New build on older hardware


RackIt

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I've completed my first unRaid server at home. I went cheap and used only existing hardware I already had on hand. Maybe in a year I'll replace this completely with a new 20-drive server.

 

I am new to unRaid and have always relied on hardware raid.  For a media server I did try WHS for a while but I hated it. I was considering FreeNas until I stumbled upon unRaid. Easy expansion was my goal.

 

SATA on this server is at 1.5GB/s versus the now common 3GB/s and 6GB/s for SSD. Pre-clear is running at about 30MB/s.  I'll post some performance numbers once I have them.

 

What's in photo1:

(1) the unRaid server is the top device with 6 drive bays.

- Supermicro P4DP6 with two Xeon processors

- 8GB ECC memory

- PCI-X 3-ware raid controller (used just as a SATA expander)

- SATA drives are one 80GB parity drive and four 80GB data drives, and one 80GB cache drive.

 

I will use this setup to test and understand various unRaid functions and in a week I'll replace all drives with 3TB drives.  Also, the P4DP6 has no USB boot capability so I have a Plop boot manager CD which boots first then it boots the USB drive.

 

(2+3) These are servers which run virtual machines with about 6TB storage in each. Striped RAID 10 for boot and striped RAID 10 for data partition. Both have an inter-connect using InfiniBand which provides a dedicated 40GB network channel between the two servers for failing over VM's.

 

7076624801_597dfe9408_o.png

 

Photo2 is the inside of the unRaid server:

http://I've completed my first unRaid server at home. I went cheap and used only existing hardware I already had on hand. Maybe in a year I'll replace this completely with a new 20-drive server.

 

I am new to unRaid and have always relied on hardware raid.  For a media server I did try WHS for a while but I hated it. I was considering FreeNas until I stumbled upon unRaid. Easy expansion was my goal.

 

SATA on this server is at 1.5GB/s versus the now common 3GB/s and 6GB/s for SSD. Pre-clear is running at about 30MB/s.  I'll post some performance numbers once I have them.

 

What's in the photo:

(1) the unRaid server is the top device with 6 drive bays.

- Supermicro P4DP6 with two Xeon processors

- 8GB ECC memory

- PCI-X 3-ware raid controller (used just as a SATA expander)

- SATA drives are one 80GB parity drive and four 80GB data drives, and one 80GB cache drive.

 

I will use this setup to test and understand various unRaid functions and in a week I'll replace all drives with 3TB drives.  Also, the P4DP6 has no USB boot capability so I have a Plop CD which boots first then boots the USB drive.

 

(2+3) These are servers which run virtual machines with about 6TB storage in each. Striped RAID 10 for boot and striped RAID 10 for data partition. Both have an inter-connect using InfiniBand which provides a dedicated 40GB network channel between the two servers for failing over VM's.

 

I've completed my first unRaid server at home. I went cheap and used only existing hardware I already had on hand. Maybe in a year I'll replace this completely with a new 20-drive server.

 

I am new to unRaid and have always relied on hardware raid.  For a media server I did try WHS for a while but I hated it. I was considering FreeNas until I stumbled upon unRaid. Easy expansion was my goal.

 

SATA on this server is at 1.5GB/s versus the now common 3GB/s and 6GB/s for SSD. Pre-clear is running at about 30MB/s.  I'll post some performance numbers once I have them.

 

What's in photo1:

(1) the unRaid server is the top device with 6 drive bays.

- Supermicro P4DP6 with two Xeon processors

- 8GB ECC memory

- PCI-X 3-ware raid controller (used just as a SATA expander)

- SATA drives are one 80GB parity drive and four 80GB data drives, and one 80GB cache drive.

 

I will use this setup to test and understand various unRaid functions and in a week I'll replace all drives with 3TB drives.  Also, the P4DP6 has no USB boot capability so I have a Plop CD which boots first then boots the USB drive.

 

(2+3) These are servers which run virtual machines with about 6TB storage in each. Striped RAID 10 for boot and striped RAID 10 for data partition. Both have an inter-connect using InfiniBand which provides a dedicated 40GB network channel between the two servers for failing over VM's.

 

7076624801_597dfe9408_o.png

 

Photo2 is the inside of the unRaid server:

6931045682_416075a0ce_o.png

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