Suitable for Unraid or for parts?


unseenuk

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I've finally got to the point where my old venerable i5 (1st gen!) can't handle the strain when more than one person is connected to Plex so looking at options I keep coming back to Unraid thanks mainly to an awful lot of LTT videos!!  I am ashamed of the current "server" as I should know better than to have let it get as bad as it has :(

 

So moving forward I have a couple of options...  One involves a Dell R730XD, dual E5-2630 v3 with 64Gb ECC ram and 2 perc cards a H730 Mini and H810 with a dell enclosure attached (may not use the enclosure) and a number of 4TB SAS drives included in the server.

 

Can Unraid be used on this hardware and utilise the hardware/drives?  The only caveat I can see is the XD doesn't seem to support the install of a GPU which is a shame as I'd like to start with the NAS and a few dockers then as knowledge grows stretch it out to something bigger.

 

So option two would be to gut it for parts..  CPU/RAM are obviously useful but can the drives be reused?  

 

Third option would be to just start from scratch but...  Would be a shame to not use some of the hardware.

 

Is it viable or should I just start planning to raid the piggy bank on black friday?

 

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My R710 runs my backup unRAID server fine but you do need the raid cards flashed to IT mode and its been awhile but if I remember correctly you will not have spin down or SMART info on the sas drives the bigger question is power consumption as enterprise hardware is not power friendly. My primary unRAID server is based on my retired pre-built I7 6700 and serves up plex and a dozen dockers including hassio and has worked out very well plenty of gas in the tank for adding more

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13 hours ago, mrbilky said:

My R710 runs my backup unRAID server fine but you do need the raid cards flashed to IT mode and its been awhile but if I remember correctly you will not have spin down or SMART info on the sas drives the bigger question is power consumption as enterprise hardware is not power friendly. My primary unRAID server is based on my retired pre-built I7 6700 and serves up plex and a dozen dockers including hassio and has worked out very well plenty of gas in the tank for adding more

Ugh I know how power unfriendly Enterprise kit is...  Dell M1000 Blade chassis are like Vulcans on takeoff if you disconnect just one psu! :(

 

Sounds like using the R730XD might be a hiding to a lot of pain for not much benefit...  So if I went down the parting it out route would SuperMicro X10SRL-F that be a suitable board?  Or is it overkill?

 

General idea is to merge all the storage I have (approx 8TB) into one nice neat box with the ability to run Plex / Sonarr / Deluge either in VMs or dockers (haven't started playing with those yet properly!)  MAYBE the idea of it being capable of being a fully fledged workstation/gaming vm is a draw but I console game these days so not a priority. Would using the Xeon's for that be sensible or should I dial back a little and look at something AMD based?

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