RackIt Posted April 14, 2012 Share Posted April 14, 2012 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. 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. Photo2 is the inside of the unRaid server: Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted April 14, 2012 Share Posted April 14, 2012 Very nice - only thing I'd suggest being wary of is whether the BIOS and the controller will actually support 3TB drives. Be worth looking into before you spend $$ Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.