So today I have 5x 2TB drives unprotected in a PC-Q08 chassi, running an outdated ubuntu version. Awhile ago I bought a N54L to base a new server on, and am finally getting to put it to use.

 

My short term goal is to gain a few TB of free space and protect my data, without too much investments. I plan to plug 3x 4TB WD Red into the N54L, fire up a v6 beta as dom0, and test a bit. Once I gain my bearings, I plan to move data from two disks in my Q08 to the unRAID array and then move the physicals disks as well. Once that is done (should now have 12TB of total space in unRAID), I'll move the rest of the data from the Q08, and then install unRAID on that machine as well.

 

That's a lot of data to be moved... am I on the wrong track?

 

At this point, I should have 6TB of free space and that should have me set for some time. Thinking ahead thou, my options for extending this would include 4TB drives. So first move would probably be to replace a 2TB drive in the N54L with a 4TB one, and re-use that 2TB drive in the Q08. Once the N54L is full, I reckon I will not bother with exchanging the 2TB drives in the Q08, but rather look for the next build.

 

Any advice would be much appreciated; I cannot decide if I'm shooting myself in the foot thinking too short-term here or not.

 

Cheers,

Magnus

well first thing first, isn't the n54l too small for all this hard drives?

if you are building anew, why not get a good case that can support some 10 drives,

at least in theory(with maybe couple of 5in4 cages) and build on that.

what you will get is:

a. a good some what future proof case that can hold roughly 40T of data using all  4T drives. and if you pick right MB/CPU you can save your self a lot of grief but simply running unraid v6 as dom0, take your existing drives and either mount them with SNAP or pass them  to small VM and copy data to array using local vm network which basically will go through your setup not out and back again.

 

not sure what your budget is or long time plans, but that might be a though to ponder.

 

why run 2 servers if you can run one?

and again ,if you pick right MB/CPU you may end-up saving on running costs as well.

 

 

 

 

The N54L have 4 cold-swap spaces and then I'd put another in the 3.5" bay and connect it through the eSATA.

 

You make a good point thou, my first thoughts were to build in a larger case to fit 15 drives. I don't know why I ended up buying the N54L, it may just have been a spending frenzy right before Christmas. I do remember trying to shop for parts at one point, and not finding any good cases or drive bays for a reasonable price that shipped to Barcelona, Spain. May be that I need to look into that option again.

 

I had another think re: this two-server setup over lunch now, and if I go down this road I'll most likely make the investment and get 4x 4TB to start with, so I don't have to be moving 2TB drives around at all. This way I could move all data to the N54L right away and then set up the Q08 as a second noRAID.

 

With a bigger case I guess the immediate investment wouldn't have to be that great anyways, as I would only need two drives to start with (one parity, one data, then gradually move data and add the 2TB drives to the array).

 

I'll have another look at what kind of case I can find here before I move forward I guess. Thanks for making me look outside my (small) box.

u r welcome.

 

do understand though, I was not knocking your n54l plan at all. it is a solid plan over all.

 

but it seams to me that you do plan to expand capacity later, and if that is true,  I have found that a bit more of initial planning go a long way.

case in point, I have been running unraid for the last 2 years in an old full tower case ,I found at garage sale, that is very badly build and I can barely fit all components in (even though it is a FULL TOWER). it simply was not designed for it.

so last year I found a deal on a supermicro refurbished server, the whole server was 480$ including shipping. I jump on it thinking that since it was a server grade hardware I could build a powerful machine with it.  well if I was planning a simple unraid server it would have been very good. but I wanted virtualization. and guess what, the hardware does not support it. regardless of the fact that supemicro website say it should, it does not.

Now the deal does not sound so good, is it?

I have been struggling to make something out of it for the last year.

now I had finally gave up and got a new MB and CPU to use with the case and will be parting out the original CPU and MB and some other parts to sell so I can recover some of the cost. now the case is 24 bay hot swap norco style. and yes the case alone could cost over $300+  but that was not the point of me getting the server.

 

hence my suggestion to think it over couple of time of what your plans might be in a year or two, and see if your planed build will be able to accommodate them.

 

of course if budget is tight or not exiting, and you already have the n54l go with it and see if you can find a deal along the way at later time.

I have plans on doing some virtualization, but nothing that need pass-through and very little resources I would think. I'd probably run a headless xbmc (that was initially planned to run on a spare raspberry pi), some torrent related stuff, a teamspeak server, perhaps a webdev stack for staging.

 

If I went with a new server, I'd probably try to re-use some older components I have laying around. I think I could put together a 1st gen i7 with 8GB RAM. Excluding cables and possibly some fans,  I could put it all together for less than the price of a single WD Red 4TB.

 

1x Chassi Aerocool vs-9 (47 Euro): http://www.amazon.es/Aerocool-Vs-9-Advance-ordenador-placa/dp/B007CVXA52/ref=sr_1_43?ie=UTF8&qid=1401454899&sr=8-43&keywords=aerocool+caja

2x Drive cage, Fantec (56 Euro): http://www.amazon.es/Fantec-SNT-BA3151-1-89-aluminio-ventilador/dp/B000PI49RC/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=16J4FVAN20VHX5XK8HGF

 

159 Euro.

 

WD Red: 154 Euro (http://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B00EHBERSE/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

 

Close! Given, these components are wild cards...

 

I'll have a good think about this over the weekend, see if I can find time to tinker a bit with the various options I have at home already.

well,what you can do is simply find yourself a good case with let say 8 5.25 drives.

this cases usually have one or two 3.5 harddrive holders inside as well.

so you technically can have a 11-12 drive system. using 2 5in4 cages

you can move your current hardware from PC-Q08 case and load unraid to it.

add 2 4T drives, setup array and than using SNAP load all your data to it.

clear the current drives and add them to array if you want , you will need at least a PLUS license to support 8 drives, although if you plan for bigger array get the PRO.

 

this gives you 2 things 1. you get an immediate protected storage of 4T.

and can expand it to 14T(1x4T + 5x2T) quiet fast as you will move your date locally with in the PC. you also get the security of the fact that old data is removed only after it was moved to the array.

drawback is that your data is not available untl it is transfered to new server.

but you can remedy this partially by moving all your current drives into n54l case until you need them for transfer.

 

what do you think?

this way you can reuse your MB/CPU/RAM until you ready to replace them.

and you can hold off on getting any 5in4 cages as well until you find a good deal on them.