2 PCs : Which would you use for unRaid?

[MediaMaan]

Hi folks.

Soon-to-be unRaid user here I hope ;-)  Have been using OMV up until now, and am preparing to make the change over to unRaid.

Primary function will be NAS for media server.  No transcoding will be performed on this machine.  I would like it to connect as a VPN client to a provider, and to utilise a torrent downloader.

 

Drives : a 10TB parity will shortly be obtained, and I have a 10TB Exos with some data on.  I will add a couple of smaller drives to the mix - think I have a 4TB and a couple of 1.5TBs kicking around.  I plan to use a 250Gb cache drive that would write to the array at 5am every morning.

 

I have 2 old machines that have recently been donated to me.  If you wouldn't mind, could I ask for the Community's advice?  Which would you use as your NAS platform?

 

1 - 2008 era Dell PowerEdge 1430 with 1 Xeon 2.x GHz CPU, 4Gb RAM.  Was removed from service since it "died".  Looks to me like the SAS card has gone - hard drives not recognized in the BIOS.  However when I plug the drives into a SATA port (of which there are 4, only 3 usable according to Dell), they are visible.  I was able to commence booting from an SSD from another machine using the motherboard SATA ports.  This thing makes a racket when it's running, so once can assume excellent air circulation!  Hangs when booting when it can't see the drives, and also reports some kind of temperature sensor error.  There are no USB 3 ports on this machine.

 

2 - 2011/12 desktop with a 2nd gen Intel I3, 6Gb RAM.  4 onboard SATA ports.  Nothing special or unusual about this machine.  Was previously just running Win 7.  I believe it has 1 USB 3 port, in addition to several USB 2 sockets.

 

Both devices appear to have gigabit networking.

 

While I think the airflow of the Dell would be better, there are only 2 drive mount locations, and apparently it is limited to 3 of the 4 SATA ports being used simultaneously.

The Desktop would be easier to work with, and offers more RAM, but obviously the components are not server grade.

 

In terms of expansion, I would consider adding more SATA ports, but I am currently out of work, so budget is key here.  I will make do with the SATA ports I have initially, but it would be nice to add a card later that offers more.

 

So - what are your guys' recommendations???

Cheers,

MediaMaan

 

[SeeGee]

One thing to consider is that the Xeon cpu has many more pcie lanes, allowing for more flexibility down the road. You could add a HDD controller, and suddenly support many more drives, or you could add a pcie nvme adapter and slot in nvme drives if you really want the performance. My vote is for Xeon in almost any server scenario

[MediaMaan]

2 hours ago, SeeGee said:

One thing to consider is that the Xeon cpu has many more pcie lanes, allowing for more flexibility down the road. You could add a HDD controller, and suddenly support many more drives, or you could add a pcie nvme adapter and slot in nvme drives if you really want the performance. My vote is for Xeon in almost any server scenario

Thanks for your input.  The old Dell seems to have 2 PCI Express x1 slots.  The desktop unit has a PCI x16.  How much difference would that make?

 

I've removed the old SAS card from the Dell.  I might try and find another card locally (there's a guy selling old servers on Kijiji classifieds constantly - he's bound to have a few kicking around), if the price is right.  Speaking of that guy, he sells some of the old servers for under CAD $200. e.g.
 

Server 1: CPU: 2 x Intel Xeon E5620 Quad core CPUs: 8 cores / 16 processor threads for virtual machines. - Memory: 32 GB ddr3 registered RAM _ Storage 8 x 3.5" hot swap bays, H700 6GBps RAID card. One SAS HDD 300gb installed, five caddies included. Eight bays allow lots of room to add SATA or SAS or SSD - 2 x Power supplies, total $189.

Seems like a decent price to me.  But if I could get this current one running well, I guess that'd be even better, loud as it is.

[SeeGee]

I think the H700 can be flashed to it mode... Look into it. That's not a bad server for the money. Especially considering the added storage options. I used to run my unraid on desktop consumer hardware and the upgrade to the server chassis has made it so much nicer.

That being said, you could always try it on the hardware you have, and make your decisions from that experience as to whether or not it fulfills your needs adequately. Unraid is pretty portable, so setting it up with a couple of disks and tinkering then moving the USB and disks to the other machine and trying that out should be pretty easy.