I use my unRaid setup to do quite a lot: store files, download things, run a few virtual machines (Windows/Linux), plex, encode/restream my live stream from my streaming PC (FFMPEG, NGINX all to Facebook, Twitter (Periscope), Twitch, and YouTube) at 1080p, etc. all at the same time. Its running 192GB RAM and 2x Xeon 5690 CPUs. Storage is a bunch of IronWolf drives on an LSI card. I have room in my case (Rosewill) to add some more drives, but my SuperMicro board doesn't have SAS at 6Gpbs and i ran out of PCI-E slots to add another (Video Card and 10Gig-E Network Card take up the other two slots). 

 

Temperatures have become an issue when I slam the server and stream (my board reminds me of this with a high temp alarm that is annoying AF), so I am going to do some upgrades to fix everything at once. 

 

1. New Supermicro board that will support more RAM (ECC DDR3 is cheap, might as well) and has more PCI-E slots (add a second LSI card).

 

2. Add more RAM. Why not while I am at it.

 

3. Add more HDDs to increase my storage.

 

4. Probably watercool everything with a second case above it to act as the giant reservoir and cooling tower. This will be the most expensive part of the upgrade believe it or not. 

 

OK, enough of the list of crap I am going to do. On to my questions:

 

1. Any issues I am going to have when I do these changes? 

 

2. Will unRaid reconfigure based on the new hardware?

 

3. Does HDD order matter? I.e. if I move the HDD on SAS Port A_0 to A_3 (for example) will it matter? I've moved the drives before when I swapped to a rack case, but I was super careful to reconnect everything exactly where it was before.

 

I appreciate the help! Just want to make sure I do this right and don't loose my data. There were many hours of "backing up my movie" collection I'd rather not lose. 

 

PS: If any one knows of rails that work with Rosewill 4U cases, let me know. I hear the stock ones are terrible and hard to find. I'd love to remove the shelves and reclaim some Us.

45 minutes ago, JasenHicks said:

Probably watercool everything with a second case above it to act as the giant reservoir and cooling tower.

IMHO, liquid cooling that isn't permanently sealed is a bad idea in a server. Too many things that can go wrong. It's much better to have a big heavy chunk of copper and aluminum that works somewhat even when airflow is compromised. In a water cooled system if you lose liquid circulation for whatever reason, the temperatures spike way quicker, and depending on why you lost liquid, the result could be very messy.

 

That said, if you use the machine more like a desktop than a server, where the tower is in close proximity and only on when you are there, go for it. It's unattended use (most servers) where I see it to be a problem.

 

55 minutes ago, JasenHicks said:

Does HDD order matter? I.e. if I move the HDD on SAS Port A_0 to A_3 (for example) will it matter?

As long as both systems are using plain HBA disk access with no funky JBOD single disk RAID controller trickery, you can move disks without issue. Unraid tracks disks by serial number, so if Unraid sees the same serial, all is good.

57 minutes ago, JasenHicks said:

Will unRaid reconfigure based on the new hardware?

The basic NAS and docker functions should transfer seamlessly, VM's may require some love, hardware passthrough VM's will be broken until updated. Turn off any auto start functionality until you confirm everything is ok on the new hardware.

Thanks for the insights. As for the watercooling concerns, this wont be my first system water cooled nor my last. Additionally, with it right next to me in my office with oversight most of the day, I'm willing to accept the risk. It's pretty easily mitigated using soft tubing and compression fittings. 

 

As for the VMs, fortunately, they all run headless with virtual hardware, so I think that will be pretty easy too! Looking like a huge benefit to update with few roadblocks.

Be careful