Hi all I'm new to unraid, but it looks like this will solve many of my issues I've been tossing around for quite a while now (NAS / VM host) so I'm ready to learn as much as I can before I take the dive head first. What I am looking to do (and it's not a unraid question per-say) is setup a server down in my basement and run some workstation client VM's off of it. The main goal I'm looking to solve (using unraid or not) is to get the noise and heat out from my small home office room.

 

What I'm interesting in getting comments on are solutions to run audio/ video signal and peripheral cables from the server? In my situation, I can locate the server rack almost directly under the room I am going to use the VM's from, but at the moment I have 4 x24" LCD's using DVI. Clearly DVI is a large connector and would require a huge hole (more like a at minimum 6" square) be cut in the floor. HDMI is smaller, so upgrading the video cards and monitors may be the only reasonable way to do this. Like I said, I'm new to unraid and I don't even know if I can pass two video cards through to the same VM client. I could parse down the monitors to only 2 larger ones if it comes down to it..

 

The USB cables are easy to rewire and maybe even consolidate into a single cable with a break out box, how ever I'm not sure if distance will become an issue. I'm looking at roughly 20-25' of total cable extension and I'm wondering if the signal voltage drop may cause com data reliability issues.

 

Please comment, especially if you are already deployed a similar setup.

DVI and HDMI are typically interchangeable as they are both digital signals. The difference being audio over DVI isn't part of the standard. Cheap adapters can be used to convert from DVI to HDMI and back. You may want to look at CAT5 extension kits that carry USB and digital video over the CAT5/6 cable. Some technologies carry both video/audio and USB over a single CAT5, however those tend to be a bit pricey for home use. Another option would be set up a thin client or RDP/VNC machine in the office and run a single network cable down. USB spec is very short over passive cable, so you need active repeaters or some conversion for it to be within spec.

We've run USB 17-18' at work and it's been fine. I'd try it first. You could always put a powered USB hub just below the floor to act like a repeater with another USB hub at the desk. They're pretty cheap.

 

DVI can also carry analog signals, basically the equivalent of VGA but I highly doubt that your monitors are running on analog. So, you can probably just convert to a HDMI cable as mentioned to make the routing easier.

 

You can assign 2 video cards to the same VM.

As noted above, HDMI and DVI carry the same electrical signals vis-à-vis the video component, although DVI does not include any audio.    You could use a simple HDMI-> DVI cable for the monitors [e.g. http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2842 ], but would have to run a separate audio cable for your sound

 

USB cables are more problematic => the distance you've noted exceeds the maximum cable length specification (5 meters) ... so you'll need to use active repeater cables.  An alternative is to use an active repeater cable to an active hub upstairs; and then just plug everything into the hub.

 

Note, however, that to use 4 monitors you'll need to have support for them in your VM's ... which means you'll need to pass through video cards that support that many displays [this could be a single card with modern video cards, but may require 2, depending on which cards you use].    So before jumping in, be sure you have outlined the exact topology of your clients => e.g. do you want one VM that supports 4 displays;  2 VM's that support 2 displays each;  one VM that supports 2 displays and two other VM's with one display each;  etc.    This will determine just how many video cards you'll need, which clearly impacts what hardware you'll need.

Depending on your application you could use some sort of thin client.....  Not going to work if you want to play games.

Thanks for the comments. The DVI to HDMI looks like a good solution along with a adapter that converts it back to DVI. Audio is another good point I didn't think about. ATM, I am using the onboard optical out and I'm guessing that unraid VM's would not have access to this? As I am learning, I may need to just build a new rig for this as my motherboard lacks onboard video, so one of my video cards would be wasted on the unraid OS, or buy a cheap videocard. Doing that however then adding in audio card would limit my ability to use the PCIx lanes for SATA controllers once I want to upgrade my drive config (both video cards I have now occupy two slots due to heat / fan design).

 

I think the proper route is to get a new motherboard with onboard video, then a new video card that has at lest 2x native HDMI ports (looks like stuff with 4x is $$). I'm not doing any gaming, so I CAN get away with lower performance 3D acceleration. Any suggestions on the amount of hardware to be looking at? Right now I am running a older i7 Bloomfield 960 chip on a Asus P6X58D, 24GB DDR3 ram, a single application 250GB OCZ SSD on the 6GB's channel and a few older 500gb spinning disk drives in software raid 5 for data. I'm happy with the performance of the hardware (other then I'm running out of data disk space and have to off load backup and archive stuff to a external NAS), I at times do max the CPU @ 100% for a few hours during large text parsing operations and I don't think I've ever used more then 10GB's of ram, but I would like to run at lest a ubuntu server VM along side the Windows 7

VM when running unraid.

... The DVI to HDMI looks like a good solution along with a adapter that converts it back to DVI

 

There's no conversion => it's simply a connector issue.  The cables I linked to have HDMI connections on one end; DVI on the other ... so you simply plug them HDMI into your video card and the DVI into the monitor.

 

 

As for what hardware to go with ... if you really want to max out the "future proofness" of your system, I'd go with a high quality Socket 2011 server motherboard and an E5-series Xeon.  This is a superb board with 4 PCIe x16 slots and IPMI, so you could run it headless and could add 3 video cards with no problem and still have an x16 slot for an add-on controller.  It has 10 SATA ports onboard, so a single 16-port controller would let you max out the UnRAID system's disk support.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182959

 

For the CPU I'd go with the superb 6-core E5-1650v3: 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117499

 

... although the quad-core E5-1630v3 is a good alternative if the 1650 is more than you want to spend

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Xeon-E5-1630-Quad-core-Processor/dp/B00NHDDNFG

 

Garycase, would one of these CPUs match the MB  ? Looking for one of the cheaper CPUs with 8 core / 16 threads

http://m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?isRefine=true&_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC2.A0.H0.XE5-2670.TRS5&_nkw=E5-2670&_sacat=0&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC2.A0.H0.XE5-2670.TRS5&_mwBanner=1

The board requires v3 Xeons ... the E5-2670v3 in you link should work:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E5-2670-V3-ES-2-0Ghz-30MB-12-Core-22nm-105W-LGA2011-3-Processor-US-/401060782747?hash=item5d6115e29b:g:E78AAOxyCepScNeQ

 

A very good price for a 12-core hyperthreaded CPU !!

 

[i don't think there's any appreciable difference between the retail CPU and an engineering sample, but note that the one on e-bay is an engineering sample]

 

 

The board requires v3 Xeons ... the E5-2670v3 in you link should work:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E5-2670-V3-ES-2-0Ghz-30MB-12-Core-22nm-105W-LGA2011-3-Processor-US-/401060782747?hash=item5d6115e29b:g:E78AAOxyCepScNeQ

 

A very good price for a 12-core hyperthreaded CPU !!

 

[i don't think there's any appreciable difference between the retail CPU and an engineering sample, but note that the one on e-bay is an engineering sample]

From my searches for new cpus I found out that you should check carefully if the engineering samples have vt-d support. It turns out quite a few don't have it. Usually the last stepping before retail release have vt-d, but this have to be checked before you buy.

The only apparent differences between the ES and the retail version are the slower clock speed (2.0GHz vs. 2.3GHz) and the lower max power consumption (105w vs. 120w) of the ES unit.    Other than the $1,395.00 price difference, of course  :)    ($1670.99 vs. $275.99)

 

Intel's Ark site doesn't list the ES processors, so if there are indeed missing technologies, I'm not sure how you'd determine that.  (But my understanding is that the ES units are simply early production runs that are set to run at more conservative settings for testing - thus the lower clock speed and power)

 

The only apparent differences between the ES and the retail version are the slower clock speed (2.0GHz vs. 2.3GHz) and the lower max power consumption (105w vs. 120w) of the ES unit.    Other than the $1,395.00 price difference, of course  :)    ($1670.99 vs. $275.99)

 

Intel's Ark site doesn't list the ES processors, so if there are indeed missing technologies, I'm not sure how you'd determine that.  (But my understanding is that the ES units are simply early production runs that are set to run at more conservative settings for testing - thus the lower clock speed and power)

The problem is that the Ark site doesn't list the different steppings of the ES processors, but a quick google search and you can find the information. www.cpu-world.com have a lot of information on the different steppings. Take a look at this E5 2670 below and check the different steppings and their features:

E5 2670

 

So buying an ES processor without knowing the stepping/S-spec is a hit and miss.

 

So buying an ES processor without knowing the stepping/S-spec is a hit and miss.

 

Saarg, do you have any recommendations or sellers you follow that provide the needed information (properly listed stepping) to determine the VT-x / d instruction set needed when looking to buy a new CPU? I'm ok with taking a hit on CPU speed for the cost savings a ES chip offers, but the last thing I'd want to do is order a chip and it not be as expected. My build budget wouldn't allow me to entertain a $600 CPU where I'd rather spend 35-40% of that on storage.

I have only bought cpus once from eBay, so don't have any safe sellers, but buy from the guys that lists the stepping/S-spec. Send them a question if it's the correct numbers listed in the listing.

What shall we look for spec. to be sure to get vt-d? should be so fun to get a 10 or 12 core hyper threading CPUs for a good price!

You definitely want vt-d.

 

The PC-World info is excellent => unfortunate that many of the earlier steppings don's have vt-d ... I'm a bit surprised at that for an E5 series Xeon.

 

On the other hand, perhaps that explains why you can buy a $1600 chip for under $300 

 

Remember the adage:  If it sounds too good to be true ...

 

What shall we look for spec. to be sure to get vt-d? should be so fun to get a 10 or 12 core hyper threading CPUs for a good price!

You have to check to Stepping/S-spec number in the ebay listing as I mentioned in the above post, and then look up the processor on cpu-world.com and see if the stepping has vt-d in the feature section.