Hi Guys

 

New to the forum but dabbled in unRAID a long time ago and want to know if this would be a good solution or if I should stick to Windows

 

I want to create a new rig to run unRAID with only SSD's. Plan is the to use 4 x Intel 1TB 660p with an ASUS Hyper M.2 Card in an ITX form factor build. CPU is going to be an Intel i3 Coffee Lake. I will be using the Docker module to run some application but this is going to mostly be my Plex server with the applications sitting on a standard 512GB 660p or equivalent.

 

Back ups are to be done to an external USB hard drive for the main boot disk. I'm not to worried about the data on Plex as this will also be backed up periodically but is all available via the physical media that I have. 

 

So questions are below

 

1. I know its possible but how would I handle the the parity? If i remember correctly then re-writing the parity on an SSD will normally kill a SSD after a short amount of time. Is this still the case?

 

2. Is this even possible and supported?

 

3. If i can do this then, what would be the best way to create the array?

 

Its been a long time since i had to mess around with any of the setup and I before anyone says anything I am RTFM at the moment, but this post will either make or break the project completely.

 

The main goal is to

 

1. Reduce Size

2. Reduce Noise

3. Reduce Power

 

Any input is greatly appreciated. 

 

Thanks in advance

Currently, SSDs in the array cannot be trimmed, and there is some question whether or not some SSD implementations could invalidate parity. You can have a cache pool of many SSDs without these limitations, and various btrfs raid configurations are supported for the cache pool.

 

You must have at least one data disk in the array, parity isn't required. Best to think of SSDs in the parity array as a possible future development for Unraid.

 

You mentioned backing up the main boot disk. Unraid boots from a USB flash drive. Think of it as the "firmware" of an embedded system. The OS is loaded into RAM at boot from that flash drive, and runs completely in RAM.

1 minute ago, trurl said:

Currently, SSDs in the array cannot be trimmed, and there is some question whether or not some SSD implementations could invalidate parity. You can have a cache pool of many SSDs without these limitations, and various btrfs raid configurations are supported for the cache pool.

 

You must have at least one data disk in the array, parity isn't required. Best to think of SSDs in the parity array as a possible future development for Unraid.

 

You mentioned backing up the main boot disk. Unraid boots from a USB flash drive. Think of it as the "firmware" of an embedded system. The OS is loaded into RAM at boot from that flash drive, and runs completely in RAM.

Ahh. yes... I have already starting digging around for the USB that i setup years ago with unRAID.

 

OK, So if stick in a 4TB data disk for all the data to sit on and use 4 of the 1TB 660p's as the cache does that mean that data will be written to both the data disk and cache and use the cache for the read operations? Does that also mean that the cache gets wiped after reboot?

59 minutes ago, retrogamer999 said:

OK, So if stick in a 4TB data disk for all the data to sit on and use 4 of the 1TB 660p's as the cache does that mean that data will be written to both the data disk and cache and use the cache for the read operations? Does that also mean that the cache gets wiped after reboot?

No and No

 

You can have data written to cache, and optionally moved to array or kept on cache. Cache is never wiped. It isn't a temporary storage location. It is just faster permanent storage, with a feature (Mover) that moves data from cache to array on a schedule.

 

Have you looked at the Product pages? Here is a link to the Overview in the Wiki:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview