting design.

I'm not sure about the logic for a dedicated Plex metadata drive (it's not that demanding) and VM drive.

You would get much better performance and reliability from running dual NVMe drives in a RAID cache pool and setting your VMs to be stored on the cache.
Are you planning on running Plex as a docker or within a VM? Will it need to do transcoding?
Are you going to run Unraid without a dedicated GPU?
Is the Quadro a CAD requirement?
 

I would throw money at a pair of the largest NMVe drives that you can afford and use them as a cache pool and just run everything off that.
You will never regret having larger cache drives and the price difference between 250 and 500GB drives is $20.


In my own rig I have 2 x 1TB 970 Evo as a cache running all my VMs/dockers etc. The HDD array just holds media, ISOs etc.
I also have a 3rd 2TB NVMe drive dedicated for my primary OS X install which is my work machine (also dedicated USB/GPU/etc).

Just my 2c

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On 6/21/2021 at 6:28 PM, cat2devnull said:

I'm not sure about the logic for a dedicated Plex metadata drive (it's not that demanding) and VM drive.

You would get much better performance and reliability from running dual NVMe drives in a RAID cache pool and setting your VMs to be stored on the cache.

So I wasn't necessarily dedicating a 2.5" SSD to Plex metadata, that would just be the first thing that I put on there and would have room to add more as I go. I do like your idea of loading all of the VM's onto a raid cache on two NVMe drives. Also, my case can handle 6x 2.5" drives and another 14x 3.5" HDD's, I'm not worried about having a few 2.5" SSD's.

 

On 6/21/2021 at 6:28 PM, cat2devnull said:

Are you planning on running Plex as a docker or within a VM? Will it need to do transcoding?

My Plex will need to do transcoding and it will be a docker, I wouldn't load it into a VM. 

 

On 6/21/2021 at 6:28 PM, cat2devnull said:

Are you going to run Unraid without a dedicated GPU?

Do I need a dedicated GPU for UNRAID? I read that I would be able to share the GPU between UNRAID, Plex and whatever VM I am running. Is that not the case?

 

On 6/21/2021 at 6:28 PM, cat2devnull said:

Is the Quadro a CAD requirement?

Quadro isn't a CAD requirement but does well working for CAD program as well as Plex transcoding.

 

On 6/21/2021 at 6:28 PM, cat2devnull said:

In my own rig I have 2 x 1TB 970 Evo as a cache running all my VMs/dockers etc. The HDD array just holds media, ISOs etc.
I also have a 3rd 2TB NVMe drive dedicated for my primary OS X install which is my work machine (also dedicated USB/GPU/etc).

Just my 2c

So I am curios since you said you run OX X, how do you like it? Are you using Mac In A Box? Is it clunky?

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On 6/28/2021 at 8:27 AM, Muelz said:

My Plex will need to do transcoding and it will be a docker, I wouldn't load it into a VM. 

Do I need a dedicated GPU for UNRAID?

I read that I would be able to share the GPU between UNRAID, Plex and whatever VM I am running. Is that not the case?

You don't have to have a dedicated GPU for Unraid. It can be accessed via a web interface post boot so that's fine.

The issue will be that the GPU can only be assigned to one role at a time.
If you turn on the VM then it isn't available for the docker and visa versa.

Also in my experience switching hardware back and forth between the base Unraid OS and a VM tends to expose bugs in motherboards PCIe implementations. Aka you will get weird hardware lockups, reboots etc.

 

 

Getting Plex hardware transcoding has been covered by Spaceinvader One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkC5Hi-rO2c

 

 

On 6/28/2021 at 8:27 AM, Muelz said:

So I am curios since you said you run OX X, how do you like it? Are you using Mac In A Box? Is it clunky?

 

I don't use Macinabox but I did take a look at it when I switched from Clover to Opencore to speed up my migration.

That being said, Macinabox is fantastic and really lowered the bar for a lot of people to get into OS X VMs.

I wanted to be on a much more vanilla Opencore installation that didn't require a bunch of custom hacks to work.

That way I could upgrade OS X and Opencore when ever I wanted to without having to worry about breaking something.
I also just like to understand things for myself and not be too reliant on someone else's "black box" product.

It did take me a good few days to get my head around... But the result was worth it.

My OS X install is 100% functional and stable. It's my daily driver for work and personal computing.

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17 hours ago, cat2devnull said:

You don't have to have a dedicated GPU for Unraid. It can be accessed via a web interface post boot so that's fine.

The issue will be that the GPU can only be assigned to one role at a time.
If you turn on the VM then it isn't available for the docker and visa versa.

Also in my experience switching hardware back and forth between the base Unraid OS and a VM tends to expose bugs in motherboards PCIe implementations. Aka you will get weird hardware lockups, reboots etc.

Ahhh I see. So if I were to use this as a workstation, I would need a GPU for Plex AND for my VM. I wouldn't need a third GPU to run UNRAID while I'm running my VM, would I? 

 

17 hours ago, cat2devnull said:

Getting Plex hardware transcoding has been covered by Spaceinvader One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkC5Hi-rO2c

So I'm already using hardware transcoding on my current Plex device(Synology NAS DS920+). This is starting to sound more and more like I'm going to need a second GPU....hopefully not a third.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Muelz said:

Ahhh I see. So if I were to use this as a workstation, I would need a GPU for Plex AND for my VM. I wouldn't need a third GPU to run UNRAID while I'm running my VM, would I? 

Yep... On my rig I run dual GPUs, one for OS X and one for Windows. The Unraid server is headless.

You will end up with the same setup but for a VM and docker.

You might want to keep an eye on how many slots wide the GPUs are as you don't want to block off a PCIe port that you need for an add in card.

In my case I have a PCIe USB controller and a WiFi card being passed direct to the OS X VM (that's how I get iServices and Handoff working). So I have a single slot RX550 GPU. The onboard USB and second GPU are for windows.

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4 minutes ago, cat2devnull said:

You might want to keep an eye on how many slots wide the GPUs are as you don't want to block off a PCIe port that you need for an add in card.

In my case I have a PCIe USB controller and a WiFi card being passed direct to the OS X VM (that's how I get iServices and Handoff working). So I have a single slot RX550 GPU. The onboard USB and second GPU are for windows.

Interesting, so since my motherboard has a wifi card built in, could I(in theory) pass that through to OS X and just use my 1GBe ethernet connection for Unraid, Plex, etc?

Yeah, I know my P2200 doesn't overlap with any other PCIe slots, but worst comes to worst, my case has two vertical PCIe slot covers next to the rest. 

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Unraid can pass a virtual e1000 intel ethernet device to your OS X VM that will work just fine. You still need a WiFi card and Bluetooth if you want to use iServices and Handoff.

You may be able to pass the wifi card... It depends on the IOMMU groups.

Also in general, most onboard Bluetooth is actually attached to the motherboard via a dedicated internal virtual (no connector) USB port. This means that you will have to pass through that entire USB controller as well.

 

OS X is very fussy about WiFi and Bluetooth cards and they almost exclusively use a subset of Broadcom chips.

If you want OS X to work well then you may need to add a combo card.
Eg; https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/264398687275

https://dortania.github.io/Wireless-Buyers-Guide/unsupported.html#supported-chipsets

 

You will still need to connect this to an internal USB2 header to see the Bluetooth and that USB has to be passed through.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/272407930666

Any card based on the FL1100 chip should work OTB. Inateck have a good rep but there are other options.

 

If you get the hardware right, then everything just works. Otherwise you will have to use kexts to support other chipsets from Intel/Realtek/etc and you will likely just keep hitting all sorts of weird compatibility issues.

 

I've just thrown hardware at the problem (dedicated GPU, USB, Wifi, SSD)...
IOMMU group 31:[1b73:1100] 0b:00.0 USB controller: Fresco Logic FL1100 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 10)
IOMMU group 32:[14e4:43ba] 0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC

IOMMU group 34:[1bb1:5012] 11:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Seagate Technology PLC FireCuda 510 SSD
IOMMU group 35:[1002:67ff] 12:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X]

[1002:aae0] 12:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X]

Edited by cat2devnull
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