So, I am in the middle of building out a new plex server running in a u-nas 810 chassis and I am looking at both UnRaid and Freenas to accomplish this. This will be my first real home deep dive into a linux based system other than raspberry pi's scattered across the house.

 

8x6TB Hdd's run through LSI raid card as JBOD. (or should I just not flash it to IT mode?)

i5 9400

32gb DDR4 (max mobo can handle)

3x500gb Samsung SSD's on onboard sata (I might be able to go 4 at a later date if it helps caching performance)

1x500gb NVME (was going to be my boot drive. but looks like I shouldn't do this with an unraid setup? how does this affect plex? - Seems people like sandisk?)

 

The system's main purpose is plex, and then I would like to use this opportunity to learn docker for tossing in additional apps (sonarr?, ombi?, calibre?)

From my reading, sounds like ZFS and unraid might be the best? Where should docker containers go?

 

So, Is Unraid right for me? 

(convince this old windows admin to switch!)

 

I'm not sure anyone can convince you.  But I will say this I'm a windows admin and I switch to unraid.  I made a test system and played with and found that it would do the job I needed it to do.  And I find that I didn't need to know linux to use unraid.  The web ui does most of everything that I need and what it doesn't the community is always here to help.  

I was in a similar boat to you. Knew Windows well, wanted to use/learn dockers more and wanted a media system for Plex + more. I'm currently running a trial of Unraid but I've bought all the hardware and I'll be buying a key once the trial runs out. It's perfect for everything I've needed. It allows me to run everything I wanted to via Windows or via Docker on Windows but a lot more efficiently.