Advice on server purchase.

[Spazilton]

Hello, fairly new to Unraid, however after playing around with it I have decided it will be absolutely perfect for what I am looking for.

 

I already have a good start on the HDDs I will be using, so it looks like a 24 bay Supermicro will be the way to go. Currently I am sitting on 12x 8TB Segate  I plan on running dual parity, with 2x1TB SSDs as my cache pool.

 

Main uses are going to be a file server, Plex server for at least 4 probably 6 streams at a time.  I will also have a VM for Unifi Video and video stream recording (8-16 cameras). This will also be the backup server for every computer in my house (6 Windows 10 desktops, 5 Macbooks, various other mobile devices) Needless to say this server will be busy.

 

Noise and to some extent power consumption isn't a concern at all, as the server will be located in my second garage. Currently I have 4x1Gbit connections running to there, and the managed switch I'm using supports link aggregation so I should have sufficient bandwidth to it. 

 

This is what I'm looking at:

 

Supermicro 4U 24x 3.5" Drive Bays 1 Nodes
Server Chassis/ Case: CSE-846BA-R920B
Motherboard: X9DRi-LN4F+
Backplane: BPN-SAS-846A 24-port 4U SAS 6Gbps direct-attached backplane, support up to 24x 3.5-inch SAS2/SATA3 HDD/SSD
PCI-Expansions slots: Full Height 4 x16 PCI-E 3.0, 1 x8 PCI-E 3.0, 1 x4 PCI-E 3.0 (in x8)
* Integrated Quad Intel 1000BASE-T Ports
* Integrated IPMI 2.0 Management
2x intel Xeon E5-2690 V2 Deca (10) Core 3.0Ghz 
32GB DDR3
8 x 4GB - DDR3 - REG
3x LSI 9210-8i HBA **I plan on replacing 2 of these with a 9201-16i I already own**
24x 3.5" Supermicro caddy
2x 920Watt Power Supply PWS-920P-1R Platium
Rail Kit 4U
Standard 30 Day Warranty

 

Price with shipping as listed is about $1600, I'm counting on another 300- 400 or so for the RAM upgrade.

 

Only thing I'm not happy about is the amount of RAM is way too low, I will probably upgrade it right off the bat to 128GB.

 

I've also gone back and forth on the back plane, it seems to me for pure compatibility and the direct connect back plane is superior to the SAS expander variety. Am I correct in assuming this?

 

I've seen a lot of the advice given out and you guys here know what you are doing, and can probably spare me a lot of redo and rework on this project, have I made any glaring mistakes or is there any advice or suggestions you guys would have for me?

 

Thanks so much in advance!!

 

[whipdancer]

Others can speak more authoritatively to the hardware, but based on what I've seen/read over the last 6 years - it looks pretty good.  I haven't seen much extensive discussion of the backplane vs. expander.  My 2 expanders have been running for 2+ years now without issue. The one backplane based server I have personal exposure to has been running just as long, also without issue. As long as the MB & backplane are known to be compatible, you shouldn't have any issues.

I agree that the RAM is probably not optimal given your projected use, but I don't think you need to necessarily max it out either.

[NotYetRated]

Just a couple of quick notes from me:

 

1. Power supplies seem vastly over-spec'd. I am running a server with 12 HDD's, 4 SSD's, Dual V1 E5's, dual Nvidia GeForce 1060 GTX and have 750 WATT platinum power supply. Even with both gaming VM's going, by Blue Iris server running, 1 or 2 Plex streams, I still only hit ~600 Watts pulled. My idle puts me right around the sweet spot for power supply efficiency. Running way over spec'd is running at quite low efficiency. I know you say the power bill is no problem, its just my observation. I am not on solar yet so try and watch efficiencies here and there...

 

2. Do you live in a hot climate? Is the garage cooled? Summers by me can hit 100 F, a server in my garage would seriously cook 10 or so days a year. (though my winters are nice and cold, so that would be nice on the opposite end!)

 

3. Everything else looks pretty damn good to me. Though I am not intimately familiar with backpanes to be of much use there...

 

Enjoy!