HP ML310e Gen8 V2 Xeon 3.10Ghz. Upgrade path. And backups.

[RobW9173]

New to Unraid - had it up and running for about a month. Got an old server from work for nothing. It's an HP ML310e Gen8 V2 with a 4 core Xeon running out at 3.10Ghz. With 16Gb RAM. 40tb of disk space; 2 x 10tb WD Reds as parity and 2 x 10tb of WD Red and WD ultrastar for data. First and most obvious upgrade after Xmas is to take the RAM to 32Gb. On the basic licence atm, so have a window currently for 6 storage devices. 

 

So far, so good. Primarily using it for PLEX (mixture of 720p, 1080p and some 4k) and storage (docs, music, photos) no VMs (yet). Fancy spinning up a Minecraft server for the Kids and a Quake one for me.

 

Aside from RAM upgrades, I want to get the max out of this box - just wondering what upgrades might be useful. I've heard that certain types of video cards/GPUs can be used for hardware transcoding. 

 

I'd also be interested in hearing what folks are using for their backups. Currently discussing with a friend about having a co-lo backup for each other.