Hi all,

 

After scouring this site for a couple of weeks now, I finally registered and am ready to dip my toe in the water.  I'm impressed with how good the community is here!

 

A few months ago, I bought a Synology 4 bay box and liked it a lot until I went to expand past the initial single 3TB drive I bought.  It was then I found out that I couldn't just toss another drive in and expand the storage.  Frustrating to say the least! 

 

I'm new to raid in general, so I did some reading and realized that the Synology would not fit my long term needs.  I'm now faced with the question of how to best go about building a new storage server and will probably sell my slightly used Synology.

 

So to get to the point…I'm preparing for my first Unraid build and need some parts and programs advice!

 

I would need to stay under $1000 total for my box and all parts, not counting hard drives.  Ideally, I'd like to stay as low as possible, but I am looking to buy good components that will both last a long time and allow for future expandability and increased functionality.

 

As far as my specific needs and situation:

My household is mixed Mac and Windows, several iOS devices and a PS3 for media playback.  I want to have a more elegant/functional media playback experience so am looking to the future there (any advice on what item / software would be greatly appreciated!).  I would like Time Machine storage which may or may not be on the Unraid volume, depending on if it is supported.  Lastly, I would like to have DVR functionality so my girlfriend can record things to watch later.  I am fairly conversant with Windows and Mac, no experience with Linux though so this will be my first foray.  As I mentioned earlier, I am looking for storage and serving up media, but I recognize that I might need a different device or program to take care of the media server / DVR needs.  I currently have about 4 TB of data and that seems to be growing rather fast.  I'm storing compressed movies (around 500) but would like to go back and store them at full quality or at the least, very high quality so that they look good on my 55" HDTV.  Additionally, I've got a very large music collection (70K or so songs) that I am going to store at either 320k mp3's or FLACs.  Add to this archival storage for important documents, etc. 

 

I will start out with one 3TB parity drive and two 3TB data drives, adding more 3TB drives as my requirements increase.  I expect that my needs will grow quickly, probably hitting the 15TB neighborhood by year's end, then slowing down a bit.  Knowing this, I think I'd like to go with something that will let me hold a lot of drives and allow for a lot of expandability. 

 

Speed is important, but not the primary factor.  I'd like to hit 60-70MB/sec sustained transfer rates from the Unraid, through my Airport Extreme to whatever device needs it.    I'll likely run nothing but green drives and look for a solution that is as energy efficient as possible while still providing ample power for NAS and possibly media server functions at the same time.

 

My spare parts are slim:

-4GB of Kingston ram in 2x2 sticks

-40GB Intel SSD (X25-V)

-2x WD 3TB green drives (WD30EZRS)

-1x miscellaneous 1TB Segate drive that I would like to not put in the drive long term for fears of reliability (it's fairly well used)

 

 

I've been looking at the new Sandy Bridge processors, specifically the i3-2100 and the Pentium G850, although I honestly don't know if they are overkill for my needs.  I'm not opposed to going AMD if the long term energy requirements don't negate the initial AMD savings.  I have kind of fallen in love with the Norco 24 bay case but am somewhat put off by the initial high buy in ($410 from Newegg currently). 

 

So there we go.  I am kind of unsure of what my exact hardware needs are and would greatly appreciate any help! 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

John

 

 

P.S.  I have looked over Raj's awesome builds - if one of those seems to fit my needs, please feel free to point out which one specifically!

 

 

 

 

Oh, I totally forgot to mention: I am not opposed to buying used equipment that might serve my needs if there is something that I should be looking for!

 

John

 

 

Personally, I would stick as close to one on Raj's builds as I could.

 

He has done a lot of research, and I believe his choices are good. You might want to look at the 15 disk array. I have something similar, and like it a great deal. Raj put up this selection about a month after I purchased my unRAID set-up, and as a consequence, I made a few bad decisions, that I have had to change later.

 

You will not be able to get the exact system that is described usually, technology moves to fast for anyone to keep up with. But he has done most of the grunt work for you. I would go with that, and have when making unRAID servers for friends. 

 

Bruce

So, after doing a bit of research, here's what I have so far:

 

Case: NZXT Whisper, $120 + $25 shipping    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146051

PSU: Corsair TX650, $100 -10 mail rebate    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020

Mobo: Asus M4A78LT-M, $62                       http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131672R

CPU: AMD Athalon x2 250, $60                    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903

HDDx1: Hitachi 3TB, $150                           http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145493

Ram: 4GB Kingston I have laying around

HDDX2: WD 3TB, WD30EZRS I have laying around

Cache Drive: 40GB Intel SSD I have laying around

--------

$517 with shipping before rebates

 

 

Are there any known issues with this hardware that I should be concerned about before I hit "buy"?

 

With this setup, I believe I can run 6 drives (1 Parity, 1 SSD Cache, 4 data) for a total of 12GB before I need to buy any SATA expansion cards.  After buying the expansion cards, I should be able to mount 18 or 20 drives in this case and with this setup.

 

Any thoughts on this setup would be greatly appreciated!

 

John

 

 

That all looks good to me.  Keep in mind you'll have to run the latest beta version of unRAID for 3 TB drive support.

I swapped the CPU and Motherboard out to get longer term power savings and better up front speed with more longevity in the processor. 

 

CPU: Intel G850    Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116397

Mobo: Asus P8h67-M EVO  Link:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131710

 

Did some reading on here and I *think* they'll work.  Anyone able to confirm?  I pulled the trigger on this today.

 

In regards to that Asus EVO board.

 

Onboard LAN

 

LAN Chipset

   Realtek 8111E

 

I do believe that is a troublesome chipset for unraid at the moment.

 

The supermicro MBD-X9SCL-O is the same price as the asus once you toss shipping into the equitation. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182252

I have no clue when newegg lowered the price on that, but that's a bargain!

 

If i recall, that board is level 1 tested and i am sure it is level2 compliant from my own testing.

You would get the stability of an enterprise server board, less hardware bloat that you wont use like firewire/soundcards/hdmi with a desktopboard.. saving you power, hardware conflicts and incompatible network cards.

 

You would have to switch to an I3-2100 or (2100t) and different ram if you went with the supermicro board. not a big price difference if you're taking 2-4 gigs.

 

The IPMI option is a great upgrade if you get the MBD-X9SCL-F-O version, but right now that is a $50 upgrade (WTF?! ) , I honestly am not sure that it is worth it. i would just go all the way to the X9-SCM-F-O if that was the case.

 

I now personally own 3 of the SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253, the big brother of the X9SCL and i cant say enough about them. we just ordered 25 X9SCM-F-O's for work.