Need to upgrade unRAID H/W


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When i started off building my first unraid machine, I don't know how I got the impression that just about any cpu/ mobo lying around could be used to base your unraid on. So i did just that - picked up a MSI E350IA45 or something and started my build.

 

As things went along now I am stuck with

 

1. No more SATA ports

2. Not enough space in the cabinet to add more drives

3. Inadequate processor speed for the add-ons (everything is sluggish when Plex Media Server is running)

4. Somewhere someone mentioned that my motherboard might be having the HPA disease and

5. A flash drive that keeps giving problems. (Just got me the PLUS key about 2 weeks back  :'( )

 

First the flash wouldn't let me copy files to it. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25125.msg218289#msg218289

 

Today I lost all my shares when I rebooted. I found a similar issue with someone else on this forum, tried a chkdisk on the flash, and sure enough my machine was back up and running. But I have painstakingly organized and copied my data and I dont want to take any chances and want to get everything to spec.

 

Sorry for the rant, but how do i move all this to a new MoBo/ CPU and what are my options with the flash drive? And for the future, can someone suggest some really good flash drive to boot my new config off?

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If you are asking for suggestions on what to upgrade to, you sort of need to tell us what you have now and what you're plans for the future are.

 

unRAID itself can run on almost anything. your limits are going to be resources for plugins and limitations for adding drives (both physical space and ports available). 

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Thanks for the replies guys.

 

Just now, after the checkdisk and restarting my system, a copy failed and all shares have disappeared again. Pulling out the flash and checkdisk-ing it again. Frustrating.

 

Not planning anything major. Will use 6 HDDs (4 x 2TB Data, 1 x 2TB parity, 1 x 1TB cache) Will be used to serve data to 5-6 openelec clients. Plus I want Plex Media Server to run on it, so that all the tabs and smartphones at home are taken care of. Thats about it. All suggestions welcome.

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I have disabled itunes and serviio (though i dont know how to permanently uninstall them). And plex has a different share on the array cos I dont have a cache drive yet.

 

So, Yes. I dont think anything should be constantly writing to the flash, though I am not the best judge of it!

 

One observation I have made though in the recent times  - the shares disappear and plex stops working ever since I got Plex working on the machine. (P.S. - it took me ages to get Plex working too. I had to get rid of the GCC package to get Plex working)

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I just picked up the tiny MicroSD only version of the MobileLiteG2 and it seems to be generating it's own GUID as well.  Tested 2 very different MicroSD cards (diff manufacturer and size) and both reported the same GUID in UnRAID.  Not only was it a bit cheaper, but it's not as large of a wart sitting off the back of the server.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139080  (searching around might find you cheaper options.)

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Has anyone looked at the syslog? Running Plex seems to corrupt the shares.

 

Also, any tips on how to get rid of the iTunes Server and Serviio? I wont be needing those if I can get Plex working.

 

The library and temp folder for Plex are on a different share on the array (since I dont have a cache disk yet). So I cant imagine what process must be writing anything to the flash, if at all. How can I check this?

 

Edit: The shares just went down again. I can see them from Windows explorer and in unraid GUI but when I cant copy anything to the shares. Had not restarted Plex or any other addon.

 

Edit: Drive temperatures are also unusually high at ~ 52 deg.

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Shares disappeared again. Web GUI works fine, and Windows Explorer shows the disks. Syslog attached.  :'(

That is not a complete syslog.  It is the tail end of one.

 

Sorry.  no analysis possible.

 

Seek assistance in the customizations forum on how to disable your plugins.  From all you've described, you've not enough memory to run them and the emhttp process or smbd are being killed in an attempt to free memory.

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No one??

 

Would the contents of this post be helpful in some way for my scenario? http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8423.msg81707#msg81707

 

Should I try and increase the value to 100 or higher?

 

Edit: @ Mods - Please, I really need help on this guys. I am a systems integrator and plan to make several licensed unraid servers for my clients. The broad outline for all the builds is to have 6-8TB of data storage with hardware capable enough to serve this out to 4-6 other clients over SMB, plus to 3-4 Plex clients. That is all! Cost of hardware is no object, but I'm really having difficulty identifying the correct configuration.

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I experienced similar issues with memory (at some point SMB stopped working). Joe L. is right, this is most likely related to your RAM memory and swap file. Search forum for creating swap partition on cache drive. If you don't have one, then should definitely buy it (SSD recommended). in addition increase your RAM memory.

 

You should, probably invest in some quality mobo (Supermicro, they have on board usb port and 6 sata ports), in hardware section of forum you will find recommendations for add-on cards to increase you SATA ports

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I have made the following changes

 

1. Increased the physical RAM to 8GB

2. Created a swap file with the plugin, and allocated 8GB on the cache drive.

 

There seems to be a noticeable improvement. Still need to check thoroughly though.

 

Which brings me to the all important question - Are there some sort of logical steps to follow to arrive at the ideal processor type, speed and physical and virtual memory numbers for a particular type of build? Like I mentioned, all of the servers I plan to make will have 3-4 data drives with 8-10TB of storage. It will transfer media via SMB to 5-6 clients as well as transcode media and serve another 5-6 portable clients. Now this is the absolute max load. At any given point of time, I do not foresee more than 2 wired and 2 wireless clients in use. What sort of processor and ram would be the best bet to achieve this with the least hiccups?

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This is a little bit tricky. Certain computer activities, like transcoding video are dependent on cpu and number of cores, but accessing file on server without hiccup over LAN is more related to type of wiring, gigabit switch, network card, router etc. So when everything is top notch in that department, but server cpu is kind a weak (intel atom), you can still serve video to couple clients without problems (search for I/O topic)

 

Other video activities, like conversion, commercial skipping search etc require more powerful cpu's, at least 2ghz with more cores. It's actually better to have lower cpu with 4 cores then higher one with 3 cores. After you cross that minimum cpu recommendation of 2ghz, you will notice that getting very powerful cpu is simply not necessary. Unless you plan to do do some heavy video conversions. This rule served me well when I built my HTPC. Many people will also say that their htpc running on lower end cpu's are just fine for what they do. Server is similar in that sense. Now, Plex transcode video on the fly, sometimes they just change container without touching video. As you probably know you can adjust streaming quality within plex client on your mobile device. To tell the truth I do not know if they transcode all videos by default. My guess is,  they do not. It all depends on what type of hardware is running plex client.

 

There is interesting discussion about Plex on BYOB podcast with one of it's creators

 

http://homeservershow.com/category/byob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you for that very informative reply!

 

So should I regard a 4 core processor to better than a 2 core or a single core processor? Likewise for physical RAM? Is it certain that the Plex transcoding process can certainly utilize and benefit from additional cores and physical memory although it is running on the unRAID platform? Also, what is the most amount of RAM that Plex can successfully use to optimize memory-intensive processes?

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Definitely, that is rule of thumb. Number of cores are more important then cpu clock. Each core is a "separate" cpu. So it's like having 4 cpu's working on different parts of the video at the same time. I do not know too much about Plex internal affairs. Maybe you should ask this question at their forum.

 

For testing I did setup Plex on my unRaid machine running intel atom d525 with 2gb ram and I had no problem streaming mkv's to desktop client. Streaming to iPad was a little bit chalenging, but once I lowered streaming quality within app settings, everything went smoothly. From listening to the BYOB podcast I remember that Plex was designed originally to work only on iOS. It was in fact optimized for mp4 container and since mkv are similar (h264+aac), then there is really no transcoding but simple container swap on the fly. Other formats are different story, and I believe they are working on improving that transcoding engine. Now, imagine that your transcoding on the fly and streaming that video. Your CPU will have to keep up with streaming and pump those junks of bits to your network. When will you know that cpu is too slow? That is simple. You will see video freezing and buffering on your device.

 

Glad to help :)

 

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