Hi all,

 

I have a new system that I am trying to build. It is an i7-6850 with Asus x99 deluxe 2 mb. I have a Samsung 950pro and a 850evo both are 512GB. And many HDD for my unraid. I want to have an unraid setup but I want to use the 850evo as a cache drive and the 950pro for only my windows 10 VM system drive. Is there a way to do this? if so how? Some type of passthrough?

 

Thanks!

(1) full spec of your intended build would be useful to identify potential pain poins

 

(2) you will need to use 6.2 beta for native NVMe support (for the 950 Pro)

 

(3) M.2 can be passed through via PCIe / scsi bus etc. Alternatively, Unassigned Device plugin can be used. It all depends.

 

(4) Don't expect performance from the M.2 SSD due to overhead

Below is a post of what i was originally thinking. It has my build in it.

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612499-os-on-new-build-for-gaming-nas-vms-editing-survilence/

 

If the performance is that low(<75%) on my 950pro

Maybe i should look at at splitting my systems up.

 

I have a A10-5700 based system with onboard gige that i can move it to a full tower with a cx750 power supply i have to give me the nas and plex server i want. Thanks again.

 

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I think you are in a similar dilemma to mine a short while ago. You already have the parts (vs I had to buy CPU+mobo+PSU etc.) so I think a dedicated server is a much better solution.

 

The A10-5700 should be able to transcode 1 PLEX stream + serves all the NAS functionality.

2 PLEX streams are possible but highly dependant on what content being transcoded.

You can also explore moving "24/7" types of tasks to the server using the many dockers available.

 

The biggest pro I think is to keep your workstation / gaming machine as fast as possible.

Booting up with M.2 SSD takes seconds. Assuming you are not running 24/7, booting up unRAID takes minutes (then you still have to add the VM boot up time on top too).

You are also free to overclock the gaming machine to whatever level of stability you want. In contrast, unRAID server + overclocking = disaster waiting to happen.

 

Then we have the big elephant in the room: passing through GPU / other devices.

You seem to want bleeding edge tech. Despite all the great support from the community, dealing with brand new hardwares is going to be a pain (and it might not even work 100%).

You can search the forum to find the post LT guys mentioned (briefly) that they + Linus had to go through plenty of difficulties to build the 1-rig-7-gamer because the R9 Nano was basically too new.

I'm not saying it will not work. I'm saying given a choice (and I think you are at a position to make a choice), it's better to not kick the elephant.

 

Last but not least, setting up and troubleshooting in general is way way way way easier with 2 systems.

 

 

I picked the dedicated server route and 100% love it.

And as a small bonus, my server averages about 50-60W while doing work.

My (overclocked) 5820K workstation IDLEs at 75W!

So I will probably ho that route, maybe  install w2012 and 10 as a vm on my main rig. As far as my dedicated server i was thinking that i may want to switch out the cpu mb ram to a xeon. I read some posts that you can pickup the E5-2670 or 80s for 50-100dollars and a mb for 200-300 and ram for under 100. If i go the route now that i use the A10, setup my unraid, store data on it and then in 6months i upgrade to xeon is it going to be a pain to switch that hardware? Also how fo you think that cpu would work for plex could i get 2+ streams or have the server pre encode all my videos to a more universal format? Would it get better to go dual cpu or will that not matter much as most of the stuff if not multi-threaded unless Im wrong. I know i have more cores to divy up across apps/vms.

 

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The A10-5700 should be able to transcode 1 PLEX stream + serves all the NAS functionality.

2 PLEX streams are possible but highly dependant on what content being transcoded.

 

I would contend that an A10-5700, with a 3120 futuremark score, should handle two full BD bit-rate 1080p transcodes at the same time. Tests show 1000-1500 "futuremarks" are needed per stream. Also lets not forget that not all streams need transcoding (cough bittorents cough) and for those the cpu load is almost nothing. also transcoding THOSE for mobile is less taxing than the aforementioned full BD rips. 

 

So, a realistic assessment of your transcoding needs is important, but the above CPU should have no trouble with dual streams.

 

That said, I'd go with an FX processor and an inexpensive PCI graphics card (not PCIe to save the slot of SATA expansion) to handle basic serve console /boot duties unless you need more serious graphics passthru to VM/docker for which an APU is not considered a good choice. The FX will let you buy more "cpu" for the same price since you aren't paying for the onboard APU.

 

Just some other thoughts to consider from another AMD server builder.

For the A10 it is something i already have. Its from a HP desktop and had 12GB of ram and onboard gige. I was looking at using freenas but BSD doesn't support the onboard  gige. Thats where I found unraid.

 

As far as transcoding i think that about 95% of the time would be 1 stream and 4% 2 streams 1 for my kids and 1 myself. And the rare occasion there maybe a chance that my sister from another household  may want to stream something and not know that we are using it.

 

I also have an i7-920 but just found out it doesn't support virtualization.

 

For the MB from the HP with the A10 it only has 1 pcie slot and ill hook up my 3ware  9650se and do IT mode, (Can I just have them set up as JBOD  or does the card neet IT mode to reduce the cards overhead?) That is 8 sata plus 3 or 4 onboard sata.  So with that sysem moved to my ATX Full tower I have like 10 bays(6x3.5 and 4x5.25 and 1 ext 3.5 i think i can use) in it. I will use my 850evo 512gb as cache drive(ill add another later) I have a 6TB WD red ill use as parity and i have some 4 and 3 TB drive ill use as the array. When i recover from my spending spree ill change out some of those 3s for more 6TB WD  reds, If this can get me by for a year ill save for a proper server.

 

I really need to build a VM and create a SQL server or mysql to access some books. I want that insulate that from the net. I have like 5TB of books that i was to have access to. Anythoughts on that? I could build a VM in my workstation build and access the 5TB from the unraid server but not sure if thats the best since the books are embeded in the sql db i think and if they are on the  server it would chew up resources  (ram) but like i said i do have 12GB on that system.

 

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Save the overhead from running sql within a vm and just run it through a docker (MySQL, mariaDB both available)