Good evening,

please forgive me for asking maybe newbie questions, but I just want to be sure about a solution that I have in mind.

 

I was thinking about creating an unRAID server setup, on which I, and most of my people could/should work. What I was thinking about is the following:

- Analytics VM: virtual machine for crunching numbers with our scraping, analytics and office tools (very large excel tables/models): at least 12 threads
- 2x Office VM, for Outlook, word, internet surfing: 4 threads each. These VM's are accessed via laptops, as my people are mainly onsite with customers, and I want to screen off their environments completely
- unRAID: 2 threads
- NAS: 2 threads
- and finally, for my spare time: Gaming VM: 8 threads

 

Two people who work remote use their laptop, and access my existing network and NAS via VPN. The current workstation for calculations is being used by all, if big models must be calculated (also via remote desktop), they book slots.

 

As a setup, was thinking about this setup:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xsv2Bb

 

I have a big Synology NAS with more than sufficient storage available. It can be accessed over the network and is no bottleneck whatsoever. Normally, I would skip the NAS function of the server. However, I think it might be handy to have more "local" storage (2x M.2 for cache, the rest for storage), but I have a question about this: 

At what speeds will local users access the local unRAID NAS? If I will allocate a network adapter to it, will traffic automatically pass through this, as with other traffic? In that case, directly allocating the drives to the VM's seems more feasible.

 

In general, on sharing resources: as the regular users have very little system requirements, it it possible to share resources? For example:
- as my people use remote desktop to access the server, does every VM need a graphics card? Can they not share the graphics card(s)?
- I saw that it is necessary to allocate threads. Is it possible for VM to use unused resources (CPU) of the other?
- the same goes for HDDs: I rather have a solution in which I have redundancy on the hardware level, and people can use as much space as long as the total is not exhausted, instead of having unused space everywhere. Can this be done?

 

And finally, if the system is configured, does the admin console still need it's own graphics card?

 

I was thinking about building max. three graphics cards in it, one specific card for the GamingVM and one for the workstation, and a shared one for the OfficeVM's (or even less than three, that would even be better). Only the first two of them have a monitor attached to it. Is that feasible?

 

So, a lot of questions from an absolute beginner. Many thanks for your insights and experiences, I look forward to reading more about the possibilities.

 

Best regards!

I don't really have time to answer questions, but I did look at your build and from a cost perspective I believe in general 8TB drives are more cost effective than 4TB drives, and maybe it's just me, but water cooling in a machine that appears to be mission critical scares me. While most are quite reliable it only takes a drop of water from a faulty hose to take down your motherboard and potentially damage other components. You'd be without that system until replacement parts can be brought in an re-assembled. Finally, don't forget a UPS for power outages. Corrupt data in nobody's friend.