Hello everyone, this is my first post and I am just getting familiar with unRaid and its community so go easy on me haha.

I also want to say I'm really impressed by the unRaid software and how active/capable/polite the community seems to be.

 

I've been doing DIY builds for home media, some (failed) business startup attempts and storing or backing up data for myself/others for around 6-7yrs.

My hope for this post is that a handful of people can find something interesting/useful here, and that I can get some fresh perspective on what I've been thinking about and planning.

 

My current setup consists of 3 desktop builds each containing an adaptec 6805e RAID controller...

1. Win10, 2x 8TB HDD under RAID 0, GPU, Plex server, torrents, VirtualBox.
2. Ubuntu, 8x 4TB HDD under RAID 10, Nginx as proxy server, CIFS share
3. Ubuntu, 8x 2TB HDD under RAID 10, CIFS share

 

The Win10 box is where most things are done via SplashTop remote login (great tool, switched to this because LogMeIn cost got ridiculous), and then I use the other two boxes to backup stuff from the Win10 box or other device. This has turned out to be a really messy setup that requires a lot of intervention and I think it's time to not only upgrade but reorganize.

 

Recently my consumed storage space totaled ~16TB which is basically max capacity and has spilled over into external drives, so I've been researching what sort of options I have for upgrade. If my past years using consumer grade parts/software has taught me anything, its that you should expect a LOT of failure.

I have replaced tons of drives, lost data mid-transfer because corruption, spent a lot of money for parts that struggle to achieve high performance and most of all have had to try a lot of different software. Some of this was me learning the basics, but I think most people agree that they want a setup with "great value" -- to me meaning they want 'adequate performance', 'high reliability' and to not be broke afterwards. Yes, these are subjective based on user needs but the goals are usually pretty similar.

 

When you start looking at parts, if you go for the easiest stuff to find, or websites that will do the build for you but allow you to customize (think ibuypower) it is pretty easy to spend $2,000+ for consumer grade and $10,000+ for enterprise builds with just a few clicks. I found it surprisingly difficult to put together an enterprise grade build for less than $3,000-$4,000 that would accommodate this amount of storage and leave a little room for expansion. Lots of info online can be overwhelming because I'm not someone who closely follows which model of which part is the hottest and its price changes, but I think a helpful place to start is by thinking about which of these two things you need to prioritize ... storage, or compute power.

 

For me personally, I need storage more than I need compute power, but my current system has been struggling with 4K transcoding via Plex and I would like to take that into consideration as well down the road.

 

The following parts list is a storage focused build I am looking at doing.

• Storage Chassis - Supermicro CSE-825TQ-563LPB 2U ($389.99) 
• Motherboard - Supermicro MBD-X10SRL-F ($258.99)
• Xeon E5-1620 v4 @ 3.5GHz 4core hyperthreaded ECC-capable ($306.99)
• Supermicro CPU Heatsink ($35.05)
• Kingston ValueRAM 4GB DDR4 2400 ECC Reg DIMM 288-pin ($60.73)
• Storage Array - Seagate Exos 12TB HDD ($391.99)

 

I spent a lot of time reading about different types of RAM, what storage enclosures are available, visiting cpubenchmark.net looking up PassMark scores, talking with other people, visiting the recommended (unRaid) builds wiki page etc. and came to realize that the extra money & leg work is worth it when it comes to the satisfaction you feel knowing your system works well and can be trusted. If I did my homework correctly, the parts list above should get you a really basic enterprise grade storage solution for around $1500 depending on how much RAM and HDDs you buy. I am planning to spend around $2400

 

Below are some questions I was hoping to get feedback on, but feel free to comment on anything I've touched on in hopes that someone will find it useful.

 

• Did I forget anything? haha -- in other words, will this list of parts put together a functioning unit? (regardless of rack mount, ssd cache, or other accessories)
• In regards to old equipment, does anyone have any advice on re-selling / recycling / reusing components? (I have lots of mid-low end sata/x86 stuff, some unused network switches, etc)
• Just to clarify terminology ... IOMMU is implemented into Intel chips specifically and called "VT-d" correct?
• Does anyone have any thoughts on how to handle data backups in terms of "should I have more copies on cheaper gear?" or "should I have fewer copies on more expensive gear?"
• I'm pretty sure unRaid will work in that build, but are there any gotchas I should be aware of, or tweaks available in unRaid that would help me optimize things?
• Does anyone have any additional advice for people considering doing a new build either for the first time, or as someone wondering what the best upgrade path should be? 

 

Sorry for a long post, like I said I'm hoping in the end this will bring a lot of helpful information into one place.

 

First thoughts after a quick read.....

1. Are you looking to build just a storage box? That would be very easy with the drives you have and the HW you listed would certainly power it as long as there are connections for enough drives.

2. Are you looking to build a storage box that will also run a VM of win10? The cpu listed should be plenty for that, but you might want more ram as well as a ssd to run the VM off of.

12 hours ago, buxton said:

First thoughts after a quick read.....

1. Are you looking to build just a storage box? That would be very easy with the drives you have and the HW you listed would certainly power it as long as there are connections for enough drives.

2. Are you looking to build a storage box that will also run a VM of win10? The cpu listed should be plenty for that, but you might want more ram as well as a ssd to run the VM off of.

1. Storage will be its primary function, but I would like it to be powerful enough to handle some light weight docker instances. The mobo listed above has 10 SATA connections and the chassis has 8 drive bays, so it is budget friendly to not have to buy an extra controller.

2. Not sure about windows 10 VM, but yeah I figure I will probably want to upgrade to 16GB of RAM at some point -- but there will be a lot of available DIMM slots on that mobo if I'm only using up 2 of them right away.