January 14, 200917 yr I started a post in october to help out people looking to implement Unraid Technology into their Ecosystem. Some great input was had from many of the experienced users. Of course, in just three months some of the advice has become dated so I have re-read and started a new thread to summarize everyones great input. Here is the original post placed by "Sparkie" (I am now "Mark-HC" to clear things up). Original post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2589.0 A interesting spin took place in the original thread discussing cost-effective Hard drive "buying techniques" I have started a new thread so we can discuss some ideas of cost effective hard- drive implementation. So lets keep this post strictly hardware based. I feel many people will benefit from our advanced users advice... This is for persons willing to invest their time rolling their own box. Tom offers some great options on the website for people that want their boxes built for them at a price hard to beat. Here is what I recommend for hardware: 1)A cheap 4U case (http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=27944&vpn=RA455A00&manufacture=Compucase) - Lots of working room in the above case (fits Two 5-in-3 Drive cages allowing 10 drives total). If you need more room there are more expensive options. This is probably fine for MOST home users. - I recommend a 4U case because you might find yourself going crazy with computers and expanding beyond a simple file server. It's nice to stack your PC's like drawers in your basement. - Keep in mind where you will be placing your server. It's going to give off heat, and it is going to make some noise. I recommend running a cat5E to your basement or a closet far away from the bedroom/media room/study den. 2) Power Supply - Don't skimp on this item. Buy high quality trusted power supplies. Buy one large enough to handle the amount of drives you plan on having. 600W to 850W should be more than adeqaute to handle up to 10 to 16 SATA drives. - Brands (Corsair, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic) - Recommended to go with a PSU that doesn't use modular cables. Modular Power Supplies are nice because of cable neatness. But you are taking a chance with loose connections using modular. 3)Motherboard - Gigabyte is my personal preference. Asus is known for their great boards. I only recommend Gigabyte over Asus because of the quality Gigabyte puts into their releases. Gigabyte doesn't seem to cut as many corners as Asus does. Asus has been going overboard lately with the amount of 'revisions' of their boards. Rather than fixing problems they will release a new board with an 'enhanced' name with a few more options, trying to bury the previous boards bad reputation. It's only my personal experience with Asus. If you do your research Asus has some solid boards. - Pick a motherboard with an older 'Intel' chipset rather than the most current one. So lets say as of writing the latest Intel Chipset is ICH10. Look for a 7,8,or 9 series chipset. The older the chipset, the better chances of compatibility. Mind you Tom is selling machines with ICH10 chipsets onboard, so they must work fine. Right Tom? - Some of the gigabyte boards support up to 8 Sata Drives onboard. The cost of the board is more money upfront, but you save money by not having to implement a seperate SATA controller. 4)Processor - Intel is the most compatible with Linux. 32-bit is also better supported. - Unraid now supports multi-core processors. I would recommend 2ghz dual core as a minimum to handle future server software enhancements. Low wattage processors are also favourable, but don't wimp out too much. You may need the extra cylces as your Unraid expands into the Super Beast of all home Arrays (meow). 5)USB stick - Search the forums for popular sticks that work. A 2Gb stick is fine (Corsair is well supported) Buy two Sticks, have one for backup. (Take advantage of the 2 for 1 deal offered by Tom. 6)Network Card - Disable the onbaord network card in the bios. Most likely the onboard will get you by, but it's performance will not be the best your server can be. - Buy and install an Intel PCI-E 1 Gigabit Network card. Fastest card out there with rock solid driver support. Intel cards are the De-Facto when it comes to reliable Linux Network throughput. 7)Hard Drives - Seagate for their 5 year warranty and little hassle. They simply have the best reputation with Western Digital a close second. - SATA 2 drives. IDE is a thing of the past. - Only use 'new; high quality sata cables. Careful not to bend them at 90 degree angles. Nice sweeps inside that server box 8)Video - Utilize on-board video if you have it.. Get a cheap Nvidia card if you don't. 9) 5-in-3 Drive cages - Look into using these. They make it easier to add drives to your array. Okay now for the setup: 1) http://www.giga-byte.com/Support/Motherboard/HowToReflashBIOS.aspx -Go to the above link and download the PDF that reflects how you want to upgrade the BIOS -Or go to this link if you use an alternate motherboard http://www.techpowerup.com/printarticle.php?id=34 2) After the bios flash, disable what you don't need in the Bios (onboard nic,serial port,parallel port,onboard video etc) 3)Follow this guide word for word http://lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=46 Any questions please PM me.
January 14, 200917 yr AWESOME! TY very much for this post.. Really new to all this and this short description has helped me out a ton!!! Getting sick and tired of my 6 different external HD's and having this as a media storage solution is just what I am looking for! Would it be ok with you to bother you (PM) once I start building my own with (probably) some real stupid questions Thanks!!!!!!
January 14, 200917 yr I created this response to the original post that is in the referenced thread. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2589.msg20893#msg20893 I think it is still mostly relevant. The current motherboard shipping with unRAID preconfigured servers from LimeTech is the SuperMicro C2SEE. Tom, the author of unRAID, felt that this motherboard had the best price / feature mix for unRAID. It can accomodate 2 Adaptec 1430SA controllers (for 8 VERY fast SATA ports) + has one more PCIe x1 port. Onboard video. Gigabit Lan. And remember that Tom will be testing each version of unRAID on this exact motherboard before it is released. These are some good reasons to consider that motherboard in particular. If you want to try a different motherboard, do yourself a favor and make sure it is not based on the nForce 2, 3, or 4 chipsets. (See here). I had a problem with a Gigabyte motherboard that would not boot off the USB stick. Only some of the Gigabyte motherboards are compatible!
January 14, 200917 yr 2) Power Supply - Don't skimp on this item. Buy high quality trusted power supplies. Buy one large enough to handle the amount of drives you plan on having. 600W to 850W should be more than adeqaute to handle up to 10 to 16 SATA drives. - Brands (Corsair, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic) - Recommended to go with a PSU that doesn't use modular cables. Modular Power Supplies are nice because of cable neatness. But you are taking a chance with loose connections using modular. There was a spin-off thread regarding power supplies from this one. Great info all around: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2648.0 3)Motherboard - Pick a motherboard with an older 'Intel' chipset rather than the most current one. So lets say as of writing the latest Intel Chipset is ICH10. Look for a 7,8,or 9 series chipset. The older the chipset, the better chances of compatibility. Mind you Tom is selling machines with ICH10 chipsets onboard, so they must work fine. Right Tom? - Some of the gigabyte boards support up to 8 Sata Drives onboard. The cost of the board is more money upfront, but you save money by not having to implement a seperate SATA controller. Keep in mind, most of the time, only 6 ports of the total SATA ports use the Intel ICH chipset. The other 2 ports use a different controller, sometimes JMicron, sometimes Silicon Image. The new "official" motherboard is the Supermicro C2SEE. This would be my recommended motherboard since it's the same one Tom uses for testing. 4)Processor - Intel is the most compatible with Linux. 32-bit is also better supported. - Unraid now supports multi-core processors. I would recommend 2ghz dual core as a minimum to handle future server software enhancements. Low wattage processors are also favourable, but don't wimp out too much. You may need the extra cylces as your Unraid expands into the Super Beast of all home Arrays (meow). There's really not much issue if you go with whatever processor you want. There really is no need for powerful processors. Even the current lowest single-core Sempron (Socket AM2) is more than enough for unRAID. Of course, if you want an Intel ICH chipset, the processor choice is somewhat obvious. With price of processors being so low coupled with low power consumption of low-end dual-cores, going with a dual-core just seems more prudent. 6)Network Card - Disable the onbaord network card in the bios. Most likely the onboard will get you by, but it's performance will not be the best your server can be. - Buy and install an Intel PCI-E 1 Gigabit Network card. Fastest card out there with rock solid driver support. Intel cards are the De-Facto when it comes to reliable Linux Network throughput. You probably won't notice much performance difference going from onboard gigabit to an Intel PCI-e card. Samba on Linux is somewhat inefficient so you'll hit the software ceiling prior to hitting the hardware one. 7)Hard Drives - Seagate for their 5 year warranty and little hassle. They simply have the best reputation with Western Digital a close second. - SATA 2 drives. IDE is a thing of the past. - Only use 'new; high quality sata cables. Careful not to bend them at 90 degree angles. Nice sweeps inside that server box Not the recent models, particularly the Barracuda 7200.11 series, especially the 1.5TB versions. Also, Seagate has dropped the warranty from 5 years to 3 years starting January 1, 2009. 8)Video - Utilize on-board video if you have it.. Get a cheap Nvidia card if you don't. Meh, for a really old PCI video card, you don't need to get Nvidia. Even ATI cards will be supported. 9) 5-in-3 Drive cages - Look into using these. They make it easier to add drives to your array. If you get a Norco RPC-4020, you won't need this.
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