Old-time FreeNAS, now Synology but looking at unRAID DIY

[Jacko_]

Hi all,

First time creating an account but have been lurking in the background a little doing some research.

 

Back story is i used to use FreeNAS around 10 years ago but then stopped but i very recently bought a Synology NAS to storage some media and use as a Plex Server.  It's doing ok with direct-play x264 but is struggling with some codecs and i'm looking to invest in a 4K TV now they are much cheaper.

 

Current Synology

 

DS918+

4 x 4TB IronWolf - Raid 5

2 x Samsung Evo 500GB NVMe

2 x 8GB DDR3 RAM

 

I'm around 50% capacity at the moment, so that's not a big driver but being able to transcode video to all devices is important.  At the moment with some containers running etc the CPU is struggling which is the biggest problem, to the point where the Plex Client (Fire Stick and Fire Stick Pro) will crash and restart.  Seems to happen mostly with animated films for my son to watch.

 

I have this old FreeNas server which i've not powered on for years.  It developed a problem with one of the controllers and i got busy (work, kids, houses etc.) that i never did get around to sorting it.  I wanted to reuse some of the components in it but i'm really out of sync with modern-day computer components so i'm looking for advice / gotchas i should be aware of.

 

Lian Li full size case with 15 x 5.25" front bays

Asus M2N32 WS Pro Motherboard (believe it's full ATX size)

Unknown AMD AM2 CPU and a massive fan

4 x 2GB DDR2 ram

3 x icydock hot-swap 5 drive drive enclosures giving 15 hot-swap bays

5 x 500G SATA Seagate drives

5 x 1TB SATA WD Green drives

2 x Adaptec 6 port SATA PCIx controllers (one is a Dell rebrand one isn't)

Silverstone modular PSU - can't remember the power but maybe around 400W perhaps

 

I'm using 5 ports on each controller, plus 5 off the mainboard

 

I would love to reuse as much hardware as possible but i have some concerns / questions about doing so.  Firstly, i need to understand the power requirements of modern motherboards (the M2M32 is 24 and 8 pin).  If the PSU is man enough for all the drives / motherboard, GPU etc and if i can reuse the SATA cables and drive bays and take advantage of SATA3.  I can't see why the cables should be an issue, the drive bays have a passive backplane as much as i can remember and see so i don't think that'll be a problem either.

 

Can you think of any issues with my thoughts here?  I'm looking at a motherboard, LSI controller in IT mode, or two of them depending on the number of ports on the motherboard) CPU, RAM and a GPU.  I'm probably looking at a Nvidia P2000 but i'm not sure if i can use an HP branded version or not, or if this is really required if a decent CPU is used - i still need to research this bit, and if unraid can fully support hardware transcoding using a separate GPU.

 

I think i would like to stick with more enterprise grade motherboard, but i'm just not sure what i should be looking at.  It doesn't need to be Skylake / Cascade Lake levels of performance but having some CPU available for additional things would be handy.  Docker containers, some VMs, etc would be great without it impacting on transcoding would be the ideal but without going mental on the cost.

 

I know this is long-winded, but has anyone got any advice on a build that could support what i'm after - lets say 2 or so transcodes and still support other workloads at the same time. 

 

Should i look at Intel 1151 socket, perhaps an Kaby Lake would do it? 

Single 16GB ram? 

NVMe 500GB (from the Synology) for Plex / unRAID cache?

P2000 GPU 

2 x LSI PCIe controllers

16GB or so USB key for unRAID (am i right in thinking USB2.0 is better than USB3.0?)

 

What other things do i need to consider as part of this - should i just try and use what i've got already perhaps  Its not exactly cutting edge but was very good back in the day when i built it.  Thanks for your help on this in advance.  Looking forward to getting this going again soon.

 

Some photos of the old rig

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Jacko_
Added some photos to get your

[trurl]

Are you planning to keep the Synology going, or would you also be thinking of reusing its drives in your new Unraid server? There are several advantages of going with fewer larger newer drives instead of more smaller older drives like you have in that old server.

[Jacko_]

I'm planning on a single 16TB drive, actually, maybe two of them for parity - i believe it's best to use the largest drive going which makes adding new drives easier as you expand.  I'm not sure what to do with regard to the drives in the Synology - perhaps keep them where they are so that i can use it as a DVR for CCTV.  I was thinking of using the 1TB drives in the Synology but not decided yet.  I would still need some space for copying the data i already have over to unRAID so just got to figure that out in my head.  So not sure really.  Perhaps use 8TB or something in the unraid, whatever the sweet-spot is for £ per TB is these days.

Edited July 5, 2020 by Jacko_

[trurl]

8TB is what I just bought when I needed to replace a drive (had to do parity swap). Now I will be replacing 6TB drives with 8TB drives as needed. My storage needs don't grow very quickly and my mITX case won't hold many disks.

 

You will still need backups of course, parity is not a substitute.

 

I just finished a rebuild myself, thread here:

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/93149-mitx-motherboard-which-can-support-7-drives-on-board/

 

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[Jacko_]

I'll take a look at your build.  My idea is to try and stick to a known-working design where possible as it should be tried, tested and an almost validated design that just works and gives me zero bother.   I just want something that works, that i can upgrade as i need to and not worry about for a good few years.

[Jacko_]

If anyone has some ideas / thoughts on a good middle ground for motherboard / CPU / GPU combos i would love to hear them.  I'm so far removed from consumer hardware these days i just haven't a clue what's what.  I can get a board that supports 2 x M.2, has a bunch of SATA ports (7 ports would be amazing as i could use a single 8 port LSI card to give me my 15 bays - with unraid booting from USB into ram then i should be golden with this.  Support for GPU card would be great as well - but perhaps i don't need it with the right CPU - but i just don't know enough about. Any advice is welcomed.

 

Thanks.