I've been wanting to build a NAS server for some time, now. As it stands I need it to serve the following purposes:

• Store and serve up my ripped Blu-Ray movies (.MKV format maybe? Haven't decided for sure.)
  
• Store family photos/videos
  
• Provide a backup destination for family computers - have yet to decide on a backup method
  
• Run Plex and whatever other dockers I need to display movie box art and such - usually won't be transcoding, but I would like to have the resources for transcoding a couple of streams, in case someone decides they want to watch something on a portable device or something.
  
• At some point I plan to purchase an HDHomerun or some other CableCard solution to record programs off of my cable service, stripping commercials with nightly scheduled tasks.
  
• Git repository
  
• Provide some room to grow. I'm just starting to learn of all the cool dockers and other functionality that is available. I doubt I will go crazy with it (this is a network storage solution first and foremost), but I know I will find at least a few to be useful. One thing I *know* I'll be looking into is a means of backing up important files to some commercial service or at least some offsite location.
  
• Light VM hosting. I plan to build a separate virtualization server, so there would be at most 1 or 2 VM's on this box, and none of them would see heavy use.
  

 

I want to build in some room to grow. Like I said, I haven't seen most of the things I could be doing with unRAID. That said, I don't want to go crazy with it. Cost is certainly an issue, as I expect to be dumping $1,000 into the drives, alone, just to get started. Noise and heat are concerns. I can deal with some noise, but my office is fairly small, and it doesn't take much to heat it up.

 

I've got a couple of emails out to some refurbished server vendors, just to see what they may be able to offer me. I owned a Dell C1100 at one time and really liked it a lot, but it was a 1U home lab server, and I was pretty limited in how I could expand it. My preference would be to build this server, myself.

 

Here are the motherboard and CPU I'm currently considering:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SSH-LN4F-O Micro ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1151 Intel C236

Intel Xeon E3-1245 v5 SkyLake 3.5 GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1151 80W BX80662E31245V5 Server Processor

 

Are there any gotchas that jump out at anyone with those? They seem to tick all the boxes (ECC, HyperThreading, VT-x, VT-d, acceptable TDP).

 

I'm not sure which ECC RAM I should be looking at for that motherboard (2x8GB). I know I could look at the approved memory list, but that turns into a game of bouncing back and forth between the SuperMicro memory list and Newegg/Amazon, trying to find the models that I can even buy. Maybe someone knows of some "safe" memory that works well?

 

I'll be starting out with 2- or 3-data drives and 1-parity drive (all HGST NAS 6TB) as well as a couple of SSD's for the cache pool. Considering future expansion, I think it will probably max out at 10-drives total at some point down the road. Criminy, anyone have a source for best prices on those drives?

 

I'd like the case to have trayless hot-swap drive bays, whether by design or by adding multi-3.5" to multi-5.25" drive cages. Trayless isn't a requirement, but it would be a nice convenience. Does anyone have any experience with the IcyDock or StarTech solutions? If I go with trays, the SuperMicro boxes look promising.

 

Cases. I don't like doors. I want to see HDD activity lights. I know the Norco's are fairly popular. They're also at the very top end of what I would be willing to spend on the case. I hate to skimp anywhere, but cost is, unfortunately, a concern, and I need to save where I can. Any other case options that would satisfy my needs? I'm also planning on a 500-600W gold or platinum certified ATX PSU.

 

I would love to get some feedback on my thinking so far. I'm learning a lot from reading up here on the forums, but my head is starting to swim a bit, and I'd like to know if I'm going about anything wrong or failing to consider something important.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Sounds like a solid plan.  That's plenty of CPU for your stated purposes, and probably enough RAM if your VM memory usage is light.  Do you prefer a rack mount or standard server case?

Sounds like a solid plan.  That's plenty of CPU for your stated purposes, and probably enough RAM if your VM memory usage is light.  Do you prefer a rack mount or standard server case?

 

The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to go with a mid-tower case. All things being equal, rack mounted would be my preference. When I add a second server at some point for virtualization, it would be nice to have them both racked. However, all things are certainly *not* equal in this case (no pun intended), as going with a mid-tower would save me a good four hundred bucks or more.

 

The midtower case I like the best right now is the Fractal Design Define R5 and here.  It only has 8 x 3.5" drive bays (plus 2 x 2.5") and the bays are internal but it seems like a really nice case (I haven't built with one yet).  I really like that both sides come off, making drive replacement an easy pass through.  They make other models as well, including the XL and well regarded Node 804.  There's also the Lian Li PC-Q26 but that gets expensive if you fill it with backplanes.

 

You could certainly load up a traditional tower case with 4in3 or 5in3 drive cages from IcyDock or iStarUSA - lots of people do that with unRAID.  The drive cages add both cost and failure points with their backplanes, though - something to keep in mind.  If a really well designed case makes it easy to replace drives without disturbing the wiring harness, is externally accessible hot swap necessary?

 

FYI, there are a lot of options with up to 8 drive bays but getting to 10 narrows the field considerably.  Personally I'd get a great case with 8 bays and buy larger drives .

I don't know if you will be doing any hardware passthrough to your VM's, but that CPU / motherboard doesn't really support multiple VM passthrough well. If you only need 1 running VM at a time to access passed through hardware, or don't need passthrough, it will be perfect.

 

The E5 series is much easier to do multiple simultaneous passthrough, google ACS override for more info.

I don't know if you will be doing any hardware passthrough to your VM's, but that CPU / motherboard doesn't really support multiple VM passthrough well. If you only need 1 running VM at a time to access passed through hardware, or don't need passthrough, it will be perfect.

 

The E5 series is much easier to do multiple simultaneous passthrough, google ACS override for more info.

 

This is the sort of insight I was hoping to hear.  At this point the only need I can think of for VM passthrough would be if I were to run my workstation/game station environment in a VM (requiring GPU and/or USB passthrough), which I won't be. Are there other scenarios that would require hardware passthrough? At this point I don't yet know of all the things I *can* do with unRAID, to allow me to determine everything I *will* be doing with it.