Need help verifying compatibility and capability of this hardware configuration for Unraind


mhweb

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I'll be building my first Unraid server, and this is the hardware I picked.

I think I know this configuration falls under the compatible list, but I was wondering if anyone could double check if this is good hardware for Unraid for storage and Plex.

 

6 x 10TB WD hard drives 7200rpm
CPU: Xeon E5-2680 v3
Cooler: Noctua NH-U12DX i4
Mobo: SuperMicro X10SRL-F ATX

32GB of RAM.
PSU: Seasonic FOCUS GX-650, 650W 80+ Gold 

 

Thanks,

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There are two three points I wish to make.

 

First, you don't have an SDD on there for use as a cache drive.  (Having E5-2680-v3 leads me to believe you are going to be running a VM at some point.)  Cache will also speed up transfers to the array.  IF you are concerned about lack of data protection, get two SSD's and set a protected cache pool.

 

Second, Unless you actually  have 50TB of data ready to load on the system, reduce the number of 6TB drives back to a more reasonable level.  It is so easy to add disks to Unraid.  You shut the server down, physically install the disk, start the server up, assign the disk to a data slot and start the array.  Another reason to spread out disk purchases to prevent buying into a lot of disks with poor manufacturing quality level.  Spreading the purchases out also reduce the risk of long term shipping damage due to exceptionally rough handling of the delivery package. (Plus, disk prices for a given size tend to come down over time.  Waiting a year of two could result in a significant saving.)

 

EDIT:  You should be ordering ECC Memory as that MB supports it.

Edited by Frank1940
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Thanks for the reply @Frank1940. I'll be shucking the drives, and I already bought the drives, but I haven't open them yet. I went ahead with the drives because at the time I wasn't sure if I was going to go with FreeNAS or Unraid.

 

As for the CPU, I'm planning use this machine for data storage and to do multiple streaming of Plex. If I'm playing 1080p video to a 4K TV, Plex doesn't have to transcode to up scale the video, right?

 

Also, I wanted a CPU that won't become obsolete quickly, I've seen older models, but I'm buying it used, so every time I checked, for I found that thing that for $10 more you can get even more cores. Do you think this is too much CPU considering Plex, other plugins, and possible VMs? Does Plex count as a VM? Also, I didn't want to have something that's just enough (for right now), I wanted some head room for the future.

 

As for cache, yes, I'm planning to add an SSD for caching.

 

I get about the ECC memory, but I already have 32GB of non-ecc memory that came out from another upgrade. So, my thinking was to try them, and if the mobo take it us this RAM. Otherwise, buy ECC RAM.

 

Any additional thoughts?

Thanks,

 

Edited by mhweb
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7 minutes ago, mhweb said:

If I'm playing 1080p video to a 4K TV, Plex doesn't have to transcode to up scale the video, right?

Most (if not all) 4K TV's will do their own upscaling.  While I don't run Plex, I would suspect that its upscaling algorithm is not superior to that in the TV.   (If it does a cruddy job, you should not have purchased that TV in the first place!) Transcoding is usually required when you are feeding high resolution stream to a low resolution device.   A old rule of thumb is 2000 passmarks per stream.  The only other time you might need transcoding is if you had some video with a non-standard resolution that the TV could not handle. 

 

16 minutes ago, mhweb said:

Also, I wanted a CPU that won't become obsolete quickly, I've seen older models, but I'm buying it used, so every time I checked, for I found that thing that for $10 more you can get even more cores. Do you think this is too much CPU considering Plex, other plugins, and possible VMs?

Your choice of CPU is fine.  The comment was made more in reference to the lack of a SSD for cache then about the CPU.  (Having a cache drive for VM's and Dockers makes for much better performance!) That CPU has a lot of computing power and you should be quite happy with it for a long time.  For a simple server, it would be overkill but IF you want to have the option of running VM's, you will be quite happy with this choice. 

 

22 minutes ago, mhweb said:

I get about the ECC memory, but I already have 32GB of non-ecc memory that came out from another upgrade. So, my thinking was to try them, and if the mobo take it us this RAM. Otherwise, buy ECC RAM.

Since you have it--try it and see if it works,.  I pointed it out in case you had not purchased Memory yet.  Since that MB supports ECC, a lot of Unraid Gurus recommend using it when possible.  (Most non-server MB's do not support ECC and most server MB's do support it.  A bit of logical thinking brings one to the conclusion that the folks who run the server farms want ECC in their servers!)

 

25 minutes ago, mhweb said:

Does Plex count as a VM?

If you run it as a Docker, technically not.    You could setup a separate VM and run Plex on that VM but I don't know of a reason why you would want to do that. 

 

One more thing, if you are thinking of setting a VM, you will probably need a GPU at that time as I don't believe that that MB/CPU combination supports on-board video.

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Appreciate the advice.

One more thing, if I use SSD for caching, do I need an extra SSD for VMs and Plex transcoding, or I can use the cache drives. I heard that Plex will work better with an SSD, but I don't know I need an addition drive for this.

 

Thanks,

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35 minutes ago, mhweb said:

If I'm playing 1080p video to a 4K TV, Plex doesn't have to transcode to up scale the video, right?

Just because you are streaming 1080p content to a 4K TV does not mean the Plex is going to upscale to 4K resolution.  Your TV (or certain client devices such as the nVidia Shield) may attempt to upscale, if it does not, Plex will always try to direct play the files in their native format/resolution if the streaming/playback device supports it.  On the client side, you can tell Plex to transcode to a particular resolution other than the native resolution of the file, but, any 4K transcoding is going to require about 17,000 passmarks according to Plex, Your CPU has a passmark rating of 18426, so you should be able to get one 4K transcoded stream with barely enough overhead for unRAID itself (generally about 2000 for unRAiD is the recommendation).

 

FYI- generally transcoding goes the other way, for example 4K ---> 1080P or 1080P --> 720P, etc.  Basically, the rule to thumb is that Plex will first try to direct stream to the client in the native format, if that format is not supported on the client side, it will transcode.  You can always force transcoding and remote streaming usually does involve transcoding.

 

For this reason, may of us maintain separate 4K and 1080p content libraries.  4K content for local streaming to devices that support it natively so it can be direct played and 1080p libraries for remote streaming and streaming to devices without 4K content support.  4K transcoding is very resource expensive for the CPU or GPU depending on your configurataion

 

40 minutes ago, mhweb said:

Does Plex count as a VM?

You should run Plex as a docker container.  Dockers are another argument for an SSD cache drive as you should store the appdata share and docker.img on an SSD when possible for better performance and few array disk spinups.

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1 minute ago, mhweb said:

One more thing, if I use SSD for caching, do I need an extra SSD for VMs and Plex transcoding

Depends on how you use the cache drive and how large it is.  I have only a 250GB cache drive but I do not cache any writes to array shares with it.  It is only houses the appdata (docker container share) and is the initial landing spot for downloads.  I have another 500GB SSD as an unassigned device which I use for hosting VMs and Plex transcoding.

 

You could theoretically do all of the above plus write caching on a single large SSD but it may be busy.  😁

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7 hours ago, mhweb said:

I already bought the drives, but I haven't open them yet.

I would test them, then put them back on the shelf until you need the capacity. Fewer drives = fewer points of failure, and plenty of spares means if you do have a failure it's painless to replace. For a media server, it's much better to mostly fill the drives and add as needed vs. putting them all in and filling all of them gradually. Because of the way most people obtain and consume media, and the fact that unraid lets drives stay spun down if not being read, you are better off keeping older stuff together and adding newer stuff to a single drive at a time.

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