My First UnRAID Build (SuperMicro X11SSH-LN4F)

[Clarkee]

Good evening ladies and germs.

 

I'm about to invest in an UnRAID system after discounting a FreeNAS system - I want to be able to scale up without having to build new arrays!

 

I am looking to consolidate few bits of media, have back ups of 2 PCs and a laptop and a few dropbox/BT sync folders of some kind for photos from phones - possibly a Plex server in a docker, but I have no interest in VMs or anything of that ilk that goes WAY over my heed!

 

So please feel free to jump in and let me know if this build would be a good idea or not, the buying finger is twitching to make a purchase! 

 

MB - Supermicro X11SSH-LN4 (£215 - thought a decent amount spent here for good up-scaling in the future).

CPU - Pentium G4400 (£51 - for a basic NAS box and keeping costs down this will do to get me started I believe..might scale up again in the future).

RAM - 2x8Gb SAMSUNG M391A1G43DB0-CPB  DDR4 ECC (£110 - I really don't think I'll need more than that for the moment and getting another 2x8Gb could be possible, but 2x16Gb would cost too much for the moment).

HDD - 4Tb WD RED for parity, 2x2Tb WD RED (£free! I wish, already have them sitting here from Christmas! but do plan on upping the parity drive to 6Tb or something later).

SSD - I don't believe I'll need a cache straight away, but may pony up for one later, already got a 240Gb SanDisk SSD Plus sitting here.staring.looking.bored).

Case - Corsair 750D (£130 - I like normal cases, no need for any rack-mount escapades!).

PSU - this I am slightly torn on so feel free with suggestions! Was thinking Corsair HX750i, mainly cause its platinum but also cause having one in my gaming rig I already know it has a ton of ports for SATA power cables).

 

I guess on looking about in the tinterwebs, I am having problems sourcing that MB so I might purchase that rather swiftly if the correct choice has been made?

 

So peeps, please feel free to jump in and applaud or pelt me with roars of "NNNNOOOOOOO (you are not my father)" but suggestions would be greatly received as well 

 

Cheers

[tdallen]

Hi -

 

I think you will like working with unRAID over FreeNAS  .

 

Interesting motherboard model- 4 LAN ports?  Seems very capable and SuperMicro is commonly used for unRAID.  The G4400 is a good choice for basic NAS duties, but it isn't much of a transcoder and you mention Plex... be careful regarding your expectations there.

 

16GB is plenty for pretty much any unRAID implementation except big VMs.  The cache disk used mostly as an application drive these days for Dockers and their data and VMs.  If you want to run Docker you'll want to install that SanDisk SSD sooner rather than later.

 

Any high quality power supply with a single 12v rail works well with unRAID - the Corsair HX750i is great but would probably be overkill for your initial implementation - but it certainly should work well.

 

[Clarkee]

Thank you for reading and responding.

 

Yeah 4 NICs is a bit much for at first but as I mentioned I plan on upgrading fairly rapidly - and you have me rethinking the cost cutting on the CPU now.... lol!

 

Cheers again, I'm well looking forward to starting and getting this build done and defo something different than usual gaming PCs!

[Clarkee]

Amd that's me pulled the trigger on the MB and RAM.