Hardware requirements

[daninmanchester]

I want to use unRaid it as an ingest station for video and photos, with some encoding and a plex server as well as a general home file server.

I'll probably do the ingestion via a USB card reader.

 

I'm upgrading from a 4 Tb myCloud which is slow and full.

 

Initially I was thinking to go for  16Tb and a cache drive of about 250GB.

 

As the base unit my plan is to by an old Dell/HP workstation with a xeon.
It will be 1GB ethernet.

 

I'm trying to get a sense of what sort of CPU I need in terms of CPU Passmark and whether faster processor or more cores is likely to be better to overall performance.

 I'm assuming that unRaid will easily saturate 1Gb ethernet and any CPU horsepower is more about encoding and server functions than NAS?

 

Also how much is  RAM likely to be an issue? Would 8Gb suffice?

 

[Frank1940]

There has been a 'rule-of-thumb' that each 1080p plex stream that is to be transcoded requires about 2000 passmarks per stream.  As long as you are not planning to setup VM's, Cores vs raw CPU power should not be an practical issue.  There are probably a few people left around that are running AMD Sempron processors on their basic NAS boxes.  Although, they are not transcoding with them...  

 

I, personally, would go with a minimum of 8GB of RAM even on a basic NAS box.  If you are going to install a lot of Dockers, then go with 16GB.  For VM's usage, be looking at 32GB.  The thing about RAM (as you may realize), is that is much cheaper to install a bit more than you need, then to have to upgrade it later if you find you need a bit more in four or five years down the road.  And remember to buy in pairs and minimize stick count.  (Buy two 8GB sticks rather than four 4GB sticks.  If you should have to upgrade later, you will find that choice will provide more, economical upgrade options.) 

 

BTW, you don't have to install a full 16TB of drives with unRAID to start with.  I am assuming that you are using 8TB drives. Start out with two 8TB drives---  one Parity and one data drive.   Then when you have about 6TB of data on that first drive, get the second 8TB data drive.  (That does two things.  First, you reduce the initial out-of-pocket expenses.  Second, you get that second drive from a different manufacturing lot which reduces the odds of 'buying into' a bad run of drives.) 

[daninmanchester]

Thanks

 

Sorry, to clarify what does this mean : VM's, Cores vs raw CPU power 

The difference between virtualization CPU instance and assigning a physical core?

I was looking at dual 4 core or a 6 or 8 core in my budget. around 7000-9000 passmark.

 

Transcoding is likely to be a batch process as I ingest the data in particular with batch video files for editing.

It would be nice to offload this to a GPU but it didn't look like unRaid was particularly setup for this.

 

Another basic question....why might I need  VM over a docker? 

It seems all key functions such as replication, backup, plex etc are handled within unRaid or docker images.

I don't plan to run windows on the box.

 

Useful tip regarding the drives. 

[Frank1940]

Passmarks is basically a measurement raw CPU power.  To achieve this number, virtually all modern CPU's have more than one processing unit (core) in it.  I would suggest that you read this, if this seems confusing:

 

         https://www.howtogeek.com/194756/cpu-basics-multiple-cpus-cores-and-hyper-threading-explained/

 

It is my understanding that many folks who set up VM under unRAID will dedicate a fixed number of cores to the VM.  You have almost asked a very interesting question-- "Why set up a VM"?   I guess the simplest answers would be responses like this:  "Because I can!"  or "I enjoy the challenge of doing something new" or "I only want one box in my living quarters."   Why might you want to choose a VM over a Docker?  My guess at this point (from the way you asked the question) would be that you could not find a Docker to do the task you wanted done.

 

At your Passmark requirement point, you could pick from a wide number of Core i5/i7 and Xeon E3/E5 CPU's.  And that is just looking at the Intel choices.  Remember that basic unRAID will run almost any 64 bit system.  From my observation, it appears that the folks who want to run VM's to do things like video editing, gaming, are going with the Xeon's.  (Another factor in the number of Xeon systems was that were a large number of used CPU's that came onto the market at a very reasonable cost a while back.)  Folks who are more modest in their expectations  are going with the i5 and i7 CPU's.  (There are actually a couple of i3's that now come close to 7000 passmarks.)  

[daninmanchester]

Thanks.

So my unraid is mainly a file server and ingest station for SD/CF cards from my cameras.

i.e. plug in my memory card(s) to the unRaid workstation and start dumping them to the unRaid volume.

Then ideally have the unRaid server take care of any transcoding of videos/ images automatically too.

i.e. taking images and videos and getting them all in to a common format for editing.

 

I want to run plex server will also sit on the unRaid box as a docker.

 

I eventually plan to add a second unRaid box with more   basic storage / CPU  for backup purposes.

 

When it comes to editing or any other stuff my plan was just to have the unRaid volumes available to my editing PC over a 1 Gb connection and pull content in as needed.

 

What wasn't 100% clear to me is if there were 2 CPUs both with the same passmark but one is 4 cores and the other 8 if I am better with more physical cores as these can be better allocated which is what I think you were getting at with your Raw CPUs?

 

 

[Frank1940]

50 minutes ago, daninmanchester said:

What wasn't 100% clear to me is if there were 2 CPUs both with the same passmark but one is 4 cores and the other 8 if I am better with more physical cores as these can be better allocated which is what I think you were getting at with your Raw CPUs?

 

That is what (for me) is a $64,000 question.  As I have thought about this issue from a theoretical standpoint, I have wondered if I have three CPU's all with a passmark of 10,000.  One of these CPU's has one core, the second CPU has two cores, and the third CPU has four cores.  Which one would have superior performance?  Would it depend on the mix of applications?  Would a case where one process required massive amounts of CPU power benefit from having fewer cores?  Apparently, many folks who are setting VM's where they are looking to achieve near 'bare metal performance' are dedicating a number of cores exclusively to the VM.  This type of usage would favor having more cores.   

 

But deep down, I keep coming back to the  feeling that I may be involved in a similar debate that mirrors the great medieval argument about "how many angels can dance on the point of a needle?".  I think it depends more what you are actually doing and that in any given situation where one configuration may be superior to any other configuration, the difference is probably so small that the end user can't perceive any difference.