One Pro vs. Many Basic/Plus boxes?

[markguy]

I'm in the process of ensuring I've got a new, working jump drive before ordering a Pro license... so this isn't as immediately obvious a cheapskate question as it might seem. In any case, while waiting for some portion of the new unRAID build to finish, I starting thinking about the various licenses. In particular, I have enough components to come up with one, possibly two boxes that would suffice for (if not excel at) transformation into unRAID servers. I'm looking at giving one to my brother and had the notion that it might be interesting to run it next to mine for a time, just to see how large a performance difference there might be.

 

This led me to wonder about the feasibility and advantages of running multiple instances of unRAID versus cramming more drives in a single case. Rather than foist my opinions on anyone interested at this point, I thought I'd see if anyone had opinions of their own. Or better, a case study of sorts.

[WeeboTech]

I'm sure there are a number of us who have multiple boxes.

Part of the question is why.

 

In my case I have one large server and one small one.

I backup the most important files from the large to the small one in the event I have to work on the larger server.

 

It's easier to build a mid sized server (8-12) drives then it is also to build a > 12-24 drive server.

Building a single 20 drive server requires a bit of research and quality parts.

Then there is all the compatibility matching and further issues of speed with parity create/check and usage during a drive failure.

 

So building two 8-12 drive servers is easier.

 

I'm actually in the process of shifting from a micro (5 drive) server and a massive (24 drive) server.

One to house every day files , music, recent backups & recent rips.

Another to house movies, long term backups.

[prostuff1]

I was just thinking about this the other day also.

 

Right now it is more feasible for me to keep adding drives to my current system.  I have 10 in there right now and can probably add 4 more easy enough before stuff starts to get "cramped." I did not go with the 5in3 hotswap like bays for my first build but I have a lot of room in my case anyway.  Right now I am living in an apartment that I rent and it is less advantageous for me to make multiple smaller servers for my needs.  When I look to buy a house in 5-6 months I will probably look to dedicate a room or spot in a basement so I can put all of these toys.  When that time comes I will probably start building other servers.  I would really like to break what I currently have on one machine into 3 separate machines. One for general everyday storage of "miscellaneous" files, one for my movies, music, and TV shows, and another as my backup machine.  The backup machine would be used in conjunction with Crashplan so that my parents and sister could also backup to it easily.

 

Come of the new Atom based boards look promising for this type of task (the Supermicro) and the Zotac one that was pointed out looks to be almost idea, especially when the PCIe Supermicro SATA card becomes supported.

[Guest smnas]

If you've got a few old PIII > 1GHz boxes around and about 6 to 9 or so drives used a paper weights (Or door stoppers, I'm sure everyone has a few of these boxes gathering dust at home), why not use them as cheap unRAID Free boxes.

I had one a while ago just as a test server, with some old mixture of PATA and SATA drives, so before I deploy any change/update on my production server, I'd deploy it on this Test unRAID box first. Its good just have a few as off site or as secondary backups of your current unRAID server.

[markguy]

I meant to get back to this sooner, but an unscheduled full reinstall (and failed backup as a bonus!) has kept me busy. Busier.

 

I really got interested in the many boxes idea after I thought of storing all the kid's shows on a different share. I don't want them accessing the full movie library and I have this vision of forgetting to flag something after sticking into the library. Turning them loose (I trust this is obviously a relative phrase) with a fully kid friendly movie library seems better. Having a separate media box would obviously be nice and since my new Netgear EVA9100 seems to be a fantastic deal at $230 for this, it doesn't seem too unreasonable.

 

Well, it was interesting to hear from others who have done it... I appreciate everyone taking the time to contribute!