How do I know if the power supply I've chosen will fit the case I have also chosen.

 

case: pc-d8000

power supply: Corsair CX705M

Try PM'ing garycase (if he doesn't respond or no one else knows) I do not know.  If the case accepts ATX power supplies and the power supply is a standard size ATX power supply then it should work - but there is no guarantee since manufacturers have been wrong before.

What case?

What case?

I'm assuming this:

case: pc-d8000

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-d8000/

 

And based on that link I don't see how the power supply wouldn't fit.

Bob, that was my thought, which is why I didn't really give it too much consideration until now (purchase time). Thanks all

Bumping build specs, so it is easier to see for those that want to look or are helping.

 

 

Case: Lian Li PC-D8000 ($351.55)

MB and processor Combo: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7 + Xeon E3-1231V3 ($478 shipped), cheaper to buy in combo, will save $30 at newegg

RAM: 8GB - kvr16e11/8 (got it for $30)

Power Supply: CX750M (Modular, $60), looking for new fully modular supply, didn't realize this was only partially modular

Cabling: Still need sata cables, making own power cables. Got connectors $15.50 and have wire to make them already

Fans: Picked up a lot of 20 fans 120 and 140mm ($47, found a decent deal)

Added top exhaust fan bracket, may just take the existing plate and make this with some modders mesh: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lian-Li-D8000-2-Dual-140mm-Fan-Panel-for-PC-D8000-Black-/111556015757?hash=item19f941b68d

 

 

Final Build price: $982.05 - I'll need to probably get some more sata cables, but I have quite a few already and I don't want to buy any until I get the case and see the lengths etc...

Everything is ordered except the power supply. The place I was going to get it at seems to be down

 

Edit: found it elsewhere for $60 shipped.

I have a couple quick questions that I'm hoping you guys can help out with.

 

1. With the SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7, do I need to change anything in the bios or do anything special for the 14 onboad sata ports to recognize the hard drives?

 

2. My current unraid setup is running on an old Pentium 4 processor circa 2000. I'll be running the Xeon E3-1231V3, do I need to do anything to my unraid USB drive files when switching over? I would imagine the old system is 32 bit and the Xeon is 64. I will upgrade to the new 6.x.x version of unraid once I get the new setup running and working. I am currently on 5.x.x.

 

3. I have some really old arctic silver 5 and cleaning compound. Probably about 15 yrs old, does that stuff expire? Do you recommend using Arctic silver 5 over the compound that intel puts on the processor?

 

 

I'll get some pics up, if you guys are interested.

Don't have a X10SL7 so cannot confirm this:

 

1. The X10SL7 should have 6 traditional MB ports and nothing would need to be done for them to use them.  The other 8 ports are likely hooked up to an LSI controller (think LSI-9211-8i here) but they may have an IR firmware installed and it would need to be flashed to IT mode for unRAID to use them.  I've seen posts from other users that have flashed an LSI controller built into the MB but I don't remember if it was a X10SL7

 

2. You should just be able to plug it in and go as long as the controller in #1 above is in IT mode

 

3.  I just use the pre-installed compound if the heat sink has it applied on it.

Bob, thanks again for the help there. I've got the fans installed in the case and power supply. Am I glad that I found a lot of 20 fans on Ebay. There are a LOT of fans in this case and utilized every 120mm fan that came in the lot and have a handful of the 140mm fans left. If I utilize the fans that can go on the top then I'll only have a few fans left out of the lot. I think a fan controller would be pertinent to an efficiently running system. LOL.

 

I should hopefully get the processor and heatsink on the board then get those installed and start hooking up all the wiring. I'm going to make some custom power sata cables, but for now I'm going to just use the traditional ones to get it going.

Well, I got it up and running today. Server is back online. I am not using the ports from the LSI controller yet, so I didn't have to worry about flashing to IT mode or anything.

 

What kind of a fan controller would you guys recommend. The board I have supports up to 5 fans, which I think I only have 3-4 running right now. It is plenty, but I would like to look at fan controllers so I can get the cooling down as I add more drives. So far, in this case, the temps on the hdds are about 10C less than they were in my previous setup and I only have a couple fans going. They are about 25C now and before they would usually operate around 35C, so I am very pleased with the setup. Yes, the case is a bit on the large side, but it gives PLENTY of room to work and also expand the system. I also like it because it isn't an eyesore either.

Not going to be much help with fan controllers.  I run my fans at full speed because most of my servers are in the basement and I can just close the door to turn off the noise.

 

Hopefully someone else can give you advise on a good fan controller.

I'd mostly like it to simply make the fans not have to run at full speed all the time and that way I can either control a pair of fans or have them individually. Whatever it is though, I'd like to have them controlled automatically by set parameters since there are about 12-16 fans in the actual case (just 4 hooked up now). As you can see, just a few running 95% of the time is all it needs.

 

Bob, are you running esxi?

I currently have 3 ESXi 5.0 servers.  Each has an unRAID VM and an Windows 7 x64 VM where I run SageTV.  I will be converting to unRAID native instead of ESXi eventually but just haven't had time to convert to it.  I have to find time off from work and no scheduled recordings at the same time.

I'm new to Esxi. If you don't mind me asking just a couple questions.

 

From what I understand ESXi runs on top of the hardware and them VMs on top of that (ie: windows, unraid, linux, etc...). Is this correct?

 

If that is correct then is it possible to run unraid natively (again, I'd assume this is the natural boot from USB directly in to unraid) and run a vm  through another method or some other way through esxi. I just don't like the idea of running unraid in that manner (through esxi). Unraid is the main purpose for the server and would like it to be as stable as possible and not be a major PIA to upgrade if need be.

You can't natively boot to two different operating environments on the same hardware.

 

If you boot to ESXi, that hypervisor then controls the computer ... and will manage all of your virtual machines.    It does a VERY good job of this ... indeed, a virtualized UnRAID works just fine and is every bit as stable as a natively booted version.

 

On the other hand, if you natively boot to UnRAID v6, it has its own hypervisor (KVM), and you can run VM's under that.

 

There are advantages/disadvantages to both approaches.    The big advantage I see with the ESXi approach is that you can shut down or reboot UnRAID (e.g. to upgrade) with NO impact on your other virtual machines ... whereas if you're hosting your VM's within UnRAID they all must be shut down before you can shut down or reboot UnRAID.

 

I don't know how "rock solid" the KVM-hosted VM's are, but I do know that ESXi is absolutely rock-solid ... it's used in many corporate environments to host multiple servers virtually and has a superb reputation.  On the other hand, KVM may be somewhat easier to do hardware pass-through for high-end graphics cards (e.g. for gaming) -- I really don't know if that's true or not, but there are several examples in this forum of folks doing just that, and I haven't seen a lot of this kind of activity on the VMware forums (although that's likely just a matter of the focus of the average participant).

 

 

garycase, thank you for chiming in. I was actually reading through some posts that you had in a few other threads and have been making notes on this subject.

 

My largest concern is the stability of unraid and I suppose the ability to upgrade. I usually shy away from upgrade simply because there are many aspects that can change causing unknown results. While 99% of the time there is no issue, I usually stick to the philosophy of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Unless there is a reason to upgrade, I usually don't if everything is working as intended.

 

The VMs that I would install are not really important, but rather there to simply have that OS in case I need to use it for a specific menial task that I find I need to do. Even then, it would likely only be used once it a while and VM would likely be powered down 99% of the time. If something were to happen to a VM I wouldn't really care. If something were to happen to the Unraid install and the array then I would be more than upset. I don't game on PCs, so a graphic intensive situation like that probably isn't too likely unless I found a use for some solidworks or autocad heavy programs. I suppose video editing, but I do that on a laptop anyways.

 

You seem to be much more knowledgeable on the topic and the options that there are. From what I've described, what are your thoughts for the best route to go with the precedence I have put on the Unraid install/functionality?

 

BobPhoenix: Why are you going to move back to native Unraid vs the unraid being run in ESXi?

... BobPhoenix: Why are you going to move back to native Unraid vs the unraid being run in ESXi?

 

I'm also very interested in this question 

 

The ONLY issue I've seen documented with the ESXi implementations of UnRAID is that there WAS an issue with booting from the USB flash drive, which meant you had to boot from a virtual disk partition and simply have the UnRAID flash drive passed through to the VM, so it would be "seen" and the key would be properly recognized.

 

The main implication of that was that, now that v6 has built-in upgrading, the upgrades wouldn't work ... as they'd be applied to the flash drive, and that's not where the system was booting.    My understanding is that there is now a very nice fix for this (I forget the details, but they're outlined in the v6 ESXi threads) and you can now use v6 seamlessly -- upgrades and all.

 

As for stability -- I don't think there's any difference between native UnRAID and UnRAID under ESXi.  Since Bob's actually using it this way, I'm interested in his comments on this.

 

... BobPhoenix: Why are you going to move back to native Unraid vs the unraid being run in ESXi?

Managing the passthru.

Hopefully bob chimes in and lets us know what his thoughts are.

 

What is the likely hood of the VMs having a negative effect somehow on unraid in a ESXi environment vs the KVM that unraid supports? I was reading around a little last night and was seeing that most people were saying KVM was a bit easier/nicer to work with vs ESXi, especially when in a home environment and with someone not too familiar with it.

I think it's purely a matter of the learning curve -- you'll like what you're familiar with the best.

 

e.g. probably the main reason I haven't built a nice ESXi setup is that I have 73 VM's I've created over the last few years in VMware Workstation, and they all work just fine on my main desktop under Workstation.    I believe they're all move seamlessly to an ESXi box, but I just haven't got around to trying it.

 

I too am very interested in Bob's thoughts ... I'm particularly interested in what he does NOT like about ESXi that might be motivating him to move to KVM hosting for his VM's; or what he doesn't like about the virtualized UnRAID under ESXi that's motivating a bare metal boot.

 

Agreed. Cmon bob, let's hear it.

 

As of now I'm leaning toward kvm through unraid simply because it seems to be the most natural way for unraid to run and have a VM. Since I'm not to concerned about the reliability of one of my VMs if I had an issue down the road or I'd I had to wipe one clean when/after updating unraid.

Biggest reason I'm thinking hard about switching is I may be able to drop most of my reasons for having a VM at all.  I have the 3 ESXi servers so that I can have my 3 Windows VMs running SageTV with passed through TV tuners and an unRAID VM on the same box.  Now that SageTV is Open Source and I have access to a Linux version now I may be able to drop the Windows VMs and run SageTV in a docker on unRAID.  I also don't like where VMware is heading with ESXi and having to pay for vCenter to control them.  Yes I know if you setup a VM with the older VM formats it still works like it always did but I don't like the idea of being locked into that older format just to be able to use the free control app.  Also I've been testing out Linux on my laptop.  Control of ESXi works better from Windows then it does from Linux.  With unRAID I don't have that problem it works equally well from a Windows or Linux laptop.

 

 

FYI In order to completely control ESXi server from Linux I have to install the control app on Wine but that only gets me access to setting up the VM.  I have not been able to see the boot screen of a ESXi VM from my Linux laptop.  Not until I also installed VMware workstation for Linux and connect up to the ESXi host from that.  But with VMware workstation you don't get to pass through a PCI device only what workstation supports.  So I have to use both apps to control ESXi servers from a Linux laptop - pain in the ass.  So much so that I now have a Windows VM on my Linux Laptop just so I can run the ESXi control app from there like when the laptop ran Windows.  I'm trying to switch from Windows as much as possible because the activation's of my Windows TechNet serials are being used up and I would only be able to use MSDN to get new ones.  New licenses for me would cost since Windows 10 is likely not a possible FREE upgrade with a TechNet Windows 7 serial.

If you can in fact run Sage essentially native on UnRAID (i.e. in a Docker) that would indeed be nice.

 

One negative -- you then can't do anything that requires an UnRAID reboot (i.e. upgrade; add a disk; etc.) any time that you have recording activity or a viewing session ... something that's not a restriction with ESXi  [Although if you record directly to your UnRAID array that would apply there as well.]

 

If you can in fact run Sage essentially native on UnRAID (i.e. in a Docker) that would indeed be nice.

 

One negative -- you then can't do anything that requires an UnRAID reboot (i.e. upgrade; add a disk; etc.) any time that you have recording activity or a viewing session ... something that's not a restriction with ESXi  [Although if you record directly to your UnRAID array that would apply there as well.]

Actually with ESXi that is only partially true.  I've found I have to reboot if I move/remove drives on my M1015 and SAS expanders.  The only thing I DON'T have to reboot the host for is if I'm just adding a new drive to unRAID.  But even with that I've found the hot added drives can return sync errors and be dropped from the controller if I don't reboot after a time - I.E. before the next parity check. So while ESXi allows upgrading unRAID and adding disks (delayed reboot) it isn't something I'm too concerned with.  At least based on my experience running a Windows VM with unRAID 6 beta 5 using XEN.  But in any case I will not be dropping ESXi all at once.  When I setup a unRAID 6 beta 5 XEN server I ran it until unRAID 6 RC/final came out.  I switched back to ESXi at that time because the VM manager was not built into unRAID then and I just haven't had the recording window on the Windows VM and the time off to do it again.  I have another unRAID server setup that currently doesn't do any recording but that I've been testing out VMs on.  I plan on testing out the Linux version of SageTV on a VM on that box before I switch ANY of the ESXi servers to be unRAID native.

Bob. Would you recommend just using the built in vm manager in unraid then, With the unraid being the most important aspect of the server?