June 12, 201214 yr I've read Raj's "read before posting new builds" post and I think I am doing this right. I have been reading here for months and posting a lot in the last few days. Nights have been spent lamenting over hardware, trying to control impulse buy habits on ebay, and trying to really determine my needs before I start dropping coin on this project. I played with unraid on an old P4 I had laying around, after picking up three 40GB and three 80GB Seagate disks off ebay. I simulated every failure I could think of, simulated drive upgrades, simulated parity failures and rebuilds, etc., and I must say, having considered Netgear and Synology solutions for the last three years, and having played with FreeNAS, Openfiler, disparity, and a handful of other solutions I'm forgetting, unraid seems like a dream come true. I believe I have my final hardware list (minus drives, see below) in hand, and would like the hive mind to critique the build list. My budget is "I have to buy my 16 year old her first car soon," but my needs are relatively low end anyway so I am hoping to get by with consumer-grade hardware. This system will function as a primary central data store for the family, which means my 30+ years of collected and hoarded files, the kids' school files, the old lady's work files, all of our music and pictures, and whatever else I want to have semi-protected on the array. More than anything, I am looking to create a data store large enough that I can finally consolidate and organize the dozen or so hard disks I have full, ranging in size from 254MB to 2TB. And a drawer full of floppies, ZIP disks, 4mm DAT drives, DLTs, and several external SCSI enclosures full of disks from my Sun and SGI days that probably still have data on them I'll find some use for. At some point we will be upgrading the tube TVs to flat screens, at which point I am hoping to cut my ties with my ($100/mo) cable company and use SAB/CP/SB to download content. This is well into the future, 12 months or so, but the difference in price between single core and dual core CPUs is such that I will be looking to build a server capable of this tasking as though I were going to go online with it today. Having said that, the system will be on 24/7 and sitting in the living room behind a love seat, so low power, low noise, and low heat is going to be key. I'll jump right in. CPU: http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-ATHLON-II-X2-250u-DUAL-CORE-1-6GHz-AD250USCK23GQ-AM2-AM3-/200770105276?pt=CPUs&hash=item2ebed4afbc AMD Athlon II X2 250u Rationale is that its super low power and a dual core. MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131795 ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS AM3+ Rationale is that SATA3 will probably suit my needs for years to come as I don't plan on using SSDs (correct me if I'm wrong). I also didn't want to get tied down to a non-socketed MB, in case unraid offers massively awesome apps in the future. I can put a Phenom II or even an 8-core FX on this board, should it ever become necessary. NIC: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033 Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Rationale is that the ASUS's onboard NIC leaves a lot to be desired, and may flat out simply not work. PS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028 CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 V2 600W Rationale is that it specifically mentions a single rail, and its efficiency at 20% load. Fans: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835226045 SilenX Effizio Thermistor EFX-12-15T 120mm Rationale is they move a lot of air and are quite. I will run five of them off a fan controller. Case: http://www.materiel.net/live/68967.jpg Cooler Master 590 Rationale is that I already have it. I have two 4GB DDR3 sticks in an unused system at the moment, and will probably pull one for the unraid server, unless anyone has any major issues with running single channel memory. For drive cages, I am looking at the SNT-SAC3051TL and the NORCO SS-500. I like the trayless design personally, and I will be removing whatever fans my final cages have, as all five 120mm case fans (and the PS fan) will be removing air (negative case pressure), and every other section of the case besides the front drive bays will be sealed. So I am hoping that I can create enough airflow, directed specifically through the drive cages, to allow for the removal of the cage fans. To that end, does anyone have any pictures of either (both) of these two cages with their rear fans removed? I'd like to see how much obstruction there is under those fans... Once this initial build is done, I will start researching drives (there is simply too much information, and it changes too fast and too often, for me to absorb right now as far as who has the best drive/least failures/most compatibility at this moment in time). I need to get smart on preclearing and formatting with different sector sizes. But my initial build will likely be one 3TB parity disk and two 2TB data disks. I imagine a day when I have 15 3TB disks total in the array, but I will start with 2TB disks due to economics. The 3TB parity disk will (hopefully) prevent me from having to change or upgrade it just because I'm adding disks to the array, at least up to the initial full capacity of the system. Once I have the initial three disks running, I will begin copying data off my shoebox full of drives, and then will probably add some of the larger drives to the array (that will be scary even though I will have the most important data backed up elsewhere). Assuming everything goes as planned, once the array has proven itself over a few months (and I have no doubt that it will), I will probably place a smaller version at my folks' house, offer centralized storage to them for their important documents, and then mirror both households' critical data across both servers. So... Having read this ridiculously long post (thanks for doing that), do any of you frequent posters, expert users, and garage hackers have any advice? Any issues you've noticed with my hardware selection? Any tips to get me started on the right foot? I'd like to get this running with the least amount of hiccups, so my confidence remains high as I begin to move decades worth of data... Thanks for your time.
June 13, 201214 yr Overall I'd say that looks like a decent system with plenty of room to expand in terms of CPUs and adding more drives. One thing I'd say is skip the NIC unless you're dead set on it. The integrated one will be fine if you are using Unraid 5, which has the drivers for it. I've gone through 3 different boards over the years in my server and never had any issues with the various onboard networking. If you are dead set on a NIC get a PCI one, not a PCIe 1x. A PCI slot is plenty of bandwidth for a gigabit NIC but would be two slow for a 2-port SATA card in some situations if you need the expansion in the future. Save the PCIe 1x slots for controller cards.
June 13, 201214 yr Author Thank you for your reply. My understanding is that PCI only supports half-duplex gig, while PCI-x supports full-duplex. I've seen various data that suggests unraid isn't necessarily able to fully saturate a gig network (again correct me if I'm wrong but I'm thinking 5400rpm green SATA-II drives). Having said that, at some point down the road, I can see the server streaming HD content to four devices simultaneously, possibly more, along with reads and writes from my higher-end machines. This of course is worst case scenario, but I'd like to be prepared for it. At one point I had even considered a dual- or quad-port gig NIC and a switch that supports teaming (again, down the road). One of the primary goals of this system is that, other than adding or upgrading drives, I don't want to have to touch it at all for as long as possible (years). I'd like the storage to simply be "there," in the corner, largely ignored. Thanks again.
June 13, 201214 yr Thank you for your reply. My understanding is that PCI only supports half-duplex gig, while PCI-x supports full-duplex. I've seen various data that suggests unraid isn't necessarily able to fully saturate a gig network (again correct me if I'm wrong but I'm thinking 5400rpm green SATA-II drives). Having said that, at some point down the road, I can see the server streaming HD content to four devices simultaneously, possibly more, along with reads and writes from my higher-end machines. This of course is worst case scenario, but I'd like to be prepared for it. At one point I had even considered a dual- or quad-port gig NIC and a switch that supports teaming (again, down the road). One of the primary goals of this system is that, other than adding or upgrading drives, I don't want to have to touch it at all for as long as possible (years). I'd like the storage to simply be "there," in the corner, largely ignored. Thanks again. Not sure where you read that but it isn't true. PCI supports full duplex on gigabit NICs. A standard 32-bit 33MHz PCI slot is capable of a theoretical 133MB/s, above gigabits theoretical 125MB/s. Also FYI, PCI-X is different then PCI Express so you don't ever get confused when ordering parts. The other bit, about unraid not being able to saturate gigabit, is half true. Reading from the array should be able to max out gigabit. Writing directly to the array is where you will run in to a slowdown. You will max out there somewhere between 30-50 MB/s. But that is where the cache drive comes in. The cache drive will allow you to write to a disk, which is not part of the array, at as fast as the disk and your network connection will allow. This data is stored there temporarily and then moved over to the array at whatever time you schedule the mover script to do so. This is all invisible to you. If you download a movie to your Movies share, it will be written to your cache disk first and show up on your network in the movies share so you can play the movie from the share. It will later be moved to the corresponding place on the array by the mover script. You will find most people on here run a cache disk. I personally use a 320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm laptop drive. One last thing, you will very likely not max your gigabit connection streaming HD to 4 devices. Even uncompressed blu-ray peak at about 35-40 megaBITs per second for video, plus another 3 or so for audio. That is only about 5-6 megaBYTES per second or about 20 to 25 MB/s total over 4 streams. That's well below the 80-100 MB/s you will see in real world speeds from a gigabit NIC. If anything, the only place I could possibly see a problem would be the disk itself not being able to keep up if all 4 movies were on the same disk. But I still don't think even that would be a problem. You've got to remember that when playing a movie over the network, it isn't downloading the whole movie to the PC or device you're viewing it on, it's streaming it. It may buffer a few seconds ahead depending on the device/software used for playback but that's it. So beyond the initial burst to buffer the first few seconds of the movie it will only by transmitting data as fast as the bitrate of the movie.
June 13, 201214 yr Looks good. If you really need a other NIC get a PCI one from Intel. You can get them of fleabay for $10-15. http://www.ebay.nl/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150592466899
June 14, 201214 yr I agree with everything above. While I can't guarantee that the motherboard will work, it looks good on paper. The onboard NIC will work just fine with unRAID 5.0 beta or RC, both of which are safe to use. unRAID 5.0 stable is right around the corner as well. I posted some detailed photos of the Norco SS-500 with the fan and fan plate removed in the Greenleaf Hardware and Software Blog (scroll down to the Fan Replacement section). I suggest that instead of removing the fans entirely you might try running them at half speed, which you can do by changing the position of one of the jumpers on the yellow circuit board. The instructions as to which jumper needs to be changed are printed on the side of the box in which the cage is shipped.
June 16, 201214 yr Author Thank you all. When you say "I can't guarantee this motherboard will work," what specifically do you mean? Other that network controllers, what other MB problems are being seen? Trying to figure out while something as simple (complex...) as a MB could possibly be an issue. Unraid may not like certain hardware?
June 16, 201214 yr I always say 'I cannot guarantee this motherboard will work' whenever I or another forum member I trust haven't personally handled it, tested it, run it through the gauntlet, and come out the other side with a smile. I hesitate to recommend hardware to anyone that should work, looks good on paper, has all the right specs, etc., but hasn't actually been proven to work. This is one of those cases. Searching the motherboard model number does come up with a few threads in which others asked about the board. I don't see any conclusive evidence in any of them that the person actually built a server from the board and was happy with it. If you want to be thorough in your research, I suggest sending a PM to each of those people and asking them if they did end up using the board and how well they like it. Since you asked, the following are somewhat common issues to have with motherboards: Unsupported NIC - by far the most common problem. You won't have this problem with this particular motherboard as long as you stick with an unRAID 5.0 beta or RC release. One of the simplest problems to fix, as adding a $20-$30 PCI NIC and disabling the on-board one will solve it. Unsupported Chipset - more rare, and typically not an issue with modern boards. See here for a list of some known incompatible chipsets. Unsupported CPU type - technically this is part of the chipset, by some cutting-edge CPUs aren't supported by Linux and therefore aren't supported by unRAID. Typically this problem is solved with Linux updates that filter their way into unRAID updates. The AMD F1 socket CPUs are a recent example. Unsupported SATA controller - also somewhat rare, this typically is only an issue on motherboards that have more than one SATA controller, which is also a rarity these days. There is often no solution for this besides using a PCIe SATA controller and disabling the onboard one(s). However, sometimes a BIOS update will solve it. Defective hardware - this can happen with any board, and is often very difficult to diagnose. Unfortunately quite common as well.
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