I started off a few days ago bringing an ancient unRaid 5 server back to life. My Original build back in the day was this:

unRaid 4.7
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 600E 2.2Ghz 45w - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TPGLVG
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003KPP4JO
RAM: CORSAIR XMS 4GB DDR3 (2), to be expanded- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233132
Case: Helios 910 - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RS4HVQ
Power Supply: SeaSonic X650 Gold SS-650KM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088

 

Success in that arena! A minimum of cleanup - I just wanted to see if the darn thing worked (the fan filters, they do notheeeng!). I replaced a drive, which was fun as all the labels I'd stuck onto cables and drive had unstuck, so I had to remove each disk to check the model/serial number. now I'm here, running 4tb parity, a new 4tb data drive, 5x2tb data drives, and a 1tb cache drive. The wiring is temporary. It's temporary!

 

It seems silly to be running a spinning disk as cache in this day and age, so I ordered up a 500gb SSD to fill that role. Then I thought about all the Docker containers I've been running on my DS218+, and the fact that it's sort of silly to run two NAS devices side by side... Now I have a whole pile of parts heading my way!

Most importantaly, an AMD RYZEN 7 2700...

An ASUS ROG Gaming motherboard

A couple of sticks of 8gb DDR4 RAM

A Dell Perc H310 (to be reflashed while I look real busy at work) and breakout cables

I'm keeping the case, fans (well, except 2 that are going bad and I've ordered replacements for), and power supply for the time being.

 

Open questions for me:

* Should I return the 2.5" SSD for an M.2 SSD now that I'm entering the modern world (or maybe a couple of them)?

* How good of a person am I? I'll be passing the DS218+ on to a friend soon, but it has a couple of fairly new 3tb drives in it, and here I am with all these old 2tb drives...

 

I can fit another 2 or 3 drives into this case (I have 2 unpopulated 5.25" slots), but I'm thinking the best plan will be to replace disks as they fail with larger ones, or just as I need more space. That assuming, of course, that I get all the new hardware into a running rig. With my previous experience with unRaid, I'm feeling pretty confident, but I'd love to hear if I've bought something terrible!

Edited November 30, 20196 yr by Rustbucket

34 minutes ago, Rustbucket said:

an ancient unRaid 5 server

So have you actually upgraded to Unraid 6 yet?

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

So have you actually upgraded to Unraid 6 yet?

 

I have! I'm running 6.8.0-rc7. I haven't done much with it, as it's still rebuilding parity after the drive replacement, but it looks very slick. Sorry - I meant to mention that in my original post.

Edited December 1, 20196 yr by Rustbucket

Since you have some new and empty disks, the best time to convert your filesystems is before doing anything else, since conversion means reformatting. So you will want to format the new disks (XFS or btrfs) then copy the data from your ReiserFS disks so you can reformat them. Most people format array disks as XFS but btrfs is also available and btrfs is required for cache pools.

The screenshot below is where I am now - I was looking at the unBALANCE plugin to clear off the new 4tb drive once parity is done, format that, then move on to other devices. I already cleared/reformatted my cache drive, so that's all set. Caution seems to dictate XFS, but I've read a few posts that seem to indicate the btrfs is ready to prime-time. What's your opinion? (I don't seem to be able to @ you)

 

Edited December 1, 20196 yr by Rustbucket
Better quality screenshot

I have 2x275 SSD as btrfs raid1 cache pool. I converted my array to XFS early in V6 and haven't tried anything else. @johnnie.black is the btrfs expert.

 

As for "pinging" other users, you have to start typing and then actually make a selection from the matches. Typing the whole thing doesn't work. Like this: @Rustbucket

I use btrfs exclusively for all my Unraid servers, and I've found it 100% reliable so far especially for single device filesystem, like array data drives, but I do have at least one full backup of each server, if you don't care for btrfs main advantages (cheksums and snapshots) or don't have backups I recommend using xfs since it's more stable and less likely to result in an unrecoverable filesystem if something goes wrong.

Thanks @johnnie.black. XFS. It is.

 

This just isn't going to fly. I'm going to borrow a spare 2TB drive from work and figure out a better way... I can't even guess what would cause such low transfer speeds. One of the disks is on the motherboard, and one on a junky Marvell expansion card, but still.

 

 

Edited December 1, 20196 yr by Rustbucket

Resuscitation is (nearly) complete! New motherboard is installed, and man is this thing fast! I ended up picking up a new LSI 9207 for $60 on sale, so I'll pass along the Dell card when it arrives. It was twice the price, but I'm more comfortable with something that I know the history of. I also ordered 2x250gb M.2 drives that haven't arrived yet, so I'll toss those in later. I also dug up a an old cheapo graphics card to drop in for the time being.

 

The only unfortunate thing about the new setup is the SATA port placement on the new motherboard. It's crowded, so I understand the design choice, but it will be tricky to utilize them. If I get more drives, I'll have to decide whether I want to sacrifice my last big PCI-E slot for another HBA, or deal with tricky cable routing.

 

Here's a picture of the motherboard mounted in the case before i routed any cables, with the SATA ports circled.:

 

Other than enabling virtualization settings in the motherboard, I haven't made any configuration changes, but everything seems dead stable. My only complaint is that the CPU fan is pretty darn loud under load. I may explore quieter options in the future. In the meantime, I'm removing the useless (for me) top case can and closing up that giant hole in the case, and replacing a couple of failing fans with new units.

 

Thanks @trurl and @johnnie.black for the advice and helping me get up to speed on this decade's technology. The current unRaid is exactly what I wished the old unRaid could be. @limetech has done a wonderful job of evolving and developing this product.

Don't sweat the cable management almost if not all SATA ports are in that exact position on current motherboards and should be no problem