My Goal for Unraid

[gerkenator]

So I have some desires and would like to know if Unraid can be used in this way. I believe it can but having never used it......

 

I have a couple of bare metal windows boxes.

One running PLEX on a DMZ net

One running TDARR on my INSIDE net

Each have a dedicated graphics card for h265 encoding.

 

I have a spare barebone pc

Intel 8700k with 16 or 32GB of Ram, don't remember exactly it's enough for sure.

 

I would like to run Unraid on this pc and convert my installs or rebuild a new on Unraid. I would be moving both graphics cards into this box. I believe I can run these as containers rather than full vms and assign a graphics card to each of them.

 

This pc I would prefer to have 3 network interfaces but could get by with 2 if needed by combining MGMT and INSIDE. I want to protect access to the GUI from the rest of the DMZ net.

MGMT - Web GUI access

INSIDE - (TDARR)

DMZ - (PLEX)

 

Anyone see any issues with this plan?

Edited August 13, 2023 by gerkenator

[ConnerVT]

Can this be done?  Certainly.  Both Plex and Tdarr can be run in Docker containers, each with a dedicated NIC.  A third NIC can be for general Unraid usage and management.  Plex and Tdarr are available in the Community Applications, relatively simple to install and can be configured for both the dedicated network and using your GPUs for transcoding.

 

My main server runs Plex and Unmanic (very similar to Tdarr) and 17 other dockers full time.  Only one GPU (Quadro P400) for transcoding.  I was running on a Ryzen 5 1500X (1st gen) and 16GB.  It ran OK but occasionally it would start to get a workout if I asked it to do too much at one time.  I've since updated to a 5700G which never breaks a sweat.

 

The red flag for me is if your hardware will be up to the task.  8700k and 16GB may be on the edge of where things may be hardware limited.  The 8700k is more powerful than my old 1500X, but you have more hardware to manage as well.  The other issue is (not knowing what MB you have) is if there are enough PCIe slots/lanes available to install 2 GPUs, a multi-port NIC, and potentially a HBA to add drives (if your MB doesn't have enough on board SATA).

[gerkenator]

3 minutes ago, ConnerVT said:

Can this be done?  Certainly.  Both Plex and Tdarr can be run in Docker containers, each with a dedicated NIC.  A third NIC can be for general Unraid usage and management.  Plex and Tdarr are available in the Community Applications, relatively simple to install and can be configured for both the dedicated network and using your GPUs for transcoding.

 

My main server runs Plex and Unmanic (very similar to Tdarr) and 17 other dockers full time.  Only one GPU (Quadro P400) for transcoding.  I was running on a Ryzen 5 1500X (1st gen) and 16GB.  It ran OK but occasionally it would start to get a workout if I asked it to do too much at one time.  I've since updated to a 5700G which never breaks a sweat.

 

The red flag for me is if your hardware will be up to the task.  8700k and 16GB may be on the edge of where things may be hardware limited.  The 8700k is more powerful than my old 1500X, but you have more hardware to manage as well.  The other issue is (not knowing what MB you have) is if there are enough PCIe slots/lanes available to install 2 GPUs, a multi-port NIC, and potentially a HBA to add drives (if your MB doesn't have enough on board SATA).

I believe this answers my question.

 

Currently the machines are pretty lean. The only times I could foresee having some issues would be in the event where TDARR has a substantial queue and Plex needs to encode or serve up multiple streams.

 

Plex is running on an i5-3470 with 16 GB RAM

TDARR is running on an i5-4570 with 6GB RAM and a mech drive. I really slapped it together and forgot about it.

 

The mobo specs are here https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-Z390-GAMING-PRO-CARBON/Specification

 

Lastly thanks for your quick reply and help!

 

[ConnerVT]

Glad my feedback was useful.  Many times it is difficult to answer the "I want a server that does X,Y and Z.  Will this hardware work?" type of post, as it comes down to not what you are doing, but how much of it (and if X/Y/Z are all happening at the same time).  If your are running Plex and only you and the family are using it, a couple of movies playing in your home LAN is easy.  If there are always 5-10 streams going at the same time (with people outside the LAN being served), obviously the workload goes up.  The devil is in those details.  It sounds as your workloads are fairly low, so you shouldn't have any issues.

 

The motherboard is pretty solid, not what I usually think when I read "I have a spare barebones PC."  It should give you enough PCIe lanes, as I mentioned above.  Some things to note:

• The MB shares some bandwidth between the M.2 and SATA connectors.  Looks as each M.2 you add has you lose one SATA connector.  Keep that in mind when you spec out your drives.
• You can share a GPU between Plex and Tdarr.  This can save you some power and room in your server.
• You can also use the iGPU of your 8700k for transcoding.  (I'm an AMD guy, but have been running Plex for years.  Check details of this on your own.)

 

I put my first Unraid server on line about 3 years ago.  I really have been impressed with how it all works.

[gerkenator]

1 hour ago, ConnerVT said:

Glad my feedback was useful.  Many times it is difficult to answer the "I want a server that does X,Y and Z.  Will this hardware work?" type of post, as it comes down to not what you are doing, but how much of it (and if X/Y/Z are all happening at the same time).  If your are running Plex and only you and the family are using it, a couple of movies playing in your home LAN is easy.  If there are always 5-10 streams going at the same time (with people outside the LAN being served), obviously the workload goes up.  The devil is in those details.  It sounds as your workloads are fairly low, so you shouldn't have any issues.

 

The motherboard is pretty solid, not what I usually think when I read "I have a spare barebones PC."  It should give you enough PCIe lanes, as I mentioned above.  Some things to note:

• The MB shares some bandwidth between the M.2 and SATA connectors.  Looks as each M.2 you add has you lose one SATA connector.  Keep that in mind when you spec out your drives.
• You can share a GPU between Plex and Tdarr.  This can save you some power and room in your server.
• You can also use the iGPU of your 8700k for transcoding.  (I'm an AMD guy, but have been running Plex for years.  Check details of this on your own.)

 

I put my first Unraid server on line about 3 years ago.  I really have been impressed with how it all works.

I understand it can be hard to know if it's going to work for the user, I wasn't very forthcoming with details since I was mainly looking for concept. I'm a Network Engineer with a heavy background in Desktop and Server hardware probably should've led with that. I have a ton of gear here at the house. This is just my first venture with Unraid and I want to make sure my hope are realistic before I spend a few hundred and put it together only to be disappointed. My main goal is condensing functions and trimming a little power consumption. It's rather out of control right now to be honest.

 

I've been an wintel guy for a while. My gaming rig is running an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X when I put that in is when this hardware became spare lol.

 

Thanks again for the help.

 

 

[ConnerVT]

I'm a Jack of all trades in the microprocessor world for nearly 40 years now.  First gig after college was creating one of the first hi-res graphic cards (640x480!) to go into the soon to be released IBM PC/AT.  Hardware, software, networking and systems since then.  My current gig is supporting systems for the place that manufactures the IO die in every AMD Ryzen and EPYC.  Thank you for your purchase.  😉

 

I think you will enjoy Unraid.  At its most basic level, it is a very simple GUI that is easy to configure.  Due to the maturity of the application, you will find that it has many ways to configure it to do so much more.  With a large number of plugins and Docker containers (configured to play out of the box) in the Community Applications (Unraid's take on the Apple App Store) and some great folks active here in the forum, the learning curve should be fast and easy for you.

Edited August 14, 2023 by ConnerVT

[Lolight]

2 hours ago, gerkenator said:

I've been an wintel guy for a while

Intel is still considered to be a preferred platform for Unraid for the following reasons: iGPU efficiency, idle state implementation (C-states) and overall Linux stability.

The 8700K's built-in iGPU (UHD 630) is powerful enough for a few streams of 4K Plex transcoding (assuming you transcode and not just direct-play) - no need for a stand-alone GPU for that specific purpose.

[gerkenator]

On 8/13/2023 at 6:49 PM, ConnerVT said:

I'm a Jack of all trades in the microprocessor world for nearly 40 years now.  First gig after college was creating one of the first hi-res graphic cards (640x480!) to go into the soon to be released IBM PC/AT.  Hardware, software, networking and systems since then.  My current gig is supporting systems for the place that manufactures the IO die in every AMD Ryzen and EPYC.  Thank you for your purchase.  😉

 

I think you will enjoy Unraid.  At its most basic level, it is a very simple GUI that is easy to configure.  Due to the maturity of the application, you will find that it has many ways to configure it to do so much more.  With a large number of plugins and Docker containers (configured to play out of the box) in the Community Applications (Unraid's take on the Apple App Store) and some great folks active here in the forum, the learning curve should be fast and easy for you.

That's pretty sweet, I kind of fell into Networking, wanted to work on Systems but ehh. I've gotten to play with a lot of neat stuff.

 

So far I've kicked my TDARR node down as well as my server VM. It's working great. I'm letting the new server chew through all my files. Once that finishes I'll look into moving Plex over. But I'm really liking this system a lot.

[gerkenator]

A month later I love this box. Working as intended fix a myriad of issues I was having with Windows machines. Eliminated 2 physical machines and 3 virtual ones from my home environment. I call that a win!