New Build Advice

[apefray]

Hi,

I am currently in the process of building a new server to house an Unraid setup along with a couple of dockers (emby and a torrent client)

 

The server specs are as follows:

 

·         Asrock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16

·         IBM 1015 SAS Card (running in IT mode)

·         2 x Intel E5-2670

·         32gb ECC Ram (16gb per cpu)

·         1 x WD Red Pro 6TB for the parity drive

·         2  x WD Red 4TB and 2 x WD Red 3TB drives for data

·         1 x Samsung 120gb EVO 850 SSD for running the Dockers

 

The Asrock motherboard has 4 x 1Gbps Lan ports, so my thought is to team 2 Lan ports to Unraid (maybe overkill), then dedicate two others to the Dockers so that each is using its own Lan port only so each Lan port has its own IP address. Is this possible?

 

I would like to have dedicated ports, especially for the Torrent Docker as I use a VPN for a connection which I don’t want to interfere with the other Lan ports. Currently I have a standalone PC that I use for Torrents and the VPN connection, and another PC for running Emby as the two cannot co-exist on the same PC due to the VPN connection, hence I would like to combine these two PC’s into the Dockers running on the new Unraid Server.

 

Of course, I could also go the route of running everything under ESXI instead, but I haven’t really looked into this at the moment.

 

Any pointers with regards to the above would be appreciated or indeed any other suggestions would be welcomed also.

 

 

Cheers

[tdallen]

Your proposed setup is nice, but it would help to know more about what you will do with it - right now it seems like pretty dramatic overkill.  16 or 20 cores depending on whether you get the v2 chip, twice as many threads, in excess of 24,000 Passmarks.  And all this is on an older, not at all power efficient platform with a non-standard size motherboard and cases that tend to be noisy due to the cooling requirements.  If you know what you're getting into and just want to have fun - then go for it.  But folks usually have pretty demanding use cases to assemble a beast like this.

 

[apefray]

Lol, lets just say i'm a geek when it comes to these sort of things. I have two E5-2670, but may actually only use 1 and see how things go. The thing is, I have outgrown a Qnap 4 Bay NAS drive, and did think about purchasing a newer 8 bay model, but where's the fun in that, hence looking at building my own Unraid Server that I can expand in future if needed (and for quite a substantial saving over the Qnap). 

 

Yes, I bought the motherboard, and already have the hard drives from the Qnap I am currently using (apart from the WD Red Pro 6TB which I bought a couple of weeks ago) but the rest of it is from now redundant servers that were broken up, hence ending up with the E5-2670 v1 cpu's which I rescued before being tossed in the bin. I have spent many hours considering the case this should be built into, and came up with a 3U 16 Hot Bay server case which then allows me to use 1 or 2 x Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U which should keep the noise down. 

 

The intention is to store all my movies/music/photos etc. etc. on Unraid, then be able to watch both locally and whilst out and about through Emby. There is the potential for 4 -5 connections to Emby at anyone time (family), again either locally or whilst out and about. The transcoding is limited to 3Mb/s per user, as overall, I only have a 19Mb/s upload rate on fibre.

 

I'm also very much into the Emulation scene, and have around 1TB of files that need storing on Unraid as well, and this is where the Torrenting comes in via VPN. I won't actually be running any Emulation on this server, just storing the files, as I have my main computer to run this on instead.

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by apefray

[SSD]

SSD seems a bit small, depending on what you are aiming to do.

[apefray]

I did have that thought also, but did come to the conclusion that 120gb should be big enough to run the two dockers from. Or am I thinking along the wrong lines here and in fact the dockers will run from the drive array instead? If this is the case, then I could use the SSD as a Cache drive instead which is something I am still looking into.

 

I understand (almost) how dockers work, but with the Torrent (deluge) docker, does this run as a stand alone app within the Docker, or do I need to install Ubuntu to run it on aka:

I ask because I need to run deluge through the VPN (CyberGhost VPN), so how do I install the VPN and ensure that Deluge is running through it? I'm a little lost with this part at the moment, although, ensuring that Unraid, Emby and Deluge/CyberGhost VPN are using their own dedicated Lan ports is the other side of the puzzle I'm trying to figure out.

[trurl]

17 minutes ago, apefray said:

120gb should be big enough to run the two dockers from. Or am I thinking along the wrong lines here and in fact the dockers will run from the drive array instead? If this is the case, then I could use the SSD as a Cache drive instead which is something I am still looking into.

I would use the SSD as cache and use that cache for dockers. Using cache for dockers is the standard way of doing things, and is simpler to manage than alternative methods. You should be able to run a lot of dockers with 120GB.

 

If you also want VMs it may not be enough. And if you intend to cache a lot of user share writes between scheduled moves it may not be enough. Just depends on how you will use cache. I don't usually bother to cache user shares.

[apefray]

My intention is to only run Unraid along with the two Dockers. I only mentioned ESXi in my original post as I did start out thinking I would use ESXi with Unraid, Emby and Deluge all running on separate VM's but have since decided that Dockers may actually be the way to go. 

 

I hope I am thinking about this the right way. Basically my goal is to consolidate my existing QNAP Nas Drive, Windows 7 running Emby and Windows 7 running my Torrent Client/VPN connection into 1 server case, which is then rack mounted along with my existing workstation (Intel i7-6700k with 16gb) which I use for Emulation/CAD work.

 

Currently, the QNAP stores all my Movies/Music/Photos files, and is served out to several Emby apps (roku, apple iphone, android etc. etc.) using my old PC (Intel i5-2500k with 16gb ram). Then I have the second PC that serves me for the Torrent side of things, running CyberGhost VPN which I use downloading files for the Emulation software. Both these PC's sit in old cases that I found lying around and take up more room than I actually have

 

As you can see, I have a rats nest of PC's which I want to consolidate (apart from the workstation) so I will end up with two server cases in a rack.

[JonathanM]

4 hours ago, apefray said:

I ask because I need to run deluge through the VPN (CyberGhost VPN), so how do I install the VPN and ensure that Deluge is running through it?

binhex has a VPN enabled deluge docker, it takes care of all the leak protection and security for you.

 

A quick google of cyberghost shows they do not enable port forwarding for torrents unless you have a subscription, so I assume you have a paid account?

[apefray]

Yep, I have a CyberGhost VPN paid account to allow me to download Torrents. I've just watched a Youtube video that shows how to install the Deluge VPN docker, and this looks ideal. The only thing I need to figure out is changing from PIA VPN to using the custom settings to enable me to use CyberGhost VPN instead, but as I say this will probably do what I want, especially using the DelugeSiphon Chrome extension. 

 

Edit: I think I may have found the settings for Deluge VPN:

 

https://support.cyberghostvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/213652765-How-to-configure-PPTP-for-Linux-Ubuntu

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by apefray

[bman]

I agree with bjp999 re: SSD too small.

 

Granted you can always install another SSD should it come to this, but in my mind with a system with that much capability I don't think it would be too long before you found additional Dockers and VMs you'd like to run.

[apefray]

So the consensus is a bigger Cache drive then.

 

I can purchase a 250gb SSD, but has anyone used something like a Seagte FireCuda Hybrid drive for the Cache drive? For the same price as a Samsung EVO 850 250gb, I can have a 2TB firecuda (ST2000DX002).

 

Has anyone used a Hybrid drive for cache? Is it recommended? Will it work for the Cache + Dockers and maybe VM's at a later stage?

[SSD]

1 hour ago, apefray said:

So the consensus is a bigger Cache drive then.

 

I can purchase a 250gb SSD, but has anyone used something like a Seagte FireCuda Hybrid drive for the Cache drive? For the same price as a Samsung EVO 850 250gb, I can have a 2TB firecuda (ST2000DX002).

 

Has anyone used a Hybrid drive for cache? Is it recommended? Will it work for the Cache + Dockers and maybe VM's at a later stage?

 

The cache drive has a specific purpose. To provide an extremely fast read/write access with no spinup delays or delays in having simultaneous access for multiple I/O streams.

 

It is used primarily for two purposes.

 

1. To hold Dockers and VMs so that they operate very fast.

2. To act as a high speed landing zone for files prior to being added to the array.

 

For most, 250G is a reasonable size, 500G generous. But depends on the use case. A hybrid drive would act as a sort of high speed cache, but the fundamental data is still on a spinner. It would not suffice IMO.

[apefray]

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB it is then, bought.

 

I'm still scratching my head regards to dedicating the Lan Ports, to both Unraid and the Dockers? Anyone know of any guides or has anyone done this previously?

[JonathanM]

22 minutes ago, apefray said:

 

I'm still scratching my head regards to dedicating the Lan Ports, to both Unraid and the Dockers? Anyone know of any guides or has anyone done this previously?

This is in a state of flux, we just got built in docker IP assignment in the latest release candidate, it's not even in the stable version except by command line hackery.

 

If you want to play with it, you are going to be learning along with us. Feel free to document your frustrations and successes.

[apefray]

Lol, so I guess the consensus is don't at the mo. Just a thought, but if I use the Deluge_VPN docker and use my CybeGhost VPN details, then will this docker be the only thing to connect over VPN whilst Unraid and the Emby Docker will connect though my regular internet as usual? In my mind this is how its going to work which may negate having to set a seperate Lan Port for Unraid and the 2 dockers.

 

Secondly, what do people do with regards to backing up Unraid? External drives, a NAS drive or some other setup?

 

I was thinking about purchasing a JBOD 4 bay enclosure (StarTech do one) with an e-SATA port, then add an e-SATA card to the Unraid server, connect the two together via an e-SATA cable and back up to the JBOD device. I'm moving away from desktop cases and moving to rack mount to free up my desk, so this seemed an ideal solution assuming Unraid works with e-SATA cards?

[SSD]

Sata are sSata are the same from unRaid perspective. Different cable tips but same standard. You can buy a cable that is esata on one side and sata on the other. UnRaid can't tell one from the other. So yes, unRaid would support what you refer to as an esata controller so kind as that sata chipset is supported.

 

You might look at the LSI SAS9201-16e. It has four external SAS connectors and makes it easy to hook up external drives. You could probably find an SFF-8088 to four esata breakout cable.

[tdallen]

3 hours ago, apefray said:

if I use the Deluge_VPN docker and use my CybeGhost VPN details, then will this docker be the only thing to connect over VPN whilst Unraid and the Emby Docker will connect though my regular internet as usual?

Yep.

[apefray]

Update

 

Have now built the server, install the 6TB drive along with 2 x 4TB drives for Data, and 250g Samsung SSD for cache. Array has been started, parity setup has been done. Now have all green lights for everything. Easy.

 

However, could do with some advice with regards to setting up user shares for emby (have spent two days looking at you tube videos, wiki articles and posts on the internet). I'm trying to get my head around the best way to setup the shares to store my media so that emby can access each of the shares.

 

What I would like is to create a Movies share on disk 1, then copy my 1.5TB worth of movies to this drive. Going forward, drive 1 is only used for movies, however eventually I will fill this drive and will need to start filling a second drive in future (not bought yet), and so on. As my Movie collection increases, so does the number of disk holding the Movies.

 

Then, I want to do the same scenario but with the 2nd drive for my Music, TV collection which currently stands at 1.9TB. Again following the above scenario, so these two shares are stored on disk 2, but can grow onto new drives as and when I purchase them.

 

I understand creating shares, that's the easy part, the bit I am stuck on is the Split Levels bearing in mind my intended setup as above and this is where I my head is scrambled with regards to which split levels I should be using. I assume I am correct with regards to using user shares rather than disk shares to achieve the above (although even that I am doubting thinking how I want this setup), grrrrrr!

[tdallen]

You're correct that User Shares are the way to go when you want to manage data spread over multiple disks.  When you define a user share you can also specify which disks to include or which to exclude.  Turn on Help in the UI for a good explanation. That said, you might be happier in the long run if you just let unRAID do it's thing via the Allocation Method.  While you can micro-manage unRAID there is little reason to do so and you have to remember to update all your shares when you add disks.  

 

Split levels have to do with the way data is stored in directories when split between disks rather than which logical data is on which disk... If you have specific questions about Emby it would be best to post in the support thread for your specific Docker.

Edited June 12, 2017 by tdallen

[SSD]

If you only have one disk in a share, split level is irrelevant.

 

It controls what content you want to keep together on a single disk. For example, if you want all episodes of a tv show season to be on one disk, you can set the split level for that. If you want all seasons of a tv show to be on the same disk, you can set it one level lower. But the lower the split level, the higher the risk that you'll run out out space on a disk, because unRaid will not break the split level rule, and place a new file on a different disk, even if it runs out of space. It causes unRaid you ignore the min free and even include/exclude settings!

 

Goes without saying that information must be stored in a uniform manner in a user share for this to work well. Movies and TV shows typically have different hierarchies.

 

Back in the day it was common for a single movie to be split into multiple files. When watching a movie and the file changes, the disk the new file was on could need to be spun up. This created an unsatisfactory pause in the movie watching experience. Split level gives the tools to minimize such kinds of things. For example, browsing could be impacted if the movie poster image were separated from the movie itself. It also allows those of us with slight OCD to keep things more neatly organized on our disks.

 

The mechanics are clearly documented in the wiki.

[trurl]

If you use the default Allocation method of High-water, it will "usually" result in things that are written to a user share at the same time winding up on the same disk. "Usually" is good enough for me.