New to unRAID and I have a few questions about my new Plex NAS.

[Herdo]

Hello!  This is my first post after lurking around here for a bit.  I've looking into unRAID for a new NAS I am building but I have a few questions I'm hoping you all can help me with.

 

I guess I should start by explaining my current setup.  I have an i5-4590 server running SickBeard, Couch Potato, Syncthing, Plex Home Server, and various other utilities.  The storage for all of this is currently held locally on the server (2 x WD Green 3TB, no RAID) and I'd like to change this.  I'm running out of space for HDDs, I'd like to get them into some sort of array, and I'd like to just clean it up a bit.

 

So onto my first question.  Currently the server works like this: SB and CP start Deluge on my seedbox > Syncthing on my seedbox syncs with Syncthing on my home server > SB and CP rename and organize the files in the correct locations.  This works beautifully and I'd like to keep this setup.  I guess my question is, can I keep this setup and just use unRAID like another drive I point these programs to?  Basically, I don't want anything but unRAID running on the NAS.  I'm fairly certain this wouldn't be a problem, just thought I'd check.

 

 

Secondly, when using the two drive parity how many disks are required?  Is it like RAID 6 where 4 drives are needed, or could I start with 3 (2 parity, 1 data)?  The reason I ask is because I plan on buying 3 x HGST 4TB Deskstars and I actually already have 1.  The problem is the 1 I have already has some data on it that won't be going onto the unRAID NAS, so I'm going to have to play musical chairs with the data, clearing up some space on one of my WD Green drives first.  This is how I figure this could work:

 

Current WD Green 3TB (Movies) -->  Move data to 3 disk unRAID array (2 parity, 1 data)

 

Already owned HGST 4TB (non-NAS media) --> Move data to now empty WD Green 3TB

 

Already owned HGST 4TB (now empty) --> Add to unRAID array as 4th drive (2 parity, 2 data)

 

 

 

 

So I guess all that's left is to ask about my build (prices include shipping):

 

 

 

Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  -  $58.98

Should be perfect for just a NAS and has ECC support.

 

Supermicro MBD-X11SSL-F-O Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  -  $192.98

IPMI and ECC support.

 

Crucial 4G?B DDR4 PC4?-2133 ECC ?UDIMM  -  $26.99

It's ECC RAM and it's compatible according to the Crucial Advisor Tool.

 

Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive x 3  -  $472.17

Reliable.  Not much else to say.

 

Super?Micro 2U C?SE826 12-B?ay Server ?Barebone w?/ 2x PSU, ?Trays  -  $284.99

I chose this case for a few reasons.  It includes rails and all 12 trays.  It comes with a BPN-SAS2-846EL1 backplane which supports 4TB drives (unlike the BPN-SAS-846EL1).  And these cases are usually very loud due to their PSUs, but this particular one comes with 2 x 500W 80 Plus Platinum Supermicro PSUs, which from what I've read are practically silent compared to the other Supermicro server PSUs.  Considering you can get this case with a working motherboard, 16GB of ECC RAM, and a pretty decent CPU (if not 2) for about $250 this might not be the smartest choice, but I think the rails, trays, BPN-SAS2-846EL1 and quiet PSUs are totally worth it.

 

SUPERMICRO? AOC-SAS2L?P-MV8 PCI-?Express 2.?0 x8 SATA ?/ SAS 8-Po?rt Control?ler Card  -  $111.99

I will probably hold off on buying this until I need it in order to make this initial build a bit cheaper.

 

1m 30AWG I?nternal Mi?ni SAS 36p?in (SFF-80?87) Male t?o Mini SAS? 36pin (SF?F-8087) Ma?le Cable -? Black X 2  -  $20.40

Same with these obviously.

 

NORCO C-SF?F8087-4S D?iscrete to? SFF-8087 ?(Reverse b?reakout) C?able  -  $15.99

 

unRAID Plus  -  $89

 

 

 

TOTAL COST:  $1273.49

 

TOTAL COST LESS SAS CARD AND CABLES:  $1141.10

 

 

 

So any thoughts or considerations before I start making this thing happen?  I thought about purchasing an old Dell R510 (and still might), but I'm not sure I want to trust a 5+ year old motherboard. Also even forgetting the rails, start factoring in the cost of trays and the savings aren't large enough to justify it in my opinion.  Include rails and you aren't saving very much at all.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Herdo]

I should point out I'm using Windows 10.  The server kinda doubled as an HTPC and I wanted to use the WMC, but then learned it was dropped from Windows 10.  As a linux user I should be ashamed! 

 

That being said, I'm not sure how this would work exactly.  Can the unRAID array be seen by Plex running on Windows 10 (NTFS)?  If I can get the data off the NTFS drives and onto XFS I would probably install Lubuntu or something similar on my server/HTPC.  If that's the case, can Plex installed on my ext4 drive interact with the XFS unRAID array directly?  This is an area I know little about.

[avpap]

I have been using unraid since the beginning of the year and I am quite happy with it. I am by no means an expert on it, so I will try to help with as many of your questions as I am confident in answering.

 

The setup you are currently using can be moved to the unraid box. I am using something similar, just no seedboxes. I have CP, SR sending commands to deluge and plex server running as well. I have never used syncthing on the unraid, but I just checked and I can see that it is available as an app, so my guess is that you will be able to use your current setup.

 

When reading your second message, I am under the impression that you are trying to make things more complicated than they should be. Why don't you install ALL the apps you want on the unraid server. CP, SR, deluge, syncthing AND plex server. If you want, you could mount the unraid server as a network location on a Windows machine and it would appear as just another drive. This way you could use your current setup on the i5 without ANY changes. However, why would you do that? It would require 2 machines running 24/7 instead of one. The G4400 which you are planning on buying has enough power to play 2 streams simultaneuosly with transcoding. If that's enough for you, what's the point of involving the i5. My current unraid-plex server is runnning an a G1820 and I'm perfectly happy for my needs (1 transcoded streams + however many direct play streams the network can handle).

 

Do you plan to continue using the i5 for work or games? If you just want to use it as a htpc, to be honest I don't see the point. Maybe you could think about setting up the unraid server with the i5 as cpu and then build a cheap htpc. In my home I have raspberry pis and a nvidia shield as media players (plus mobile devices).  The only reason to continue using an htpc would be if you have a PVR setup. Even if this is the case, you could still move that to the unraid machine by using TVheadend or other similar apps. I am using tvheadend with a dvb-s2 card and it is working fine.

 

[Herdo]

Thanks for the reply and the advice.

 

 

When reading your second message, I am under the impression that you are trying to make things more complicated than they should be. Why don't you install ALL the apps you want on the unraid server. CP, SR, deluge, syncthing AND plex server. If you want, you could mount the unraid server as a network location on a Windows machine and it would appear as just another drive. This way you could use your current setup on the i5 without ANY changes. However, why would you do that? It would require 2 machines running 24/7 instead of one. The G4400 which you are planning on buying has enough power to play 2 streams simultaneuosly with transcoding. If that's enough for you, what's the point of involving the i5. My current unraid-plex server is runnning an a G1820 and I'm perfectly happy for my needs (1 transcoded streams + however many direct play streams the network can handle).

 

Do you plan to continue using the i5 for work or games? If you just want to use it as a htpc, to be honest I don't see the point. Maybe you could think about setting up the unraid server with the i5 as cpu and then build a cheap htpc. In my home I have raspberry pis and a nvidia shield as media players (plus mobile devices).  The only reason to continue using an htpc would be if you have a PVR setup. Even if this is the case, you could still move that to the unraid machine by using TVheadend or other similar apps. I am using tvheadend with a dvb-s2 card and it is working fine.

 

 

I actually thought about the same thing and did some parts lists about a week ago for several different scenarios.  The i5 box is no longer being used as an HTPC and I thought about just canabalizing it to build the unRAID NAS, but I use the i5 for gaming in the living room (emulators mostly).  I would lose the gaming, ECC support, IPMI and a few other things that I can't remember right now.  I would only save about $280 and that doesn't really seem like an option to me.

 

The next option was to buy something like a G3258 to replace the i5, but then I'm not really saving any money because I'd still need a motherboard and memory to match the i5 for the unRAID NAS.

 

Also, I just like the idea of the NAS being the NAS and the server handling the operations.  I have it so why not use it?

 

I think I may be making it SOUND more complicated than it is haha.  If I can point Plex, CP and SB (installed on an NTFS or ext4 file system) to unRAID  (installed on an XFS file system) then it should work fine without having to even alter anything other than the directory locations.  I wasn't sure if my Windows installed applications could "communicate" with the XFS file system, but after reading more about this, it appears that will be no problem at all.  I've never messed with network storage in any way so this sounded like it may be a problem, but now I realize this is pretty much how it's intended to be used.

 

Thanks again.

[avpap]

The file system used by the unraid box will not be an issue. Anyway communication between your i5 and unraid will be based on SMB protocol and when you mount it it will appear as just another hard drive. Just make sure you have a good stable gigabit connection between the two boxes. To be honest, my current setup apart from the unraid box, includes an hp micro 54l (running xpenology) that is mounted on the unraid box (via LAN). So I am also doing something similar to what you will be doing.

 

The only reason to consolidate your boxes is a) power consumption and b) simplicity of operation.

If you don't want to tinker too much you can do what you are planning (i5 server stays as is and you built the unraid just for storage). Maybe as you grow more comfortable with the unraid system you will gradually offload more procedures to it and you will be free to use your i5 for other things. I am currently in the process of finding ways to transfer all of the hp processes, but xpenology offers some utilities that i have trouble mirroring on the unraid.

 

Dual parity has not reached stable release yet, but it should be just around the corner (it's currently in release candidate form, if memory serves me right). If you only have 3 data drives, you can start with 2 data and 1 parity. I think that it would be a waste to start with 2 parities (unless you have some reason to mistrust one of the parity drives).

 

However you decide to use unraid, i think that you will be happy with the platform!

Good luck

[Herdo]

The file system used by the unraid box will not be an issue. Anyway communication between your i5 and unraid will be based on SMB protocol and when you mount it it will appear as just another hard drive. Just make sure you have a good stable gigabit connection between the two boxes. To be honest, my current setup apart from the unraid box, includes an hp micro 54l (running xpenology) that is mounted on the unraid box (via LAN). So I am also doing something similar to what you will be doing.

 

The only reason to consolidate your boxes is a) power consumption and b) simplicity of operation.

If you don't want to tinker too much you can do what you are planning (i5 server stays as is and you built the unraid just for storage). Maybe as you grow more comfortable with the unraid system you will gradually offload more procedures to it and you will be free to use your i5 for other things. I am currently in the process of finding ways to transfer all of the hp processes, but xpenology offers some utilities that i have trouble mirroring on the unraid.

 

Dual parity has not reached stable release yet, but it should be just around the corner (it's currently in release candidate form, if memory serves me right). If you only have 3 data drives, you can start with 2 data and 1 parity. I think that it would be a waste to start with 2 parities (unless you have some reason to mistrust one of the parity drives).

 

However you decide to use unraid, i think that you will be happy with the platform!

Good luck

 

Thanks again so much.  You are probably right about one day getting more comfortable with unRAID and wanting to run all the processes through it.  I was actually thinking the same thing.  If that happens, it's just another thing I can play around with.

 

I didn't even think to add a second parity disk later on.  It makes sense that you would be able to do that, but it didn't cross my mind.  The reason I wanted to add two now was because I thought that wasn't possible, but yes, it would probably be a better idea to add 4 drives now and then add a second parity drive when I start adding more.

[JonathanM]

If you only have 3 data drives, you can start with 2 data and 1 parity. I think that it would be a waste to start with 2 parities (unless you have some reason to mistrust one of the parity drives).

Do NOT use a drive in unraid that you don't fully trust. I made that mistake years ago when I first set up my server. My thought process was... unraid can rebuild a drive, so why not make use of my questionable drives, I'll just replace them when they die... BAD idea. I lost data because when 1 drive died, another one of my questionable drives acted up during the rebuild. Unraid needs to be able to read all parts of the remaining drives perfectly to reconstruct the bad drive. That's why most of us thoroughly test drives using preclear or some other method before trusting them in the server.

[tdallen]

Just to give you another way to think about it, here's my setup:

 

- My Core i7 desktop, and every other machine in my house goes to sleep when not in use.

- My unRAID server is my only always-on machine.

- All media handling is done via Dockers on my unRAID machine.  Docker makes unRAID a fantastic application platform.  SB, CP, Sab, renaming and many other media handling tools are available as Dockers.  Check them out via the Community Applications Plugin once you have your server up and running.

 

Also, a couple of recommendations.

- A G4400 is not necessarily enough to transcode two streams.  If you want to run unRAID, Plex and a few Dockers I recommend starting with a 4,000 Passmark CPU for a single 1080p stream and then going up by 2,000 Passmarks per additional 1080p stream.  A G4400 is fine for a pure NAS and some light duty Plex transcoding but stepping up to an i3 or i5 gives you a lot of options (and doesn't use any more power, except under load).

- RAM is cheap - I wouldn't build an unRAID server with less than 8GB of RAM.  You'll want it when you discover how great Dockers are.

- Definitely start with one parity drive and add another later when needed.

- I assume you have a rack today?

- If you have the luxury, stand up your unRAID box and play around with it while getting it setup.  It's great, but it's different than what you are used to.  You'll really benefit from some play around, trial and error time especially if you want to try out Dockers.

 

 

[testdasi]

Just want to add 2 things:

Syncthing docker works fine.

Anything you cant get a docker can always run in a VM, as long as ur hardware supports virtualisation. Dont even need a GPU for the VM, just RDP in.