New Member - advice & build help

[Tyranian]

Hi,

 

Been looking into unRaid for the last few weeks on and off as a possible solution to consolidate 3 machines into 1!

 

I currently have the following requirements and would love some advice from some seasoned users on what's the best way to address them

 

Would like to

1. run a Windows 10 VM with graphics passthrough for Kodi, basic kids games, web browsing, 4k streaming/playback, etc.
2. run docker apps such as Sonarr, Radarr, Sabnzdb, Plex, LetsEncrypt, etc.
3. Consolidate my storage from a NAS and micro server with mixed disk sizes (total of 8 HDD's).
4. If possible utilise some spare hardware I have lying around - G Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4-3000 16GB, Corsair - RMx 750W PSU
5. Any case must be living room friendly!

 

Any help\advice at all is appreciated!

Edited July 29, 2017 by Tyranian

[squirrellydw]

2, 3 and 4 you can do easy.  Not sure about 1 since I know nothing about VMs and 5 is personal preference

[tdallen]

Hello and welcome.

 

You should be able to do everything you want to do.  Take a look at the Fractal Design Define R5 for a case.

 

Will you be doing any Plex transcoding?  That would help drive your CPU decision.

 

Since you're interested in 4k video, I'd get a Kaby Lake CPU in case you do want to do any transcoding/encoding.  In theory you could get away with a Core i5 if your VM requirements are light - two cores for unRAID and two for the VM.  You get more flexibility with the addition of hyperthreaded cores if you get a Core i7 or Xeon E3, though.  If you want to reuse the DDR4 that you have already, I'd stick with a Core i7 - no sense pairing an E3 with non-ECC RAM.  I like motherboards from Supermicro, ASRock, and Asus.  Your PSU should be reusable.

 

VMs on unRAID have been very popular.  I'd caution you that you need an "enthusiast" level of interest, though - they aren't consumer level plug and play yet.

[SSD]

I recently converted my existing Win 8.1 primary workstation to a KVM VM, and got it running (no passthrough attempted, just VNC and SplashTop).  

 

And also set up a new Win10 workstation with 4K video passthrough (not planning any gaming) that I intend to be my primary Windows workstation.

 

[When i do major Windows updates, I prefer to install fresh rather that do an update. I leave the old rig as a VM. Before I was using VMware, but KVM is working as well or better for me. I do like that VMware display driver dynamically adjusts the resolution as you re-size its Window. And Unity mode is quite nice. But KVM is way peppier to boot and run, and fixed resolutions are fine.]

 

I also bought a 43" Hisense H7D 4K TV to use as a monitor. Heck of a deal at Costco, and at this size I can get 4 1920x1080 windows that are actually readable! And no squinting watching YouTube videos! I can get more than 100 lines of text in my text editor at very readable size.

 

I plan to write up my experiences. Still having a bit of trouble getting my 4K AMD audio stable. Today I was having a problem with voice and video being out of sync on YouTube when watching 4K content, and then colors went screwy when I closed YouTube (easily fixed but not pretty). Might be an AMD driver problem. I plan on trying a Nvidia card to see if it works better. AMD looks to have gone downhill in the driver department compared to Nvidia.

 

So bottom line, there isn't a superhighway for getting the VMs set up, but there is a pretty good dirt road down the path, with just a few potholes/rough patch! @gridrunner's 5 videos (the Win10 Daily Driver / Gaming VM series, and the three part tuning series), and absolutely required watching. 

 

My server lives in my basement, and I ran long cables to my office/media room. So can't help you with a beautiful showpiece case. I prefer invisible!  But I can tell you you want a case that makes it very easy to swap drives. I strongly strongly recommend hot-swap style cases. The CSE-M35T-1B are excellent, and fans can be replaced with quiet(er) ones (92mm). So many users get into cable hell, and wind up with drives dropping, especially when the open the case to add or exchange a drive. Avoid this most common of all problems (averaging several a week!) in unRAID forum-land. Get the cages. They are not optional equipment with 8 drives!

 

16G will be fine, but depending on what you are wanting to do, you might decide you need a bit more. I went from 16G to 32G on my server so I could give my Win10 VM a full 16G, leaving 16G for unRAID, occasional use of Win 8.1 VM, and other VMs / Dockers. I'm maxed at 32G.

Good luck and have fun! 

[Tyranian]

Thanks for the replies, 

 

Your responses seem to confirm I should be able to do everything I want and sounds like BJP is already using a VM with passthrough that's capable of 4k media but with a few driver snags.

 

I've spec'd up 2 builds so far 

 

1 Ryzen because I think the additional cores would be great for VM use but nervous of going down this route as it seems people have struggled with passthrough on Ryzen

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/tyranian/saved/Dhh4D3

 

My other build is based on Kaby Lake but is using the IGP for graphics will this be an issue for passtrough \ 4k playback?

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/tyranian/saved/sYc3CJ

 

 

To answer some of the questions directly

 

Will you be doing any Plex transcoding? - yes but only for mobile devices, I use this for streaming when away from home.

 

you need an "enthusiast" level of interest - happy to tinker to get things working and already knowledgeable in virtualization from the use of VMware and HyperV, but do need things especially the shared storage to be stable once it's done.

 

Case wise

 

I was tempted by the NZXT H440 (windowless) case as it can take up to 11 3.5" drives for growth and I can comfortably sit it behind my TV, though after your advice I think the Fractal Design Define R5 is more tempting as I am sure I can repurpose the 5.25" bays and get 11 drives in that too (if I ever need too) and it looks to have drive swap friendly bays while not swap they look like it should be easy to change and save me a few £ on going all out hot swap . The Define XL is also a tempting option.

 

The other option I have is repurpose my Lian Li TYR-X2000 which has 6 hot swap bays and add in another 3 bay hot swap the 5.25" bays but its a big ass beast of a case to sit near the TV.... 

 

 

[CHBMB]

@bjp999 Win 8.1?  Thought nobody liked Windows 8 and most preferred Windows 7?

[SSD]

@Tyranian

 

Its a tough choice between Ryzen and Kaby Lake. Ryzen might be frustrating at first but grow into a solid platform and be awesome in the long run. Kaby Lake is tried and true now. I am not sure if Ryzen has the HEVC features for 4K decoding that Intel has. If you had a rig and were considering an upgrade, I might say hold off a little longer. But if you are just starting out, I'd honestly go the Intel route. But that is me and MY needs. Read over the monster Ryzen thread and make your own decision. One reason I say that is because I don't need all of those cores - at least not right now. My 4 core Haswell is more than capable of everything I have thrown at it. (I do very little (none) viewing movies on mobile devices.) Splitting the 4 cores up has not been an issue at all. It is more the memory the becomes the issue, and 32G is fine for now, but I could see needing more. I'd definitely look at a setup that would support 64G+ of memory, even if initially you only populate 16G or 32G.

 

I am not a fan of the R5 case. It does not have the hot swap cages, and thus exposes you to cable risk with every drive add / exchange. THe Lian Li TYR-X2000 seems like it might hold one 5in3. Not good. The NZXT H440 looks a little more promising for mounting the cages, but it is hard to tell from the pictures. I like the way my cages have the fan BEHIND (on the inside) the drive slots, and pulls cool external air over the drives into the case, and then the case fans exhaust that air. Looks like the NZXT wants to push air through the drives (not nearly as effective) or else pull warm air from the inside of the case over the drives, also not optimal. Maybe those fans would come out and you could just mount the 5in3s. That would be great. You'd have to investigate. I like the very simple Antec 900 (or similar) with 3 of the CSE-M35Ts. The case seems so mundane to be discussing, but I can't tell you how important having those cages is.

 

Interesting you mention mobile devices. It is actually the mobile devices that are the hardest for Plex to transcode. That is because a highly capable media player can take a raw stream and play it back. No transcoding needed. But a phone asks Plex to do a lot of work to skinny the video and audio down to its minimalist requirements. So taking a big 10 bit HEVC movie and playing it back on your iPhone, that's the hardest job Plex transcode will ever do. It depends a lot on the SOURCE material. If you have a bunch of DVD rips, transcoding to the iPhone is a lot easier than big BluRay images.

 

BTW - 4K was not what drove me down the VM road. It is the channel level speed to the array from Windows. Last night I was moving some data around using the VM, and was able to copy at over 230 MB/sec with Windows explorer from the array to an unassigned device. A 4G set of files took about 20 seconds! THAT is what drove me this way - driving the 4K display was table stakes.

 

23 minutes ago, CHBMB said:

@bjp999 Win 8.1?  Thought nobody liked Windows 8 and most preferred Windows 7?

 

My sister was raving about Windows 8, and I was needing to upgrade so went for it. With "classic shell" (replacement start menu), its just like Windows 7 IMO. I never used the metro apps, and occasionally one would annoyingly pop up to view an image or something. But I got that taken care of long ago. IMO Windows 8 and Windows 7 were almost the same. It is really the driver availability that distinguishes things. I am a bit uncomfortable with Microsoft owning my OS, and basically able to morph it at will without my consent. But 8.1 is quickly loosing driver support (the AMD 550 I bought has NO support for Win 8.1). But I am leaving my 8.1 setup bootable if the Windows 10 future arrives and I hate it!  I also have several Windows 7 keys and can spin that up if I need to. It does seem that there are now a lot more Windows 7 users than Windows 8 users - most of the Windows 8 users have moved to Windows 10. It surprised me that Windows 7 still holds a lead over Windows 10, but that gap continues to narrow. 

 

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide

 

 

[CHBMB]

Fair enough, just wondered.  I quite liked Windows 7 myself, but got very annoyed with Windows 10 very quickly, and after many years of using Windows finally left and installed Ubuntu in frustration.  If you're happy with Windows 8 I'd say hold out as long as possible.

[SSD]

@CHBMB -

 

What about Windows 10 did you find annoying?

 

I'm just learning about it, but doesn't seem much different from Win7 or Win8/8.1 for basic OS functions.

 

But since you are a newfound Linux convert, I am planning to install a Linux to run Virt-Manager. Considering Ubuntu, Fedora (which is what @gridrunner recommended in a video from 8 months ago), or maybe something else. But thinking Ubuntu is going to be my choice. Any thoughts?

 

I know the Linux command line, but not as familiar with the GUI options (Gnome, KDE, Unity 7, Unity 8, ...). If going with Ubuntu - should I choose 16.04 LTS or 17.04? Again, primary goal (at least initially) is to run the latest version of Virt-Manager, and will want to install updates. But would like to give a good "test drive" to see if it might be my future desktop OS.

[CHBMB]

I became annoyed at the bloody updates and I had real concerns about the telemetry they're connecting and their desire to force Cortana down my neck. The absolute breaking point for me was when I was running a dual boot system of Ubuntu and Win10 and a Windows update overwrote my boot partition meaning I could only boot into Windows.

After that I formatted my disk and installed Ubuntu.

At the moment I'd recommend Ubuntu but use the Gnome version rather than Unity as they're dropping Unity.

Solus is also a very nice operating system, but the thing that stops me with that is the lack of a couple of essential packages I need and laziness to figure out how to package them myself.

For the last few months I've been using Antergos with the Gnome DE and I really like it, it's based on Arch so get access to the Arch User Repository.

I've played around with KDE a few times but it's rather complicated so I've settled on Gnome with a few extensions to tweak it to my liking.

Never tried Fedora although I hear good things, Manjaro is another Arch based distro but has it's own repo's as well which lags behind Arch a little and is apparently more stable with the package updates, it still has AUR access as well.

It was a fairly steep learning curve for me to be honest, but I'm comfortable now and I do indeed feel a little more free and comfortable that I actually control my own hardware. Strangely enough, despite using Windows for many years, I sometimes struggle with it now when I have to fix my wife's PC.

The turning point was definitely migrating from a dual boot system to a sole Linux one, as no longer could I bail out and boot into Windows to do something I had to figure out how to do it in Linux.

Strangely enough the one thing I still get my wife's laptop for is to make an Unraid USB boot stick. Never had any success in Linux with that.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[CHBMB]

I thought of something else that irritated me to high hell with Win10, instead of everything being in the control panel like in Win7 I found there were settings all over the place. Really irked me...

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[SSD]

2 hours ago, CHBMB said:

I became annoyed at the bloody updates and I had real concerns about the telemetry they're connecting and their desire to force Cortana down my neck. The absolute breaking point for me was when I was running a dual boot system of Ubuntu and Win10 and a Windows update overwrote my boot partition meaning I could only boot into Windows.

 

gridrunner's "daily driver" video gives tips on installing Windows 10 and disabling all the Windows spying, and Contana. Much of it applies to a non-VM install of Windows 10. Highly recommended for anyone installing Windows 10.

 

I do notice that Win10 settings are hither and yon, with some of the more traditional screens harder to find with other screens with the same or similar names also available. It is annoying.

 

2 hours ago, CHBMB said:

At the moment I'd recommend Ubuntu but use the Gnome version rather than Unity as they're dropping Unity.

Solus is also a very nice operating system, but the thing that stops me with that is the lack of a couple of essential packages I need and laziness to figure out how to package them myself.

For the last few months I've been using Antergos with the Gnome DE and I really like it, it's based on Arch so get access to the Arch User Repository.

I've played around with KDE a few times but it's rather complicated so I've settled on Gnome with a few extensions to tweak it to my liking.

Never tried Fedora although I hear good things, Manjaro is another Arch based distro but has it's own repo's as well which lags behind Arch a little and is apparently more stable with the package updates, it still has AUR access as well.

 

The idea of running 2, much less 4-5 different Linux OSes, is unappealing. I want ONE. Think I'll take the suggestion of the Gnome version of Ubuntu (17.04). Maybe I'll just start there and see where it leads me. If I hate it I guess I'll have learned something and then maybe try something else.

[CHBMB]

Yeah, I don't run any more than one OS, but I did a lot of distro hopping to start with to make a final decision.

I actually used Ubuntu Unity for a long time, but switched to Gnome as I wanted to use a DE that was distro agnostic. Now Ubuntu have dropped Unity anyway, so I would have had to switch at some point and I've come to really like Gnome.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[JonathanM]

Just to stick my $.02 in here, my daily driver at home for the last several years has been Mint Cinnamon. It's got most of the common add ons, a windows 7'ish start menu, and is based on Ubuntu LTS. My daily driver at my office is Ubuntu 17.04 with Unity (dislike), and my media center VM with passthrough for my home theatre is a Debian 8 Gnome with only the bare minimum of stuff loaded for multimedia and gaming.

 

If you enjoy tinkering, go with the latest Ubuntu. If you tend to stay planted for a while, stick with LTS. For me it got old chasing semi-major updates every few months. I like the stable base with ongoing security fixes that LTS offers.

[SSD]

5 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Just to stick my $.02 in here, my daily driver at home for the last several years has been Mint Cinnamon. It's got most of the common add ons, a windows 7'ish start menu, and is based on Ubuntu LTS. My daily driver at my office is Ubuntu 17.04 with Unity (dislike), and my media center VM with passthrough for my home theatre is a Debian 8 Gnome with only the bare minimum of stuff loaded for multimedia and gaming.

 

If you enjoy tinkering, go with the latest Ubuntu. If you tend to stay planted for a while, stick with LTS. For me it got old chasing semi-major updates every few months. I like the stable base with ongoing security fixes that LTS offers.

 

If there an Ubuntu Gnome LTS?

[JonathanM]

18 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

 

If there an Ubuntu Gnome LTS?

Yep. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/GetUbuntuGNOME

[SSD]

WRT Virt-Manager, would I get a later version if I used 17.04 vs 16.04. Or would they be the same?

[JonathanM]

59 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

WRT Virt-Manager, would I get a later version if I used 17.04 vs 16.04. Or would they be the same?

Probably same version, but I can't be positive without looking through the repositories. 99% of the time if a distribution doesn't include the latest version of something you want, you can find a user maintained PPA that you can manually add.

[hernandito]

How can you guys switch to Linux away from win? All the software I use is win based. I understand there are open source sort of replacements, but learning curve can be a nightmare. I used autocad, 3ds max, photoshop, ms office, in design, etc. lots of plugins, customizations, etc.

 

i like Linux and all, but it's the software that keeps me in win.

Edited July 31, 2017 by hernandito

[JonathanM]

Once the pain of monthly licensing and maintenance and fixing windows update snafu's and locking down privacy settings overcomes the learning curve, you switch. I can only imagine your ongoing license fees to adobe, microsoft and autocad with that many up to date programs running.

 

Plus, being told exactly how and what you are allowed to do and not do with equipment you purchased doesn't sit well with me. I understand licensing and profit and all that, but when it's easier to steal than it is to license properly, I'll go with the alternative that allows a proper license for free. I've never had a linux machine fail serial number validation and have to call to activate it.

 

[hernandito]

Going back to op; you mention you want win10 for kodi, web browsing etc.

 

If kodi is 95% of what you want, is kodi and plugging into a TV set; I would recommend LibreElec. I find it awkward to use win as a 10 foot OS.

 

if you have a powerful unraid, you could run multiple vm's one for kodi, one for general win usage.  I don't have experience and I think I would not recommend a VM as your primary pc. If unraid has an issue, you cannot browse for a solution to the issue.

[SSD]

On 7/30/2017 at 8:30 PM, jonathanm said:

Just to stick my $.02 in here, my daily driver at home for the last several years has been Mint Cinnamon. It's got most of the common add ons, a windows 7'ish start menu, and is based on Ubuntu LTS. My daily driver at my office is Ubuntu 17.04 with Unity (dislike), and my media center VM with passthrough for my home theatre is a Debian 8 Gnome with only the bare minimum of stuff loaded for multimedia and gaming.

 

If you enjoy tinkering, go with the latest Ubuntu. If you tend to stay planted for a while, stick with LTS. For me it got old chasing semi-major updates every few months. I like the stable base with ongoing security fixes that LTS offers.

 

I spent several hours looking at YouTube videos of the various distros.

 

I am not interested AT ALL in tinkering with the GUI. A few settings and I'm good. My tinkering happens at the command line with scripts and such. I just want the GUI to work.

 

Of all I saw, I liked Mint Cinnamon the best. Thinking I'll start with that. If it is Ubuntu under the hood, assuming it will be fine. 18.2 just came out as LTS, so that means longest possible lifetime. If I can get the latest version of Virt-Manager running there, I'll be happy. And also be able to play around with Linux as a "daily driver" a little. Who knows, this could be my future!

 

I see we have several starter settings for different Linux distros in the VM Manager. Should I go with "Linux" or go with "Ubuntu"? I know Mint is based on Ubuntu, so thinking I'll go with that one if you don't have any specific advice.

[SSD]

Hmmm ... i tried both, and both install (apparently) fine.

 

But when I restart the system, it fails to boot from the installed version.I will boot again from the install CD, but if I remove it as instructed, it won't boot.

 

Any ideas?

 

[JonathanM]

3 hours ago, bjp999 said:

Hmmm ... i tried both, and both install (apparently) fine.

 

But when I restart the system, it fails to boot from the installed version.I will boot again from the install CD, but if I remove it as instructed, it won't boot.

 

Any ideas?

 

XML?