Here is my build https://pcpartpicker.com/list/P7WG29 

The ram is $32 per module with needing to buy 2 at a time due to dual cpus

 

So i'm looking at making an unraid nas/media server at the end of the month and I was wondering how much ram it would require.

I would be starting out with a 10TB drive, Plex, 1-2 VMs, and whatever i find interesting in docker while adding a 10TB parity drive in mid October.

 

My endgame is to just keep adding 10TB drives and eventually would just end up with 7x10TB data and 2 parity drives with Plex and 1-2 vms. This would be much much further down the road though. Just want to say now I know that this isn't a back up nor is it meant to be just mainly a media server and I would have backups of anything important on and off the nas.

 

I've read that unraid doesn't require as much ram as freenas and that people regularly run with 8-16GB of ram for just their nas section. So what I am asking is how much ram would I need for my endgame because I would rather just get it now and not deal with getting it latter. I would need to go with 32GB,64GB,96GB because the sticks have to be added in pairs.

 

I would appreciate any help~

UnRAID can run its base NAS capability in 4GB of RAM regardless of the amount of attached storage.   Most people add more to allow for running dockers and/or VMs.

5 hours ago, Storm King said:

So what I am asking is how much ram would I need for my endgame

You mentioned endgame, lets assume two virtual machines (out of your 1-2 VMs from your post) - how much ram do you want to allocate to each vm? How about 16G per vm? Lets assume running Docker apps in this time period, so 8-16GB there.  So, you're at (2*16 for vms) + (8 to 16 for Docker) + (4 to 8 for unraid) ==> 44GB on low end or 56GB for highend, that may as well be 64GB for easy memory pairs.

 

As you can see, no set rules, just a matter of how much headroom you wish to give yourself, and what you want to invest in for hardware.

I hope that helps.

Edited September 4, 20187 yr by Jcloud