September 14, 200916 yr Hi, First of all, no offense, but under what rock have you all been hiding? I was looking for a way to run a BIG media storage server for a looooooong time now. Was encouraging myself to build a raid 6 or some-such server for about a year now, but was always too afraid of it going horribly wrong and loosing all of my data. I've got no experience in all them raid things, so even the idea, that it may happen was too much for me. Well, I have to say, even that haven't saved me it seems, as my one and only experience with raid ended "in tears". Just last month my dedicated server running raid0 went sideways and I lost all of the data on it. Good thing it was easily re-obtainable media files. Anyway, yesterday in some random forum, while reading up on i7 motherboards I found a mention of something called unRaid and the name was just too curious. Imagine my surprise when I googled it. I couldn't believe my eyes, its was so perfect for my needs. I started reading wiki and forums, that was ~36 hours ago and I'm still here Yep, that's right, I said still. I need to sleep now Imagine how mad I got, when I realized that unRaid has been here for years. That seems impossible, as I tend to "run" with people who are very much in this kind of thing. Hence the question, where the hell have you been hiding? I would be running unRaid ages ago... Atm, my "storage solution" consist of 50+ offline hdds in Wiebeech disk cases laying in a drawer, hot-swap backplanes and WhereIsIt software to keep track of them all. I have no backups for the most of it, as that would double my costs in hdds and I have lost a couple of them over the years. Data gone, but only single drives, and in my mind that was better, than loosing terabytes in the case whole raid server goes titsup. And off course there's always been the annoyance of all that data just sitting offline and the nuisance of swapping the drives. Enter the unRaid. Cheap, JOBD with parity - awesome. It took me 5 minutes to realize, me wants that. Though the more I went through the wiki/forums, the more complicated whole solution appeared, mainly the hardware choices (first impression of unRaid was easypeasy). As I mentioned I'm inexperienced in all things raid/cards. Here is my first mock-up of unRaid server (would like to do it as cheap as possible without loosing performance). This server would be used as a media storage server, filled with as many 1,5TB drives as unRaid Pro licence permits: Both options: Parts I need to buy either way. Keys: unRAID Server Pro Registration Key 2-Pack - $149 I'm pretty sure I'll be running more than one of these in the future, so the 2nd key for $30 is an obvious choice Flash: SUPER TALENT Pico_C 4GB Flash Drive (Model STU4GPCS) - $12.99 Me likes it that it's small, so it wont stick out of the case, and wont get accidentally broken. From what I could find out, it's fairly fast. Anyone can confirm that it is compatible (has GUID)? Case: NORCO RPC-4220 4U - $349.99 I gather it has superior airflow to NORCO RPC-4020 4U - $289.99 and SAS support (could anyone, please explain the merits of SAS support?). Cards: 2 x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 (8 x ports) - 2 x $99.99 It's cheap and it's got 8 ports. The concern is bottleneck, having 8 drives (or should I say 16) on PCI. How bad would it be? What about that very nice 8 port PCIe x4 card bjp999 has mentioned in numerous places on the forums, is it already available/compatible? I need 2x8 port cards to connect all the drives. Or is there a better solution? (I can't afford Areca cards) PSU: Ultra X-Finity 600-Watt ATX Dual 80mm Fan SATA-Ready SLI Ready - $0 (bought years ago) Will that one be enough? I could move my ABS Tagan BZ Series BZ1100 1100W from my main rig to the server. I wont be needing numerous drives powered in my main machine, when I'll have unraid up and running. HDDs: now here I need to ask, does the latest unraid version support 16 or 20 drives? What about parity and cache drives, are both of these included in those numbers? Atm I only have 15x1,5TB drives, but will replace all of the rest with these shortly. Depending on the number supported: 15x Seagate Barracuda ST31500341AS 1.5TB the rest: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB Cables: what kind of cables do I need for SAS version of NORCO 4220, and where can I buy them? Fans: XIGMATEK XLF-F1453 140mm - 3 x $12.99 to replicate this custom fan plate Other: have I forgotten something? Option 1: Build completely new C2D/C2Q server. Mobo: Supermicro C2SEE - $113.99 or Supermicro C2SEA - $124.99 (2GB DDR3/1333 memory included with the mobo) Now this was the hardest choice (I've spent hours and hours on this one and still don't feel like I've learned anything I feel I need to choose between those 2, mainly coz C2SEE is official limetech board and the other is same board, with minor enhancements & some DD3 included (btw, would 2GB be enough?). Which way to go? Or maybe theres some other, better mobo solution? C2SEE newegg reviews are terrible, C2SEA slightly better... Memory: no idea, imho $0-$100, though in the case of C2SEA and 2GB being enough, I could save on that (can always buy/upgrade, if need be). The main question is, does unRaid need lots of fast memory? CPU: Once again - no idea. C2D or C2Q? How much of a difference in power saving would 65W have over 95W? In any case, the question probably is, do I need a powerful cpu for this? I've read guys managing to run vmware on unraid, that would be great! Option 2: Make my current rig into unRide server and let myself believe that finally there is reason enough to upgrade to i7. Upgrade to i7 (mobo + CPU + memory) = $654.97 unRide parts I would reuse from my old rig (savings): Mobo: BFG NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz CPU: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ****************LicenceFlashCaseCardsPSUHDDsCables FansOtherMoboCPUMemoryi7***************Final PriceunRaidDesktop Option 1***************$149$12.99$349.99$199.98--? $38.97?$124.99~$160--***************$1036new C2D/C2QQ6600 Option 2***************$149$12.99$349.99$199.98--? $38.97?---$654.97***************$1406Q6600i7 Please, any help/advice/opinions will be very appreciated. A qouple more questions: How much $/month would it cost (approximately) to run that kind of server (20 drives). I'm very much interested in running costs, as I'm sure I'll be running more than one of these shortly, that is, if Con Edison won't bankrupt me. From some forum posts, I gathered that PCI bottleneck is so bad, that having many drives on PCI makes parity checks last DAYS. Does it bottleneck only parity checks or overall performance/network speeds? Is unraid server busy/unavablable while performing parity checks? P.S. Tried to run unraid on my old Gateway GX70220e desktop, just to try it out. I downloaded the trial software and installed it on my Corsair Flash Voyager 16GB (the only 1 I got). I connected 2 sata drives to that desktop: seagate 1,5TB & samsung 500GB (I chose 2 different makes/sizes intentionally). The Gateway was unable to boot into unraid: all I ever got was "Boot error". I tried different usb settings in bios, it didn't help. I don't even know exactly what kind of mobo is in that Gateway, as it is my first and last retail desktop that I've bought, instead of building it myself. I probably was drunk, when I decided to buy that thing Even the motherboard in that f***in Gateway is BAKCWARDS - it wouldn't fit to any normal case, if I wanted to use it in my unraid server. Anyways, Gateway is a seed of evil. Moving on. I got fed up and decided to try it on my main rig. I've unplugged all hdds except Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB and it booted into unRaid from the 1st try. So the flash is OK and my POS Gateway is not playing nice. Will try it again tommorow, need to go thoroughly through wiki and try out all the "fixes" after good nights sleep, methinks. Thought, if anyone (unlikely) has tried GX70220e and could confirm, that mobo is surely incompatible, I wouldn't bother. Thanks in advance. Sorry for my poor english and such a long post.
September 15, 200916 yr CPU - Don't waste money on the Quad core unless you plan to run VMware and multiple VM's. It will just eat electricty for no good reason. unRAID can run on a 2GHZ Celeron. Memory 1GB is enough, 2GB is better, 4GB is the highest you would need depending on how many files you have per disk. More memory more cache. It wont be faster, but it could possibly help prevent disk spinups when navigating (with additional addons). Motherboard - Here's where it can be an issue. The 8 Port sata cards are avaiable for a cost effective price. They are PCI-X (and can also run in PCI). You can either wait for an 8port PCIe card to be available. Get a 4 port PCIe card or use port multipliers or Get a motherboard that supports PCI-X. The board I am looking at has 4 PCI-x slots, 2 PCIe slots, In theory could support 32 or more SATA ports. Right now unRAID supports 15 data drives + parity + cache. The Beta has been updated to support 20 drives, but it's not working correctly yet. This is the board I plan to use for my next unRAID server. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182142 A search on the forum will bring up others who use it also. SAS - Serial Attached SCSI. This is the new SCSI standard, another method of communicating with drives as apposed to SATA - Serial ATA. Many SAS controllers support SATA drives. however, the current linux kernel does not have as good support for this. It could be some time before the SAS controller using SATA drivers makes it's way into mainstream unRAID.
September 16, 200916 yr I had to laugh at your opening comments! Welcome to the community here, you sound like quite a character, should fit in easily! Just to add to the comments above... Although the PCI bus is a real bottleneck for simultaneous I/O access for more than 2 devices (drives, NIC's, etc), you don't normally use it that way. We recommend a parity check once a month, in off-hours. More typically, you will load one disk at a time, and playback only one or 2 streams at a time, so you should not see any significant slowing. If bragging rights were important to you (my parity checks are faster than yours), then yes, you should avoid PCI cards entirely. But they make great economic sense for accessing a lot of drives cheaply, and at full speed, so long as you don't try too much at the same time. As to operational costs, keep in mind that (by default) unRAID spins down all unused drives, which helps to limit your power usage. I tend to think of it as roughly equivalent to one always-on incandescent light bulb. Some users have been exploring the use of very low power systems, but costs seem higher, and expandability (disk controllers and drive count) lower. For now, lower power CPU's and efficient power supplies are recommended.
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