New to unRAID, wondering about some old hardware and what I need to know

[RIDGID]

Hi there! I'm very new around here and still have a lot of reading to do, but I have some questions.

 

I'm looking for the machine to run Plex, plexpy, plex requests, etc... AND a Windows 10 or 8.1 VM for lite gaming and general use.

 

Here is the hardware I'm working with:

 

CPU -- AMD Phenom II X4 965

MOBO -- ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3

GPU -- MSI GeForce GTS 250

RAM -- 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 (might want to upgrade here?)

SSD -- Intel 535 Series 2.5" 240GB

 

Currently my plex server is running on my main rig, and storage is spread out on a few devices. I had a synology DS213 with 2 3TB seagate drives, one drive failed but is now partially operational in another computer on the network. I expect this second drive to fail on me completely soon so I don't keep anything essential on it and probably will not use it in the array. The rest of my media is on a Seagate Backup Plus 5 TB External HDD, which was meant to be a temporary solution.

 

At any rate I'm hoping to migrate to unRAID on the hardware mentioned above. I'm planning on initially getting two 4TB HGST Deskstar NAS, one for parity of course. I'm thinking I'll be able to move data from my one working 3TB drive, then reformat and add it to the array, then add additional 4TB drives when I can afford it.

 

As for the cache, is a 240GB SSD sufficient? Can I add a second SSD to the cache without it being used for redundancy? Say 2x240GB SSDs for ~500GB cache. Would the second ssd have to be identical to the first?

 

My other concern is about running a windows VM and GPU passthrough. My understanding is that a dedicated GPU is needed for windows. I've seen that GTX 6xx and above should be supported but I am unsure about my older GTS 250. Having functional windows is essential for this machine (my brother uses it to play games and stuff) so I don't want to get halfway through setting it up only to find out I have to buy a new GPU.

 

If anyone has links to guides/threads/materials they think are essential to read, other than the wiki, I'd love to take a look.

 

Thanks, and sorry if these are dumb questions or have already been answered.

 

 

tl;dr Will my CPU/GPU/MOBO be compatible and able to run windows? Should I add more ram? Is a 240GB SSD cache enough? Can I add a second drive to the cache without it being used for parity?

[wreck]

1. You will need to make sure your cpu/mobo support vt-d. This is a requirement in order to pass your gpu through to a vm. I'm not familiar with your cpu/mobo so I can't tell you for sure either way.

2. I would vote for more ram for sure. 4gb would be the min I would pass to a windows vm (the more the better, of course), so imho the box will need more overall.

3. 240gb should be fine for running your windows vm. Are you wanting to use it as a cache drive as well? If so you might need to schedule the mover fairly frequently or get a bigger drive, depending on the amount of data you will be move.

 

Hope this helps.

[RIDGID]

Getting more ram is not an issue, I've been meaning to do it for the past 5 years anyhow.

 

Yes the 240GB would be for the VM and cache. Not sure how big of a cache is really needed, after the initial setup and transfers I probably wont ever need to write more than 100gb per day. I don't know if running the mover once per day is a lot or a little.

 

I could possibly get a bigger SSD... Still wondering if its possible to use multiple disks to expand the cache. Alternatively, say I have 2 240GB SSDs, could I use one as a cache and add the other to the array to run my VM off of? 

[wreck]

The ssd could work depending on how much room you want to allocate to the vm, that's all up to what you are going to be using it for. You are able to do a cache pool (search for it, it's pretty common as far as I know) and also set up 2 ssd's (one cache and the other mounted outside of the array for vm's, etc via a plugin).

[tiwing]

In  my very limited experience so far with Unraid, I'm running 3 windows 10 VMs on a single 240GB SSD - 60, 80, and 100GB. Since you will be saving all your files to the unraid storage anyhow you shouldn't need a huge data drive to install windows to, unless you're running some application that uses a huge amount of local cache - I know of a few that require minimum 500GB Windows installs for this reason but it's pretty specialized stuff.

 

I've also been using mine with 2.6GB Ram allocated, although all I'm doing on the machines is light web surfing and normal spreadsheet and word processing, with a little powerpoint. My other VM is a light weight point of sale machine and operates beautifully with 3GB Ram. The nice thing about running on SSD is that windows swap files run pretty fast as well...

 

Someone with way more experience can tell us about the dangers, if there are any, but so far in 3 months of daily 6-8 hour use these machines have been fantastic.

 

cheers.