Hi everyone,

 

i'm about to build my first Unraid box.

 

I recently upgraded my main rig from i7 4790k/GTX 970 to 3700x/RTX 2070 so i have spare CPU, MOBO, RAM (16GB) and GPU.

 

I currently use a N3700 NUC for Plex and Docker but it obviously lacks performance, plus a single 1TB 2,5" HDD translates to a very slow system (i'm running Windows Server 2019) and no redundancy. I mean, it's painful just to RDP into it.

 

So i bought a couple of 4TB Ironwolf drives, a Riotoro CR1080 case (i have a full ATX z97 board) and a Corsair CX550M to complete the build.

 

The plan is to setup the two HDDs in RAID 1 and i also have a 250GB M.2 SATA SSD laying around that i may use as cache.

 

I've never used Unraid but i have experience with virtualization software (ESXi, Citrix) and Linux, i heard mostly positive things about it and the pricing is extremely convenient considering the completeness of this solution compared with other commercial alternatives.

 

My question is: what do you think about this configuration? Could i run into compatibility issues with this semi-old hardware?

Can i take advantage of the GPU for Plex HW transcoding? Is there a noticeable overhead with Unraid vs a simple Debian server?

 

 

Thanks to all in advance

 

 

12 minutes ago, abg95a said:

The plan is to setup the two HDDs in RAID 1

Unraid IS NOT RAID

56 minutes ago, trurl said:

Unraid IS NOT RAID

I meant the equivalent of a RAID 1 in Unraid. That's why i came here to ask, i want to know if it is possible.

Edited November 12, 20196 yr by abg95a
typo

1 hour ago, abg95a said:

My question is: what do you think about this configuration? Could i run into compatibility issues with this semi-old hardware?

Can i take advantage of the GPU for Plex HW transcoding?

unRAID will run on that hardware as it runs on just about everything.  For Plex hardware transcoding, you should see this plugin discussion.  You will need the plugin and the unRAID build that supports it.  Somewhere in there is a link to the Nvidia graphics cards that should work for hardware transcoding.  Assuming the GTX 970 is on the list, you should be aware that due to Nvidia consumer card limitations, you will only get two concurrent hardware transcode streams.

 

Alternatively, you could pass the card through to a Plex VM on Windows.  The plugin/docker route is usually preferred, but, you have the choice.

 

1 hour ago, abg95a said:

The plan is to setup the two HDDs in RAID 1

unRAID is not a RAID implementation and, although you can setup two SSD cache drives in a btrfs RAID 1 mirroring configuration, you don't do that with unRAID array drives.  If you want protection against disk drive failure, one of those two HDDs could be a parity drive.  If the data drive fails, it can be rebuilt onto a new drive from the parity drive.

 

Most servers have several data drives protected by one or two parity drives (you can have single or dual parity).  The parity drives contain no data, they merely contain bit calculations that allow a missing drive to be rebuilt if the parity drive(s) and ALL other data drives are intact and functioning normally.

 

With a one parity drive, one data drive array, its a rather simple one-to-one-protection scheme.  iI the parity drive fails, you just put in a new one and rebuild parity from the data on all (even if it is just one) of the data drives.

 

 

Thanks Hoopster,

 

would you also suggest adding the M.2 SSD as cache or is it too small (250gb)?

 

Will the cache be used for anything written/read or can i include/exclude specific paths?

 

I'm afraid the lifetime of the SSD will be shortened very fast if unraid keeps writing big files to it that don't actually need caching (eg. video content in Plex libraries).

 

User Shares are how Unraid allows folders to span disks. Note that each file exists completely on a single disk, but folders can span disks.

 

Each User Share has settings that control whether and how it uses cache.

18 hours ago, abg95a said:

would you also suggest adding the M.2 SSD as cache or is it too small (250gb)?

My current cache drive is a 256 GB SSD.  However, I really don't use it much for actual write caching.  You can certainly do that on a share by share basis as trurl has explained. 

 

Not everything you access from the array gets "cached" on the cache drive.  You determine what goes there.  It's just an initial file write location for files you may want to write faster to an SSD and have them moved to the slower spinning disks later by the Mover.  If you are caching initial writes to the cache drive they still appear in user shares as if they on the array.  The Mover, of course, will eventually move them there per your schedule.  

 

The cache drive is more commonly used as the preferred location for the appdata share which contains docker containers and their associated configuration and database files.  Some store their VM images on the cache drive as well.  Personally, I prefer an unassigned devices SSD for that.

 

My Plex docker container and its configuration files live on the cache drive in the appdata share; however, the contents of my Plex libraries are all on the array and NEVER get written to the cache drive.

Edited November 13, 20196 yr by Hoopster

Thanks, i'll setup Unraid once all parts come in and i'll let you know how it went.