New Media Server Build

[Ockingshay]

This is my current system that i've had now for 7 years and it's running out of storage and starting to feel a bit long in the tooth with what unRaid can do now and the UHD era:

 

Supermicro X9SCM

Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1270 V2 @ 3.50GHz

32 GiB DDR3 Single-bit ECC

2 x AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controllers

14 x 3TB WD Red array

2 x 3TB WD Red parity

2 x 1TB WD Black cache

 

It doesn't run any VMs but it does run many dockers from plex to roon, to my cameras and network, so has to be pretty powerful. What i'm thinking and need support for the following:

 

1) Replace the 3TB drives with modern large capabilities 10TB+ to cut down on the amount of drives, but at the same time increase overall array size.

2) Replace the cache drives with SSDs

3) Requires dual GB ethernet ports, so that i can bond them

4) Are those controllers still relevant, or i've noticed some supermicro boards have 10 sata ports built into them

5) Similar sort of RAM 

6) iGPU offloading for hardware acceleration in plex

7) Plenty of cores to handle all the stuff it now does

8] preferably IPMI as it sits in my server room, headless

 

It'll need to be the intel route i believe, to get hardware acceleration working, but other than that i'm open to any suggestions. Budget isn't too much of a problem if the solution fits, but i would like it to be bullet proof like my current system.

 

If you were to create the ultimate media server build, what would you use? 

 

 

[Ockingshay]

well, instead of getting you lot to do all the work, i thought i would use this platform to think out loud and go through the choices for each component and hopefully get some feedback. 

 

I'll flick back between posts to address each, and so it won't be in any particular order but most probably the order at which i find easiest to choose

 

Components required:

 

1) CPU

2) Motherboard

3) Memory

3) Cache

4) Array

5) Case

6) PSU

 

[Ockingshay]

3) Cache

 

This seems like a good place to start and was actually inspired by this Spartacus Build. I'd not seen one of these before but really like the clean solution of using the ASRock Quad M.2 PCIe NVMe Gen3 Expansion Card. This allows me to install up to 4 nvme SSDs in a tidy little package and actively cooled. It uses PCIe Gen3 x16, so will need to make sure that the motherboard is able to support this.

 

The other option is just to use 2.5" SSD attached to the motherboard's SATA ports.

[Ockingshay]

) Array

 

This has taken a bit longer to get my head around, as there are just so many different cards out there. I plan on using 10TB+ drives to negate the need for having so many drives in the system, reducing energy consumption and more components to go wrong. The AOC-SAS2LP-MV8s have served me well and are still available and cheap. I do get a warning from "fix common problems" telling me:

 

Quote

It appears that your server has a Marvel based hard drive controller installed within it.  Some users with Marvel based controllers exhibit random drives dropping offline, recurring parity errors during checks etc. This tends to be exacberated if VT-D / IOMMU is enabled in the BIOS. Generally, LSI based controllers would be preferred over Marvel based controllers because of these issues.  Note that these issues are out of Limetech's hands. Depending upon the exact combination of hardware present in your server, you may not have any problems whatsoever.  If you have no problems, then this warning can be safely ignored, but future versions of unRaid (and later Kernel versions) may (or may not) present you with the previously mentioned issues.

 

I've never had an issue, but happy to give other controllers a go. I have noticed that there is now a bottle-neck in my system if i'm trying to watch a movie and i'm copying data across drives. This didn't happen when i had less drives, so i guess its a bandwidth issue? CPU is also a little high, so maybe it's also because of this.

 

Supermicro do an AOC-S3008L-L8E, which has 12GB/s ports. Is that overkill for WD Red/Gold drives? I want to avoid this bottle-neck when the system is doing a lot of things at once. I want my server to be doing whatever it needs to be doing and not interfere with me watching plex. it has to be seamless. It uses PCI-E Gen.3 x8

 

Any other idea for controllers?

 

EDIT: Well as seems to be the general consensus around here i will go with an LSI controller

 

Edited May 18, 2019 by Ockingshay

[Ockingshay]

6) PSU

 

I've always gone with Seasonic, so will probably just get another one of these with the best efficiency certification that's on offer. 

[Ockingshay]

1&2) CPU & Motherboard

 

This is what i've struggled with the most. It was easy 7 years ago, but again there are just so many choices out there now. What i don't like about my current setup is that my X9SCM doesn't support the iGPU of my E3-1270 V2, so i cannot use the hardware acceleration in plex transcoding. This server runs my entire house and I have about 15 dockers doing all manner of things. I need the cores to be able to handle all this and thanks to the AMD Threadripper, both camps have started to make many core CPUs part of the norm now.

 

Things to consider is multiple transcodes, so that's AMD out of the question? Could i use a Threadripper and an nVIDIA GPU? i don't think dockers support GPU passthrough. If that is the case then an intel is the obvious choice, but what family? workstation xeons or these new prosumer i7/i9s? What i like about the xeons is that everything is geared towards server functionality. if i go down the i7/i9 route, i have to buy a "gaming" motherboard that costs an arm and a leg because it has useless features to me like RGB lighting, WiFi AC etc. What pulls me towards the i7/i9 is the functionality with 4K support. They just seem to be more geared towards this new generation of Movies/TV.

 

So i'm really not sure what to do about this part. The other consideration is depending on the motherboard i will need to get ECC Ram or not. I would prefer to use ECC Ram as that has worked perfectly for me for the last 7 years, but again, i'm open to suggestions.

 

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by Ockingshay

[Ockingshay]

5) Case

 

When i built my first server, the only criteria i had was the ability to house loads of drives. The beast that i ended up with was a Xigmatek Elysium. it is so big, that the motherboard looks like a little toy in the middle of it! However this case has lasted me so well, the fans are all still working, and being on wheels i can clean it out every year, so it's been a fantastic buy. Due to it's large size temps have been fantastic. CPU sits at 32oC and the MB 33oC all year round. Currently all my drives sit at 27oC and this never fluctuates. I think this has been the biggest impact on longevity.

 

My "server" room is just a glorified cupboard in the middle of my house, but having lived here for so long, whenever we've renovated rooms we've added cat6 and so everything is hardwired back to this cupboard now. That also includes my landlines and POE cameras. Being an Electrician, it also has it's own dedicated circuit running off an isolating transformer and air conditioning. 

 

What i didn't appreciate the value of in those early days was hot-swappable cases. The ones that can be rack mounted and you can just replace drives as and when required. it's a bit of a session to do anything in the Xigmatek, so i really want to move to something like that. Fortunately in my line of work i have access to plenty of stuff like this and over the past couple of years i have slowly moved to rack mounting everything.

 

In the end it will be whatever the server monkeys are upgrading and won't need anymore.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Ockingshay

[Twitchstick]

An AMD Ryzen chip is a good value with a good amount of core/thread count. I'm rocking a 2700x 8c/16t and I've had 10 transcodes going at the same time. If you are looking for server hardware then this build is a solid option. I almost went this route but decided to go with a more modern build that doesn't break the bank and I can run multiple dockers and VMs without an issue.