EDIT: I picked out a build and am curious on opinions. You can see everything on newegg with ID=27644486 (I have only picked out the bare parts as the rest is just more of what I have (more 2TB Reds).

 

I am redesigning my network and am looking for advice on building an unRaid NAS that will house all of my data. I am seeking opinions and advice on configurations and concepts so I make the best of my design. I am also aiming for efficiency in the form of not having to put so many computers on my rack if I don't need to to not only save money, but noise levels and energy. As far as data goes it'd mostly be a large collection of pictures and games along with backups of images for clients and my virtual server I'll build later. I am not going to put much redundancy into the virtual server since I'll have this main NAS.

 

Budget: $1,000-$1,200 before drives

Reliability: Very important. It'll house all of my data and run 24/7. I am going to stick to quality drives.

Expandability: Also important. I want to eventually fill every bay up in the chassis.

Drives: All reds for storage and purple for the cameras. Possibly and SSD for docker/cache (more detail later). I'd like to initially start at 2TB for the storage drives and a 4TB parity.

Spare Parts: Not using any spare parts. I'll try to keep as much as I can new though used raid cards on ebay is fine.

Raid Card: I keep seeing the M1015 popup on here. If it only has two 8087 ports wouldn't I need 3 for a norco 4224 case for all 24 drives?

Noise Level: Since the server room is next to my bedroom (old house with low basement ceiling) noise level must be kept very low.

Environment: This room will range from 60F to 100F throughout the year. When summer comes around I'll try to block some of the sun from coming in through the four windows.

Plugins: Without having had experience with unRaid yet I'd like to use the following plugins: UnMENU, Control Panel, UnRAID-Web, UnTorrent, SmartHistory, SNAP (possibly), Plex, SABnzbd SickBeard and CouchPotato (possibly)

UPS Software: When I do buy a UPS I'd preferably like to be able to use the company's software to send a shutdown signal to the server. If I am gone I want to avoid hard shutdowns. This isn't  a super high priority though would be a very nice feature if it can be done with relative ease.

 

I want to put all of the plugins on a docker and use a cache drive. I'd also like to preferably turn off spindown on two of my drives for the possibility of two purples for recording from the future of IP cameras. Also if I am running UnRaid from a flash drive what happens when that breaks? I assume just have a backup and remake the flash drive?

 

Parts picked out so far:

Chassis: Norco RPC-4224 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219038&cm_re=rpc-4224-_-11-219-038-_-Product

 

The rest of the parts have not been finalized yet. Since this is going to manage all of my data I am going to go with server parts including ECC RAM. Due to the number of plugins I'd like to run I am unsure if 8GB would be enough instead of 2GB for example. I also don't know how big a cache/docker drive should be for my needs. I know the parity will probably be 4TB minimum for future growth. I also don't know if my OS drive should be a flash drive or an actual drive inside the case.

 

As a last note if anyone has advice on this idea compared to multiple smaller servers please let me know. I am willing to run several if needed though obviously that'll increase noise levels and cost more. I am also uploading the current iteration of my network plans for additional info. I am expecting to have 1Gb/100mb fiber at my house in the next few months from a growing ISP which is why I'd like to possibly offload my website to my own network as I'l have a static IP by then.

Since you mention expandability,  an option I use in servers for scratch disks is using:

http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Mobile-Racks/25in-SATA-Removable-Hard-Drive-Bay-for-PC-Expansion-Slot~S25SLOTR

 

And connect it to the motherboard's SATA ports and enable hotswap on those ports in the bios.  That may be worth doing for your docker/cache drive(s).

 

Keep in mind many motherboards do not allow non-video cards in some slots (typically the first physical 16x slot), there's information on this forum.  SAS Expanders/multipliers are a way around that but introduce another point of failure/cost.  Often people choose a motherboard that has 8 ports onboard (or 4x from a pci slot), use reverse sata-sas cables to connect them to two backplane ports, then the other 4 are connected to two cards to allow all 24 bays to be connected.  There's lots of ways to do it though, each with caveats (price being one of them).

 

Noise wise, I do like the 120mm fan bracket for that case.

 

What you're going for looks similar to what I've been using, although I am using Supermicro OEM cards (same chipset I believe, may be bit cheaper, I haven't had issues but I haven't read up on them recently so I'ld trust someone else's more recent claims over mine) and I chose Ubiquiti Unifi 720p cameras.

 

For the flash drive you can copy the files off to restore it later if it breaks, and Lime Tech has a policy they put in the announcements section recently I believe.  If it's a decent one, wear and tear will be minimal as it shouldn't be regularly writing to it.  Use an internal USB port or a nano/flush USB drive to reduce the chance of it get broken off if knocked around.

 

Spindown is configurable, shouldn't be an issue.

Since you mention expandability,  an option I use in servers for scratch disks is using:

http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Mobile-Racks/25in-SATA-Removable-Hard-Drive-Bay-for-PC-Expansion-Slot~S25SLOTR

 

And connect it to the motherboard's SATA ports and enable hotswap on those ports in the bios.  That may be worth doing for your docker/cache drive(s).

 

Keep in mind many motherboards do not allow non-video cards in some slots (typically the first physical 16x slot), there's information on this forum.  SAS Expanders/multipliers are a way around that but introduce another point of failure/cost.  Often people choose a motherboard that has 8 ports onboard (or 4x from a pci slot), use reverse sata-sas cables to connect them to two backplane ports, then the other 4 are connected to two cards to allow all 24 bays to be connected.  There's lots of ways to do it though, each with caveats (price being one of them).

 

Noise wise, I do like the 120mm fan bracket for that case.

 

What you're going for looks similar to what I've been using, although I am using Supermicro OEM cards (same chipset I believe, may be bit cheaper, I haven't had issues but I haven't read up on them recently so I'ld trust someone else's more recent claims over mine) and I chose Ubiquiti Unifi 720p cameras.

 

For the flash drive you can copy the files off to restore it later if it breaks, and Lime Tech has a policy they put in the announcements section recently I believe.  If it's a decent one, wear and tear will be minimal as it shouldn't be regularly writing to it.  Use an internal USB port or a nano/flush USB drive to reduce the chance of it get broken off if knocked around.

 

Spindown is configurable, shouldn't be an issue.

 

EDIT: I picked out a build and am curious on opinions. You can see everything on newegg with ID=27644486 (I have only picked out the bare parts as the rest is just more of what I have (more 2TB Reds).

 

• So it really won't be and issue using both raid cards + onboard?
  
• Definitely love the hotswap idea for inside the case. Once I put this chassis in it's going on a sliding shelf and not being moved ever. I'm weak and can't lift much.
  
• Do you have a video I could look at for those cameras? Also you can send this in a pm if you want, though what kind of setup do you have for it? I'd love to combine my NAS and cameras into one so everything goes to a central place.
  
• If I fill all 24 bays up + more with your item how does unRaid handle that? I thought I could only have one parity for everything and 24 max drives including parity?
  
• I also had an idea of buying another similar 24 bay case for future expansion and using external SCSI cables to connect to that case's hard drives instead of running another unraid and cloning. What's your opinion on this in terms of simplicity and reliability?
  

 

• For such a central server what is your opinion on motherboard chipset/ram? I was thinking something with a  C222 chipset from supermicro and 8GB ECC ram (since we're dealing with my data without using ZFS ECC should help a little).
  
• In terms of speed do you think this will be fine if I put two purple drives in for cameras? I just need a simple raid1-like setup so if one drive dies the other is fine and I replace the purple. It's not like I will have ultra critical video files.
  
• What cpu are you using? I don't know what'd be overkill or not with those plugins+the storage though I also want to get something low in wattage. I also am curious in your opinion on a docker size and if you'd go ssd or hdd
  

 

That should be it for now. The rest are software questions. And to everyone else reading I am stil very curious if going such a central route is wise vs many smaller storage servers or another way to backup to other places. If that server ever goes down I want to make sure my data is safe. I'm talking in cases of a cpu problem or ram being replaced and the server shutting down on its own vs an hdd failing.

Don't use SSD for cache.  SSD is faster, but I doubt iops (the metric we use to calculate how many reads and writes a drive can handle per second) will be your bottleneck.  I can stream 1080p to 3 TVs at a time in my house on spinning disk, and only the most recent content will be oin cache anyway.  SSD doesn't hold up well with write intensive workloads unless you use commercial grade, and those are very pricey.

 

If anything, put a higher capacity 10k rpm drive as cache (of course it depends on how much you think you are going to download before the process runs that moves the data out of cache).....

 

Stick with USB flash for the operating system and make sure that you direct anything that gets writes (plex dB for example) to hard disk.

Don't use SSD for cache.  SSD is faster, but I doubt iops (the metric we use to calculate how many reads and writes a drive can handle per second) will be your bottleneck.  I can stream 1080p to 3 TVs at a time in my house on spinning disk, and only the most recent content will be on SSD anyway.  SSD doesn't hold up well with write intensive workloads unless you use commercial grade, and those are very pricey.

 

If anything, put a higher capacity 10k rpm drive as cache (of course it depends on how much you think you are going to download before the process runs that moves the data out of cache).....

 

I ended up going with a 2TB red as I couldn't possibly see myself writing over 2TB in a day. The SSD was also cheap and will be used for docker (Samsung 850 120GB EVO). So far I only put about $1600'ish into it before I slowly work on buying 4TB reds over time. Once my build's done I plan to put a build up on this forum.

 

EDIT: Typing while tired leads to weird grammar

Don't use SSD for cache.  SSD is faster, but I doubt iops (the metric we use to calculate how many reads and writes a drive can handle per second) will be your bottleneck.  I can stream 1080p to 3 TVs at a time in my house on spinning disk, and only the most recent content will be oin cache anyway.  SSD doesn't hold up well with write intensive workloads unless you use commercial grade, and those are very pricey.

 

If anything, put a higher capacity 10k rpm drive as cache (of course it depends on how much you think you are going to download before the process runs that moves the data out of cache).....

 

I suggest you catch up to reality and check out TechReports torture test of consumer grade SSDs. They all survived far beyond what any unraid and enterprise user will put them through.

Thanks brit, but I think I'll trust what I see on a day to day to day basis in the wild.  Im a storage specialist, and see consumer grade (and mlc) ssd's fail on a regular basis in even moderately write heavy workloads.

 

Do what you will....but I wouldn't do it, unless of course you NEED the extra io