Newbie advice for options on re-using old N40L hardware

[lloydsj]

Hi,

 

I've currently a HP microserver N40L with 8GB ram and the below HDD's and a DVDRW, which has not been used for about 5 years.  I'm thinking i want to install unraid, and a couple of dockers for plex and sickbeard on it.

 

[0:0:0:0]disk hp v165w 0.00 /dev/sda 4.04GB

[1:0:0:0]disk ATA SEAGATE /dev/sdb 250GB

[2:0:0:0]disk ATA SEAGATE /dev/sdc 250GB

[3:0:0:0]disk ATA WDC GREEN /dev/sdd 2.00TB

[4:0:0:0]disk ATA WDC GREEN /dev/sde 2.00TB

[5:0:1:0]cd/dvd HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GSA-H60L R90A /dev/sr0

 

I've also got an old Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB lying around doing nothing.

 

As im just trying to reuse some old hardware, I don't really want to spend much on this but will spend a few quid if needed.

 

Few questions....

1) Can I set the HDD's up as 2 x raid1 mirrors?  (2 x 250GB and 2 x 2TB).  My plan was to have the dockers etc stored on the 250GB share, and my media/data on the 2TB.

2) If 1 isn't possible, whats the cheapest/best option for using most of the above hardware?  I was wondering if I should remove the 2 x 250GB drives, purchase another 2TB drive as a parity for the existing 2x2TB, and maybe get some sort of adaptor for the 60GB SSD and use it as a cache drive?

3) Is the Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB any use for this project?  as its old and i've read a few things about TRIM but not really sure on its spec etc.

4) Will I actually see any benefit from a cache drive?  as this server is going to be used as a downloader and plex server (direct play only, with no transcoding required).... so most of the fast network traffic will be outbound.  I'm only on 30MB fiber internet so download is unlikely to max out the drives even without a cache?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by lloydsj
removed serials from HDD

[JorgeB]

12 hours ago, lloydsj said:

1) Can I set the HDD's up as 2 x raid1 mirrors?  (2 x 250GB and 2 x 2TB).  My plan was to have the dockers etc stored on the 250GB share, and my media/data on the 2TB.

Not as a single array, but you could use the larger ones as array devices and the smaller ones as a cache pool.

[lloydsj]

45 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Not as a single array, but you could use the larger ones as array devices and the smaller ones as a cache pool.

Can you only have 1 array?  as my intention was to have 2 arrays (first being 2 x 250GB RAID1, second array being 2 x 2TB RAID1)

Do you think I will actually see any benefit from creating a cache pool for my use case?

[JorgeB]

37 minutes ago, lloydsj said:

Can you only have 1 array?

Yes, maybe in the feature you can have more, but it won't be soon, you'll be able to have multiple cache pools soon.

 

38 minutes ago, lloydsj said:

Do you think I will actually see any benefit from creating a cache pool for my use case?

You can use the pool as a separate "array", by having the array share(s) not use cache and the pool share(s) use cache only.

 

[bonienl]

In the next Unraid release with multiple cache pool support, you can per user share tell which pool to use.

 

This gives you the ability to set up dedicated pools and shares for a specific task.

E.g. VMs can run in their "own" environment, and the same is true for Docker containers which may have another dedicated environment.

 

In short; a lot of flexilibty is added !

Edited May 4, 2020 by bonienl

[lloydsj]

OK thanks for the help/pointers.  I've decided to get rid of the 2 x 250GB drives, use the Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB as cache drive and have the 2 x 2TB WD GREENS as 1 parity and 1 data (leaving me with 1 spare bay to purchase another 2TB to double the data storage if needed in the future).

 

Any issues with that setup?