Hello everyone.

I am new here. And after careful consideration unraid seems to be what I am looking for.

 

Needs: 

Storage of a lot of my own video files(and some pictures), no need for fast access. Just as a backup from local workstation ~atm 3 tb.

~400gb - 1tb of documents of various kinds that I will need access to from wherever and whatever.

Backup of some local folders, rsync or similar. Something like that for my phone as well would be nice.

Future fun projects and stuff.

A couple of VM:s, like a wiki.js, forums etc.  Nothing super heavy but I will need a processor with some cores and ram enough to grow. 

I am considering a matx computer with room for 2 3.5 drives so I can run raid 1, perhaps a usb hdd that runs backup to it for some redundancy. But should I go with regular atx so I can fit more HDDs later? Probably...  

• Any good chassi suggestions?
• 2x6tb seagate ironwolf should be fine for now.
• An m2 drive for VMs/cache, 250gb samsung 860evo any good?
• Do I need ecc ram? Or can I manage without? 16gb enough to start?
• intel or amd?
• Considerations for motherboard? What functionality to look for? Anything that is usually recommended? 
• Anything to look out for that is not compatible with unraid overall?

I am trying to keep the costs down and upgrade later if possible. Aiming for a cost around 1000$/10000sek (I am Swedish) for this to get up and running.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated. 

11 minutes ago, Hagge said:

room for 2 3.5 drives so I can run raid 1

Unraid is not RAID, but if you only have a parity drive and a single data drive then it is effectively raid1. Just thought I would mention it since if you add additional disks Unraid is very much not RAID. Parity is somewhat RAID-like, but each data disk in Unraid is independent. No striping for example.

 

The independence of the disks is a benefit of Unraid that allows mixing disk sizes and adding disks without rebuilding the array. And if you lose more disks than parity can recover, you don't lose everything since each disk has complete files on them and can be read independently on any linux.

Right, forgot about that. 

So if I have 2x6TB as a start I should stick to 6TB drives. Or if I add just one 12TB drive to the 2x6TB drives that would be the parity drive if I understand this correctly. Check  

Parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk. There is no need for it to be larger than any single data disk. A single 6TB parity disk provides parity protection for any number of data drives, each 6TB or smaller.

 

Just wanted to spell that out since your post seems like you may think parity must be as large as all of your other disks combined. It doesn't. It is not a backup and doesn't contain any of your data.

Form factor of the motherboard (MATX) is not always indicative of the number of drives it will support. I would select the MB to allow for expansion - either PCIE slots or on-board controllers (PCIE slots are more versatile).

48 minutes ago, Hagge said:

I should stick to 6TB drives

As mentioned, Unraid allows you to mix disk sizes.

Thanks for the help. 

So for expansion it is easier/recommended to just go with a sata pcie card in the future (like the Delock PCI-Express 10x SATA III) compared to me searching for a mb with a lot of sata slots right now. 

 

Anything especially recommended for VMs in regards to HW? Or is most modern MBs and processors ok with it?
Is ECC memory worth it or is it overkill for my little planned setup?

1 hour ago, Hagge said:

like the Delock PCI-Express 10x SATA III

That is a 2 port controller with two SATA ports multipliers, and should be avoided, for performance and reliability reasons, when you need more ports get an LSI HBA.

I ended up getting an HP z420 for cheap. 

It has a Intel Xeon E5-1620 in it and 32gb of ECC ddr3 ram. 

I use a 250gb SSD for scratch and 2x4tb ironwolf drives. Will add more later, just testing it now and it looks good so far