Hi Guys,

 

I recently decided I'll be going with Unraid for my new NAS build. However, i'm trying to keep my budget on hardware as low as possible while still being able to use ECC Ram and server-grade components, so I'm leaning towards buying a refurbished server instead of building my own, as much as I would like to.

 

I've pretty much narrowed down my search to a refurbished Dell Poweredge R410, which range on Ebay anywhere from $150-$300 depending on configuration.

 

I'm planning on using this NAS for media streaming/transcoding (Plex) to maybe 5 concurrent streams max, streaming either 720/1080p to mainly desktop/laptop clients.

In addition, probably OwnCloud and a few small VM's but the main resource user I see becoming a problem is Plex.

 

Because of this, I've decided I'd like something with dual quad core CPU's and 16GB memory at least.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R410-Cabled-Server-2-x-E5520-16GB-RAM-PCI-Rail-Kit-/191409850981

that is pretty much all I want, however I had a few questions in regards to Poweredge R410's in general I suppose.

 

First, is it safe to assume the servers are shipping with ECC ram? Most descriptions either just say "DDR3" or "PC3-10600R" and I've found that the R simply means Registered but not always ECC so I am a bit confused.

 

Secondly, has anybody successfully used a Poweredge server (of this generation) with Unraid by simply plugging the sata from the backplane into the mobo, or am I going to want to purchase Dell PERC or other non-raid HBA? Unfortunately I think the ports on the mobo are SATA2, but will this drastically decrease performance for my uses? (Plex/Owncloud).

 

Thanks for any input guys.

 

 

That rack mount system is going to limit your upgrade options. First, the listing states you will need a raid controller, second you'll need drives and they aren't cheap or large in capacity either and there is only room for four of them so you are looking at spending at least double or triple your budget to get this server going, not a good deal. I think you may want to save a little more $$ and get a motherboard, i5 cpu some ram, a case and power supply and some hard drives, essentially build your own system rather then buy a brand name server like this.

Well a large part of why I'm choosing this over say building my own is the server-grade mobo and ECC Ram (yes it is ECC ram, checked with the seller).

 

Building a whitebox machine that supports ECC Ram would be somewhere alone the lines of ~$200 for mobo, and ~$200 for ECC ram, and that's already more than the Dell. On top of that I'd need a rackmount case, CPU, PSU, and HBA.

 

I think if I was going for a consumer grade build without ECC memory I'd be fine going with something I built myself but I just can't see building something server-grade below $500

 

Also, the four HDD bays isn't too much of a problem. To start, i'm planning on buying 3x 3TB Seagate NAS drives (one for parity, two for storage) and adding a fourth down the line. And in the future I can always replace them with 4TB/6TB/8TB drives if needed but I don't see myself needing that much storage any time soon. Or perhaps even buy a JBOD and connect it to the R410 with SAS? Heh i'll have to see about that one.

Can I ask why ECC is so important to you? Are you doing mission critical stuff that cannot possibly afford any memory problems? In all the years I've had clients with servers with ECC, I've never seen a memory issue or problem that made having ECC worthwhile? Is it a nice to have or need to have? Do those drive bays take 3.5' drives or 2.5' drive? They look like 2.5' drives to me and those are quite expensive in the capacities you are talking about.

It's not mission critical stuff but it will have some important documents I don't want lost (documents backed up from my PC). And as far as I've seen, everybody seems to strongly recommend ecc memory for zfs and unraid.

 

Although I'm often wondering if it is worth it too.. but I'd be hitting myself over the head of some memory issue were to cause data loss.

 

As for the bays, they are four 3.5" bays on the R410

ZFS has to use ECC, but UnRaid does not, so again, in my opinion ECC is nice to have but not a need to have. Remember, you should have more then one backup location for your data, your UnRaid server should not be the only place your data resides, you should have a secondary backup to either an external hard drive, a second UnRaid server or the cloud. You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket so that if your UnRaid server blows up you lose everything.

Ah, I was under the impression that it was strongly recommended for Unraid as well, but it seems most people on the forums are running on non-ecc mobo's.

 

At this point I created a build on Newegg with an AMD A8-7600 , MSI A78M-E35 V2 and 8GB Ram but with the rackmount case (not even hot swappable), and 500W psu it's already a $300 build, excluding HDD's, but I guess I can't get much better than that for a quad core nas.

 

Is there some way I can setup Unraid to do nightly backups of a specific folder (say, only one folder in Owncloud with the most important docs) to a separate internal HDD that isn't in an array?

Ah, I was under the impression that it was strongly recommended for Unraid as well, but it seems most people on the forums are running on non-ecc mobo's.

 

At this point I created a build on Newegg with an AMD A8-7600 , MSI A78M-E35 V2 and 8GB Ram but with the rackmount case (not even hot swappable), and 500W psu it's already a $300 build, excluding HDD's, but I guess I can't get much better than that for a quad core nas.

 

Is there some way I can setup Unraid to do nightly backups of a specific folder (say, only one folder in Owncloud with the most important docs) to a separate internal HDD that isn't in an array?

 

A cron rsync job would do that pretty simply in conjunction with mounting the drive using the Unassigned Devices plugin.