PLex, plus 2 gaming machines

[tucotheugly]

I am planning a dual cpu e5 2670 v3 machine, with this board:

 

http://tinyurl.com/z72d94u

 

64gb of ram, and 2x rx 480 GPUS.

 

A rocketraid 2720sgl raid controler for my 8 2tb hdd's in raid 5.

 

And a rosewill throne, which supports the motherboard.

 

I haven't decided yet on a psu.

 

I will be using unraid to virtualize the following:

 

a plex server with free nas, and then having 2 gaming VM's powering 1 of those 480's and their own monitor. I plan on using multiseat or some other solution so that each gaming vm can be used simultaneously.

 

I am basically looking for ideas, and suggestions to make this process smoother. Hopefully some first hand knowledge. I have already found a local source that I can get the motherboard, and both CPU's from for $340. So great deals for both.

[BobPhoenix]

The motherboard in your link is V3 CPU only won't handle V2 CPU.  I hope you know that and you just linked the wrong MB or you meant V3 CPU not V2.

[NeoDude]

Confused as to why you are mentioning FreeNAS and RAID on an UnRaid forum

 

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

 

[tucotheugly]

Confused as to why you are mentioning FreeNAS and RAID on an UnRaid forum

 

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

My 16tb raid 5 already exists. My ultimate goal is to replace it using unraid, but i cant do that as i have insufficient space at the moment. And honestly i just assumed unraid wouldnt support a traditional raid. Guess i could have mentioned all this in the op, but i just assumed we would all focus on the spirit of my post, learning about unraid and gets tips and best practices.

 

 

The motherboard in your link is V3 CPU only won't handle V2 CPU.  I hope you know that and you just linked the wrong MB or you meant V3 CPU not V2.

 

Sorry i misstyped.

[tucotheugly]

Oh also, i much prefer unraid for virtualization. So that is my main priority here.

[NeoDude]

I apologise if I offended you, but to be fair, your original post does state that you are planning on building a Dual Xeon machine with a RAID controller and a RAID 5 array. You also state that you want to run a Plex Server using FreeNAS. None of this actually suggests that you want to use UnRaid for anything. Not once in your original post do you mention UnRaid. I'm not a mind reader.

[tucotheugly]

I assumed this would be implied, considering I was in an unraid forum. It's fine buddy, we can move through this. I'll just update the OP.

[NeoDude]

Ah, gotcha, you want to run FreeNAS as a VM.

 

Ok, first things first, you won't need a RAID controller for UnRaid, a JBOD controller will do. Search the forums on which ones to get.

 

Any reason why you want to run Plex server in FreeNAS and not as a docker?

[tucotheugly]

Ah, gotcha, you want to run FreeNAS as a VM.

 

Ok, first things first, you won't need a RAID controller for UnRaid, a JBOD controller will do. Search the forums on which ones to get.

 

Any reason why you want to run Plex server in FreeNAS and not as a docker?

 

With the raid controller, I just worry about swapping the controller as in my experience that doesn't always work well, and I have about 13tb of data I can't lose on my raid. I am working on finding someone I can temporarily back that up to now, and then I will happily just run unraid.

 

(more info I forgot to mention in the OP) I am currently running a 8, 2tb drives in raid 5 with that rocket raid 2720sgl.

 

I have extensive experience with freenas, dockers seem like an easy solution however, and I'm willing to entertain anything.

[NeoDude]

The RAID controller will work fine as a general disk controller, but understand that UnRaid does not support RAID of any type. If you wish to use UnRaid you will sooner or later need to copy your data off your old RAID array and in to UnRaid.

 

Dockers are really the way to go with UnRaid. I have a similar system to the one you are looking at with 32 cores. I assign 8 cores to my Windows 10 VM, 8 cores to my Plex Docker and 8 cores to the rest of my dockers, they include Couch Potato, Sonarr, Crash Plan & NZBget amongst others. The whole setup just works. Couch Potato, Sonarr & NZBget take care of automatically downloading Movies & TV shows and the Plex docker has enough grunt to stream them all around the house as well as transcode for clients outside the network.

 

As far as the 2 gaming VMs go, you don't need any extra technology as it's already supported in UnRaid. You will need to make sure that UnRaid is setup to use your onboard VGA and then each of your VMs can have a GPU each.