Data junkie new to unraid

[Mrpipdarty]

Greetings everyone! As the title lsays I'm one of those data pack rats, and finally got tired of my "backups" and media being strewn about various external hard drives, flash drives, etc.

 

I'm a part time content creator, so what I did was take my old streaming/gaming pc, toss in some ssds and 3 12tb ironwolf pro drives, add in a copy of unraid as I honestly was intimidated by the task of setting up a "proper" raided nas/server, add absolutely hated the lack of expandability and flexibility freenas offered and the potential to nuke every drive.

 

So as my introduction to the group, here's my first crack at am upcycled server: 

Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3

Cpu: AMD FX-8350 

RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (two of these kits) 

GPU: AMD Radeon Sapphire 580 Nitro

SSD Cache: 2X Samsung 870 EVO 500gb

Array: 3x Seagate Ironwolf Pro 12tb 

 

The server is mainly used for Plex and file backups of configs and game saves/ twitch stream vods

 

Anything you folks find dangerous to my data with this setup (like is my novo craps etc)? I know the 8350 is a power hog, but I have some ideas to utilize that power, I'm not against buying new or used gear that would better so suit my desired use for the server, I'm just kind of using what I got to upcycle older gear if I can. 

 

Ultimately, the plex server (which would service max 3 users, one locally on a VM as this tower is parked next to my entertainment center) functionality as a data archive is the primary use, but with an 8 core almost 4ghz cpu i was thinking the following: 

 

-When not servicing my media, running a Windows 10 VM and using the pc as an obs transcoding pc for my twitch stream using a capture card or ndi, recording straight to the array. 

-Running play on media Center on the Windows vm to dvr content direct to the array (which the box will be doing most of the time I'm not streaming)

-Handbrake transcoding of my dvd collection (a few blu-rays) 

-using something like rsync to backup full file folders/disk images of my local machines and smartphones 

 

Am I being a bit overzealous in thinking this good can handle all of that when configured properly? I have some spare 500gb ssds one for a dedicated VM/docker dice and the others are currently cold storage backup cache drives. 

 

Any and all recommendations for hardware/config etc would be much appreciated. I've got about 8 days for parity to finish writing (transferred about 5 tb of files with parity disabled to the array, then after a md5 verification enabled parity to write the redundancy). So I thought a long winded hi guys was in order! 

 

Also, I do have an honest question: I have gigabit nics on my tower and gaming rig, both going through a gigabit unmanaged switch, and I'm only getting 11mbps transfer rates from my pc to the array,  even when writing to a cache enabled share. Is this normal for the writes due to the parity write as well, or is something up with my config? 

 

Anyways I've rambled enough, hello people!

Edited June 16, 2019 by Mrpipdarty

[trurl]

9 minutes ago, Mrpipdarty said:

I'm only getting 11mbps transfer rates from my pc to the array,  even when writing to a cache enabled share. Is this normal for the writes due to the parity write as well

Not normal, in fact, sounds like your network has degraded to 100mb instead of 1000. Go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete diagnostics zip file to your next post.

[Mrpipdarty]

17 hours ago, trurl said:

Not normal, in fact, sounds like your network has degraded to 100mb instead of 1000. Go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete diagnostics zip file to your next post.

figured this one out fortunately, apparently the router feeding the switch had gotten secured around and my server was hooked into the network via my,routers 100mbps lan. We are transferring much quicker and smoother now 

Edited June 16, 2019 by Mrpipdarty

[Mrpipdarty]

Okay so I have received a lovely tuft from my family a package containing a supermicro x9sra motherboard with a cooler, intel xeon E5-2609 and 64gb of ecc memory. Going to be testing ram and all today, but would anyone have any recommendations for an 8core or more with faster clock speeds?  I have been enjoying using,my,unraid,server as a virtualization environment on my 8350 processor, so id like to retain that functionality if I switch to this board. 

[CHBMB]

Damn, that's one hell of a gift, I get socks and the odd bottle of Scotch.

Sent from my Mi A1 using Tapatalk

[Mrpipdarty]

2 hours ago, CHBMB said:

Damn, that's one hell of a gift, I get socks and the odd bottle of Scotch.

Sent from my Mi A1 using Tapatalk
 

Yeah girlfriend picked it out and got the family all to chip in to surprise me. She knows I've been working on getting my data storage in check for a while now but have been complaining about how much nas hard drives and such cost.  The light vm tinkering I've been doing was running fine but that 8350 or the motherboard has something screwy going on with it because I kept getting parity errors and when I run vms the cores would just take turns pinning themselves at idle to 90-100% load with no dockers or vms on, just sitting there powered on. 

[Mrpipdarty]

Also what kind of scotch? Becayse that's pretty good gift wise on my book unless it's walker red label

Edited June 30, 2019 by Mrpipdarty
Typo

[Mrpipdarty]

On 6/30/2019 at 9:38 AM, Mrpipdarty said:

Also what kind of scotch? Becayse that's pretty good gift wise on my book unless it's walker red label

Dalmore sinclaire actually. We sadly have since parted ways but the scotch is still around at least. Also still curious of any cpu recommendations ive since swapped to this board but with the slow 4 core I am simply running Plex as as docker but would like to be able to tinker with/use additional dockers/vms to offload my main pcs workload