May 2, 20233 yr Hello Everyone, I would love your thoughts and opinions on a new Unraid server that I am considering. I primarily use Unraid as a media storage and plex server. I currently have an i3-4130 with 16GB of RAM that can have trouble transcoding single stream x265 movies when watching remotely. It also has trouble when a couple of family members stream remotely at the same time. I have access to an Intel NUC9 Extreme i9-9980HK with 16GB of RAM through work. It is a tiny little powerhouse with a single PCIe x16 (Gen3) slot. I was thinking about pairing it with a LSI-9400-16e that would go into the PCIe x16 (Gen3) slot and a QNAP TL-D1600S JBOD Storage Enclosure for all the hard drives. My thought was that this could be a spiffy, small form factor Unraid server to last a while, that could be easily moved if needed, with enough power to run Plex transcodes and maybe a VM or two. Is this a good idea? Or will the CPU and HBA card not be enough, and I should focus on a solution that has two PCIe x16 slots so I can add an Nvidia GPU for transcoding? I would love to know your thoughts! Thank you for your help!
May 2, 20233 yr QNAP TL-D1600S JBOD Storage Enclosure is some kind SATA enclosure solution, you always need 4 cable for 12 disks and those cable can't too long. SAS ( can use SATA disks ) always recommend. You may got some problem with those enclosure
May 2, 20233 yr Author Thank you for your reply! I actually picked the QNAP TL-D1600S JBOD paired with the LSI-9400-16e (rather than using its included controller) based on post from a brilliant member of the community... YOU In this thread here, at the very bottom: If you think I will have problems with the QNAP TL-D1600S, I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board. Thank you for your help!
May 2, 20233 yr 37 minutes ago, UnRaid_11318 said: YOU In this thread here, at the very bottom: Oh yes longtime ago.😀
January 15, 20242 yr On 5/2/2023 at 10:43 AM, UnRaid_11318 said: Thank you for your reply! I actually picked the QNAP TL-D1600S JBOD paired with the LSI-9400-16e (rather than using its included controller) based on post from a brilliant member of the community... YOU In this thread here, at the very bottom: If you think I will have problems with the QNAP TL-D1600S, I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board. Thank you for your help! Were you ever able to get the QNAP TL-D1600S functional in Unraid? I can't seem to find anyone that has confirmed proper connectivity using SFF-8088. I'd really like to pull the trigger on one and couple it with the new Minisforum MS-01 mini PC to reduce my server footprint and power utilization.
February 5, 20242 yr The original D1600S definitely used a Marvel chipset, but as per the QNAP website it got an update and any model produced after February 2022 includes a different HBA card which is called the QXP-1600eS-A1164. While not specifically mentioned, A1164 very likely refers to the ASM1164 controller made by ASMedia, which should be fully supported by unRAID. Quote Source: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tl-d1600s Starting in February 2022, the package includes QXP-1600eS-A1164 expansion card (previously QXP-1600eS) and four 1M SFF-8088 to SFF-8644 cables. I will likely order the D1600S at some point, so will update once I have it set up.
May 16, 20242 yr On 2/5/2024 at 12:18 PM, Charles_H said: I will likely order the D1600S at some point, so will update once I have it set up. I'm considering this myself. Were you able to get it working in Unraid?
October 2, 20241 yr On 5/16/2024 at 3:55 PM, Gex2501 said: I'm considering this myself. Were you able to get it working in Unraid? The million dollar question. Still wondering the same thing myself. Seems like this, plus a NUC or Minisforum box would make a living room-friendly homelab / plex server.
October 9, 20241 yr @Unexploded About 9 months ago I bought the TL-R400S (basically the same principle as the D1600S, but for rackmounts and it's 1U with only 4x 3.5" drives). The Qnap kit comes with its own PCIe 3.0 HBA (QXP-400eS-A1164) which connects to the DAS through a single SFF-8088 cable. I have my Unraid running off a SFF 1L PC (Lenovo). I bought 4x 16TB Seagate Exos 16 drives, put them in the TL-R400S and Unraid recognised them straight away. On the TL-R400S the included PCIe card has just one SFF-8088 connector. For the 8x and 16x units, there are other PCIe cards (which I believe are not included in the box): QXP-3X8PES has 4 connectors for up to 16 drives QXP-3X4PES has 2 connectors for up to 8 drives The downside of using QNAP is that it is, fundamentally, optimised for Windows. Their own software makes it easy to manage drives on Windows, but you get none of that on Linux, much less Unraid. For example, to do a Firmware update, you'll need to SSH into the machine and then use the command line to manually update it. Works a wonder, but I would reiterate the importance of a UPS in a setup that contains that many drives. I've had Unraid freeze up on me a couple of times, and the parity check for a 16TBx4 setup takes 24 whole hours.
December 6, 20241 yr @LemmingO Thanks, appreciate the insight. Still haven't decided what I'm going to do when the 10 year old Synology I use for backing up Unraid packs it in. Got a deal on a tiny Terramaster D6-320 & 4 X 22tb WD Red drives. So I've got that setup as a DAS using StableBit DrivePool. Which kind of reminds me a little of Unraid. With PC cases slowly turning into aquariums, a small external case for spinning disks is handy.
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