Newbie with some hardware questions


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Hey everyone - I'm new to unRAID so hopefully I'm not asking about super stupid things. I'd appreciate any tips from those who've used unRAID for a while.

 

I have a home 'server' that I'm looking to upgrade/replace. It's running on an old Atom processor from 2010 with Win 7 and 5 TB of storage because I am literally only using it as a file server, with zero bells and whistles. Obviously it's not a powerhouse and I want to get into something more substantial. It would still mostly be a home media server, backup server for documents and disk images from my family's other computers, but I also want to run a few VMs and not run out of computing power.

 

Here is what I've cobbled together so far for a custom build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/chris_b_chicken/saved/ddzf8d

 

Here's what I plan to do with this new computer:

  • Have a fair amount of storage. I'm not 'data hoarder' level, but I still want more than your typical computer user, something in the neighborhood of 20-40 TB with 6-8 TB individual drives making up the pool. I haven't decided on how to structure that quite yet. I'll also have a cache SSD to help with some of the slower write speeds I've read about.
  • Run a lightweight Linux VM 24/7 (probably with a manually started GUI if I need to update it because I'm a noob). It'll probably run Debian/Lubuntu. This is primarily going to be for Pi-Hole to block ads on a whole network level, plus it would just be a general Linux sandbox. Pi-Hole can run on a Raspberry Pi, so it doesn't need much in terms of specs.
    • I may have additional lightweight web servers (CLI only for these) for my personal dev projects, but nothing requiring huge processing power (e.g. not an ecommerce site with tons of customer transactions writing to a DB).
  • Have a few random VMs that I would spin up from time to time to do random things, but they'd mostly be off:
    • A Windows VM to convert/encode/transcode videos/burn DVDs/compile code/do random tedious or boring crap when I don't want to tie up my main workstation. Some decent performance would be nice, but I don't necessarily need to replicate a brand new Core i7 workstation in a VM.
    • Run older Windows versions (XP, 98, etc) to possibly run some old legacy games. I don't even know if this is possible, I haven't done a ton of research here. I have a separate rig for modern Win 10 gaming, so it wouldn't be on that crazy of a level needing a maxed out GPU, etc.
  • I'll probably run a few dockers (like Sonarr, Radarr), but I'm a total newbie, so I don't know what the full extent of that would be beyond those two.
  • I am not planning to use Plex in any way (all my set top boxes run Kodi and play files natively), so having cores/threads available for the Plex docker to transcode with isn't necessary.

 

Constraints/comments:

  • I have some cash saved, but I don't want to break $3,000 (including storage) if I can avoid it. I had about $1,000 worth of mechanical drives saved on the parts list, but I'm still trying to figure out what I need, so I left them off that list. I'm going to use an 850 EVO SSD from my desktop for a cache drive and replace that one in my desktop with an M.2 drive, so I'm excluding that SSD from the budget for the server. So whatever's in the parts list + mechanical storage is my budget.
  • My wife doesn't want a huge server rack in our apartment, so a traditional rack/rails set up is out. I'm sticking to a ATX/microATX box at the largest. I really like the Fractal Node 804 for the amount of 3.5" drive bays, and small size, so I set up my build around that. Hot swap is not important to me (for now), so leaving them fixed internally is fine. I picked up a few extra fans for it to keep the drives cool.
  • I looked at Ryzen initially simply because of the core count for VM possibilities, but the motherboards seem to suck for server-like purposes (I'm hoping for 8-ish SATA3 ports without having to get an HBA card, I'd also love 2 NICs, but that's not a deal-breaker, I don't need sound or wifi and all of the Ryzen boards have sound, etc.), plus the forums seem to be full of people having issues with Ryzen, so I'm wary of it even though it's way cheaper price/performance wise.
    • That said, I'm not getting the computer until Christmas, so if it's anticipated that the Ryzen problems will be cleared up before then, I may move to Ryzen (probably the 1700X).
    • One thing that keeps pushing back to Xeon is IPMI, but considering I'm going to run this thing headless at my desk most of the time, I'm fine with using unRAID's web interface for the most part, plus VNC/RDP/Teamviewer for the VMs. I'm not going to complain if I have to hook up a keyboard/mouse/monitor to update the BIOS once in a while, so losing IPMI is not a dealbreaker. Just my thoughts on it.

 

Anyway, actual questions:

  • Is the 6 core Xeon in my part list (link above) not good enough/too good for my use case? If it's not a good fit, what would be?
  • 32 GB of RAM adequate/overkill? I run 16 GB in my desktop computer - haven't needed more than 8 GB when I'm heavily gaming and browsing the web, so 32 GB may be overkill, but I don't mind 'future proofing' a bit.
  • Is the 650 W power supply OK (with the drives I originally spec'd it was projected to draw ~340 W) for potential drive addition later on?
  • Any other suggestions/comments you guys have for a newbie?

 

Thanks for helping me out! I've done a bunch of googling, and every post I read either wants to heavily game or just use unRAID for storage + dockers so I'm just curious what the specs for my 'middle of the road' use case would be.

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Hello and welcome.  You have a good looking build and I think you will really like unRAID.  Here are some comments on your build and attempts to answer questions.

 

Your build is probably a little overkill, but I like overkill.  I suspect you could run unRAID, some Dockers, a full time Linux VM and occasional small Linux VMs on a 4 core CPU like a high end Core i7 or Xeon E3.  That said, 6 cores gives you greater flexibility.  The same is true to a lesser degree with RAM - I think you could get by with 16GB but I'd go with 32GB.  Are you interested in socket 1151 options, or pretty set on 2011?

 

Regarding the cache drive, it has several purposes.  First and foremost (and not exactly clear based on the name), the cache drive is the main "application drive" in modern versions of unRAID and it's where you install Dockers and their data.  Second, it's a good location for VM images as well, though people also like to install them on dedicated SSDs for performance.  Finally it allows you to configure user shares for the caching of writes to the array.  You may want to do that, but frankly writes to the array are a lot faster than they used to be and I'd urge you to try unRAID without write-caching initially.  If you need it, it's there. 

 

On your other hardware, the 804 is a very nice case but I don't think I'd call it small.  I'd be remiss if I didn't urge you to consider hot swap - it doesn't seem necessary until a drive fails and you need to pull your case apart to get the drive out, then you dislodge another drive's cable and things go thunk when you try to restart the server.  It really is worth thinking about, you can easily add drive cages to a standard case.  Have you looked at Lian Li?  They have some options with internal hot swap...  The 804 is a nice case if you don't go in that direction, though.  650w should be fine.

 

Ryzen is a very interesting but immature platform.  If you've been reading about it, you know that there are still issues running unRAID on it, especially around hardware pass-through to VMs.  Personally I would not move to Ryzen yet for a server where stability is the priority.  I think one of the greatest benefits of Ryzen is that it will force Intel to move up their plans to roll out competitively priced multi-core CPUs, starting with this week's Coffee Lake announcement.  Since you aren't buying until Christmas I'd hold off on final CPU/Motherboard selection.  There should be more movement over the next few months.

Edited by tdallen
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I actually couldn't find any 6 or 8 core Xeon processors in the 1151 socket. Maybe I'm totally looking in the wrong places, but I would be totally open to an 1151 motherboard and processor if it had at least six cores (my daily driver is a 4 core Skylake i7 6700k). I ended up on 2011v3 after looking at various passmark scores / price and performance scores for 6+core Xeons.

 

It's good that my build is a little bit overkill, because I'm not exactly sure what I want to do in terms of VMs and dockers, so I wanted to leave extra headroom to expand. Unless some things change pretty significantly in the next two months, I think that might be what I end up with.

 

Thanks for the info on write caching, when I was initially doing research on unRAID, a lot of the complaints that I saw were on slow write speeds, but it's probably because I was reading some older articles. It sounds like I may use my 500 gig SSD as the application / VM drive for sure and then I guess I'll know more when I get the hardware and test it out to see if I need/want write caching.

 

I did look at some Lian-Li cases, but none of them jumped out initially. Interestingly enough, my current 'ghetto' server is in a PC-Q28 miniITX box from them. I liked the Node 804 because it had a ton of hard drive slots, but I'm not sold on it. What would be some good options for a case that either has hot swapping (either external or internal) built in or could be easily/cheaply added? Does Lian-Li have a good option?

 

Thanks again for responding to my post, your input has been really valuable! 

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