(Re)Build Advice and Migration


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First, what are the implications of switching a motherboard, CPU, and RAM for UNRAID?  The installation is tied to the key which is tied to the Flash device which boots, right?  Not to a particular hardware signature?  (UNRAID Plus, if it matters.)

 

If I switch motherboards all of my drives will have new identifiers.  Is it as easy as placing them all in a new array?  Should I ensure that each drive is placed back in the same position within the array?  (Probably so, just to be safe.)  I'll have to recalculate parity after the installation, I'm sure.

 

Are there implications I'm not aware of or thinking of here?  I'd like to do this as painlessly as possible - that means not losing 60TB of data.  (And I have no way to back it up... only about 36TB of other storage space available and that's impaired until I get a replacement drive.)

 

Second, the actual switch.  Right now I have an Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 motherboard (AM3+), 32GB of RAM, and an AMD FX-6300 Hex Core at 3.5Ghz.  My server is switching off at random intervals, but noticeably during heavy load.  I believe my CPU is overheating and the shutdown is the "oh shit, save the system" operation.

 

The cooler that's currently on the CPU is vendor trash and I can replace it, however, I believe a new CPU and motherboard might enhance the usability of my system.  Right now with parity check, a Sonarr docker, a Radarr docker, a Deluge docker, a NzbGet docker, and a Jackett docker my CPU usage sits at 100% (via UNRAID Main screen; via HTOP it's about 75% with a lot of kernel [IOWAIT] time.)  My temperature sits at 79C/174F; the hivemind of Google says I should keep it below 77C/170F.  My performance is compromised with these dockers - Deluge can kill a computer on its own most of the time - but if I go to remove a file with SMB everything stops; even using SSH it takes a few minutes to return, depending on the size.  (Comparison, with all dockers terminated and only a parity check occurring the temperature is 57C/135F.  Performance seems substantially improved as well.)

 

The question is do you believe I'm taking a hit because of the temperature (and automatic CPU throttling), because I'm overtaxing this system (it's no beast, I admit), or because I'm expecting more from my drives than I should?  Would I see a substantial benefit from upgrading my motherboard/CPU?  I've spent a substantial amount on this project and have a very heated wife objecting to further expenditures, but said wife is also an avid user of the resources made available from the server so it dying would not be good either.

 

Is there any information I'm not looking at that would help inform this decision?

 

Config: 

Sonarr has main directory pointed to /mnt/user/media/Television.  [media is the array, cache is turned off].

Radarr has main directory pointed to /mnt/user/media/Movies.  [same as Sonarr]

Deluge has the download directory pointed to /mnt/user/downloads/deluge [downloads is the share, share is set to only use cache].

NzbGet has the download directory pointed to /mnt/user/downloads/nzbget [same as Deluge].

Sonarr and Radarr move from the downloads directory to the media directory upon completion.

 

All of the rest of the docker configurations are stock, I'm using the linuxservers dockers.

 

One thing I've noticed is that my drives seem to be mostly connecting at 3.0Gbps (SATA II) rather than 6.0Gbps (SATA III).  The drives which are attaching at 6.0Gbps are connected to the system with an PEXESAT3221 PCIe SATA III (ASM 1061) controller, so the motherboard ports are not running at 6.0Gbps - so that's one upgrade which would occur.  But I've been led to believe that SATA III vs II is really irrelevant because a drive can't saturate the bandwidth anyway.  (Parity runs at 165Mb/sec, which I think is pretty good.)  I normally have -- max -- three streams feeding Plex.  Normally two. 

 

Another benefit from a motherboard upgrade would be additional PCIe slots in which I could add additional SATA controllers.  I have physical room for two more drives in the case but no open connections.

 

Even if I did upgrade, it wouldn't be a best of breed situation.  At best, I'd be looking at a couple hundred to throw at the situation.  Probably an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and an accompanying ASUS motherboard.  (https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-2600-vs-AMD-FX-6300/3955vs1555)

 

Thanks for your time.

 

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7 hours ago, Talonius said:

If I switch motherboards all of my drives will have new identifiers.  Is it as easy as placing them all in a new array?  Should I ensure that each drive is placed back in the same position within the array?  (Probably so, just to be safe.)  I'll have to recalculate parity after the installation, I'm sure.

If by identifiers, you mean the /dev/sdX, then yes, they will have new letters, but unraid ignores those. All drive ID is handled by the serial number reported by the drive, so as long as your current system and new system both pass those numbers through unmolested, Unraid won't even show a difference. You shouldn't have to recalculate parity, as long as nothing but unraid has control of your drives.

 

Because of the way unraid is designed, each boot is essentially a new install, with all persistent configurations read into memory from the boot flash. It doesn't care if the hardware changes from one boot to the next, it's starting fresh anyway.

 

The only exceptions to that rule are things that do directly access the motherboard or system devices, like VM's or dockers that have hardware passed to them. In your described layout, as long as the new board has compatible drive controller and network chipsets, everything will likely come up like nothing changed. Before you land on a specific motherboard, see if you can find someone on the forums using that exact board, and ping them to see if there are any gotcha's.

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