I am considering a future virtualized unRAID system whilst I contemplate new hardware for my system. Problem is, I am none too sure where/how to start. Is there a surefire, can't miss and not prohibitively expensive hardware list for a say "12 data drive" unRAID solution using modern components that will also work with the virtualized world? What do you look for in a Motherboard? Memory? CPU? I've been reading now for hours and it isn't apparent to me if you need a true server motherboard or if a commercial board would do, how truly important it is if memory is ECC or not, the pros and cons of Haswell vs Zeon vs AMD CPU technologies (beyond sheer power consumption) and how the virtualization decision process drives the hardware selections?

 

Anybody care to elaborate? I grok the benefits of virtualizing unRAID and welcome it, I'm just not wanting to buy hardware that won't serve the purpose - it seems to me that perhaps the hardware requirements of the "Virtual path unRAID" might be considerably different than the old unRAID - which was "it just works, and it works with whatever you got, most likely". Maybe even a "build guideline" kind of like Raj's suggested builds, except for Virtualized setups - that would be ideal.

 

I've run my test system for a little over 2 years with little problem, using a castoff motherboard [ and a non-recommended one, at that!] on 4 megs of memory and a cheap single core processor. I'm ready to buy a real license and step up, but I want to make solid hardware choices.

Good questions.... which unfortunately don't have a straight forward answer.

 

Ultimately it depends on what you want to do with your hardware and what your budget will allow.

 

When looking at virtualization there are a number of different features available which can influence what processor you buy. As to AMD vs. Intel it's going to come down to personal preference, so I am not going to comment on that, but either way if you want to virtualize you are going to want to make sure that your CPU supports vt-x (Intel) or amd-v (AMD). This is the base level extensions required for virtualization.

 

If you want to be able to pass-through hardware (the best example being a video card for XBMC virtual clients) then you need to make sure your CPU supports vt-d (Intel) or amd-vi or iommu (AMD). If you don't see yourself needing this feature, then the options for CPU (and motherboard) open up quite a bit.

 

Lastly, because you are running multiple workloads it is recommended that you make sure your CPU is optimized for this, which for Intel is hyper-threading, and for AMD I think is hyper-transport or truecore (I am not 100% on the AMD equivalent on hyper-threading, but think it's one of these). The benefit of hyper-threading is that it helps ensure all requests to the CPU are queued up and allows you to maximize cpu utilization.

 

Once you have determined which technologies you want then you need to make sure that the cpu, motherboard and bios will support it. I am an Intel guy, so most of my comments will reference that specifically, though the same rule of thumb will apply to AMD.

 

If you are only looking at vt-x then most CPUs/MBs/BIOS should support it. vt-d is a different case. Even though most Intel chipsets can support this feature, it's up to the motherboard manufacturer to enable it. SuperMicro does a good job of this, as does ASrock, however ASUS doesn't support it in their boards.

 

The last consideration (specifically Intel again) is that not all CPUs support on-board graphics. This may or may not be a huge deal, but since most motherboards offer on-board vga, hdmi and possibly dvi, if you want to take advantage of that then you need to make sure your CPU includes the Intel graphics feature.

 

Intel offers a great website (http://ark.intel.com/) where you can look up any CPU you are considering to ensure it has all the features you are looking for.

 

Motherboards are a bit easier, provided you only want vt-x. As mentioned, almost all manufacturers will support this, so it will come down to socket type (1150, 1155, etc - this will be driven by the CPU you pick), as well as features you want (max memory support, sata port requirements, pcie ports, etc).

 

If you want vt-d for hardware passthrough, then it's recommended to look at SuperMicro or ASRock, but you are typically looking at server based motherboards (i.e. $200-$250 for the MB). One nice feature SuperMicro often includes is IPMI which is an IP based KVM which allows you to remotely manage your server through the boot process and after boot up. If you have IPMI then you don't necessarily need on-board graphics on the CPU as you can use IPMI to manage the server without ever having to hook up a monitor (once the board is setup that is).

 

As for ECC vs non - I don't know how big a difference this really makes. If you want it I think you need a Xeon processor (again, you can confirm on ark.intel.com) but I think most people don't focus on this as a requirement - though some of the more hardcore forum members do seem to include this in their build. I am sure others more knowledgeable can likely comment here on reasons why they picked ECC.

 

As I mentioned at the top of the post - there is no easy answer - it's really going to come down to what you want to do with UnRAID today, and in the near future, as well as budget. If you want to invest in something that will support all possible features you are likely looking at a Xeon or i7 processor (and only some Xeon include graphics). You are also looking at a high end motherboard and will likely stock with 16GB of RAM (most high end MBs will support 4 DIMM slots and 32GB total, so to maximize you will likely want 8GB DIMMs).

 

This type of solution can cost $700-$900 for CPU, MB and RAM. If that is too steep then you can start scaling back requirements until you get down to your budget.

 

Hope this helps, and feel free to ask for any clarifications. I just went through this process over the last month, so thankfully it's fairly fresh in mind.