My build


m4r0c4s

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Hi!

 

Im a new user of unraid.

 

My intention was to virtualize my company server, but after a few difficulties with VMWare and proxmox I tried Unraid and it was so easy to use that I choose to stay with Unraid. Hope not to regret...

 

My initial build was from a 10+ years machine with Tyan S7012 motherboard with 2 Intel Xeon E5620, 2 Sata Seagate 160gb drives and 2 Sata Seagate 1Tb drives. This machine was bought second hand like 2/3 years ago to upgrade our server and the only thing we add was the 2 1tb drives.

 

For security reasons we decide to virtualize the system, thats why we try VMWare, Proxmox, etc, but we have difficulties and the price for support and the "good" features, was to much for our company.

 

We try unraid, we love it, super easy to configure, super fast to "deploy". So we decide to stay with that and we bought the licence.

 

We decide that for the Virtualization of the server we should have an SSD passthrough and since the unraid can be a NAS we decided that we should use the 1tb drives for storage on unraid and get some more for partiy, so lets upgrade the server and the final machine was:

 

MOBO – TYAN S7012 3.0

CPU – 2 x INTEL XEON E5620

RAM – 6 x 8Gb DDR3 ECC

PSU – EVGA Supernova 750P2 80+Platinum

DRIVES - 5 x 1Tb (2 for parity and 3 for storage)

Cache - Sansung 850EVO 120gb

CASE - Doesnt have...

 

For the VM server 1 SSD Kingston A400 120gb for the OS and the 2 160gb drives for DATA BACKUP

 

We also upgrade the server OS from Windows Server 2003 to 2016. For now its working just fine...

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

Hi there!

 

My unraid server is working for a few months now and we are really impresse. Zero problems so far =D

 

Meanwhile we made some changes to the machine:

 

MOBO – TYAN S7012 3.0

CPU – 2 x INTEL XEON E5620

RAM – 4 x 8Gb DDR3 ECC (we dont need all those memory)

PSU – EVGA Supernova 750P2 80+Platinum

DRIVES - 4 x 4Tb and 1 x 1,5Tb (2 for parity and 3 for unraid storage share) plus 2 x 2tb in Raid 1 for VM 

Cache - Sansung 850EVO 120gb + Sandisk 120Gb + Kingston 120 Gb

CASE - PCI Case  IPC-C4FB-XP with 2 x IcyBox Flexcage MB975SP-B and 2 x IcyBox ExpressCage MB326SP-B for 10 x 3.5 drives and 12 x 2.5 drives Hot Swappable

 

We are so happy with unraid that we are thinking to build another one  (in another office) to replace the two workstation that we have there, plus sync with the first server.

 

The idea is to have 2 VM workstation passthrough SSD and graphic card and sync some of the shares of the first unraid server for fast read/right (because is another site connect with VPN)

 

What's your opinion?

 

 

 

 

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Hey m4r0c4s, I'm glad you're having great success with unraid, im a user of about the same time as you with similar build and have been loving it.  I don't see any issues with what you're trying to accomplish, I would say to test it out first and then if you see fit add more memory, VMs love ram, even though 24 is a good amount. two vm workstations might eat that up depending on what programs you are running on them. 

Also if data transfers speeds to the network and internet are highly important, you may consider assigning them each their own ethernet plug rather than making it a virtual one on the vm.

Edited by s_mason16
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On 1/14/2018 at 6:57 AM, m4r0c4s said:

The idea is to have 2 VM workstation passthrough

What sort of work do you want these to do? Office clerical? compiling? Stats? I just want a feel for workload vs expectations is all, and to better answer question of performance and ram. But, from your server specs, I'd guess it should be very plausible.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi!

 

The machine I have is for the server already deploy and its not to change. I want to build a new unraid server to have 3 VM, 2 workstation for office, ms project, our accountant software and not much more. For the 3rd workstation, its to use Autodesk Revit and Autocad for some projects that I do.

 

For these project I was thinking to buy Ryzen Threadripper (because of PCI lanes) 1900x or 1920x, depends on how much cores I need.

 

 

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On 2/2/2018 at 7:46 AM, m4r0c4s said:

The machine I have is for the server already deploy and its not to change. I want to build a new unraid server to have 3 VM, 2 workstation for office, ms project, our accountant software and not much more. For the 3rd workstation, its to use Autodesk Revit and Autocad for some projects that I do.

 

For these project I was thinking to buy Ryzen Threadripper (because of PCI lanes) 1900x or 1920x, depends on how much cores I need.

 

I'd say it should be do-able. Threadripper GPU pass-through is basiclly, functioning for most, multiple GPU vm pass-through still seems to have a few kinks in the line; but personally I think things are moving along nicely; then again I'm not building anything for mission critical work with unRAID either.  Also for the clerical systems if you're going to do GPU pass through you should be able to get away with GPU 8x (PCIe 3.0 +specification) bandwidth; so you don't necessarily need need to have all of TR's lanes (this was something I learned a few weeks myself). Source

 

For RAM, maybe something like 8GB, 8GB, and 16GB on provisioning, or scaled similarly, plus say another 2-8 GB for unRAID host to have. 

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  • 9 months later...

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