Moving my Unraid to SFF - Need Advice


Recommended Posts

Unfortunately I do not have much time to tinker these days so do not keep up on hardware developments.  I am running my unraid with 7 hdd's of various sizes in a large tower with a P4 3.2Ghz Northwood- so very oldschool.  I assume that it is on borrowed life, but regardless what I am hoping to accomplish is to prepare an entirely new build in a smaller form factor with less hard drives (and noise, and power, etc.).  We're moving into a new home and there isn't a great closet space like our current home, so this may be sitting near our home theatre.  Ideally I'd throw in 3 x 4TB WD Red drives with 8TB of total space.  That will be more than sufficient for our needs.

 

So, the question becomes what kind of case/motherboard/cpu should I use.  I'd like to transcode 1080p via plex which I can't do now.  I do use sab/sickbeard/transmission too.  I'm guessing my minimum CPU would be an i5 and that 4 gigs of ram would be sufficient but welcome the feedback.

 

Where I'd really like some recommendations are on the case- does anyone have a good case they can suggest to fit 4 hard drives with a decent amount of room to work? 

 

Thanks!

Link to comment

Unfortunately I do not have much time to tinker these days so do not keep up on hardware developments.  I am running my unraid with 7 hdd's of various sizes in a large tower with a P4 3.2Ghz Northwood- so very oldschool.  I assume that it is on borrowed life, but regardless what I am hoping to accomplish is to prepare an entirely new build in a smaller form factor with less hard drives (and noise, and power, etc.).  We're moving into a new home and there isn't a great closet space like our current home, so this may be sitting near our home theatre.  Ideally I'd throw in 3 x 4TB WD Red drives with 8TB of total space.  That will be more than sufficient for our needs.

 

So, the question becomes what kind of case/motherboard/cpu should I use.  I'd like to transcode 1080p via plex which I can't do now.  I do use sab/sickbeard/transmission too.  I'm guessing my minimum CPU would be an i5 and that 4 gigs of ram would be sufficient but welcome the feedback.

 

Where I'd really like some recommendations are on the case- does anyone have a good case they can suggest to fit 4 hard drives with a decent amount of room to work? 

 

Thanks!

 

I don't have any real recommendations on the case, but as far as CPU/memory... yes, an i5 should be sufficient for transcoding via Plex, however you may want to bump memory to 8GB since we are moving to 64-bit which will take advantage of it Plex is a bit of a hog, so the more the better).

 

When looking at a CPU I suggest you check out:

 

http://cpubenchmark.net/

 

They test all CPUs on the market and give them a relative score. This can be really helpful to understand whether it's worth investing another $20 into the upgraded CPU or not based purely on performance. It also is helpful in breaking down cost vs. performance so you know whether you are getting a good deal or not.

 

Also, WD has recently launched their 6TB Red drives, which you may want to consider instead of the 4s. You may as well maximize your potential space for a minimal increase in cost.

Link to comment

Both the Lian-Li PC-Q25B and the Silverstone DS380 are excellent choices for what you want.

 

Personally, I prefer the Q25B.    I'd get that case, an H87I-Plus motherboard [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132032];  a Silverstone SFX power supply [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256063&cm_re=silverstone_450W-_-17-256-063-_-Product ];  8-16GB of RAM (your choice ... either use 2 4GB modules or 2 8GB modules for best performance);  and a Haswell i5 [This would be a good choice:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116990 ]

 

This would be an excellent system that would be VERY quiet, could be expanded well beyond the storage capacity you noted; and would have plenty of CPU "horsepower" for the additional duties you'd like to assign to it.    I agree that you should consider using the new 6TB WD Reds.  Two of them would let you have 6TB of protected storage to begin with;  and you could add 6TB at-a-time as needed up to a total of 30TB of protected storage in that little case  :)

 

Edit:  Corrected the motherboard link to the mini-ITX version as intended.

 

Link to comment

Thanks!  Some great tips in here.  I was toying with getting a QNAP TS-451 to avoid the hassle of building my own system, but after weighing all the pros and cons I think I would miss moving away from Unraid too much.  I have gotten used to it, and the earlier reviews for the TS-451 don't seem to make any great guarantees about Plex transcoding performance which is important to me.

 

I can save a couple hundred bucks by going with 3 x 3TB drives (as opposed to 2 x 6TB) and honestly, expansion size isn't that important to me anymore.  I do not store a ton of content.

 

Just for arguments sake, is there a case similar to the PC-Q25B that is even smaller but maintains the hot-swap bays and perhaps uses a mini-itx motherboard that anyone can recommend?  As I mentioned I do not see myself putting in more than 4 hard drives, ever.  So, the PC-Q25B is even bigger than I'd really like (though at first glance it might be the best I can hope for).  I'd love something with the footprint of one of those pre-builts like the QNAP device.

Link to comment

You're not going to get much smaller if you want expansion room for drives.    You can trade-off height for width a bit by looking at other mini-ITX options, such as the Fractal Node 304 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352027 ].

 

If you only need 2 or 3 drives, you can get a bit smaller yet [e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119261 ]

 

... but you're simply not going to have as nice a system.  I really think the 3 premier cases for mini-ITX builds are the Q25B (my favorite);  the DS380; and the Fractal Node 304.    I'd use one of those ... they are NOT very large at all, and you'll really like the build quality of any of them.

 

As for "saving a couple hundred bucks" by using 3 x 3TB vs. 2 x 6TB ==>  that's true;  but the "cost" is an extra SATA slot;  a bit more power utilization to spin 3 drives vs. 2;  and 1/2 the ultimate capacity for your server.    In addition, the performance would be notably better with the 6TB units, as they have an areal density 20% higher than the 3TB units ... although it's true that this is only beneficial for operations "within" the server (e.g. transcoding, etc.), since any of the drives can max a Gb network for transfers.  Personally, I think the one-time cost to go with the 6TB units is worthwhile for the larger growth potential.    But clearly that's a personal choice.

 

Using 6TB units may even save you the cost of an UnRAID license -- you could have 12TB of storage with the free license ... whereas you'd need 5 3TB drives and an UnRAID Plus license to match that with the smaller drives.

 

Link to comment

Great answer, thank you.  Sold.

 

Two more spinoffs:

i) the motherboard listed below seems to be micro-atx, but the case is mini-ITX.  Are they in fact compatible?

ii) I do not have the technical knowledge to do this, but I am usually a decent learner so I'll ask the question: would an i5 with 16GB of ram be sufficient to virtualize a Windows 7 environment?  The only thing that I will be missing with Unraid vs. QNAP is built in google drive syncing (which I rely on).  Could I run Windows and Google Drive in a VM?

 

Have I mentioned how great it is that people go out of their way on this forum to help out?

 

 

 

 

Link to comment

i) the motherboard listed below seems to be micro-atx, but the case is mini-ITX.  Are they in fact compatible?

 

Whoops !!  I meant to point to the mini-ITX version of that board !!  Good catch.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132032

 

would an i5 with 16GB of ram be sufficient to virtualize a Windows 7 environment?  The only thing that I will be missing with Unraid vs. QNAP is built in google drive syncing (which I rely on).  Could I run Windows and Google Drive in a VM?

 

If you're going to run virtual machines, definitely go with 16GB of RAM ... a pair of 8GB modules.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148704

 

The CPU I suggested supports both vt-X and vt-D, so you're in excellent shape for running VM's.

 

Once you set up a Windows VM, you can run anything in it that you could run in a "real" Windows machine.

 

 

 

Link to comment

An SSD is indeed a good idea for an applications drive -- it can be used for your Docker containers and your virtual machines.    It can also be used as a cache drive, although I'd be inclined to restrict it to your non-NAS functions.  Get the largest one you can afford ... at least 256GB and preferably twice that.    If the cost is more than you want to spend for that, just use a spinner ... the higher capacity is almost certainly more important than the speed.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment

An SSD is indeed a good idea for an applications drive -- it can be used for your Docker containers and your virtual machines.    It can also be used as a cache drive, although I'd be inclined to restrict it to your non-NAS functions.  Get the largest one you can afford ... at least 256GB and preferably twice that.    If the cost is more than you want to spend for that, just use a spinner ... the higher capacity is almost certainly more important than the speed.

 

I think a smaller SSD as an app drive along with a spinner for cache (if a person even wants a cache) is a good combo. Although I agree you do not want to buy an SSD and plan to fill it to the brim, I do believe that 512Gb is an extreme luxury whose value does not justify the cost for many users. A 256G for containers and appdata is generous and even a 128G would be plenty big if used in this way. Even 60.is probably big enough for now. But if you're looking to create VMs for Windows and full Linux, and want the performance boost of running them from SSD, 60 is too small and.128 might be a bit limiting.

Link to comment

I disagree. If you get a good SSD there is no reason to not use it completely. Have a look at TechReports SSD torture tests to see how long the good drives can last. They will far out pace anything an unraid user can throw at it.

 

I did some extensive research on.SSDs before I bought my first 60G one several years ago. The limited write cycles of that generation were clear, and it sunk into my brain pretty deep.

 

Based on reviewing the torture test you referenced as well as another one on hardware.info, it does seem that the current generation would have a long life (over 60 years) if used by a typical user, and even very heavily used for unRaid array caching purposes, it seems unlikely it would wear out before becoming obsolete.

 

But these studies are taking drives well beyond the manufacturers specifications, and I would not be shocked to see the longevity decrease in future models. There was a Kingston SSD that went in a fabulous sale when I was buying one, and it had great reviews. But just before ordering I found a report that they had changed that NANDs and the new ones were crap. I went with the Samsung.

 

I could not faulty someone using the SSD for all its worth as a cache disk. But personally I don't use one (at least not in the typical sense) preferring my array writes to be instantly parity protected. And I also feel that the marginal performance improvement over a fast spinner because of the network bottleneck make an SSD unjustified. The torture tests also don't account for typical usage patterns, and instead run the thing full speed for months. If you did that type of testing on a car engine you might conclude that it could run a million miles whereas in normal use you'd not get anywhere close. So in my mind the jury is still a little out on the lifespan, and if I can cut write cycles to my SSD by 90% and have little performance hit, and get away with a smaller SSD, l'd do it.

 

But based on this research I do have some ideas how I will increase the SSD usage and not be as conservative as I have been in the past. Thanks for posting BRiT!

Link to comment

Definitely agree that SSDs are far better than just a few years ago.  There's NO reason to be concerned about write deterioration; and indeed the garbage collection algorithms in the firmware are also dramatically better -- so much so that it really doesn't matter whether or not your OS supports TRIM, as long as there are periods of inactivity that the firmware can use for garbage collection.

 

In addition to their duties with UnRAID servers -- where they make great application and Docker container drives -- I've also used them for older OS's (e.g. XP) that don't support TRIM and there's NO deterioration of performance with modern drives.    A few years ago you'd have to run a special utility every few months to retain performance ... no longer a problem.

 

BTW, I agree with Brian r.e. using a cache drive for writes ... I definitely prefer that when I write something to the array I want it immediately parity protected, so I don't use a cache.    I may, however, reconsider that now that v6 is supporting RAID-1 BTRFS cache arrays.

 

Link to comment

 

BTW, I agree with Brian r.e. using a cache drive for writes ... I definitely prefer that when I write something to the array I want it immediately parity protected, so I don't use a cache.    I may, however, reconsider that now that v6 is supporting RAID-1 BTRFS cache arrays.

 

Even in this case, I would consider a small SSD cache drive for Docker containers. Just disable the usage of cache for everything else than Docker.

Link to comment

People may not know but at the time the cache feature was added, writes to the array were in the 10-12MB/sec range compared to cache writes that were 40-60 or more. This was huge. But a major performance enhancement improved array write performance substantially, and the speed improvement of the cached writes went way down. Today many users, including most seasoned veterans, do not cache writes to the array.

Link to comment

Not sure how many folks do vs. don't cache their writes; but I agree it's much less necessary than in the early days of UnRAID.

 

With modern disks, uncached writes in the 35-40MB/s range aren't uncommon.  ... and you then have parity protected data immediately.    Certainly worth the slower writes in my book.

 

With a cache, you can get writes in the 100-110MB/s range (assuming an SSD or a high performance spinner).  That's only 2.5 - 3 times as fast as uncached writes ... a nice improvement; but unless you're writing a very large amount of data I don't think it's worth the bother.

 

From my perspective, if I start a large data transfer to the array, I'm not going to sit around and wait for it anyway.  Whether it takes 30 minutes or a couple hours is irrelevant.    And if I'm copying a really large amount of data (i.e. a TB or so), using a cache is actually detrimental; as all the data written to it will likely to moved during the same time the transfer is still in progress ... causing both the moves and the ongoing writes to slow down appreciably during the moves.

 

If you DO want to use a cache, be sure the cache is large enough to hold ALL of the data you ever plan to write in any single session ... and if you encounter a situation where you need to move even more data to the array, disable the cache during that transfer.

 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.