Newbie build: All in one UnRaid + Backup = questions!

[Chrisola]

Hi everyone

 

I've been furiously reading the wiki and forums over the past week, and wanted to ask some fairly specific questions about a new build.  Overview below...questions at the end!

 

Situation & Current Stuff

 

My current storage is full...so it's either by another off the shelf NAS, or some external USB drives...or build an expandable system! I've actually lost my data 3 times over the years (once after a faulty SATA \ Molex adapter shorted and the small fire took out my SSD and both data drive PCBs..killing them!)...and i'm now at a stage where i need both storage and some security. Current hardware as follows:

 

Laptop with SSD + 2tb data drive

4tb RAID 1 Synology NAS (full)

2tb RAID 1 Naim NS01 music streamer\server (space for the foreesable)

2tb USB Drive (nearly full - 3+ years old)

2tb USB Drive (some space free 2-3 years old)

 

Purpose & Wants

 

1. Media server for my home, to feed upstairs (laptop to TV) \ downstairs (Surface Pro to TV) \ bedroom  (Surface Pro) as needed (just a single user)
2. Files: FLAC music, HD video (possibly 4k).
3. I just use WinAMP and SMPlayer at the moment, but considering something a bit flashier for the videos maybe? If it's easy enough to setup!
4. Some minor doc & photo storage (couble of gb max)
5. Easily expandable storage
6. Some safety\redunancy
7. Backup functionality
8. Quiet (likely will be hidden in lounge or my study)

 

Server hardware

 

I've been following the serverbuilds NAS Killer 2019 and built:

 

• SUPERMICRO X9SCL REV 1.11A SOCKET LGA 1155/H2DDR3 DESKTOP MOTHERBOARD
• Onboard Matrox G200 gpu
• INTEL XEON E3-1220 V2 SR0PH 3.1GHZ 8M LGA1155 CPU
• be quiet ! cooler...it's a huge one from a previous gaming PC that cooled my i5-2500k at 4.2(ish)ghz overclocked
• Samsung DDR3 PC3-12800E 1600Mhz ECC Unbuffered 8gb RAM
• be quiet! Pure 600 case with 2x 120mm and 3x 140mm Shadow WIings 2 PWM fans (maxed case out)
• EVGA 550w B3 PSU 80+ Bronze Fully Modular Power Supply
• Syba SY-PEX40039 2 Port SATA card
• 120 Kingston SSD (for cache OR another OS OR a VM)
• 2x 4tb WD RED HDD
• 1x 2tb Seagate Pipeline HDD (same as NAIM put int their NAS streamer, which work well for music)
• I have 6x onboard SATA and the add on card gives me another 2 (4 used so far)

 

It's all setup - very quiet and system is 26c temp with fans working about 450 - 498 rpm - not put the 3x HDDS in yet as been running the WD Lifeguard Tests.

 

Is there anything i'm missing here? 

 

Plan

 

1. Use 1x 4tb HDD as a parity drive for unRaid

2. Copy my 4tb Synology NAS data over to other 4tb WD RED

3. Fill Synology up with my USB drive stuff

4. Finish ripping my CDs to my NAIM NS01 - then make a copy in unRAID on the 2tb unRaid drive

5. Come bonus time at work, drop in another 4tb HDD to the unRaid array

6. FInd a way to backup my data. By that i mean, dump it all to something which is as safe as i can get it, then move stuff over every month \ week as my data expands.

 

Questions!!!

 

Backup Plan 1 - Tape:

 

I'm seriously considering grabbing a LTO 4 (or maybe LTO 5) off ebay, and using that to make a backup of my unRaid data. Basically jiust fill the tapes, then lock box them at my parents house.

 

This would cost me:

£100-£150 for a good LTO 4 drive OR £200 - £220 for a good LTO 5 drive

£25 - £50 for a HBA card to control either

£10 - £15 per tape (4x LTO 5 would do, or 7 LTO 4).

 

I think I'd want it in the server box, so i have an 'all in one' box to save on space and for ease...but it would eat drive bays. So i guess an external version is ok too..i'd then need a SAS controller with an external port.

 

1. Can i work this from unRaid? Are there any guides? Would i dual boot with Windows or another OS for the tape backup side ?

2. What SAS card would be recommended as the controller for the LTO drive? I'm consfused on  that side...

3. With LTO 4 i believe i will need a Tape Backup software, so that seems like another complexity - but LTO 5 has LTFS which apprently just appears as a drive in Windows \ Linux so is easier just to drag and drop onto. But i still don't get how i would work that using unRaid

4. What would a cheap and efficient gpu recommendation be? Something like a passive cooled GT710 or GT730? Or even earlier? 

(i have an old 6800Ultra and 580GTX but they are the overclocked ones with 2x fans on them and would be overkill and probably not fit my casse)

 

Backup Plan 1 - External USB

 

I could just buy a big USB drive (or two) or use my 3.5" USB 3.0 SATA caddy to drop a big drive into...but i know that's not long term really, and has it's own limitations. i'd be looking at £140 + for an 8 TB WD USB drive...and i've had two of those fail on me before now too!

 

Q: What do people think?

 

Backup Plan 3 - Another server

 

I've seen a few DELL and Fujitsu servers on ebay for like £120. That plus a couple of big HDDs would push me close to the cost for tape...but it's another server to look after and more drives to go bad. And i'm not sure how much life these cheap ex-enterprise ones will still have?

 

Q: What do people think?

 

Backup Plan 4 - Cloud

 

I could make use but my upload speed isnt that good (i'm in UK too) and i'm not sure i trust the service completely, and with at least 5 - 6TB of definite MUST KEEP data already, it's going to be a looooong time to upload, and possibly expensive!

 

-------------------

 

Thank you for reading and for any help and suggestions.

 

I'm really kind of stuck now...i know what i want to do, just not if it's achievable or what the last couple of bits needed are!

Edited February 28, 2020 by Chrisola

[sota]

Man it seems like people are starting to think about this like I did.

I'll do my "boilerplate" answer to start with: see my sig.

[trurl]

16 minutes ago, sota said:

see my sig.

To enable viewing of sigs on this forum (disabled by default) click on your user name at top right on any forum page and select Account Settings. There you will be able to enable viewing of sigs and setup your own sig.

[Chrisola]

On 2/25/2020 at 12:20 AM, sota said:

Man it seems like people are starting to think about this like I did.

I'll do my "boilerplate" answer to start with: see my sig.

 

Thanks - interesting idea...I guess i could get an external hot swappable 3.5" bay, so i can swap in and out via the front once it's all setup?

 

So far i think the tape idea is maybe not workable. I've never used a server, unRaid array or VM before and have 0 knowledge, so please correct any noob mistakes here...but from what i can gather:

 

- you can't load hardware drivers into a VM. Therefore LTFS won't work for LTO5, and i don't know if a normal LTO4 driver would either

- you need special software for LTO4 - which costs £££ and some of them you need the pro\enterprise version to use with tape, so it's more ££. Zbackup suggests that it works, but then...how do i get it going and seeing everything?

- I can't control the tape drive via my Surface or laptop, as i don't think i can SAS > USB 3.0

- the machines get hot when writing to disks

- you can't dual boot WIndows and unRaid, as if one is running the other isn't

- Getting a cheap ex enterprise server, with a tape drive, means adding another failure point, plus possible config issues to see the unRaid share over my network, other expenses for WIndows Server, backup software, a SAS controller etc...

-...and another box in the house that needs a monitor available. My router is behind my TV, so no easy way to connect and hide another device...

 

Search continues...

 

Build started!

 

 

 

[primeval_god]

53 minutes ago, Chrisola said:

 you can't load hardware drivers into a VM. Therefore LTFS won't work for LTO5, and i don't know if a normal LTO4 driver would either

Unfortunately i know nothing of LTO or LTFS so there is not much I can help with. However this sounds wrong to me. If you were to connect the device to a dedicated PCIe SAS card, sitting in its own IOMMU group, you could theoretically use hardware pass-through to connect the device to your VM. Then it should be no different than running the drive on a bare metal machine with whatever driver support the OS you choose has.

 

The above said I dont think i would recommend Tape backup to any home user, as what little i understand of it suggests that it is priced and supported primarily for enterprise users. Making it an integral part of a home build sounds like a recipe for many future headaches. 

[JonathanM]

57 minutes ago, primeval_god said:

it is priced and supported primarily for enterprise users. Making it an integral part of a home build sounds like a recipe for many future headaches. 

This.

 

For the home user, it makes much more sense to either build a second box with spare or castoff parts that can hold multiple drives, or simply keep external drives laying around. The prices for spinning rust capacity are dropping quickly enough that it's cheaper to keep 2X the hard drive capacity than it is to use tape.

 

Tape quit being economical for the home user around the time Imation Travan TR-4 was the current tape format. The tape drives are just too expensive and finicky.

 

Now, I suppose if you were to source relatively recent tape drives from the same type of market all those e2650's came from, and paid similar 10% of new retail, it might get interesting. Still a BUNCH of work getting and keeping it running.

[sota]

I agree tape isn't the way to go, unfortunately.  while the $/TB scales VERY nicely once you get big enough, It's somewhat fickle nature plus the initial buy-in cost prevented me from looking at it.  One of my goals was to make it so recovery is as hardware agnostic as possible.  I somewhat failed at that in that I'm using retired enterprise SAS disks now for backup, but I'm letting it slide as I don't see me ever using hardware that does NOT support SAS, since i'm a retired HPE hardware lover.

 

As for @Chrisola's concern about said retired server gear, short of the couple memory sticks or a hard drive or 2 giving up the ghost, I've never had the main chassis poop, and I've been using 1-3 year old ex-corporate gear for myself and many of my clients for 15 years now.   My main production server is now almost 10 years old and still going strong.

 

One of the benefits of doing the method I am, is I can do periodic incremental backups (Archive flag ) and I can make an exact duplicate of the backup disks any time, using the PV command.  (Don't use DD... it's so slow you'll want to slit your wrists.  Plus PV gives you a real time progress gauge.)

So currently i have 6 disks that are my primary Big Array backup, and 6 more exact duplicate disks.  While I don't know how long that will last, it's nice to have at least.

 

also... @jonathanm if I wanted to start my own "brain droppings" type thread, detailing the things I explicitly bump into and how I solved them, where should I put it?

[JonathanM]

19 minutes ago, sota said:

if I wanted to start my own "brain droppings" type thread, detailing the things I explicitly bump into and how I solved them, where should I put it?

I'd say the Lounge would be the best place.

https://forums.unraid.net/forum/16-lounge/

A place for new users to introduce themselves and existing users to have storage/technology-related discussions.

 

Sums up what you are speaking of quite nicely I think.

[sota]

10-4.

I'll start collecting my thoughts and regurgitate them there in the future.

Also helps me, as I'm like a post-it note addict, both physical and virtual.  Easy enough to keep an unRAID forum tab open and I can just dump my notes there.

[Chrisola]

So...tape idea is out the way and forgotten.

 

2 of my WD REDs (bought from different stores and are from different batches) passed the long Data Lifeguard check...but my Segate Pipeline failed it and I got the warranty message in SeaTools on it too, so it has gone back  as faulty for a refund. Which is annoying...and given i have 2x same drives in my Naim and have an external Seagate with 21k hours on it, a little disappointing.

 

SO i got another WD RED from another store, and currenly doing the Data Lifeguard test on that.

 

I also used the PAY20 UK ebay deal (expires today) to grab an external WD Elements 8gb drive for a good price from a reputable dealer (i have one with 22k hours on it already...which i guess is time since my old PC died and was replaced) so that should take care of initial backup duties.

 

Hardware is testing and has been running sat in the BIOS screen for 72hrs all assembled. everything at 27 - 31c temp stable, fans just under 500rpm and nice and quiet (PSU fan in ECO mode, so has been off).

 

Annoyingly the backplate for my mobo has been lost by UPS...so i'll need to try and sort that and then finish putting everything inside the case later

 

Looks like another couple of days before I start configuring unRaid, still just reading through here

[Chrisola]

It's alive!

 

Under my table in my front room for now..will probably relocate once i'm happy everything working out.