"5 PCs, 1 Tower" - '2nd Build' 14 Core Xeon UnRAID Server


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1 hour ago, pwm said:

Did you need the extra transfer speed? RAID-0 means you lose all data if one drive fails.

Sorry, I meant they are in single profile mode so I get 2x250GB=500GB of capacity - will fix.

 

There's nothing on there that I can't replace or I haven't backed up elsewhere.  At the moment it's got:

 

- appdata for plex, nzbget and a few other dockers (databases and appdata needed to restore backed up off site every night)

- nzbget intermediate files - means I can use my cache pool SSD for destdir

- deluge extracted files - disposable

- makemkv exports - disposable

- tvheadend live buffer - disposable

 

I have considered going Raid1 for redundancy, but for my usage I'll be too close to the 250GB mark too often and because I don't have a 'mover' I don't want to risk running out of space

 

 

Edited by DZMM
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  • 4 weeks later...

2nd Anniversary Update

 

2 years in and I'm still tinkering with my system and this month has seen some interesting updates!  I think I really am done now as apart from replacing drives, I've got very few outstanding projects.

  1. Re-organised Cores: I normally have 3 VMs running (2x W10 + PfSense) with the 3rd W10 VM only on occasionally.  So, Ive split my cores this way:
  • Core 0: unRAID exclusive
  • Core 1: unRAID, emulator Pins, Plex
  • Cores 2-4: unRAID, VM1, Plex
  • Cores 5-7: unRAID, VM3, All Dockers
  • Cores 8-10: unRAID, VM2, Plex
  • Cores: 11-13: unRAID, pfsense VM, Plex

Isolating my dockers (except Plex) to cores 5-7 which needs access to my machine power has worked brilliantly for VM performance.  VM3 is only turned on occasionally and is light-use, so loading all docker activity onto its cores has worked out fine and the VM is still usable - just a little bit laggy at times.

  1. Added 1050 TI 4GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING 6GB: In the past I've resisted gaming on my PC, but I got onto the geforce now beta which only allowed one login at a time.  My kids were starting to fight, so I bought the 1060 so they both could play rocket league.  It's proven to be a great investment and I wish I'd done it sooner Edit: sent the 1050 TI back as is was noiser than my whole machine thanks to the fan min being set at 45%.......Upgraded to a 1060 for better future proofing, yet still lower power usage
  2. Increased cache pool to 1TB: With my previous 500GB cache with my workload the mover was running almost constantly at times, sometimes struggling to offload faster than files were being added and I think sometimes files were being moved before they were in their optimal directories, which was messing up my array split levels.  I bought a new 1TB MX500 to go alongside my existing 2x500GB.  I'm happy with this move as it makes my future upgrade path the 1TB+ SSDs easier
  3. Removed 2TB Hitachi UD: I had to free up slot for 1TB SSD. With the additional cache capacity I have enough space for torrents so I haven't missed this drive
  4. Changed 500GB (2x250GB) Unassigned to 250GB RAID1: Feel happier this way as I've now got redundancy if one drive goes
  5. Added Crashplan Docker: As part of my new safety first strategy as I've ditched my rclone backup and I'm now using crashplan.  Luckily I'd tried home in the past, so I qualified for the $2.5/mth for 12 months offer
  6. Moved more HD movies to gdrive via rclone:  In addition to all my TV shows, I've now moved over 50% of my HD movies to google drive.  I'll keep shifting more to make room for the 4K library I'm slowly growing locally.  Eventually I'll backup my rclone mount to Crashplan in case google change their policy in the future.

My average CPU load is creeping up at around 40%, which is acceptable given how much my usage has increased since I started 2 years ago when it was around 15-20%.

 

To Do:

  1. get google music manager working in a docker so can upload music library
  2. get another geforce now account so can have 3 concurrent gamers

 

Edited by DZMM
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  • 1 year later...

It's been over a year since my last update and there's been some major changes:

 

  1. 6 PCs, 1 Tower - I've moved homeassistant from a docker to a Hassio VM which runs much better and is easier to manage as it has better plugin support
  2. Moved All Media & Backups to Rclone - my rclone setup has been running so well for over a year now, I decided to move all my media to rclone (about 370TB) which allowed me to remove 4-5 HDDs approx 30TB of storage.  I also do my backups of other key files to rclone, so I only have about 3TB across 2 HDDs of files on my server now where about 0.5-1TB are files that are seeding or pending upload to gdrive via rclone.  About 1TB are photos I need to organise and once I've done this I think I'll move them to gdrive as well as rclone supports google photos now.  It's meant I can pretty much run my server from my 1TB cache pool which has been great for noise and heat
  3. Removed Parity - because I have a full offsite backup of key files, I also sold my parity drive as it was redundant.  The change in array performance has been noticeable and I also don't have to run parity checks anymore 🙂
  4. New Unassigned NVME just for Plex - because my cache pool seemed to be doing more work, I decided to add a 970 Evo Plus 256GB nvme just for Plex alongside my nvme for VMs.  I can't say it's made a massive difference (I think it has made some), but it didn't cost much
  5. Increased RAM to 96GB - saw ram was going cheap in the summer so purchased another 32GB

1200070430_FireShotCapture043-Highlander_Dashboard-1d087a25aac48109ee9a15217a105d14c06e02a6.unraid_net.thumb.png.93ad6fa9116c734c413734b2b43d62d9.png

Edited by DZMM
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  • 3 months later...
On 9/26/2018 at 9:34 PM, DZMM said:

 

 

  1. Added 1050 TI 4GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING 6GB: In the past I've resisted gaming on my PC, but I got onto the geforce now beta which only allowed one login at a time.  My kids were starting to fight, so I bought the 1060 so they both could play rocket league.  It's proven to be a great investment and I wish I'd done it sooner Edit: sent the 1050 TI back as is was noiser than my whole machine thanks to the fan min being set at 45%.......Upgraded to a 1060 for better future proofing, yet still lower power usage

I got a gpu for gaming.  I'd like to share that gpu to VM users.  Unlike you though, I don't have a CPU per person.  I have a raspberry pi 3B.  How do you share VM per CPU User?  Thanks!

 

Edited by jang430
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Sorry, want to clarify that I'm trying to achieve something like what you did.  Create VMs, assign dedicated cores, and passthrough GPU.  But to access the VM, I'll only be using a Raspberry Pi 3B, with Monitor, keyboard and mouse attached to it.  The setup should be fine.  But Not sure about the software to run on Raspberry Pi 3B, to get maximum performance (to be able to take advantage of the GPU GTX1080).  I've tested Moonlight (installed on a desktop) but the experience isn't perfect.  It lags.

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