Planning a home unraid build, hardware and virtualisation questions

[mossiemosforth]

First off, hello and congrats on a great looking forum. I'll apologise in advance as i understand there is specific sections for things but as i have numerous questions in my first post i figured the general section would be my best bet.

 

A little background on how I ended up here. I currently have a home media solution comprising of a few machines (windows, ubuntu and even a raspberry pi), one windows machine has all my data on striped disks and the lack of parity has now got me thinking 'what if', so i'm looking for a solution.

I currently use utorrent and the rss downloader quite a bit, but after experimenting with sickbeard i must say i'm impressed with it and think its my way forward for automation, especially its integration with xbmc.

I started out looking at freenas but the requirement for me to buy new hardware that supports ECC ram to have it rock solid became costly  and i have some hardware i wish to reutilise. That combined with the plugins such as sickbeard etc also being easily installed on unraid has pushed me here.

 

To add to the complexity of my home network i don't actually have home broadband, i run my household through an android phone. The windows machine upstairs tethers wirelessly to it and shares it using ICS and an 8port gi switch to everything else minus 1 laptop (connects direct to phone).

 

My ideal solution would be an all in one box that stores all my data in unraid form, but also the ability to be my network bridge to the phones internet. the 2 ways i can see to go would be either bare unraid build with virtualbox plugin or go ESXi and have unraid as a vm (with pass through) and my network bridge machine sitting along side it in ESXi.

 

Hardware i wish to use for this build consists of;

 

Case - Thermaltake Armor (original full ATX varient)

Mobo - Asus P5Q

CPU - Intel QX9650

RAM - Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066MHz 8GB (4x2GB)

PS - Corsair 750W (i forget the exact model number)

USB - Sandisk Cruzer 4GB

Wifi Card - TP-Link PCI card (can get model number if needed)

 

 

The above would be the base build, to add to that i have 3x Hitachi Deskstar 4TB 5400rpm drives for parity & data but i also have a 74GB 10000rpm WD raptor drive lying around i was thinking of using as a cached drive. opinions?

I also have a few random 500GB drives i was thinking of using for the plugins storage, so that im not spinning up data disks constantly that way. i understand these can be outside the array, can't they?

I also understand a GPU is needed for installation, but once setup can it be removed? i only ask as the mobo has non onboard, i have a crappy one lying around but the fan is fairly noisy and i wish to keep this rig on permanently.

 

Would the above hardware be suitable, what would peoples recommendation be on virtualisation routes to best make use of it?

thanks in advance

[mossiemosforth]

ah, i've just done a little more digging and it appears my P5Q has the P45 chipset which does not support vt-d, so pass through sata isn't going to be an option.

 

open to suggestions here 

[binhex]

hi mossiemosforth, there has been a lot of development with unraid in the last 6 months, the big change is that ver 6.x now allows you to run vm's out of the box by using xen open source hypervisor, this beats virtualbox in performance (and complexity as there is nothing to install), and also beats vmware esx, as xen is open source and thus wont be crippled in the future (see esx 5.5!), and more importantly does NOT require intel vt-d to allow you to run vm's (esx requires you to run unraid in a vm and thus NEEDS intel vt-d)

 

so basically in version 6.x your running slackware os 64bit with unraid and xen 4.3 loaded, you can then create vm's which can then interact with your unraid array.

 

the only time you would require intel vt-d support is if you wanted to do something funky, like play games/running xbmc in a windows vm by passing through your gpu, if this isnt of interest to you (which it isnt to most people) then your good to go :-).

 

i hope this helps, any other questions let me know as i have this running live right now 

[dgaschk]

I don't understand the ECC RAM comment. Any system including, unRAID and freeNAS will benefit the same from ECC memory. I don't typically use ECC and my systems are very stable.

[mossiemosforth]

hi mossiemosforth, there has been a lot of development with unraid in the last 6 months, the big change is that ver 6.x now allows you to run vm's out of the box by using xen open source hypervisor, this beats virtualbox in performance (and complexity as there is nothing to install), and also beats vmware esx, as xen is open source and thus wont be crippled in the future (see esx 5.5!), and more importantly does NOT require intel vt-d to allow you to run vm's (esx requires you to run unraid in a vm and thus NEEDS intel vt-d)

 

so basically in version 6.x your running slackware os 64bit with unraid and xen 4.3 loaded, you can then create vm's which can then interact with your unraid array.

 

the only time you would require intel vt-d support is if you wanted to do something funky, like play games/running xbmc in a windows vm by passing through your gpu, if this isnt of interest to you (which it isnt to most people) then your good to go :-).

 

i hope this helps, any other questions let me know as i have this running live right now 

 

ok, now this sounds promising, thanks for this reply.

i'm not after anything 'funky', this looks like it would suit my needs just fine.

 

i understand v6 is still beta, any known issues / timeline on stable varient?

i have downloaded it anyway and it is on usb ready, just need to find time away from the wife to get it done

 

I don't understand the ECC RAM comment. Any system including, unRAID and freeNAS will benefit the same from ECC memory. I don't typically use ECC and my systems are very stable.

 

i don't claim to be a freenas guru, it is just the general consensus you get when reading their forums.

something to do with freenas being ram hungry and very very reliant on it, their have been people who has lost storage pools due to errors in ram.

that then isn't 'rock solid' for me without buying new hardware, hence me being here

 

 

 

speaking of hardware, that was really my initial question really, is the hardware above suitable?

in particular the 10k rpm raptor drive make a good cache? and removal gpu, recommended or not?

 

thanks in advance guys

[SSD]

If you search the forums for P5Q you will find many users that have used it.

 

Your plan seems solid. Take advantage of the free license to at least boot up, take a syslog, and make sure all looks good.

 

The Raptor would make a great cache drive. Only issue is heat. Make sure you have good cooling.

 

VMs tend to push up you RAM needs and DDR2 RAM is pricey and limited compared to DDR3. Consider your RAM needs carefully.

 

Good luck with your project.

[vl1969]

I don't understand the ECC RAM comment. Any system including, unRAID and freeNAS will benefit the same from ECC memory. I don't typically use ECC and my systems are very stable.

 

you right any system will benefit from ECC, BUT FreeNas with ZFS array REQUIRE it.

the reason being ZFS.

 

it has something to do with how ZFS implements it's self healing  and checksum features.

also alot of other things that go on under the hood when you implement ZFS ZPOOLs  happen in RAM so any issues with RAM will affect the file system. hence the must have ECC RAM.

 

BTRFS on the other hand have no such requirements while providing all the benefits found in ZFS.

it will benefit if you have it , but will not have as many(if any) issues compared to ZFS, if you don't

 

 

 

 

[dgaschk]

Don't remove the GPU. Find a cheap PCI card if needed. It's not worth having to open the box, possibly creating further problems, when diagnosing issues with the server. If your 100% sure that the server will never need to be debugged using the console then go ahead and remove it.

[mossiemosforth]

If you search the forums for P5Q you will find many users that have used it.

 

Your plan seems solid. Take advantage of the free license to at least boot up, take a syslog, and make sure all looks good.

 

The Raptor would make a great cache drive. Only issue is heat. Make sure you have good cooling.

 

VMs tend to push up you RAM needs and DDR2 RAM is pricey and limited compared to DDR3. Consider your RAM needs carefully.

 

Good luck with your project.

 

fair one, search facilities have been good  to me so far, should have thought of that, my bad 

 

Yesterday i managed to put a build together using 3 old 500GB drives and some test data, I happy to report that all went well actually. I managed to setup a free test bed, users shares, permissions, streamed movies to my xbmc players and even moved onto VMs (more on that later)

 

I'm happy my hardware works with this and tbh i think it will meet my requirements for some time yet, i shouldnt need more than 1 permanent VM and maybe 1 for testing. Cooling should be fine in the case i have, the 2 drive cages i have are 3x 5.25" cage with 3x 3.5" bays and a 120mm fan on the front of them, take up a lot of room, but run a lot of air past the drives.

 

God knows when i will get the time to move the 4TB drives in and move data over to it, but for now i'm happy on the unraid side of things.

 

Don't remove the GPU. Find a cheap PCI card if needed. It's not worth having to open the box, possibly creating further problems, when diagnosing issues with the server. If your 100% sure that the server will never need to be debugged using the console then go ahead and remove it.

 

after building yesterday i had a feeling this may be said by somebody. i managed to get up in the loft and found the old card i mentioned and it is not as loud as i rememeber. i only asked about this as i due to space the box would be easiest kept in my dining room corner and i figured it may become quite annoying. Thankfully i was wrong and its happily chugging away for the last 24hrs, no winging from the wife during meals, so its staying.

 

 

thanks for all your comments guys, this forum has been greatly helpful so far and i'm sure it will continue to be so as i go along.

on that note i have more questions regarding xen virtualisation, so will create a thread in the relevant section.

 

oh and btw, for those who like lights, here's a couple of pic's of 'Armor'

 

 

[jonp]

nice tower!  i like it

 

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