DTMHibbert Posted February 28, 2018 Posted February 28, 2018 So im interested in building a server for UnRaid and just want you guys to check over my parts list. Just for a bit of background though, i currently have a Synology DS411 with no RAID its just full of random sized disks. Its not powerful enough to run plex nor transcode any media really, so hence why im looking to build a server for UnRaid. So for the parts: Case - Fractal Design R4 - Already got PSU - EVGA 850 G2 - Already got Motherboard - ASRock Z370 Pro 4 (any budget standard Z370 board) CPU - Intel Core i3-8100 - Scores 8000 on Passmark Memory - 8GB DDR4 (Cheapest) No i have 1x4TB, 1x3TB and 2x2TB disk in my synology unit - i was going to buy a Seagate ironwolf 6TB with the above to help transfer over the first drives data and so on n so on then add another 4tb drive later to act as parity. i have a couple of questions. 1) is a 7200rpm drive best for parity? if so another Seagate ironwolf 6tb do the job? 2) my transfer speed at the moment to the Synology unit is about 44MB/s, what should i be looking at average with the new build? i know parity drives affect speed alot. 3) i will be adding a SSD as cache later down the line to so again how will this affect speed of transfers. 4) will the above build be ok for a basic VM nothing to heavy just a linux VM to mess with. 5) is there much difference between the LSI 9211 8i and the AOC-SAVLP-MV8, i will be buying one soon as the board only has 6 SATA ports Any help and suggestions is always appreciated i have been reading a lot but with so much information is difficult to take it all in. Thanks
Hoopster Posted February 28, 2018 Posted February 28, 2018 4 hours ago, DTMHibbert said: 1) is a 7200rpm drive best for parity? if so another Seagate ironwolf 6tb do the job? I have 7200 RPM parity drives in both of my servers just because. Although a 7200 RPM drive is going to be a bit faster at writing than a 5400/5900 RPM drive would be, calculating parity still involves reading all the other drives. Unless they are also 7200 RPM drives, the overall impact of a 7200 RPM drive for parity vs. a slower drive is not going to be huge. Yes, it will be a little faster, but, many unRAID users are humming along just fine with 5400 RPM parity drives. 4 hours ago, DTMHibbert said: 2) my transfer speed at the moment to the Synology unit is about 44MB/s, what should i be looking at average with the new build? i know parity drives affect speed alot. Fewer larger files are going to transfer much faster than lots and lots of smaller files. It is true that parity calculation impacts write speeds if you are writing directly to the array. 30-80 MB/s is usually "normal" for unRAID depending on a lot of factors, such as drive speeds; type, size and amount of files being written, presence of a cache disk, etc. You can also enable turbo write in unRAID which means all the disks are always spun up, but, it does result in faster writes to the array. 4 hours ago, DTMHibbert said: 3) i will be adding a SSD as cache later down the line to so again how will this affect speed of transfers. On a per user share basis, you can determine if initial data writes go directly to the array disks or to the cache drive. If writing to an SSD cache drive, of course, writes will be much quicker. Later, the mover will run per your schedule and move files from cache to the array and calculate parity. While files exist only in cache, they are not parity protected, but, they write much quicker. 4 hours ago, DTMHibbert said: 4) will the above build be ok for a basic VM nothing to heavy just a linux VM to mess with. The Coffee Lake i3 8100 is a 4 core CPU so, yes, you could set up a lightly-used VM and assign a couple of cores to it. I ran an Ubuntu VM for a while on a Haswell i5 with four cores. if it was a heavy-use or constantly running VM, you would probably want to opt for something with a bit more oomph; however, for occasionally playing around, it should be OK. 4 hours ago, DTMHibbert said: 5) is there much difference between the LSI 9211 8i and the AOC-SAVLP-MV8, i will be buying one soon as the board only has 6 SATA ports Do not use the AOC-SAVLP-MV8. It has a Marvell controller and has been causing lots of headaches on unRAID 6.x.x In the unRAID 5 days it was very popular, but, many users reported that with unRAID 6 there have been problems with missing disks. The LSI is a better choice. The Dell H310 or IBM M1015 have also been popular. With some you need to flash them to IT mode, so, make sure you find out if that is needed with whatever HBA you choose. Others more knowledgeable than me will likely chime in with additional or better info.
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