New Build for Smart Home


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What is your budget?

Without HDDs and the price of unRAID, I'd like to keep it under $900. 

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need?

I currently plan to start with two 8TB Red drives and then will expand over time. Most of my storage will be blu-ray rips, photos videos, files. I could see getting to 6 drives total (10 storage / 2 parity) but 12 drives would be the distant future.

 

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?

I want to be able to expand for sure. I want to use this as a whole house system. Access from any smart TV or nettop computer.

 

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)?  If so, which ones?  Be specific.

I only plan on using this for file storage/backup with possible CrashPlan and as a Plex media server. I would like to do a VM eventually just not sure how to go about it.

 

Usage would be across the whole house. We will be building a new home. I will have a server room this will be based in. I will have cat 6 lines in every tv location and computer location, only wifi will be used for is smart home devices and tablets/phones. We will have 4 bedrooms and my son likes to listen to music all night (newborn). 

 

You can follow the house build here if interested- 

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=335191

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives.

Would be willing to run lower rpm drives as long as I do not have any lag on the receiving end of the service.

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives.

Have a lot of spare parts see list below.

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 3.20 GHz Quad Core Skylake Desktop Processor, Socket LGA 1151, 6MB Cache [BX80662I56500]

 

Power Supply-

EVGA 650 BQ, 80+ BRONZE 650W, Semi Modular, 5 Year Warranty, Includes FREE Power On Self Tester, Power Supply 110-BQ-0650-V1

HDD- Samsung 750 EVO - 120GB - 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-750120BW)

RAM- Ballistix Sport LT 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR4 2400 MT/s (PC4-19200) DIMM 288-Pin - BLS2K8G4D240FSB (Gray)

Case-  https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133027  (Thermaltake Mozart TX Case)

I am willing to change out any of these components for others.

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Looks like you have almost a complete system just in spare parts! I made a pcpartpicker build to make it easier to see what you are missing.

 

I would use everything you have. The CPU even supports vt-d/vt-x if you want to look into a VM later on (With only 4 cores and no HT, you'd be a bit limited on what you could do with the VM, but it would definitely work for nothing too demanding).

 

The SSD would make a great cache drive. A bit small, but good enough to start. You can store your Dockers on it as well, and so long as you don't transfer TBs of data daily, you should be good.

 

The PowerSupply looks good. Single 12v rail, which is important when looking to support a bunch of drives.

 

Thoughts:

  • Do you have a cooler for the CPU?
  • Drives: Red drives are great. Definitely a good choice for a NAS build, but don't get hung up on the 'NAS' thing. UnRaid users for years have been using any drive available, with great success, and it has yet to be proven that Red drives are needed or mandatory. Personally, I buy the drive with the best size/cost ratio.
  • 16GB of ram is more than enough for basic NAS functionality and a few Dockers. Only down side is that it is not ECC. Were you buying new, I would suggest looking at ECC ram (And a chip that supports it), but since you have the parts already, I would use what you have. I (and many others) ran for years (and still run) without ECC ram (and 4 sticks as well - which can be more problematic than just 2), without issue.
  • Motherboard: Supermicro is always a safe bet, and this one gives you the option of upgrading to a Xeon chip down the road if you want to explore more heavy duty VM stuff. However, it's not clear to me whether it supports non-ECC ram. If it doesn't, you'll need to pick another board, or replace your ram (which seems like a bit of a waste)... Also, as a micro-atx, it doesn't have a bunch of PCI-e slots, which may limit you if you are looking to add video/controller card/extra USB.

You may want to see if you get feedback on other motherboards as well. If you can find one that other have used already for unRaid, it can save you some hassles down the road :).

 

That's it for now. Need to get something to eat, but thought it was a good place to start. Pcpartpicker is a great site for figuring out your next step!

 

Good Luck!

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DoeBoye-

 

Should i scrap my spare parts and future proof maybe with dual Xeon processors? 

 

I really want something i can set up now and will last me a few years, before i get bored again and start tinkering. I will look at the 4tb HD they seem to be the best bang for your buck right now. 

 

Thank you for the comments. 

 

 

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29 minutes ago, dirtrunner0519 said:

Should i scrap my spare parts and future proof maybe with dual Xeon processors?

 

I wouldn't. The beauty of unRaid is that it is very modular. Start with what you have (which would make a pretty great unRaid system already), and if you find yourself running into the limits of your system in a few years, start looking then. The OS is not attached to the hardware, so you can unplug the USB key (where unRaid resides before it is loaded up into ram), pop it into another build (with the same drives obviously), and away you go. (Caveat: If you've got a VM running by that point, it will complicate things, but still doable).

 

Due to limited space in your chassis, I think you're first idea of 8TB drives might be the better way to go. The cost/TB is roughly the same now between the 2, and you won't find yourself buying a new chassis or selling off old drives because you have no more available bays.

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47 minutes ago, dirtrunner0519 said:

My Chassis is huge.

External dimensions are indeed large, but only 6! internal 3.5 bays, no hot swap bays, and not very many 5.25 bays for adding hot swap 3.5 trays.

 

You are indeed limited in the amount of drives you can use in that case, especially as shipped.

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15 minutes ago, dirtrunner0519 said:

Any other ideas for that case then?

I'd be perfectly ok using it for unraid, as long as you keep the drive count in mind. Like @DoeBoye said, with the large drive sizes available now, it's fine. If you get the itch to add more drives than the case was designed for, you could always mount hotswap cages internally in the space set aside for the 2nd ! motherboard.

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