First time server build -- opinions wanted

[CasanovaFly]

I'd use a Seasonic X series or a Corsair HX or AX power supply => 750w with a single 12v rail is plenty.

 

These would be good choices:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151120

 

Awesome again. I'll probably go with the Corsair, because it's cheaper and I've had success with them in the past.

 

Might have hit a snag in my grand plans, however: if I recall, my old 790i mobo had issues booting from USB. Could be problematic. Trying to find a solution.

[garycase]

Certainly simple enough to test -- just create an UnRAID USB flash drive and see if it will boot.    You don't need ANY disks to assign to it (you can even boot it safely if the system's currently running another OS -- just don't assign any drives to it).

 

 

[CasanovaFly]

Certainly simple enough to test -- just create an UnRAID USB flash drive and see if it will boot.    You don't need ANY disks to assign to it (you can even boot it safely if the system's currently running another OS -- just don't assign any drives to it).

 

Unfortunately, I've got no (easy) way of cooking up a build with the 790i right now. Not interested in disassembling the right I currently have to test. I'm going to see if the internet can provide any answers before I have to do anything drastic.

[mr-hexen]

You don't need to disassemble anything. Just set up a USB drive and try. Just make sure you DO NOT assign any drives.

[CasanovaFly]

You don't need to disassemble anything. Just set up a USB drive and try. Just make sure you DO NOT assign any drives.

 

I do need to disassemble to hook up the motherboard to test it. Actually, I have a spare PSU kicking around... that might suffice. I was thinking I only had the PSU in my computer available to me (that's in use) and I didn't want to go to the hassle.

[garycase]

Since the motherboard's not currently in use, it does take a bit of fiddling to test it.    I presume you know all you need is a power supply, motherboard/CPU, one memory module, and a video card.    Just connect a keyboard and monitor and try the boot -- that's all you need to do.

 

FWIW I think it's VERY unlikely that there's any problem booting to a USB device with that board.

 

[dirknina]

on my test system im using a 680i evga motherboard  older than 790i mb you need to boot into bios and change the boot order to usb first boot disable any hdd boots and it should work i dont know your brand of board so it might show diffrently than mine i will post a screen of my bois in a bit need to find my cam.

 

[Traxxus]

Oh I also wanted to add something else about the cache drive that I forgot I setup, since you seemed a little worried about the redundancy portion.

 

You can enable or disable the cache drive for any share independently. So for Movies, TV, Music, cache is enabled. For Backups, Photographs, Videos, etc things that I desire to be protected, I just create a separate share and disable the cache drive for it, and it will copy directly to the array bypassing the cache drive. 

[CasanovaFly]

Since the motherboard's not currently in use, it does take a bit of fiddling to test it.    I presume you know all you need is a power supply, motherboard/CPU, one memory module, and a video card.    Just connect a keyboard and monitor and try the boot -- that's all you need to do.

 

FWIW I think it's VERY unlikely that there's any problem booting to a USB device with that board.

 

Your presumptions are correct. It's just a pain to get all the stuff out. I do seem to recall having issues, for whatever reason. But I suppose I'll have to get it all out and check regardless.

 

on my test system im using a 680i evga motherboard  older than 790i mb you need to boot into bios and change the boot order to usb first boot disable any hdd boots and it should work i dont know your brand of board so it might show diffrently than mine i will post a screen of my bois in a bit need to find my cam.

 

I've got an EVGA as well, so that's good to know. Thanks!

 

Oh I also wanted to add something else about the cache drive that I forgot I setup, since you seemed a little worried about the redundancy portion.

 

You can enable or disable the cache drive for any share independently. So for Movies, TV, Music, cache is enabled. For Backups, Photographs, Videos, etc things that I desire to be protected, I just create a separate share and disable the cache drive for it, and it will copy directly to the array bypassing the cache drive. 

 

Noted. I'm going to go without the cache drive for now, just to save money. We'll see how things perform, and then see what to do going forward.

[dikkiedirk]

Too bad Supermicro isn't offering a X10SAT with IPMI. It would make a great server board. IPMI is so nice.

[garycase]

IPMI is indeed a "way cool" feature -- lets your server be completely headless without any loss of management functionality.    On the other hand, for a home user, it's not all that big a deal to hook up a display & keyboard when needed.    I simply run a cable from the server to another display that's normally used with a different system, and have a VGA switch to switch to the UnRAID server's display when needed.    Just plug in a USB keyboard (with a 15' cord so it can be next to the display) and it's just as if the keyboard/monitor were always there.

 

I agree, however, that having all-IPMI systems would be a neat capability.    It's just not a "deal killer" for me when buying a motherboard.

 

[CasanovaFly]

Hey all,

 

Just checking in with an update. I just got back from my trip to the US with a couple goodies in tow: HX850, 8GB of Crucial ECC RAM, 3x WD Red 4TB, and an APC Back-UPS 550VA. I'm just waiting on the flash drive I ordered to get unRAID and then go. Something occurred to me, though, that may throw another (small) wrench in the plans:

 

My 790i only has 6 SATA ports. Wouldn't be an issue, except I've got 7 HDDs I wanted to start my server with initially.

 

There are a couple things I can do to solve this. I can ignore it, and go with 6 HDDs until it becomes absolutely necessary to switch. I can just bite the bullet and buy the X10SAT right now, along with a G3258 (about $430 for me). The X10SAT has 8 SATA ports, so that would do me for a little while longer than the 790i's six. My third option is to buy an AOC-SAS2LP-MV8, and the necessary SAS reverse breakout cable (is this the right one?), and toss it in the 790i. My case can fit 9 HDDs, so that will give me 10 available SATA lanes, and will cost only about $200.

 

I would like to go with the cheapest option, but I'm unsure about the SAS2LP working on the 790i. Anybody able to confirm or deny that? Or point me to where I may be able to find out?

[garycase]

The SAS2LP should work with no problem in your 790i, as long as one of the x16 slots is free.

 

Any of the choices you noted would be fine -- there's no particular advantage to using more drives at this point unless you need them to get the amount of storage you need.

 

[Traxxus]

I don't think that's the right cable, unless your case uses backplanes. If you are connecting to SATA such as HDDs directly or a cage with SATA ports, then you want something like this, SAS->SATA. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406&p_id=8186&seq=1&format=2

[CasanovaFly]

The SAS2LP should work with no problem in your 790i, as long as one of the x16 slots is free.

 

Any of the choices you noted would be fine -- there's no particular advantage to using more drives at this point unless you need them to get the amount of storage you need.

 

Thanks garycase!

 

I don't think that's the right cable, unless your case uses backplanes. If you are connecting to SATA such as HDDs directly or a cage with SATA ports, then you want something like this, SAS->SATA. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406&p_id=8186&seq=1&format=2

 

Can anyone confirm that? I think I see now why it's incorrect. Then again what's the difference?

 

I'll be going straight to the HDDs, but I don't understand what the difference is. Would this one suffice? Or this one?

[jakea333]

The difference is forward vs reverse breakout cables. The forward cables connect a controller on the SFF-8087 end to hard drives on the Sata end. The reverse cables connect 4 sata ports on a controller to a backplane (like the ones used with the Norco cases) on the SFF-8087 end.

[CasanovaFly]

The difference is forward vs reverse breakout cables. The forward cables connect a controller on the SFF-8087 end to hard drives on the Sata end. The reverse cables connect 4 sata ports on a controller to a backplane (like the ones used with the Norco cases) on the SFF-8087 end.

 

Gotcha. But they still look like the same cables to me. Can anybody comment on the viability of the two cables I linked in my last post?

[Traxxus]

Both those are what you want.

[CasanovaFly]

Excellent. Thanks for the help Traxxus!

[CasanovaFly]

Just dropping a little update on my progress so far:

 

- still waiting on the flash drive to arrive (should be here Monday)

 

- solved the issue with the 790i only having 6 SATA ports: picked up a Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8, which will let me saturate my case and keep me from needing to upgrade for quite some time

 

- picked up three Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3 Bay Converters for my Antec 900. These take up three 5.25" drive bays and let me keep four 3.5" HDDs. They also hold a fan. This allows me to fit twelve 3.5" HDDs in my Antec 900 (instead of the original nine), and also allows me to get rid of the block and space-consuming drive bays that came standard with the 900. Should give me a lot of headroom with this case.

 

- currently waiting on the CM bays and the flash drive before I can get a Basic unRAID rig together. Then I have to wait for the SAS card to get here before I can fill in the rest of my drives and upgrade to Pro.

 

THOUGHTS ON A CACHE DRIVE: since I've got ample room now, I was toying with the idea of using a leftover hard drive as a cache. I've got a 150GB Raptor drive kicking around; would this be acceptable in the interim? I was going to go with no cache until I happened upon a dirt cheap 250GB+ SSD (if at all), but just seeing if this would be any good for now.

 

CONNECTING THE SERVER: what's the best way to go about this? I want it networked, obviously, but I also want it connected to my main rig as optimally as possible. My main rig's motherboard -- ASRock Z68 Professional Gen3 -- has dual gigabit ethernet ports. Can I use the second port to connect the server? Consequently, the 790i also has dual gigabit ports. What would be the best way to go about this? Connect both the server and the main to the router via port #1, and connect each together via port #2? Would that work, or be redundant and pointless? What about connecting the server port #1 to main port #2, with the main being the only thing connected to the router?

 

The only device that will consistently being adding files to the server will be the main rig. Everything else will just be accessing content on the server (mostly video files).

[bkasten]

THOUGHTS ON A CACHE DRIVE: since I've got ample room now, I was toying with the idea of using a leftover hard drive as a cache. I've got a 150GB Raptor drive kicking around; would this be acceptable in the interim? I was going to go with no cache until I happened upon a dirt cheap 250GB+ SSD (if at all), but just seeing if this would be any good for now.

 

Like everything else with the unRAID system, it depends on your usage.

 

When I first installed unRAID, I had a massive amount of data to move. It took months to get it all on, Really.

 

But once I got the data all on, my needs for a cache dropped dramatically.

 

I have since really settled down (after 4+ years) to the point where I have a 60GB SSD on each server. This is usually way more than enough to service my daily needs. The few times that I have actually filled 60 GB's in a day, I just kick off the move in the day, and let it all empty out, and then continue. You can actually start moving while it is transferring to the unRAID.

 

This has happened two times so far in 9 months.

 

It also depends on what you have lying around. I just replaced an aging laptop HDD with an SSD, to try and keep the older laptop viable. I am considering that when I recombine my two unRAIDS into one, using that laptop drive as a single cache drive for the unRAID. I like to milk every dollar's worth out of all the equipment I buy.

 

I figure that the 250GB/5400 RPM drive will service my cache needs for a long time. It should still be faster then my gigabit network. If I had a 150GB Raptor lying around, I would sure use it before making another purchase. Not because it's a raptor, but because it is too small (for me) to use as an HDD/Boot Drive/unRAID Storage/etc for any PC's that I have.

 

This is all a matter of personal taste and views. Your needs/wants may not be the same as anyone else's.

 

Bruce

[CasanovaFly]

Like everything else with the unRAID system, it depends on your usage.

 

When I first installed unRAID, I had a massive amount of data to move. It took months to get it all on, Really.

 

But once I got the data all on, my needs for a cache dropped dramatically.

 

I have since really settled down (after 4+ years) to the point where I have a 60GB SSD on each server. This is usually way more than enough to service my daily needs. The few times that I have actually filled 60 GB's in a day, I just kick off the move in the day, and let it all empty out, and then continue. You can actually start moving while it is transferring to the unRAID.

 

This has happened two times so far in 9 months.

 

It also depends on what you have lying around. I just replaced an aging laptop HDD with an SSD, to try and keep the older laptop viable. I am considering that when I recombine my two unRAIDS into one, using that laptop drive as a single cache drive for the unRAID. I like to milk every dollar's worth out of all the equipment I buy.

 

I figure that the 250GB/5400 RPM drive will service my cache needs for a long time. It should still be faster then my gigabit network. If I had a 150GB Raptor lying around, I would sure use it before making another purchase. Not because it's a raptor, but because it is too small (for me) to use as an HDD/Boot Drive/unRAID Storage/etc for any PC's that I have.

 

This is all a matter of personal taste and views. Your needs/wants may not be the same as anyone else's.

 

Bruce

 

My needs/wants are the same as yours: extracting every bit of value from the hardware I spent my money on. I've also got a few 60GB SSDs lying around as well. I was thinking of using the Raptor because it's a good blend of speed and capacity, and something I already own.

 

Like you, after my migration I won't be doing too much transferring day-to-day. I've got about 10-11TB of data to move over, but after that it will, like you, almost certainly be under 60GB a day.

 

What do you mean by "kick off the move in the day"? Just stop the transfer at 60GB and let the cache flush?

[bkasten]

My needs/wants are the same as yours: extracting every bit of value from the hardware I spent my money on. I've also got a few 60GB SSDs lying around as well. I was thinking of using the Raptor because it's a good blend of speed and capacity, and something I already own.

 

Like you, after my migration I won't be doing too much transferring day-to-day. I've got about 10-11TB of data to move over, but after that it will, like you, almost certainly be under 60GB a day.

 

What do you mean by "kick off the move in the day"? Just stop the transfer at 60GB and let the cache flush?

 

In version 5.06, under "Settings/Share settings", the last option under the "Mover Settings" is a beautiful button. It is labeled "Move Now" with the text 'Click to invoke the Mover".

 

This will kick off the move immediately. 

 

Nice little trick I use when I need to. Not very often, but nice to have.

 

-----------

 

You may find that most days, creating more than 150 GB a day of transferred material may be challenging. I think my top day was 500 GB, and I was working it! Now I was converting DVD's, and not already digital material. I had shelves of DVD's all over my house, way too much to be practical.

 

Most of that is gone.

 

There are many options available to you with unRAID. You may wish to use a larger drive for cache, say a 2TB drive, or even a 1 TB drive. Once you have the lion's share moved, convert the 2TB or 1TB drive to a data drive, and place the 150 Raptor as your cache drive. Or you may fine that most days, the Raptor is enough, with a couple of manually started moves.

 

I guess the point I am trying to make is you are not married to any drive for cache. You can start with one, and change it to another at any time you want. Or, you can "make do" with a smaller drive, and a number of manual moves throughout the day.

 

You may want to start moving your stored data with out parity being active. There is a bit of risk with this option, but some like it. Using this strategy, you will have very fast access to all you data drives. The down-side is that the new data will not be parity protected. At least not until you activate parity, and get through the first build/check. Not for me, but it may be an option for you.

 

Bruce

[garycase]

Since you already have the Raptor, I'd simply install that as your cache drive.    There's no advantage to using an SSD, and since it's a larger drive, I'd just use it.    Note that ANY drive that can sustain writes at speeds > your network connection will provide the max performance you can get -- and the Raptor is clearly in that category.

 

As for the alternative of copying your data without a parity drive -- I wouldn't.  The whole idea of building a fault-tolerant server is that it's fault tolerant      Copying all your data without parity means none of it is fault tolerant until you add parity.    While you should, of course, have backups of all the data anyway, I still don't think it's a good idea to not have your array fault tolerant while you're loading it.

 

Personally, I don't use a cache for that exact reason -- I want everything I've written to my array to be fault tolerant when it's written ... not hours later when it's "moved" to the array from the cache.

 

Copying 10-11 TB of data to the array, even without a cache drive, isn't really that bad.  A typical write speed is ~ 35MB/s ... which means ~ 8-9 hours/TB.    So 10TB would take about 90 hours -- a bit less than 4 days.    That's all just "PC time" -- not "your time" -- except for starting the copies.  How many different copies you'd have to start depends on how your data is organized -- you don't want to start multiple copies at once (this will be less efficient due to the disk thrashing it can cause).    But even if there's a lot of wasted time due to a copy being finished and you haven't started the next one, it still shouldn't take much more than a week or so to load the array.    When I first set up my backup server, I simply invoked ONE copy to copy all of my media (~ 25TB) from my main media server ... and about 9 days later it was done, with ZERO interaction from me.

 

 

[CasanovaFly]

Thanks for the advice you two.

 

Can anyone comment on the other question I asked:

 

CONNECTING THE SERVER: what's the best way to go about this? I want it networked, obviously, but I also want it connected to my main rig as optimally as possible. My main rig's motherboard -- ASRock Z68 Professional Gen3 -- has dual gigabit ethernet ports. Can I use the second port to connect the server? Consequently, the 790i also has dual gigabit ports. What would be the best way to go about this? Connect both the server and the main to the router via port #1, and connect each together via port #2? Would that work, or be redundant and pointless? What about connecting the server port #1 to main port #2, with the main being the only thing connected to the router?

 

The only device that will consistently being adding files to the server will be the main rig. Everything else will just be accessing content on the server (mostly video files).