Best way to setup unraid and other questions?

[unRaide]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to finish spec'ing out my first UnRaid box and was hoping to get some help from some of the experts in this forum regarding the best way to setup storage on the machine? Here’s my current thinking:

1. Data Array: As many WD Red Pro drives as i can afford for my data array (4 x 4TB)
2. Cache Drive/Pool: Samsung 960 NVMe 500GB OR Samsung 850 Pro Series 500GB SSD??
3. Unraid boot drive: Flash USB Stick

 

Questions:

1. Is it possible to use two 500GB NVMe drives setup in raid 1 for my cache pool? Will I be able to pass these drives through as boot drives for Windows/macOS/Linux VMs and how reliable/bulletpoof is this setup?
2. Any thoughts on the Samsung 960 Pro NVMe drives? Anything out there that provides similar price to performance and works reliably well with unraid?
3. Am i better off going with normal SSDs like the Samsung 850 Pro Series instead of the NVMe drives? Performance would certainly suffer but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have any issues with compatibility/reliabilty with unraid/VMs?
4. Am I better off going with 2x16GB sticks at a slower clock speed like 2800 or should go with the faster ram and upgrade down the road? See my use cases below. 

 

Build:

• CPU: i7-8700K
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S 92mm SSO2 U-Type Premium CPU Cooler
• Mem: G.SKill TridentZ Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 SDRAM 3200
• Mobo: ASRock Z370 Taichi LGA 1151 (300 Series)
• Storage:
  • Samsung 960 NVMe 500GB OR Samsung 850 Pro Series 500GB SSD??
  • WD Red Pro 4TB x 6
• GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2
• Case: Fractal Design Define R5
• PSU: Corsair RMx Series, RM850x, 850W, Fully Modular Power Supply

 

My Use Cases:

1. NAS Server
2. Plex/Media Server
3. Gaming / VR Rig
4. Windows/OSX VMs

 

Thanks

[DZMM]

7 hours ago, unRaide said:

 

Questions:

1. Is it possible to use two 500GB NVMe drives setup in raid 1 for my cache pool? Will I be able to pass these drives through as boot drives for Windows/macOS/Linux VMs and how reliable/bulletpoof is this setup?
2. Any thoughts on the Samsung 960 Pro NVMe drives? Anything out there that provides similar price to performance and works reliably well with unraid?
3. Am i better off going with normal SSDs like the Samsung 850 Pro Series instead of the NVMe drives? Performance would certainly suffer but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have any issues with compatibility/reliabilty with unraid/VMs?
4. Am I better off going with 2x16GB sticks at a slower clock speed like 2800 or should go with the faster ram and upgrade down the road? See my use cases below. 

 

1.  Fairly certain you can add 2xNVMe to a cache pool.  You can definitely pass them through - there's a spaceinvaderone video that shows how to finetune for bare metal performance

2. have a look at the SM961 which is almost as fast - got one myself and very happy

3. For your cache pool I think NVMe drives will be a waste.  You'd be better off getting SSDs for your pool and using a smaller NVMe as an unassigned drive for your VMs, so that you can isolate all the background unraid activity from your VMs

4. don't know much about RAM

 

Only other comment I have is about the disks.  you have the same case as me and I'd recommend buying 8TB drives rather than 4TBs if you are buying new drives:

1. case only has 8 HDD bays (you can potentially get another 2-3 in the 2x5.25" bays) - filling up now with 6 doesn't leave you much room for expansion
2. your motherboard choice only has 8 SATA slots and limited PCIe slots - again by the time you've added a cache pool and the 6 drives you've got no slots left and no PCIe slots available for expansion
3. I'm guessing like me you like the low noise of the R5 - less drives equals less noise from drives and fans having to cool

I know it'll cost you about £100 more to buy the 8TBs, but it'll probably increase the lifespan of your system or put off for longer having to go through the hassle of upgrading drives

 

[unRaide]

7 hours ago, DZMM said:

1.  Fairly certain you can add 2xNVMe to a cache pool.  You can definitely pass them through - there's a spaceinvaderone video that shows how to finetune for bare metal performance

2. have a look at the SM961 which is almost as fast - got one myself and very happy

3. For your cache pool I think NVMe drives will be a waste.  You'd be better off getting SSDs for your pool and using a smaller NVMe as an unassigned drive for your VMs, so that you can isolate all the background unraid activity from your VMs

4. don't know much about RAM

 

Only other comment I have is about the disks.  you have the same case as me and I'd recommend buying 8TB drives rather than 4TBs if you are buying new drives:

1. case only has 8 HDD bays (you can potentially get another 2-3 in the 2x5.25" bays) - filling up now with 6 doesn't leave you much room for expansion
2. your motherboard choice only has 8 SATA slots and limited PCIe slots - again by the time you've added a cache pool and the 6 drives you've got no slots left and no PCIe slots available for expansion
3. I'm guessing like me you like the low noise of the R5 - less drives equals less noise from drives and fans having to cool

I know it'll cost you about £100 more to buy the 8TBs, but it'll probably increase the lifespan of your system or put off for longer having to go through the hassle of upgrading drives

 

Hi DZMM, thanks for the detailed response!!

 

3. Can you share some more info/posts on using an unassigned drive for VMs vs a cache pool. I checked out @gridrunners tutorial and there seems to be mixed opinions on using unattached drive vs the cache pool for VMs/Dockers. Assuming using an unattached drive wouldn’t be protected although i guess i wouldn’t want that anyway to avoid parity performance hit.

 

Any thoughts on how i would go about setting this up? Would this work:

• 2x 256GB SSD drives for the cache pool using Raid 1
• 1 x 500GB NVMe unattached drive for all VMs (i.e. Win10 for VR gaming,  OSX,  Linux). Would i also use this for Dockers or keep that in the cache pool?
•  

How much complexity does this approach add? i.e. I'd be willing to trade 5% performance for less tweaking/tuning to get this working. As long as my Win10 VM is fast enough for me to do some Vive game i'd be happy

 

Case: This is definitely a concern for me as well as i am migrating from another 20TB server which is already using 8 drives. How do you like the R5? Any other suggestions now that you've had it for a while? Was also looking at the Define XL R2 or the Corsair Obsidian 750 but id didn’t want to compromise on noise as this will likely be placed in the living room.

 

Mobo: I couldn’t find any other mobo's with more than 8 x Sata 3 + NVMe support. I also, perhaps naively, thought that i could buy an external HDD enclosure when i ran out of Sata ports but are you saying that i won't have any PCIe ports avail thus limiting my expansion options? Any alternate suggestions?

 

Thanks again for the feedback.... haven't build a machine in decades so I'm a little rusty

 

[DZMM]

I think the majority of users put their VMs on an unassigned disk to isolate the disk from transcoding, unpacking etc activity that could impact VM performance.  It's very easy to do using the unassigned drive plugin. 

 

With a single unassigned drive, yes you loose parity/pool protection, but there's a very good VM backup script that I run to make backups of my VMs on the array for protection.

 

You could also put your dockers on a UD, but imo the cache pool would be fine - I think it's rare ppl put dockers on a UD.

 

My point about PCIe slots wasn't that you couldn't use one for a HDD expansion card, but given that the mobo doesn't have many, you were setting yourself up for having to use one of the precious slots by using small drives.  Getting a usb enclosure (you need a PCIe slot to do esata...) Isn't recommend, so your best bet is to get the biggest disks that are economically viable.

 

I've had my r5 a year and I love it.  With 8-11 drive capacity it can cover most scenarios, as with the right drives that's over 100TB using current drive capacities.  There are some massive systems using unraid with 20+ drives, but they are mostly using smaller drives and very few have more capacity than 100TB. So if you start right with 8TBs you'll be fine.