Moving from Intel to AMD unraid server

[zaraki1311]

Hello,

 

I am looking at doing a swap out of my Mobo, Ram and CPU to deal with some potentially dying hardware and get some more horsepower. This move will be from an old i7 980x over to a Threadripper 1950x. From what I have been able to gather from a few google searches is that I could potentially just drop the new board cpu and ram in, plug in the usb and it should pickup the array. I want to verify that is true or if I am going to need to do more than that as it is a little more of a drastic change. I am also guessing that because of the change I will have to rebuild all of my VMs to account for the hardware change.

[John_M]

Yes, that's the theory. unRAID isn't too worried about what hardware it runs on and disk assignments are saved by serial number. Make sure you're running the latest version of unRAID (currently 6.4.1) and if your old hardware is up to it run a non-correcting parity check before you shut it down and you should be all set. You'll want to do a thorough testing of your new hardware, especially the memory, and don't be tempted to try to overclock it. The basic NAS functions should just work if you simply plan to transfer your disks over. Plugins and dockers, the same. VMs, I suspect, will have to be rebuilt, or not, depending on their individual details.

[Frank1940]

You might want to start with these threads:

 

        https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/55150-anybody-planning-a-ryzen-build/

and

        https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/67219-problems-with-ryzen-cpu/

 

I don't run any of the AMD hardware but I do peruse the forum a few times each day.  The road has been rocky and some folks have still not clear the last of the rocks out of their system.  I suspect that a fair number of the issues are in the Linux kernel and it seems to be taking a long time to get everything addressed.  I would also suggest a search on threadripper on the forum (Or I remember that someone said that using Google with a search with unRAID as one of the terms (ex.  threadripper   unraid) would yield better results.) 

 

[John_M]

The only remaining Ryzen issue is the C states one. I'm not sure that even affects Threadripper.

Edited March 2, 2018 by John_M
Added link

[zaraki1311]

1 hour ago, John_M said:

Yes, that's the theory. unRAID isn't too worried about what hardware it runs on and disk assignments are saved by serial number. Make sure you're running the latest version of unRAID (currently 6.4.1) and if your old hardware is up to it run a non-correcting parity check before you shut it down and you should be all set. You'll want to do a thorough testing of your new hardware, especially the memory, and don't be tempted to try to overclock it. The basic NAS functions should just work if you simply plan to transfer your disks over. Plugins and dockers, the same. VMs, I suspect, will have to be rebuilt, or not, depending on their individual details.

I definitely do not plan to overclock this go around. My old i7 i am running now has had a 24/7 overclock up to 4.7ghz for almost 7 years which has brought me to the state I am in now where Unraid and VMs crashing randomly. I also don't think I can get enough cooling in the case I plan to use for the build. 

[tjb_altf4]

I jumped from an x5670 (effectively the xeon counterpart to the 980x) to x399 with no issues, just remember to change core allocations before starting VMs as the pairings will be all wrong and will cause issues.

I had some boot options to allow unsafe interrupts, which I reverted back to the standard boot options.

 

I bench tested my x399 hardware on a spare unRAID licence (trial would work also) using a basic setup to satisfy myself it was stable before committing hardware to my "production" server.

Latest stable unRAID (currently 6.4.1) + BIOS seem to be a winner.

 

My current config:

1950x TR

Asrock Taichi X399

G.Skill 3200MHz C14 64GB (4x16GB) F4-3200C14Q-64GVK (running at rated speed using XMP profile)

Currently passing through GTX1060, which I've done both as a secondary GPU (current setup) and as primary GPU (passing ROM file in XML)

 

BIOS settings changes where limited to fan profiles, boot options, RAM XMP profile enable and virtualisation enabling.

Problematic Cstates are disabled by default in this BIOS, have not enabled zenstates yet and has not been any issues in 3 weeks.

 

 

 

 

[Symon]

10 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

 just remember to change core allocations before starting VMs as the pairings will be all wrong and will cause issues.

 

What do you mean by that? I'm using a 1950X Threadripper and the only thing I did was allocating certain cores to VMs. Do I have to changes something else?

 

[pwm]

25 minutes ago, Symon said:

 

What do you mean by that? I'm using a 1950X Threadripper and the only thing I did was allocating certain cores to VMs. Do I have to changes something else?

 

He meant that when switching from one processor to a different processor, he had to readjust the core allocations for the already existing VM that had the core allocations optimized for the older processor.

[Symon]

On 3/3/2018 at 6:07 PM, pwm said:

He meant that when switching from one processor to a different processor, he had to readjust the core allocations for the already existing VM that had the core allocations optimized for the older processor.

 

Ahh now it makes sense .. thank you

[SSD]

Not just core assignments for vms, but also for Dockers and USB passthrough. You also need to make sure that your GPU is assigned to its own iommu group. 

[ozzylins]

So, I got a AMD FX 8350... Is it "safe"  upgrade it to ThreadRipper ? Windows VM working fine? No Unraid freezes? I`m quite insecure on spending a lot o $$ and get desapointed

Edited March 10, 2018 by ozzylins

[FreeMan]

7 hours ago, ozzylins said:

So, I got a AMD FX 8350... Is it "safe"  upgrade it to ThreadRipper ? Windows VM working fine? No Unraid freezes? I`m quite insecure on spending a lot o $$ and get desapointed

Read through the treads posted above by Frank - those seem to be the majority of the teething problems with the new AMD CPUs. If, after reading those, you feel comfortable, go for it. If not, those would probably be better places to address your remaining specific questions, since that's where the ThreadRipper expertise seems to be concentrated.

[John_M]

The trouble with the "Anyone planning a Ryzen build" thread is that it's very long and contains a lot of outdated information. The only thing that's still an issue is the C-states freezing one, and it's easy to mitigate. Other than that the guidelines are the same as for any platform - buy compatible RAM, test it thoroughly, don't overclock, etc.

[guru69]

Found this post and I am also about to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, Ram, and cache drives on my Unraid 6.4.1. I currently have a Supermicro X9SCM with a Xeon E3-1290v2, 32gb ECC and has a pair of mirrored 256gb Samsung 850 Pro SSDs for cache (BTRFS). Currently has no VMs, and 3 dockers (Netdata, Plex, Tautulli)

 

I am installing a Gigabyte X399 Designare EX, AMD Threadripper 1950X, and 64GB of ECC ram. I want to move cache off of sata SSD and onto 3 Samsung 960 512gb NVME SSDs. The primary use is a large media server running Plex and I'm trying to maximize the number of transcodes possible. At some point I want to migrate from Plex docker to a VM so I can passthrough a good GPU for hardware transcoding (Quadro P5000 or P6000)

 

The new motherboard hasn't arrived yet, but appears to support hardware RAID on the 3 onboard NVME slots. Has anyone used this for Unraid cache? I am looking for the best performance and reliability and wonder what you guys would recommend for using 3 NVME cache drives, letting Unraid handle redundancy or the motherboard RAID? 

 

The manual shows a "Disable Global C-State" option in the bios settings, is that enough to avoid any problems with Unraid?

 

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, guru69 said:

The new motherboard hasn't arrived yet, but appears to support hardware RAID on the 3 onboard NVME slots.

Are you sure about that? It sure looks like software driver based RAID in the documentation.

[guru69]

Not actually quite sure, it appears you create the RAID array in the BIOS, maybe some kind of FakeRaid/ Raid on chip, etc? It appears that you install software to manage it after that, but I'm guessing whatever OS will see the array as a single entity if configured in the Bios. Is this considered software RAID?

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_x399-designare-ex_e.pdf

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