I am a middle-aged software developer running some kind of server system for the past 20 or so years. My first "own" server was actually Slackware on a 286 AT system which i used as a router and firewall. unRaid took me full circle, i never for my life expected to be running slackware again HAHAHA.

 

I was going to use Freenas on my new server but during my initial research the name unRaid popped up in a thread explaining how crappy Freenas/Corral had implemented Docker.

I decided to watch some video's about unRaid, found JonP's ones on youtube and I was sold.

 

This weekend my new hardware arrived, built the system and installed unRaid. Now installing was quirky because the USB stick wouldn't boot. I solved the issue by using Rufus for the formatting process and redoing the USB creation procedure. Initially I added my 3x4 TB WD red disks, created a few more shares (Media, Data/Backup)  and restored 7 TB of data from backup without a problem. (No parity drive, the 4th disk has yet to arrive). Set the internal M2 SSD as cache drive and started installing the Docker applications.

 

I had SABnzbd, Sonarr, CouchPatato and PlexMediaServer up and running in a few hours. On Sunday the decision was made and I ordered  a key. Absolutely love unRaid. 

 

Server Hardware (under $450, excluding the WD RED NAs drives):

Fujitsu Server Board D3417-B ($118)

Intel Celeron processor G3900 ($41)
Crucial 8 Gb ecc-memory ($80)

Intel 600p 128 Mb NVMe PCIe SSD (M2 slot) ($60)

Be quiet! Pure Power 10, 300 Watt ($40)

Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 tower ($90)

 

Power consumption in Idle mode = 9 watt (excluding the NAS drives, they add 3.4 watt each).

 

For my next project i am probably going run unRaid on my main system which runs Windows 10 and serves as a gaming rig / development system.

 

Edited April 10, 20179 yr by praaphorst

Welcome and congrats, looks like your first build went very well!

1 hour ago, praaphorst said:

Be quiet! Pure Power 10, 300 Watt

Like most of the brand, not Single +12V rail. If you get a lot of drives in there might want to reconsider.

35 minutes ago, trurl said:

Like most of the brand, not Single +12V rail. If you get a lot of drives in there might want to reconsider.

I'll keep it in mind, for now there going to be one more 4TB WD RED drive for parity, I should be ok.

 

Which PSU would you recommend?

5 minutes ago, praaphorst said:

Which PSU would you recommend?

I don't have any specific recommendations, and everything at my house is Small Form Factor (or even smaller), so I am using SFX PSUs in my PC and Servers.

 

Here is the Power Supply Thread. Kind of old but the general ideas in the first post still apply and maybe there are some more recent recommendations there.

 

 

Welcome to the insanity. 

 

I only need a little storage. Then next thing you know you have 4Servers and 100TB worth of drives on order.