I am a complete newbie, planning to build 2 unRaid systems:

 

a/ One will be based on Supermicro X7SPA, with 6 2TB drives, to be powered on 24/7, acted as a home media server.

b/ One will be based on Supermicro X8SIL-F-O with a possible mix of 24 drives from 500GB to 2TB, acted as a storage server and to be powered on periodically.

 

I have some questions:

 

1/ All HDDs (500GB up to 2TB) will be quick formatted as NTFS in Windows before installing into unRaid servers running v4.7. What should be done when setting up these drives in unRaid? As a side note: 2TB HDDs include Hitachi (7k2, 5k8), WD (EADS, EARS), Samsung (F3s; F4s manufactured before 2011 and already have firmware updated). Are there any specific requirements when installing them?

 

2/ In addtion to 6 SATA on the X8SIL-F-O, I will use two Supermicro 8-Port AOC-SASLP-MV8 and one SIIG 2-port SC-SAER12-S2 PCI Express x1 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) to get a total of 24 SATA ports:

• Which PCIe slot should be used for each card?
  
• What options to be modified in BIOS/software for enabling the use of all 3 cards?
  

 

3/ Any detail direction to enable the use of APC UPS with unRaid server?

 

 

Thanks for all your helps....

Well, first off for your drives, I would run the preclear_disk script on them one you have the base unRaid setup. This will wipe them and prep them for unRaid as well as let you know if there are any problems. No need to quick format to NTFS that I know of...

 

The PRO license currently only has support for 20 data drives max, with a parity drive and cache drive, so 22 drives total.

 

I installed unMenu on my build. Within the Packages is a UPS package. Using this can help to cleanly shutdown your system. If used in conjuction with unraid notify, also in the packages, you will also get emailed about UPS state changes.

 

Far as I have read, just make sure your Parity drive is connected to a motherboard port for best performance...

 

Cheers,

Shawn

 

 

Thanks.

Any news of the incompatibility of Samsung F4s (even after firmware updated) and specific slot for Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 and SIIG SC-SAER12-S2 PCI Express x1 on Supermicro X8SIL-F-O motherboard?

Cannot comment on anything about your board - you could check the Hardware Compatibility list though on the Wiki and see what others have said, if anything.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility

 

As for the AOC-SASLP-MV8  card, I have one one the way, specifically because it does have a good rep here among users and has been tested on various systems. It is a 4x card but should work fine in a 8x or 16x slot as well. Don't forget to get "forward" breakout cables for it.

 

Samsung drives, not sure since the firmware upgrade - run mostly Seagate and Hitachi myself. Search though, I know there is a lot of info on them to be found.

 

Shawn