New server, hardware suggestions

[Ivo Avido]

Hi, i just bought the base unraid license and i'm goingo to start my build from my old pc.

 

At this time i have a h170 pro Asus motherboard with a 8gb ram (i can buy more if needed but i read its enough), 256gb 2.5" ssd for the installation and cache (don't know if put two of them in array or just one) and two wd blue of 500gb that im not using Thats what i have now. I have to change the power supply with an 80 gold plus and i have to buy the hdds and an ups. For the second one i saw some models from Apc, power walker and tecnoware that have an usb jack to shut down the server automatically but for the hdd i have some questions.

 

I'm watching the prices for a wd red or a ironwolf and in italy they are quite similar for the 2tb PRO version (120€) and the normal version too (60€). The question is, is it worth to buy the PRO version for the double of the price while i could get two of the normal?

7200 rpm instead of 5900 or 256 cache instead of 64, is it really worth it? 

 

My plan is for now to have 2 hdd of 2 tb and 2hdd of 500gb (2 wd blue that i have to take the dust) and little by little add new hdd.

 

Thank you for your help!

[trurl]

5 minutes ago, Ivo Avido said:

256gb 2.5" ssd for the installation and cache (don't know if put two of them in array or just one) and two wd blue of 500gb

Unraid installs itself fresh into RAM from archives on the flash drive at each boot, and runs completely in RAM. None of the Unraid OS is installed on any of your storage devices. Think of it as firmware. The flash drive also stores the configuration settings you make in the Unraid webUI so these can be reapplied at boot.

 

SSDs in the parity array cannot be trimmed, and can only be written as fast as parity. SSDs are usually put in pools outside the parity array. Cache can be one of these pools and others can be created.

 

[Ivo Avido]

Thanks trurl so it is enough my 256gb ssd and 8gb ram for the cache? Or shuld i buy more ram?

[MarkDLeach]

On 4/20/2023 at 7:04 PM, Ivo Avido said:

For the second one i saw some models from Apc, power walker and tecnoware that have an usb jack to shut down the server automatically but for the hdd i have some questions.

Any chance you went with the Tecnoware?  I recently moved to Europe but IDK if I should trust the brand.

[Frank1940]

On 4/20/2023 at 1:18 PM, Ivo Avido said:

Thanks trurl so it is enough my 256gb ssd and 8gb ram for the cache? Or shuld i buy more ram?

With your MB choice, (and assuming that you are not going to running VM's), the 8GB of RAM should be enough. 

 

The 256GB SSD for cache may be a bit small depending on how much data you expect to upload before you run Mover.   (Mover is normally run overnight when most servers are idle from users tasks.)  Unraid does use the cache drive to store VM IOS's the App Data store and the Docker image files.  (On my two servers, this requires less than 20GB, but would depend on exactly what Dockers you have installed.  In my case, I have only two dockers installed on each server.  On the Media server, I have the Mysql Docker installed and have a KODI database managed by that Docker saved to the Cache drive.)  

 

You can see from my signature what my setups are.   I have no performance issues with this hardware as I run a basic NAS with no VM. 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Frank1940