I'm just beginning to plan a new media server but I have one question I need to wok out before I can really get started. What size enclosure to build it in? It'll be used as a media server only. No transcoding. No bit torrent. Over the past 5 years my video library has been growing at an average of about 3TB per year. Using this average a 24 drive enclosure with 4TB drives would fill in about 30 years. Could I reasonably expect a server enclosure to last 30 years? I haven't really been able to find any info on this subject. My normal reaction is "Bigger Is Better", but not if it never gets fully utilized. Any suggestions? Comments? Actually any input at all regarding basic design would be welcome at this stage.

While you could jump to an enclosure to support 30 years of growth I would personally look at a shorter term goal. I don't know how much data you have currently, but would maybe plan for growth of 3-5 years. I had the same issue originally and started with a standard Antec case that allowed 6 drives, plus I used a 4x3 cage to expand to 10 drives. Once I got close to filling it I moved to a Norco 24bay case and am now at 16 drives.

 

Given the rate of growth/options I would personally plan for the short term as you never know what will be available moving forward. We are starting to see 5TB disks now, and will likely see 6TB disks next year. With this being the case obviously the number of drive bays you will require will drop, so does it make sense to invest in a $400 behemoth case vs a $100-150 standard case today.

 

As for the other recommendations/components it is again going to depend on your planned usage. Since we are getting into virtual machines in version 6.0 it's not as straight forward as it used to be. You will again want to get a cpu/motherboard that can grow with your needs.

First, don't plan for 30 years.

 

The media you have stored for the past few years is one size, but that will grow in a few years as newer high definition content becomes more mainstream. So your 3TB per year might become 6TB per year or more. And 6TB drives are now readily available, but you'll see much larger as time passes.

 

The planning horizon is about 4-6 years, depending on your tenacity for old hardware. Trendy people roll hardware faster, and old dusty people might get 6+ years.

 

In the question of just the enclosure, yes, you could get a couple hardware cycles out of a quality case. I am using larger computer cases from early ATX days. They have pull out motherboard shelves and plenty of room for cabling, etc. The case is 10+ years old, but the power supply, motherboard, etc are all much newer.

 

Since you did not state you current capacity requirement, I wont even try to suggest a disk drive bay count. I recommend sizing for 100% growth. This helps put off the pending disk space shortage, but giving you several options 1) delete, 2) add current capacity drives, 3) add higher capacity drives.

well here is a case for you :

http://www.microcenter.com/product/385091/Asgard_Pro_ATX_Mid_Tower_Computer_Case

 

$60 supports 7 hdd as is

 

and using one of those you can expanded to 11

http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Module-Device-STB-3T4-E3-GP/dp/B00129CDGC

http://www.amazon.com/Xigmatek-Cage-Hard-Drive-CCA-EMFCB-U01/dp/B0078IWQGI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817996019

 

which when using 4Tb drives gives you 40TB+parity

 

or using your math about 13 years worth of data give or take a few based on your current data size.

I personally prefer this case:

 

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021

 

It has lots and lots of options as far as expansion goes.  You can get get 15 drives into it if you 5 in 3 drive cages.  I am using monoprices.com's hot-swap housing which will allow me to have 9 drives installed and any drive can be changed in seconds without opening the case.  ( Plus as you get more drives in a case, you can often cause problems swapping a drive because you have to move to many other wires to do so.)

 

and using one of those you can expanded to 11

http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Module-Device-STB-3T4-E3-GP/dp/B00129CDGC

http://www.amazon.com/Xigmatek-Cage-Hard-Drive-CCA-EMFCB-U01/dp/B0078IWQGI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817996019

 

I'd recommend this:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=184

 

Almost hotplugging - don't need to extract the whole enclosure to swap a drive.

This are not bad but there only work as expexted in a silverstone case. I have one of this and had to mode it to make fan work off the cable directly.

Other  than that it not bad.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

I have this,

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147164

 

or if you want hot swap(not supported on unRaid) but its on special

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147165

Thanks for the replys. I can see I'm going to need to do a little re-figuring. Right now I have about 14TB on a Drobo 2nd gen and a DroboFS 5 bay. Would probably transfer everything to the unraid and put the old equipment up on eBay. So that would mean figuring for 30 to 40TB + parity and cache. If I saved a little on the enclosure I could go with a larger SSD for the cache (540GB maybe).

I personally prefer this case:

 

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021

 

It has lots and lots of options as far as expansion goes.  You can get get 15 drives into it if you 5 in 3 drive cages.  I am using monoprices.com's hot-swap housing which will allow me to have 9 drives installed and any drive can be changed in seconds without opening the case.  ( Plus as you get more drives in a case, you can often cause problems swapping a drive because you have to move to many other wires to do so.)

I've seen this enclosure recommended a lot. I'll probably put it on my short list if I'm not going for a monster. I really prefer towers over the rack mounts anyway.

 

What about MoBo/CPU. I saw one thread related to the cache drives that atom processors had been shown to create transfer limitations when using SSD cache drives. I was thinking of going with an i3 probably. I'm sure I'll probably wind up installing a few basic addons. I doubt if there will be any CPU or memory hogs though. Mostly I'll just use it as a media server, the only reason I'm looking at cache is because I get impatient transferring BD rips.

That Rosewill 14 bay hot-swap case looks like a nice unit. You can't buy a tower and add the hot-swap bays to it for any cheaper than that costs. It would give you up to 48T using 4T drives and even more storage with larger drives in a few years.

 

unRAID doesn't support hot-swap while the array is online but it does support hot-swap for changing drives and you can plug-in and preclear new drives without even stopping the array or powering down the server. Then, once the drive is ready you just stop the array, add it and start the array again.

 

You don't really need a SSD just for file transfers. The network will be the speed limitation if you use a new HDD so the extra speed of the SSD would be a waste.

 

I personally would never use an Atom. It's buying into a limited processor. A lower end i3 or i5 would  idle at about the same power but they have much more processing capability available if you need it. You can also swap just the processor or motherboard if you find you need to. The price difference really isn't that much either.

 

That Rosewill 14 bay hot-swap case looks like a nice unit. You can't buy a tower and add the hot-swap bays to it for any cheaper than that costs. It would give you up to 48T using 4T drives and even more storage with larger drives in a few years.

 

unRAID doesn't support hot-swap while the array is online but it does support hot-swap for changing drives and you can plug-in and preclear new drives without even stopping the array or powering down the server. Then, once the drive is ready you just stop the array, add it and start the array again.

 

Thanks for the info. I don't see a 14 bay Rosewill with hot swap though. Did I miss one somewhere? Maybe there's some sort of conversion for the 12 bay? Honestly I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to building servers, computers, etc. this will be my first. Would appreciate any suggestions for components. I started looking at CPUs yesterday and got completely lost trying to figure out the differences between one i3 and another? Maybe there is an UnRaid For Dummies guide that I need to start with. I can see the advantages of a hot swap enclosure and using upgraded (i5) CPU. But I'm sure there must be compatibility issues to consider. Does every CPU work with any enclosure? Are the MoBo's pre-installed? That sort of thing. There is so much info on this forum that I'm really not sure where to start. I can see that some of the Mac related info is outdated and I'm sure this is true in other areas as well. I've been working my way through the unraid FAQ thread but what I really think I need is a beginners design thread maybe?

Oh, well if it's that way, I would recommend you use some used parts and get a better understanding

of how a computer looks like from the inside.

 

There are so many (trivial) things you can mess up and probably nobody can think of all and write them down for you.

 

Start by disassembling an existing but working (scrap) computer and put it together a couple of days later.

When holding the mainboard in your hands try to figure out what interfaces you have there.

Use the manual as reference, google and ask questions in the forum.

If it boots up again after your surgery, you already learned a lot.

Learning by doing - it's probably the best approach before you get yourself pricey equipment and break it while learning.

 

You will most likely end up with two unRAID servers after all - my experience  .

So it's probably OK if you start your first build with used parts.

Anyway you will have to spend a nice amount for 5x 4TB hard drives to accommodate your existing data.

Therefore, your enclosure should have space for 5+ 3.5" slots and your board should bring 5+ sata ports also. For later expansion you will want to have many PCIe slots (x4 and x8) to plug in sata cards.

If this first build is running as expected, you will pretty soon want to backup it somewhere.

 

By that time you're more experienced and will probably know for yourself what kind of

hardware you want to use for your second build. Perhaps your needs will have altered also.

 

See the hardware section in the wiki for unRAID compatible hardware.

 

I remember having seen some reference builds from limetech somewhere.

I will try to find that for you. Here you go - gives you an idea of what you should look for.

 

Also good to know.

 

 

Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the info. I don't see a 14 bay Rosewill with hot swap though. Did I miss one somewhere?

 

Compass in the second link. $199.

 

The case is bare. You have to buy a motherboard and a processor. As a minimum, make sure the processor has built-in graphics. For example, the Celeron G1820 processor. Then, make sure the motherboard supports the processor and has video output. After that, sort the motherboards by number of SATA ports and PCIe slots and pick a suitable board.

 

You can get 8 SATA expansion cards so a motherboard with 4 x SATA ports and a PCIe x16 slot would pretty much work to connect all 12 slots in the Roswell case.

 

As for memory, pick say 4gig of memory that matches what the motherboard uses.

 

For the power supply pick a Corsair or PC Power and Cooling that has a single +12V power rail. Here's a good example.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

 

Finally, if you're not sure, pick the parts you think and post them up and someone will help with suggestions.

Thanks for the info. I don't see a 14 bay Rosewill with hot swap though. Did I miss one somewhere?

 

Compass in the second link. $199.

I saw that one. I'm missing how it gets converted to a 14 bay? Maybe 14 was a typo.

 

The case is bare. You have to buy a motherboard and a processor. As a minimum, make sure the processor has built-in graphics. For example, the Celeron G1820 processor. Then, make sure the motherboard supports the processor and has video output. After that, sort the motherboards by number of SATA ports and PCIe slots and pick a suitable board.

 

Would this work:

MoBo-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128654

CPU-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116773

Or maybe it's overkill? I like the idea of using an i3 or perhaps an i5, but not sure about the motherboard.

 

You can get 8 SATA expansion cards so a motherboard with 4 x SATA ports and a PCIe x16 slot would pretty much work to connect all 12 slots in the Roswell case.

 

As for memory, pick say 4gig of memory that matches what the motherboard uses.

 

For the power supply pick a Corsair or PC Power and Cooling that has a single +12V power rail. Here's a good example.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

 

Finally, if you're not sure, pick the parts you think and post them up and someone will help with suggestions.

I like this enclosure overall. Since it already has the hot swap bays it'll save me having to buy the 3 in 4 cages for the tower I was looking at.

Ya, it appears it is a 12 bay case.

 

Those parts look OK but they don't match. The CPU is LGA1155 and the board is LGA1150.

 

Also, Gigabyte puts what's called a HPA onto a hard drive to save the BIOS and the HPA messes with unRAID. You have to either ensure that feature can be turned off or just use a different brand. Biostar and ASRock seems to be fairly popular for home PC class boards or Supermicro for server class boards.

I have this,

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147164

 

or if you want hot swap(not supported on unRaid) but its on special

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147165

 

Do these enclosures support low profile pci-e cards? I've been looking at the pics but I just can't tell.