Hello there, I'm apologise for my bad English in advanced.

First of all, i would like to introduce my painful experience with self made home servers:

 

1) My first server was WHSv1 (6 HD total), was nice for 2 years. and then 2 HD failed at once and i lost alot of data.

2) After that i decided to build "true raid" array, with 5 drivers.

  i used a second hand raid card "RocketRAID", and again, 2 hard disks failed at once while i was in a one year trip abroad.

  luckily i saved one of the hard disk and recovered my data.

 

3) My servers did many functions: WHS clients backups, main storage of course, music streaming for my family phones, TSM Backup for 2 remote business servers, utorrent client, ftp server, video streaming, mail exchanger, air video and alot more...

But everything here is in a really small scale, for example: i have just 3 users on the mail server, and just 3 computers to backup. so it doesn't consume too much CPU....

 

3) now, after some time spending on the net, searching for an alternate storage system that doesn't relay on RAID array, because it's expensive, inconvenient and cannot really guarantee my data. (i don't like the: "all or noting" method) I "discovered" the wonders of the unRAID operating system.

 

My vision, is to build a system that will function well with those sevices above.

addons that i will install:

WHS addon

Utorrent

VMWare

CouchPotoato

FEMUR

web and ftp

plex media

AirVideo

PlexAppServer

 

"Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?"

maximum of 9 Hard Disks, no more. (I want to start with 5 Hard Disks)

 

My budget is from 1500$ to 2000$

 

parts that i will reuse:

Case: Antec Nine Hundred Two http://goo.gl/pj2Pog

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W Cable Management http://goo.gl/Xo1x36

 

A. I need a recommendation for a CPU that can hold this kind of environment.

B. I need a recommendation for a MotherBoard that can hold at leaste 7 Hard disks. (or an PCI-E card with SATA slots)

C. and, i need a recommendation for a 5 green hard disks (2TB each)

 

Thanks for the helpers!

And also thanks to the ones who didn't help 

 

 

P.S

Should i install an SSD for the virtual OS's?

well the specs are interesting to say the least

but I want to chime in on this.

 

#1 keep in mind that UnRaid would not save you from 2 disk failure.

it is a single parity system thus only one drive failure tolarence.

since you have had a repeated 2 drive loss scenario you need to evaluate why this hapened and why it happen twice.

 

my guess is you getting your drives in batches and  you are using green drives that are not rated/designed for server operation.

 

as such the first thing first, reevaluate your target for HDD and go with WD Red drives or Seagate NAS drives instead. also try to buy them one at a time from different vendor.

 

 

I see that VMware is on your list so I would suggest to run UnRaid in VM

for that check out the HCL for VMWare ESXi5.5 list and try to get motherboard + CPU that is on the list.

you will need this for PCI pass-through function .

get a compatible PCI SAS controller (I do not have one in mind but do search here on the forum for info)

your main bottleneck would be RAM not so much CPU so take that into account.

with all the stuff you want to run and concidering going virtualized I say  16GB is a minimum.

check what your MB will support and try to get the most RAM with the least ammount of slots.

for example if your MB have 4 ram slots and is capable of 32GB total (4x8GB) than get 2 8GB if you can.

unless you can reuse the 4gb ram later do not get 4x4GB as it will limit your expansion capability later.

again,it is all upto you so look for your budget and other things and make your own decision.

 

also even though unRaid is capable of running lots of things using plug-in I would suggest, especially if you are going virtual , to run UnRaid as light weight as possible.the less plug-ins the better.

it minimises the chance of something going wrong and you loosing your data. it also make management and updates easyer as some plugins are not maintaned on the same schedule as main distro.

 

thus run unraid for NAS only and get your other things using specialized VM

 

VMWare -- as discussed above use ESXi 5.5 hypervisor  but do checkout XenServer 6.2

                    VMWare is good but free versionis not easily managed anymore as they moved to

                        webClient  which is not free. the desctop client is still there but it does not provide access

                        to all funtionality.

 

WHS addon  -- not sure what that is and what it's do

 

Utorrent  -- you can run this in Ubuntu VM  along with subNZB ,CouchPotoato, sick bieard

checkout transmission as well. you can find a good tutorial on setting up all this in ubuntu

 

FEMUR -- not sure what that is

 

web and ftp  -- any linux distro will be capable of this, also checkout SME Server as a VM

 

-- see above  for all this as well

AirVideo

plex media

PlexAppServer

 

 

 

I think that SSD is overkill for any setup except when you need a quick boot time and app access.

my HTPC is built using SSD but all else is regular HDD.

 

since in a server most of your data is on data drives anyway  and you restart servers not to often I would skip it. but it's your money after all :-)

 

 

PS.

NOTHING can guaranty your data. even UnRaid is not a backup solution.

also unRaid is a variation of a RAID of sorts with some unpleasantness of regular RAID removed.

your setup had an inherent flow(s) to begin with.

#1 flow --  you used green drives that are not designed for raid.

 

now, after some time spending on the net, searching for an alternate storage system that doesn't relay on RAID array, because it's expensive, inconvenient and cannot really guarantee my data. (i don't like the: "all or noting" method) I "discovered" the wonders of the unRAID operating system.

 

 

 

+1 to vl1969's comments.

 

Unraid should be ran as it comes, no add-ons.  It's how it was designed and works perfectly.  While add-ons are great and I get the idea that most people can't do virtualization to replace those add-ons for a number of reasons, they do complicate things and I do respect those that run add-ons, it's their server they can do whatever they want with it, but let me ask you this...do you really want your valuable data being stored on a server that does multiple things?  If something goes wrong with an add-on then you have to fix it and run the risk of causing issues with your unraid configuration and maybe no access to your data.  Since I see you want to do some virtualization, I'm with vl1969 that you should run vmware or some other form of virtualization and make virtual hosts do all your other jobs that the add-ons would do.  This limits unraid to the one thing it's meant for and you can troubleshoot the other servers much easier.

 

The only thing you need to look out for is where you store your datastore/images for the virtual hosts if you go virtual.  SSD's are great, they are fast and sometimes reliable but they do fail.  You don't want to get everything working and then lose all your servers you created.  This is why I run my datastores/images off of a raid array.  I use a raid controller on the HCL and run raid 1 arrays on my datastores.  This way if a drives fails then you are protected.  Again, raid is not a valid backup so you should use some other form to backup of your data but it saves time.

 

I understand money may be tight but trust me when I say this, do it right the first time.  I've spent countless time and money trying to piece together nas systems in the past and I can tell you I have done the add-on thing, I have done the multiple server thing and have changed things around monthly but I've finally been able to get virtualization set up the correct way and I haven't touched anything in quite a long time.  It sits there doing what it's supposed to do and I couldn't be happier because now I have the freedom to create servers for testing anytime while not affecting any other server that is holding my data I treasure.  Honestly it's kinda sad really, because now that I have a stable server doing multiple things and hardly ever touch it, I miss the time I spent changing things out because I didn't like the way it was running and now I have time to spend on other things.

 

So, take these suggestions how you want.  It's your server, do what you want with it, run add-ons, go virtual, whatever makes you happy, but take everything people are saying, think it all over and then make the best judgement you think is right for you, your time, and your money, and your data.

 

 

 

 

+1 for Zerok

 

just want to comment on Raid thing.

I would not recommend hardware raid.

with all it's good sides, it is a single point of failure as you are dependent  on the hardware you use. That is why unRaid was created

to be hardware in depended all the time.

 

instead, I would do keep copies of  VM snapshots on unRaid share AND on an external disk.

 

with that you would have a good chance of recovery for all the VM setup you have except the main server as you would have 3 copies of your data store(DS).

1 the main DS where you are running from.

2. on unRaid share

3. on External Drive

 

 

PS. I am actually in the process of building a VM server setup right now.

unfortunately I think I will have to drop unRaid as my file server since my hardware does not support full virtualizasion  for me to be able to pass my disk controller to unraid (hence a warning in my original post to hit the HCL for the VMS you want to use.)

OK, first of all, thank you for those extensive and detaild replays! 

 

I was thinking for some time and i decided to go with you'r suggestions and buy 4 WD Red drives (for now) and run with XenServer. (because the "VMWare free" is lack of backup capability, and i'm a noob in linux, while XenServer has it)

 

* decided to use a SSD to store and run my VM's from, and will backup it to my Unraid share and so on. Do you think it's ok?

 

 

1) then, which motherboard and cpu should i buy? i don't understand nothing in mothertboards, all what i want is an onbouad NIC and WOL and tempature options.

 

2) and ask on " Hard Drives and Controllers" forum for the storage controller?

 

 

again, thank you for the replays!