January 5, 201214 yr Hi, I am reading this forum almost every day since last year. On the first couple weeks my plan was to build a small budget box using one of the Rajahal’s prototypes. After that I saw the add-on page and I realized I would probably need some more power and ram so I can play with these plugins. When I was almost ready to push the order button I saw this thread from johnm talking about his “Virtualized unRAID”. I am still unsure if I am going to go with ESXi at the beginning but I really want to start this build and I want to be ready for ESXi when I will be out of regular unRAID and plugins to explore. I would like to show you my plan so you can help me confirm that my parts are compatible together and with unRAID and also confirm these parts will work when I am ready to go for ESXi. OS at time of building: 5.0 b12 CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240 Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O RAM: Kingston 16GB 2 x (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 Case: Zalman MS1000-HS2 Black Tower Case Drive Cage(s): Zalman ZM-HDR1 3-Bay HDD Rack Power Supply: SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold SATA Expansion Card(s): 2 x SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132) I will use some drives I have for the testing period. Parity Drive: 7200 RPM drive I already have. Data Drives: WD 1TB green drive I already have Cache Drive: 7200 RPM drive I already have. Total Drive Capacity: Primary Use: Media storage, centralized file server, computer backups, virtual machines... Likes: Dislikes: Add Ons Used: SABnzbd, crashplan,… not sure yet. I want to play with many plugins but will maybe go with VMs instead… Future Plans: Add new drives as needed. Questions: 1 – With this case I have 10 drvies capacity and I plan to have max 4 7200 RPM drives (1 Parity, 1 cache, up to 2 ESXi data store, 6 green drives). Is my PSU ok for this build? Edits: 1/5/2012 Changed CPU from E3-1220 to E3-1240 for hyperthreading. Changed unclear description of RAM. So do you think this plan works? Any comment? Things I missed? thanks for your comments tibonhom
January 5, 201214 yr It looks good. the only thing you might have overlooked that the E2-1220 is a quadcore without hyper threading. the E2-1230 and up all are quads with HT. It is not needed, but I did want to point that out.
January 5, 201214 yr ...I'll second what Johnm said. In addition, 8GB of RAM might be too much for an unRAID box, even with a good bunch of add-ons maybe 4GB will do. In an ESXi build 16GB plus is what you'll probably want (where 32GB is a very pricey endeavor ATM).
January 5, 201214 yr Author It looks good. the only thing you might have overlooked that the E2-1220 is a quadcore without hyper threading. the E2-1230 and up all are quads with HT. It is not needed, but I did want to point that out. Oh tanks! I missed this. I am gonna change it. ...I'll second what Johnm said. In addition, 8GB of RAM might be too much for an unRAID box, even with a good bunch of add-ons maybe 4GB will do. In an ESXi build 16GB plus is what you'll probably want (where 32GB is a very pricey endeavor ATM). Yes. I wanted to order 16gb now so I am ready for ESXi. But I see my description is not so clear. I will adjust it. You didn't say anything about the PSU and this is where I am less comfortable. May I ask you to confirm my choice? or maybe suggest another one... Thanks for your revision. I am now more comfortable to start ordering the parts. tibonhom
January 5, 201214 yr The PSU should be fine for 10 drives. I have a Seasonc gold 750 for a 24 (green) drive build.
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