AlphaBravo's UnRAID build

[AlphaBravo]

Hello, I'm Alpha and I'm an unRAIDaholic...

 

About two weeks ago, a friend pointed out the existence of UnRAID to me, that's when it all started I've had a bit of a server running in the closet for several years now, starting out with 250GB drives, upgraded to 2TB (WD Greens) shortly after they came on the market. So far, this has always been a linux server with mdraid, running a whole lot of other apps (torrent, news, a private irc server, etc). Also had my share of drive failures, including double drive failure causing a complete loss of data twice (yay for striping on consumer-grade hardware  and yay for mdraid complexity mixed with operator error). So when I learned about unRAID, I was instantly very charmed with the idea of having redundancy but still being able to access each drive individually.

 

So I started looking into allocating some existing hardware to a newly built UnRAID server, then ran into limitations with that hardware, switched some hardware out for new stuff, ended up basically buying a completely new rig (except for the drives)  

 

OS at time of building: UnRAID 4.7 Pro

CPU: Core I3-540 (using stock cooler)

Motherboard: Supermicro X8SIL-F rev 1.02

RAM: Kingston ValueRam 4GB(2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz CL9 (KVR1333D3E9SK2/4GI, this is ECC memory)

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred (required the c-clamp mod to fit the IcyDocks)

Drive Cage(s): 3x IcyDock MB455SPF-B

Power Supply: Coolermaster Silent Pro M850

SATA Expansion Card(s): 3x Adaptec 1430SA (BIOS boot sequence only sees 2, but UnRaid sees all three)

Cables: SATA cables that came with the MB and Controllers, power cables that came with the PSU (and a few extra borrowed from another case that didn't need the extra Molex

Fans: All stock fans (1x 200mm top exhaust, 2x 150mm rear exhaust, 1x 150mm side exhaust, 1x 150mm bottom front intake, 3x ??mm Icydock)

 

Parity Drive: WD2003FYYS (2TB Raid Edition)

Data Drives: 6x WD20EADS, 8x WD20EARS

Cache Drive: WD20EADS

Total Drive Capacity: 28T  

 

Primary Use: Media storage, obviously

Likes: It's roomey, some nice options for cable management

Dislikes: None yet, worries are with drive temperatures

Add Ons Used: unMenu, pre_clear, smarthistory,cache_dirs, some home-grown scripts

Future Plans: I'm not entirely sure I trust those EADS drives, so I'll be watching them like a hawk and I'll probably replace them at the first sign of increased Smart errors.

Weirdnesses:

- A soft powerdown turns everything off (fans stop spinning and all) but only a few seconds later, the system automatically powers up again. I figure this is some setting in the mainboard's bios, but I haven't found it yet; Haven't bothered too much either though, I kinda like this feature and if it ever really needs to powerdown, I can give the command from the WebGUI and stroll downstairs to turn off the PSU at just the right moment

- During BIOS POST, only two of the three adaptecs are recognized. Unraid sees all three after a cold boot, but not after a warm boot. Gave me a scary moment (see post #4) but the previously mentioned weirdness came to the rescue

 

Power data not yet available, I'll see if I can find a KAW or similar here.

Boot (peak):

Idle (avg):

Active (avg):

Light use (avg):

 

The parity disk is in the bottom enclosure, not hot-swappable but also lower density so much better airflow:

 

 

 

Showing off my leet cable management skills  

 

Rather crappy powered-on photo, taken at night obviously.

 

I'm not yet too thrilled with the drive temperatures, parity is sitting at a steady 34C during parity sync (ambient is at 28C), but the five greens are 38-41C (all in the same Icydock). I guess i'll have to do some more tweaking on the airflow.

 

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Updated July 17th: Finally finished copying over all my data and preclearing the old drives. Currently running a paritycheck at 75-85MB/sec, drives are still running a bit warm with the EARS' at 37-38 and the EADS' at 40-42 (ambient at 27C). I updated the info above with details I got some questions about through PM.

[MTA99]

Love those Icydocks. I removed the standard fan and holder on mine and used velcro dots to attach a better fan. Worth considering Nice build

[Rembro]

Nicely done!!

 

i think everyone who has a little knowledge of traditional RAID setup's and then get's to know UnRaid is nicely surprised with the capabilities: (i know i am)

 

you said it just right - UnRaid-aholic

 

Rajahal wrote a guideline for UCD : ( unRAID Compulsive Design )

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9928.0

 

please read the edit's down below!!

 

 

 

 

[AlphaBravo]

Just had a little weirdness. I was messing around a bit (playing with usershares, split level 0 and such) and at some point I wanted to stop the array. This didn't go too smoothly: turns out it must've been an ssh session I still had active from my home pc, while I'm at work right now, killing "the other" bash  brought the array down, oddly enough fuser and lsof didn't show anything.

 

As I had dont some manual stopping of stuff, I figured a reboot would give me back a cleaner situation than just starting the array again. After this reboot, I was suddenly missing four drives (most likely one full adaptec controller)    After a cold boot (power down followed by an automatic power up from the mainboard) all drives were back, so I guess warm reboots don't do too well for this setup...