My first Unraid Server


Actua

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Hello

 

Today I am running an 2 bay Qnap NAS which is horrible slow and very limited. My main computer is getting an upgrade, changing out an Ryzen 1800x with an 3900x. So I got some spare parts I want to use to build an Unraid server. 

 

My goal is to build an Unraid Server which I can have under my living room TV. I am planning on running it as a NAS, router (PFSense), a Windows VM for the TV, Torrent client (with VPN), Plex server, OpenVPN Server for external connections). 

 

The hardware I have: 

AMD Ryzen 1800x

Corsair 1200w PSU

Corsair DDR4 3000mhz 32gb (2x16gb) RAM

Corsair H100i cooler

2x WD Red 3 tb from the Qnap NAS

2x WD Blue 500 gb

OCZ Vector 256gb SSD cache disk?

Samsung 960 EVO 500gb M.2 cache disk?

Nvidia GTX 580 (planning on changing out this later)

 

Hardware i plan to buy:

b350/x370/b450/x470  ATX motherboard (ITX board in my main build)

IBM ServeRaid M1015 46M0861 SAS/SATA PCI-e RAID Controller going to flash it-mode for future expansions 

Intel Gigabit Ethernet Network Server Adapter I350-T4 V2 Quad Ports 1000Mbps QUAD NIC for more options later on

1x WD Red 4tb Parity drive

Still looking for a case. I would like to be able to expand storage later. Something that also fits besides my AV receiver. Any suggestions? (Kinda big PSU in size aswell)

 

I feel like I am taking water over my head to get the server to do all of this, but that's a problem for another time. All of this is new for me, I got some experience, watched a lot of spaceinvader one 's videos. What do you guys think about this build? Do I have enough PCI lanes for all of this HW? Anything I have forgotten? 

 

Also I am not sure how I plan to share the resources between the VMs, the Windows VM, PFSense, the rest? The Windows VM will be used for in-home streaming from my main computer, maybe som emulators. 

 

I don't have a budget, but I am trying to save some bucks here and there. Trying to find a secondhand motherboard, and refurbished NIC and raid card and using the hardware I have laying around. Going to start building in December and expecting to have everything I need around January. 

 

Thanks

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32 minutes ago, gberg said:

How much room do you have for the server, and also how many disks are you planning on adding?

An about OpenVPN server, thet you set up in the pfSense.

Hi thanks for answer! 

 

About how much room, I don't have space for a big tower, but an horizontal midi tower should be fine. Been looking at HTPC chassis, but they don't support so many disks.. 

 

I might be adding 2-4 disk over det next year. Worst case, I'll just upgrade the 3tb disks to something larger. 

About OpenVPN. I want the torrent client / docker to run on a external VPN. But I would also like to be able to access the Unraid server through a VPN. For when I am away. Is this possible through the pfSense?

Edited by Actua
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What comes to minde regarding chassis is Fractal design, node 304 which takes 6 drives and mini-itx motherborard, or node 804 that takes 10 drives and micro-atx motherboard.

 

And yes pfSense runs both OpenVPN-server and client, and the whole ide of running the VPN client in pfSense is that you then can policy route the traffic to use what route you want it to use VPN or regular WAN, instead of runninng VPN clients on each machine you want tot use VPN.

I have three OpenVPN clients in my pfSense so I can in a simple way select in what country I want my traffic origin from. But I run my pfSense on dedicated hardware.

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Node 804 could be a solution, should fit the PSU I think. But an micro-atx motherboard might be a problem. Raid controller needs 8x lane, and NIC needs a 4x for full potential. The GPU I don't care to much about. I will have a look. 

 

Do you have a tutorial for the pfSense VPN routing that you recommend? I might just try to get a cheap itx computer to run pfSense on, saves me some hassle. Just the tought of having everything in a single system sounds pretty cool. Don't want to waste the resources of the 1800x. 

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Why don't you go for a more server oriented motherboard, perhaps with 4 onboard nics, and also IPMI. I have a two servers using Supermicro x10slm+-ln4f that I bought second hand, yes they are a bit old, but nice boards. They run Xeon E3-12xx v3 CPU and max 32GB DDR3.

 

And usually your VPN service provider have guides on how to set up the VPN client in pfSense.

Edited by gberg
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15 minutes ago, gberg said:

Why don't you go for a more server oriented motherboard, perhaps with 4 onboard nics, and also IPMI. I have a two servers using Supermicro x10slm+-ln4f that I bought second hand, yes they are a bit old, but nice boards. They run Xeon E3-12xx v3 CPU and max 32GB DDR3.

 

And usually your VPN service provider have guides on how to set up the VPN client in pfSense.

I will take it under consideration, not that bad price for the board and cpu. I live in Norway and second hand server hw is a bit limited. Ebay is a thing but with shipping and taxes it gets a bit expensive pretty fast. Would probably be a lot easier to do it your way, but some of the fun is using hardware you already have right? 

 

Thanks for the help as far! 

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6 minutes ago, Actua said:

I will take it under consideration, not that bad price for the board and cpu. I live in Norway and second hand server hw is a bit limited. Ebay is a thing but with shipping and taxes it gets a bit expensive pretty fast. Would probably be a lot easier to do it your way, but some of the fun is using hardware you already have right? 

 

Thanks for the help as far! 

Ah, ok. Then we're neighbours, I'm from Sweden.

 

I get much of my stuff from GG Serverparts here in Sweden, and here is the board I'm using: https://ggsp.se/supermicro/4642-supermicro-x10slm--ln4f.html , I don't know if they ship outside of Sweden, but it never hurts to ask if they do?

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  • 2 months later...

20200124_022037.thumb.jpg.81f6557a6a1db20b3163b02f881a236c.jpg

 

Got some progression here, will be a tight fit by the end. The MSI 580 Lightning Card with extended PCB is to tall for this chassis so I was lucky to get my hands on a 1070 which I am very pleased with.

 

The server will not have a pfsense vm, got another computer for that so, makes a lot of things easier.

 

The Corsair H100 cooler did not fit because of MB heatsink so ended up using a AMD stock cooler.  All fans are tuned to acceptable acoustic levels.

 

RAM is Corsair 3000 MHz 2x8GB.

 

Some changes in the SSD cache, waiting for Samsung 980 NVME to release before moving the 960 to the server. I got my hands on 3x 120GB Kingston v300 SSD I am planning to use as a raid 5 cache pool. Tried to get a 4th disk to go for raid 6 or 10 but no luck. 

 

I now have 

Array:

1x 4TB WD Red (Parity disk)

2x 3TB WD Red

2x 500GB WD Blue

 

SSD Cache Pool

3x Kingston v300 120GB

 

So a little question, I have an expansion card with 8 sata ports on, should I run all disk on that or should I use the expansion card for the array and use the onboard sata controller for the ssd cache pool?

Edited by Actua
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  • 4 weeks later...

The server is up and running! Took some trial and error.. Had some issues by the server freezing/locking up but an edit to the syslinux file fixed that :)

I managed to get another Kingston v300 SSD, so now I will have them running in raid 6 or 10. Not decided yet. I also got an Samsung M2 drive that I will use for VMs. 

 

The WD Blues I had reported errors, and one died during a preclear prosess.. so they are out. 

20200215_191010.thumb.jpg.5dc8df7e7cd4bbb7e769ce1128eb73f8.jpg

 

Still space for 3 / 4 more drives.. just need 5.25" to 3.5" adapters :)

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