First unRAID server - yet another build


danev1k1ng

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Hi,

 

I'm a total beginner 

I've had the thought of moving my media server to unRAID for quite a while - and now I think I'll have to pull the trigger. :-)

 

Today, I have a Synology DS1511+ and 1 DX513. 9 x 3tb WD Red in Raid 6 and 1 x 6tb on the side. This doesn't have the CPU power I want, so new hardware must be bought.

I don't need the redundancy of raid6, and I like the way unRAID stores its data.

 

Requirements:

Preferences in terms of cost will be: noise  > power usage > cost. 

Overall I would like to keep the price as low as possible. However, I don't mind to pay for lower noise or power consumption, but I would like to keep it at least under $2000. And hopefully much less.

 

Min 40tb storage with expansion opportunities.

The server will be running almost 24/7.

 

Dockers:

Teamspeak

Plex/Emby - up to 3 stream transcoding at the same time. I don't have that running now due to the CPU on my DS1511+, so I'm guessing a bit in the dark.

OpenVPN

Handbrake - perhaps

...and properly a more, once I realize the power of the system.

 

VMs

1 Windows 10 for hosting various game server

1 VM for OBS recording (Win/Linux) and running nginx

1 VM for playing arround (win or Linux)

 

The parts I've found so far:

PCPartPicker part list 

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2620 V4 2.1GHz 8-Core Processor  
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler  
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SRA ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard 
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM 32GB (4 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2400 Memory 
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive x 9 - used from Synology
Storage: Western Digital Red 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive - used from Synology
Storage: Seagate IronWolf 8TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive x 3
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB Video Card - an old GPU I had. Will be used for OBS
Case: Nanoxia NXDS6B ATX Full Tower Case 
Power Supply: SeaSonic 660W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply 
Case Fan: Nanoxia Deep Silence 140 68.5 CFM  140mm Fan 

HBA: Dell Perc H310 - flashed to IT 1,2 or 3 - used
Total: $1944.25

 

 

 

I might add/exchange some of the 3tb with SSDs for cache drives. Depends on the price of the SSD.

 

I've pretty much set on the Nanoxia case, power supply, HBA, GPU and HDD. The case should be able to hold 13 hdd and it should be quite easy to add a 5-in-3 cage if necessary. The GPU just need to be a DX10-ish for OBS to record. 

 

However, I'm really confused on the cpu/mobo/ram configuration.

CPU:

My first though was a E5-2609v4, but that might be a bit down on power (according to PassMark score). Then I had view on the E3-1240, but this could use a few more cores for the VMs.

So in the end I've chosen the E5-2620v4 - for the moment.

I don't have any preferences for Intel vs. AMD. I've read that both manufactures will release a new line of server CPUs in Q2. That might be taken into consideration too. 

 

Motherboard:

I've chosen a SuperMicro with 10 sata ports on the board, but that might not be needed if I get all the HBAs that I have on hand. I don't know if this one has all the PCI-lanes needed for the HBA either. Perhaps you guys can give me an answer?

 

RAM:

I'll use ECC and I guess I would need around 32GB. Don't know if it makes any difference to buy from a different manufacturer. 

 

Is this build completely insane from what I intend to use it for? 

 

Best regards,

DaneV1k1ng

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I think its a well structured system, an H310 can handle eight drives with breakout cables, so between that and the ten onboard sata ports you should be set. I counted cores and if you assign one core and one thread to each of your VM's that leave you with five cores and five threads left, so depending on the quality of your Plex streams, if they are 720p you should be ok supporting three streams with enough resources for the rest of the system. Some SSD's would definitely be recommended for your VM's. If you find down the road you want to put a second GPU or bump up your existing GPU you may find yourself pushing the limits of the power supply so if that is a likely scenario perhaps getting an 800w power supply now is something worth considering.

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Just now, ashman70 said:

If you find down the road you want to put a second GPU or bump up your existing GPU you may find yourself pushing the limits of the power supply so if that is a likely scenario perhaps getting an 800w power supply now is something worth considering.

 

Hi ashman,

 

Thanks for your reply. 

 

The GPU will only be used by OBS. No monitor or gaming will ever come into play, so I hope the PSU is fine. PCPartpicker gives me about 400 watt usage without the HBA, so I guess it's got enough juice. 

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Keep in mind that one of the 8TB drives will need to be used as a parity drive. (Parity must be equal to or larger than other drives in the array.) This will give you 49TB of array data with 8TB parity.  Are you not going to have a Cache drive? If you decide to add multiple cache drives, keep in mind that the cache pool will sum the amount of memory and then divide by the number of drives. Example being: you have a 240GB and a 480GB SSDs as a Cache pool, it adds these (720GB) then divides by 2(for the 2 drives) Total cache memory is now 360GB.

Just something to keep in mind of.

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9 minutes ago, shanelovell said:

Keep in mind that one of the 8TB drives will need to be used as a parity drive. (Parity must be equal to or larger than other drives in the array.) This will give you 49TB of array data with 8TB parity.  Are you not going to have a Cache drive? If you decide to add multiple cache drives, keep in mind that the cache pool will sum the amount of memory and then divide by the number of drives. Example being: you have a 240GB and a 480GB SSDs as a Cache pool, it adds these (720GB) then divides by 2(for the 2 drives) Total cache memory is now 360GB.

Just something to keep in mind of.

Parity must be equal to or larger than any single drive in the array. I'm sure that's what you meant but could be misunderstood.

 

As for cache pools, mostly wrong. WIth 2 drives, the default raid1 btrfs cache pool will give you a mirror, and its total size is only equal to the smaller of the 2 drives (regardless of what the webUI says). It is more complicated with more than 2 drives, but basically you still get everything mirrored in such a way that everything exists as 2 copies on independent disks.

 

And the default raid1 is not the only possible configuration for the cache pool. See the V6 FAQ for more about cache pools (scroll down)

And here is the btrfs disk usage calculator

http://carfax.org.uk/btrfs-usage/

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Well thank you for the clarification Trurl,

As far as the Cache pool goes I am a bit confused now.

The Unraid Manual states on page 11 

"The unRAID cache pool is created through a unique twist on traditional RAID 1, using a BTRFS feature that provides both the data redundancy of RAID 1 plus the capacity expansion of RAID 0."

Is that not what is really occurring?

 

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49 minutes ago, shanelovell said:

Keep in mind that one of the 8TB drives will need to be used as a parity drive. (Parity must be equal to or larger than other drives in the array.) This will give you 49TB of array data with 8TB parity.  Are you not going to have a Cache drive? If you decide to add multiple cache drives, keep in mind that the cache pool will sum the amount of memory and then divide by the number of drives. Example being: you have a 240GB and a 480GB SSDs as a Cache pool, it adds these (720GB) then divides by 2(for the 2 drives) Total cache memory is now 360GB.

Just something to keep in mind of.

 

Hi Shanelovell,

 

Yeah, I know this. I havne't really figured out yet how I want to split of the drives in terms of cache. I've change the drives to Seagates's 6TB instead - they were cheaper in the long run. 

 

I might have an SSD or 2 for spare, so I might use those for cache. Otherwise my 1TB disk I have in my desktop atm vil change to this instead. 

 

31 minutes ago, trurl said:

Parity must be equal to or larger than any single drive in the array. I'm sure that's what you meant but could be misunderstood.

 

As for cache pools, mostly wrong. WIth 2 drives, the default raid1 btrfs cache pool will give you a mirror, and its total size is only equal to the smaller of the 2 drives (regardless of what the webUI says). It is more complicated with more than 2 drives, but basically you still get everything mirrored in such a way that everything exists as 2 copies on independent disks.

 

 

Hi Trurl,

 

I haven't decided yet if I want to use 2 cache drives instead of 1 just yet. But thank you for the clarification about it. :)

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10 minutes ago, shanelovell said:

Well thank you for the clarification Trurl,

As far as the Cache pool goes I am a bit confused now.

The Unraid Manual states on page 11 

"The unRAID cache pool is created through a unique twist on traditional RAID 1, using a BTRFS feature that provides both the data redundancy of RAID 1 plus the capacity expansion of RAID 0."

Is that not what is really occurring?

 

I would say that "overview" section of the manual is trying to keep it simple (oversimplifying).

 

In order to have redundancy, anything must exist on more than one disk. For example, I will use different numbers than you had to keep things clearer.

 

If you have a 100 GB SSD and a 120 GB SSD in a cache pool, then you can have 100GB on one disk, and a copy of that 100GB on the other disk. But there is no way to use that other 20GB in such a way that it has a copy on another disk.

 

As I said, things get more complicated with more than 2 disks since there are more than 2 disks to use for the redundancy.

 

The calculator I linked gives the real numbers for any particular configuration, and the FAQ tells how to get other configurations, including raid0 which just adds the disks together.

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30 minutes ago, trurl said:

I would say that "overview" section of the manual is trying to keep it simple (oversimplifying).

 

In order to have redundancy, anything must exist on more than one disk. For example, I will use different numbers than you had to keep things clearer.

 

If you have a 100 GB SSD and a 120 GB SSD in a cache pool, then you can have 100GB on one disk, and a copy of that 100GB on the other disk. But there is no way to use that other 20GB in such a way that it has a copy on another disk.

 

As I said, things get more complicated with more than 2 disks since there are more than 2 disks to use for the redundancy.

 

The calculator I linked gives the real numbers for any particular configuration, and the FAQ tells how to get other configurations, including raid0 which just adds the disks together.

That makes sense.

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