New User.... Best use of old hardware and drives

[bedpan]

Hey Folks,

 

Yet another new user. Been trolling the forums for awhile edumacating myself and trying to make some decisions. I probably have more questions than a single thread can handle. That said I will lay it all out and see where we end up.

 

Currently I am Unraid-less. I have a Drobo FS bay loaded with 2TB's (Hitachi and Seagate) and 7.2TB available. I use this exclusively for movies and shows.

Further I have a "server" running Windows 10 loaded with some 2TB's and a few SSD's all just JBOD's. It is a Asus P6T6 WS Revolution with a i7 980x  with 12GB ram. On this box I am running plex, SABNZBD, Blueiris for a few HD cams around the house, Crashplan, Dropbox, Google Drive and a few other assorted programs.

 

What I want to achieve

- Get rid of the drobo - I don't trust it...

- Consolidate hardware to reduce whats running 24/7

- Play with some new stuff

- 8-10TB of available storage

- Minimize downtime

 

Potential issues

- 2TB's are getting old - most are reporting 40k+ hours of power-on time

- Blueiris will need to run in a VM which adds to complexity (for me)

- Only 8 SATA ports on the P6T6 motherboard (I also have a 9650se-24m8 that I can make use of)

- Not much money if any for new hardware - I will buy what is needed however...

 

 

I have an old Core2 6700 that I have up and running a trial of Unraid. Been playing with simulated drive failures, rebuilding after failures and getting Docker up and running. My game plan is to purchase Unraid and get the Core2 up and running with enough storage to empty out the Drobo. I have a total of 8x2TB drives I can make use of this. Once this is done start getting all the Docker modules up and running Plex, Sab etc. Then it would be time to get a VM up and running with Blueiris.

 

Once its all done I will have a few options, I can leave it running on the Core2 or migrate unraid and all the storage drives to the i7 for more performance with Plex, Blueiris and whatever else I can think about to run on this thing.

 

 

Questions;

1) Is the age/power on time of the 2TB's an issue at 40,000 hours? Should I discount these drives and look a buying some new wheels?

2) If I should replace the 2TB's whats the current sweet spot? I am in Canada in the Toronto area for what its worth.

3) Thoughts on the 9650se-24m8? I cannot find much recent on it.. Might be easier to just grab a cheap 4 port marvel card if I need the port?

 

 

Sorry to make you read it all... Trying to plan this migration to go as smooth as possible. To avoid headaches I was looking at just running Flexraid on the existing box and adding drives to it. In testing I had little success with drive failures and rebuilding from simulated failures. Unraid seemed to be the smoothest option in my testing

 

Cheers folks and I appreciate any insight you can give me!

 

Mike

[tdallen]

I'm not sure if you would be successful in running all that on an old Core2Duo E6700, and even if you got it running I'm not sure you'd be happy with the result. Might be a different story if that is a Core2Quad Q6700, though.  I played around with unRAID on my Core2Duo (E6400) but upgraded to a Core2Quad Q9550 as I was moving to unRAID 6 and dockers.  The Core2Duo would have fine for basic NAS duties but I felt the need for more CPU to run applications.  If I were doing it all over I'd go with a Core i5/7/Xeon, though the Q9550 has been enough for unRAID, Plex (one 1080p stream), Sickbeard, SickRage, Sab, etc.

 

The current sweetspot in the US is 4TB, I use WD Reds in my setup (see sig).  The 6TB drives in my setup are noticeably faster than the 3TB drives due to the higher areal density.

[bedpan]

I suspected that I would end up on the i7 in the end. The only reason I stared with the Core2Duo was it was available for testing. The i7 would make a great gaming machine but it can stay a server if needed.

 

The 4TB's seem to jump up a lot. I have been trying to troll the forum to figure out which model I should concentrate on. I see a 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300 for $110 Canadian. In the end I would rather just use my 2TB's for now and replace start replacing them post Christmas.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

I'm not sure if you would be successful in running all that on an old Core2Duo E6700, and even if you got it running I'm not sure you'd be happy with the result.  I also played around with unRAID on my Core2Duo (E6400) but upgraded to a Core2Quad Q9550 as I was moving to unRAID 6 and dockers.  The Core2Duo would have fine for basic NAS duties but I felt the need for more CPU to run applications.  If I were doing it all over I'd go with a Core i5/7/Xeon, though the Q9550 has been enough for unRAID, Plex (one 1080p stream), Sickbeard, SickRage, Sab, etc.

 

The current sweetspot in the US is 4TB, I use WD Reds in my setup (see sig).  The 6TB drives in my setup are noticeably faster than the 3TB drives due to the higher areal density.

[RobJ]

Some thoughts -

 

* My opinion, drives with 40k hours should still have a few more years on them, unless they're cheap Seagates, but there are a lot of other opinions on this.

 

* For a simple NAS, your hardware is already fine.  Docker usage generally requires more memory, and possibly more CPU power.  Running Plex and other heavy apps (especially if transcoding) will require a better CPU.  The VM though is the one item with highest hardware requirements, so if the VM is required, then I'd build for it, and the rest should not be a problem.

 

* I've less money than others here, so for me the sweet spot is 3TB drives, and the 3TB Toshibas are a great choice.  I too see a significant price jump for 4TB and larger.

 

* If you could afford it, the best migration plan would be to buy new drives, and keep your current Drobo for awhile as an additional backup.

[tdallen]

You might be able to do a simple CPU upgrade to a Core2Quad off eBay, but that's a slippery slope.  I think you could run all those dockers on a C2Q with 8GB, but I would be somewhat worried about running a VM.

 

Here was my path:

• I'll just grab a Core2Quad off eBay for $75!
  
• Oh, I need a new CPU cooler...
  
• Hmm, I think I'd like to run with more memory...
  
• Dang, DDR2 memory for LGA775 systems is more expensive than DDR3, that sucks.
  
• And, I'm going to have to run 4 memory modules while I know 2 would be less load on the motherboard.  Sigh.
  
• And I'm running out of SATA ports on my old LGA775 motherboard, too.  Time for a SATA controller...
  
• And drive cages...
  
• And more fans...
  

 

And in the final analysis I still only have a box with low end Core i3 performance that uses more power than a modern platform would.  I felt good about reusing a bunch of old hardware, but like I said - if I were doing it over again I think I'd just start over.  You probably don't need an i7, though.  If you want to save that for gaming you could just build from scratch with a Core i3/5/Xeon.  I have a Core i7 desktop in addition to my unRAID server.  The server is always on while the Core i7 goes to sleep unless I'm using it.

[bedpan]

Thanks guys....

 

I had always planned on throwing things on the i7. Once I started running things on the C2Q it crossed my mind that it might stay there. Sounds like I will have to migrate sooner rather then later. I am currently using an i5 for gaming. I did ponder moving unRAID to is, then setup the i7 for gaming. It is a tonne of work shuffling all the hardware however..

 

My game plan

[*]Test VM and BlueIris on unRAID Demo

[*]Purchase unRAID

[*]Inventory drives available and setup unRAID with "best" drives I have

[*]Migrate data from drobo - Drobo will be set aside until everything is running fully

[*]Setup SAB, Sonarr, Couchpotato

[*]Migrate to i7(or i5)

[*]Add drives from drobo once stablized

 

Just did some testing with the 9650se-24m8. I am getting really slow speeds building the parity drive (15MBs). Not sure if this is all the card is capable of or if I need to do something to get it up to par.

 

Any recommendations on a affordable 4 port sata card?

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[mr-hexen]

TYour C2D/Q will run unRAID and dockers just fine. I'm running several dockers on a celeron g1840. While it has slightly more performance than your older C2D/Q it easily handles what i throw at it.

 

My suggestion is this.

 

1. Get everything minus the VM setup on the core2 (unraid, shares, dockers, etc.). Keep it simple with 1 data and 1 cache drive (sounds like you can spare some from your drobo if it has 7.2tb free. Get it all functional and keep drobo/win10 as best you can for now.

2. Research transferring your win10 to a win10VM. You might be able to retain the win10 setup as is with all your blue iris settings, etc. Otherwise a clean install is needed.

3. Remove the win10 boot drive from the i7 machine and transfer unraid over to it. It'll boot just fine, it doesnt "install" on hardware like windows does, so it remains portable.

4. Get that win10vm running, should be simple and your blueiris setup should just continue on as is.

5. Add hard drives and begin tranferring data from drobo.

6. Add a GPU and pass it to your win10 Vm. Your motherboard X58 supports vt-d which is the config needed to passthrough a PCI(e) device. Enjoy virtualized gaming.

 

Yes, you read that right. Your single i7 machine can run unRAID, dockers, and a win10vm for blue iris + gaming.

[trurl]

...Just did some testing with the 9650se-24m8. I am getting really slow speeds building the parity drive (15MBs). Not sure if this is all the card is capable of or if I need to do something to get it up to par...

Go to Tools - Diagnostics and post the complete diagnostics zip.

[dikkiedirk]

Current sweetspot regarding price/GB seem 5 TB Hitachi X300. They are fast too.

[dikkiedirk]

I suspected that I would end up on the i7 in the end. The only reason I stared with the Core2Duo was it was available for testing. The i7 would make a great gaming machine but it can stay a server if needed.

 

The 4TB's seem to jump up a lot. I have been trying to troll the forum to figure out which model I should concentrate on. I see a 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300 for $110 Canadian. In the end I would rather just use my 2TB's for now and replace start replacing them post Christmas.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

I'm not sure if you would be successful in running all that on an old Core2Duo E6700, and even if you got it running I'm not sure you'd be happy with the result.  I also played around with unRAID on my Core2Duo (E6400) but upgraded to a Core2Quad Q9550 as I was moving to unRAID 6 and dockers.  The Core2Duo would have fine for basic NAS duties but I felt the need for more CPU to run applications.  If I were doing it all over I'd go with a Core i5/7/Xeon, though the Q9550 has been enough for unRAID, Plex (one 1080p stream), Sickbeard, SickRage, Sab, etc.

 

The current sweetspot in the US is 4TB, I use WD Reds in my setup (see sig).  The 6TB drives in my setup are noticeably faster than the 3TB drives due to the higher areal density.

 

 

Those Toshibas are a god choice. I got a couple of them recently and they are pretty fast.

[mr-hexen]

Just did some testing with the 9650se-24m8. I am getting really slow speeds building the parity drive (15MBs). Not sure if this is all the card is capable of or if I need to do something to get it up to par.

 

Any recommendations on a affordable 4 port sata card?

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

That card should be more than capable. How many drives do you have attached to it? Is it set to AHCI mode?

[bedpan]

I have pulled the 9650se-24m8 out for now. I will re-install it this weekend and grab the log files. The only change I made to it was to set it to JBOD. Not sure on the settings beyond that. I also need to check the firmware version. It has been sitting on a shelf for about 6 years now I think. I did notice that I was getting no SMART data when the drives were attached as well. I did some quick searching and it appears that some command line wizardry maybe required to get it working.... Not it a big rush for this card as I have enough ports on the mobo to get me running comfortably for now.

 

Right now I am still running the demo of unRAID. I have 2 x 2TB drives hooked up (1 data, 1 parity) and 1 500GB SSD as a cache drive.  I need to try and massage my brain into understanding how to make use of the cache for docker and VM's. As far as VM'ing my game machine I will pass ;-) I have watched the video the Linus guy put out. Great idea... And I may take advantage of it for my kids at some point. Right now I am running duel video cards though. Not sure that would virtualize well. Its finicky enough without putting VM's around it.

 

I am going to copy over some media and start setting up SAB, Sonarr and plex....  Once this is going I will probably fire up a VM to see if it will run on the C2Q well enough to get Blueiris going.  I am not going to try and virtualize the current Windows 10 Server as it has a tonne of stuff running on it that does not need to be brought forwards. I will use it as an opportunity to start with a fresh clean slate.

 

I was trying to figure out how to mount a share on the drobo within unRAID so that I can get plex can see the current media share. Not sure its worth the trouble. I will use a sampling of media to get stuff running then migrate it all once I get enough drives hooked up and unRAID purchased.

 

I am still on the fence on drives. I stick to I would rather not buy any right now but I may have to but it seems like for Toshiba seems to have the best price point.....

 

So much learn, so little time!

[mr-hexen]

As a fellow Canadian, i've never seen a 3TB drive as cheap as those Toshiba's. We regularly get hosed on HDD prices up here.

 

I've never heard of someone running SLI in a VM. Might work, but likely a PITA to get going, knowing how finicky it is on a bare metal install (have a 750M SLi setup on my laptop).

 

The SSD cache drive is where your docker image and any VM's you want to setup should go.

 

What you do is create a cache only share called 'appdata' and another called 'vm' then point your docker image to that share like '/mnt/cache/appdata/'

 

Then when you create a docker, it will store the base images in the docker image in that share. Additionally, you create the config folders to that share as well.

 

/config --> /mnt/cache/appdata/plex/

 

Hope that helps.

[bedpan]

I don't get a lot of time to play with this but I made some progress last night..

 

I got Sabnzbd running in Docker. I installed Dropbox as well in Docker. I have Sab's watched folder set to dropbox. So now I can just drop nzb's into dropbox wherever I am and Sab kicks in. The Docker dropbox (gfjardim) has an issue in that you have to auth the dropbox account everytime dropbox or unRAID restart. Bit of a pain as each time you re-auth it adds another computer to the list of authenticated computer in Dropbox. Minor I guess, but I don't like it.

 

Next up will be Sonarr. Hopefully tonight I get it sorted out. I found it to be a little funky for folders even in Windows so hopefully its not to challenging. We will see how it goes.

 

I guess I will have to pull the trigger and buy unRAID soon. I am getting to far down the garden path.

 

Mike

[bedpan]

Well I paid for unRAID last night. To be honest I think the price is a bit steep but hopefully its something I look back on in a few year and think the opposite ;-)

 

I now have a few more 2TB drives in the array. Went through clearing and formatting no problem.

 

I also got Sonarr up and running. I remember struggling with it on windows in understanding how Sonarr is aware that new things have been downloaded. It seemed to go easy enough on on unRAID. The only part I struggled with is that I renamed the download container volume in SAB and not in Sonarr. A few restarts and test to figure it out.

 

Next up is migrating more media... This could take awhile. It seems my drobo has decide to be a slow boat. Its only reading at about 15MB/s for some reason. Always use to be up around 40. Its not spitting any errors or anything. So I will just copy as quickly as I can.

 

Thanks all..

[mr-hexen]

Steep? Which version did you buy?

[bedpan]

I am cheap ;-)

 

Its not terrible. I guess more my issue is paying for something that I am not to sure will be my end game. I wish the trial was more full featured.. Give me 60 days that I can make full use without the disk limitations then cut me.. I guess to many people would take advantage of it. I would love to get everything running first then pay the bills. Just my take.

 

On wards and up wards.

 

Copying Movies over now. Its taking forever.

 

I just installed unMenu.. Having problems with it. Says my arrays are offline. Trying to sort it out now.

 

Mike

 

 

 

Steep? Which version did you buy?

[Squid]

Give me 60 days that I can make full use without the disk limitations then cut me..

Extensions to the 30 days are available if necessary.

I just installed unMenu.. Having problems with it. Says my arrays are offline. Trying to sort it out now.

unMenu isn't compatible with 6.1.x out of the box (most of its features have been incorporated into unRaid's UI).

 

But, it still does have some advantages.

 

If you want to use it, you have to either manually enter in this command, or add it to your go file

 

ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mdcmd /root

[bedpan]

To be honest, I am not sure what I want ;-) Sad as that sounds... I am not a Linux user although I have a little experience over the years of sys and network admining.

 

I was digging for security and user best practices for unraid and found what seems like a current article say that unMenu is pretty much a must. Since I posted that though I found a few more things saying that its not really needed any more.. To late. Now I get to figure out how to get rid of it. Time to figure out some command line ninja stuff ;-)

Edit; It has been removed.. No ninja skills, just a couple commands ;-)

 

So on that front... What are some of the things I should be doing for security and usability? The forums are amazing but with all the wealth of information from old versions its tough to tell what is current and what is new.

 

I have seen some stuff on scripting shutdown. Is this worth looking at? I don't think I would use it much but it would be nice to be able to tap the power button to shut down if I need to

 

Anything from a security standpoint worth looking at? Password is set for root. I need to turn off the share for the flash drive still.

 

I also put on Community Applications. I believe that is suppose to make finding dock apps easier?

 

On the front of Docker... What docker for plex should I be using? Why is there so many and how would I tell the difference between them? Oh and on the plex front I am reading some issues with it causing docker.img to grow if you use transcoding (which I do). Any threads or articles that might walk me through getting plex running without causing myself grief?

 

Ugh.. Sorry so many questions.. I guess the final one. What is recommended for backup of unraid, dockers etc?

 

Many thanks folks..

 

 

 

unMenu isn't compatible with 6.1.x out of the box (most of its features have been incorporated into unRaid's UI).

 

But, it still does have some advantages.

 

If you want to use it, you have to either manually enter in this command, or add it to your go file

 

ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mdcmd /root

[Squid]

I was digging for security and user best practices for unraid and found what seems like a current article say that unMenu is pretty much a must. Since I posted that though I found a few more things saying that its not really needed any more.. To late. Now I get to figure out how to get rid of it. Time to figure out some command line ninja stuff ;-)

If you added the line to the go file to start it up on every boot, then just remove that line and reboot.  If you didn't, then just reboot

The forums are amazing but with all the wealth of information from old versions its tough to tell what is current and what is new.

While this isn't 100% accurate, if the date of the posting isn't from the last half of 2014 or later, then the information is probably outdated, especially with regards to plugins, and docker containers, and the GUI.  That being said, there is a wealth of information in the old postings that may be relevant.

I have seen some stuff on scripting shutdown. Is this worth looking at? I don't think I would use it much but it would be nice to be able to tap the power button to shut down if I need to

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31735.0  Recommended

 

Anything from a security standpoint worth looking at? Password is set for root. I need to turn off the share for the flash drive still.

Why not just set only certain users to have access to the flash drive.  That way you've got access to it if you need it.  Easier than turning off the whole export of it.

 

I also put on Community Applications. I believe that is suppose to make finding dock apps easier?

If it doesn't, then I wasted 6 months of my time

 

On the front of Docker... What docker for plex should I be using? Why is there so many and how would I tell the difference between them? Oh and on the plex front I am reading some issues with it causing docker.img to grow if you use transcoding (which I do). Any threads or articles that might walk me through getting plex running without causing myself grief?

Tons of postings about that.  You can almost flip a coin as to which to use.  Myself, I still am using Needo's (gfjardim's).  Maybe I'm just too lazy to switch.  But you'll be good with linuxserver or binhex.  Here's a decent comparison.  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=41562.0

What is recommended for backup of unraid, dockers etc?

Personally, I don't both, as my usage for them can be easily rebuilt as all they are doing is looking at metadata that's already stored on the array anyways.  (Once again lazy).  But there are a couple of scripts out there.

 

[bedpan]

Awesome info Squid! Many thanks!

 

unMenu has been removed without much hassle..

 

Finding relevant info is getting easier but still pretty easy to get led astray. That will get better with learning

 

I will add in the Powerdown package when time allows..

 

I will leave flash access on for now. Once I get a little more comfortable and have setup locked down then I can worry a bit more about trying to secure. Adding user level restriction sounds like a good start.

 

Almost everything I have done so far has been through reading the forum and hacking around. Community Applications I put on at a suggestion of a friend. Its been there since I started so I am not sure what its like without it. Anything that makes it easier I am on board with though :-) Many thanks!

 

I installed the Linuxserver version of plex and its indexing my media as we speak. Poor little C2Q is pretty taxed right now with a few dockering hitting hard while I copy media to the drives. Thanks for the website on this. It is a great break down of the (minor) difference.

 

As far as backup goes its really just the dockers that I would like to script and backup. I looks like its just the appdata folder that I will need to copy, I will just need to find a way to script it.

 

 

 

I guess my final question right now to everyone is.. What are you must do's for unRaid. Beyond the media related Dockers, what are the Dockers, and plugins you consider to be needed?

 

Thanks again to everyone for all the help... Still a ways to go but I try and make a little progress each day. Really Crashplan and Blueiris are my remaining big items left right now along with a hardware migration to a decent case. Oh and copying several TB of data. Photo attached of my current setup... This will need to change sooner rather then later!

 

Personally, I don't both, as my usage for them can be easily rebuilt as all they are doing is looking at metadata that's already stored on the array anyways.  (Once again lazy).  But there are a couple of scripts out there.

 

[Leifgg]

Thanks again to everyone for all the help... Still a ways to go but I try and make a little progress each day. Really Crashplan and Blueiris are my remaining big items left right now along with a hardware migration to a decent case.

If you you need some help with CrashPlan there is a guide in my signature.

[Squid]

Photo attached of my current setup... This will need to change sooner rather then later!

Looks Awesome!  I wouldn't change it just yet...  I hit 17 drives in my first baby before I got around to buying a case

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23796.msg209556#msg209556

[JonathanM]

Photo attached of my current setup... This will need to change sooner rather then later!

Looks Awesome!  I wouldn't change it just yet...  I hit 17 drives in my first baby before I got around to buying a case

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23796.msg209556#msg209556

Heh. Obviously no small children or pets allowed.

[bedpan]

Awesome.. Love your thread.. I was originally looking at some form of wooden rack for the drives when I spotted a couple old cases with removable HD bays. That with an old 240mm fan standing behind it and I was set. As far as final install I have a couple cases here that will suffice. Just a matter of which one I gut to put it in.

 

It really boils down to which CPU I am going to keep for my gaming machine, then the unRaid will inherit the left overs.. Going to get everything running stable first, then I will screw it all up and change motherboards and put it all in a case!

 

Photo attached of my current setup... This will need to change sooner rather then later!

Looks Awesome!  I wouldn't change it just yet...  I hit 17 drives in my first baby before I got around to buying a case

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23796.msg209556#msg209556