Considering unRAID, switching from a 10 year old Synology NAS

[fer]

Hi Community,
For the last 10 years I´ve been using a Synology NAS DS1513+ without much intervention. Its connected to an APC UPS which I had to change batteries for a couple of times, the rest has been running pretty smooth so far.
I currently have 17 TB of storage in the NAS, but it has a very weak processor (Intel Atom) already and cant do much more than just storage.
I have a gaming PC which I almost never use as gaming PC with an i9-9900K you can see all the parts I used to build this some years back on the following link. At the time I called this "The Beast" but now its more like a "chiguagua" 😃

I´ve been wanting to get out from my Google Workspace accounts (paying for 4 users) because I am paying too much and I am only using it for Google Drive unlimited storage so far.

I thought about buying another Synology NAS but apparently all consumer grade NAS from Synology also dont come with a powerful processor. Not even close to the i9 on any case.

So I am thinking how I should reshuffle things at home, and I started reading about unRAID being a good idea, thats why I want to read your thoughts about this idea or if you think on any other ideas considering my situation.

As I am not really using the "Gaming PC" as a gaming PC most of the time (but I still want to have the possibility to game), I was thinking on transforming it on my new NAS.

I want to be able to:

- Store several Hard drives building a RAID volume for the NAS.
- Use it as central repository of files for my house and Plex Server with good performance and faildrive redundancy.
- Run a Plex Server container (linux?) which would benefit of the hardware to also do hardware transcoding if needed (I have Plex pass lifetime too).
- Run additional virtual servers or other containers for other uses, maybe running a total of 3 or 4.
- Use NVME and SSD as cache to accelerate performance of anything running in the system.

I would probably also plug this computer to the UPS to ensure it has protection.

Here are some of my questions and doubts:

Watching this 7 year old Linus Tech Tips video, it sounds really interesting to use this hardware to run unRAID and run my Windows 11 Desktop leveraging the dedicated GPU while letting unRAID use the i9 and on-board video. This sounds very interesting, as I would have fast "local" storage, while at the same time having more resources for the different containers and for PLEX, while being able to restart Windows 11 without affecting unRAID containers. 
Is this recommended? Does it works well in 2023? Will I be able to have good performance overall? Spontneosly I would like to play games so this sounds nice. 
 

I am a bit worried about power consumption of the Gaming PC, I have enabled Power Optimization on the MSI motherboard BIOS, but I am not sure if this will work effectively. Does anyone has any experience with a similar setup where Unraid can optimize power consumption based on load and adjust dynamically accordingly? For example will unRAID help to keep things smart and not steadily consume power when nothing or very little things are actually happening?

I am thinking on maybe upgrading the NIC to a 10 Gbps card as I have the possibility to also upgrade my home fiber Internet connection to a simmetric 10 Gbps for USD 10 more of what I am paying now. But this will probably be happening at a later stage as I would also need to update Router, Switch, etc. Or maybe should I consider just doing a 2.5 Gbps or adding another card to allow the UnRaid server to load balance between the two NICs´?

Which hard drives would you recommend me to get and which RAID system should I configure, I know there are some different options nowadays compared to the past, I would like to have some reliability and would like to leverage also the disks from the existing NAS and maybe throwing in some additional older drives if this makes sense and adds value. I would like to buy one or two 18-20 TB drives to start with fresh hardware and try to maximize longevity of the unit.

 

I´ve been told that unRAID performance is quite low compared to dedicated NAS solutions like Synology and QNAP. Can someone please elaborate more on this? I need to build an array to store data with multiple hard drives, be able to expand it and have it perform well overall. And also have the automatic failover of harddrives in case there are some physical issues. 
 

Thanks a lot for your time sharing your thoughts and ideas!

[GRRRRRRR]

Do like this:

 

Do the easy thing "just do it" tm:

 

use WoL to reduce powerusage and task-schedule all the stuff at night during the cheap electricity time.

 

1 system unRAID mostly default config as your stated requirements without GPU passthrough at first - can do WoL to reduce power

Put the HDDs in the unraid pool and add the NVMe SSD as cache as described in a video I can provide if you need...

 

1 NAS Synology archive, can do WoL to reduce power

1 Gaming and Productivity workstation PC - turn On all power reduction tech however keep overclocking On to reduce overall latency

1x 10Gig connection for 10 usd this is a good deal however even 2.5gbps internet connection is just fine, if you truly need more than 2.5g you will know it without asking the forums.

 

1x system for experimentation of the advertised features and youtube inspirations - because youtube always encoures you to change modify your stuff, it takes a lot of effort to contionually change your setup so make it a least priority - stay stable longterm for productivity guaranteed and enjoyment without risking breaking the setup.

 

This will give you the least grief and the most satisfaction probably because it will allow you to prioritize your actions without being dependent on your environment and tooling so much.

 

Hope this helps to reduce the workloads and increase the efficiency.

[fer]

Thanks a lot for sharing your suggestions!

Since I started researching about unRAID, my feeling is that it requires a lot of configuration, especially when you want to setup drive shares and then someone needs to sync or access content from the Internet to your device...

[GRRRRRRR]

Yeah it's a funny business this secure file sync some corporations have it as their core business and product even. But you can do it on unRAID with OwnCloud container and WebDAV, or that sync-app available on all platforms (syncthing?), and have a cooler setup than the corporations, to share with your friends and family. 😁