AIO VM/unRAID Server Build - Trimming 2 down to 1!

So I'm in the process of building myself a new VM server for the purposes of saving space and power.  Currently I have two physical servers in my main location, one is a VMware server (Xeon E3-1245v2, SM X9SCM-F-O, 32GB RAM, SSD datastore, etc.) and the other is my unRAID server (see main server in sig).

My new VM server is going to be this (mini) bad boy.  I'm mainly looking to downsize the amount of space my servers take up and this fit the bill perfectly in terms of reducing space but also using less power (100w at full load?  YES PLEASE!) and giving me greater flexibility in terms of adding virtual machines down the road.

After giving it some serious thought, I'm pretty set (about 90%) on eliminating my physical unRAID server (see sig) as well and setting up unRAID in a virtual machine on this new VM server.  My chassis has the room for 4 x 3.5" drives so I'm thinking if I put 4 of the Seagate 8TB shingled drives in there, that'll give me 24TB of usable space (right now I only have 18TB and using just under 11 of it.  Therefore 24TB should leave me set for a good while.  I'm very keen on the idea of having all my VM's plus my media storage all in a very small physical box.

So anyway, once I decide to pull the trigger on these Seagate shingled drives (they're non-refundable so I want to be 100% sure first), this is what my new AIO server will look like:

• Chassis:  SuperMicro Mini-tower CSE-721TQ-250B
  
• MoBo:  SuperMicro  X10SDV-TLN4F
  
• CPU:  Intel Xeon D-1540 2.0Ghz 8-core SoC
  
• RAM:  64GB (32GB x 2) Samsung DDR4-2133 RDIMMs
  
• SSDs:  Intel 730 480GB SSD (x2) + M.2 SSD (undecided on this)
  
• HDDs:  4 x 8TB Seagate Archive (shingled) drives
  
• HBA:  IBM ServeRAIDM1015
  
• USB:  1-2 USB boot drives for ESXi/unRAID
  

I've still got a good amount of reading ahead of me before I can determine 100% that virtualizing unRAID is going to work well for me.  I've not yet learned how I will migrate my installation from bare metal to a VM as well as some other details (passthrough USB flash drive to VM?).  But regardless I'm pretty excited about having such a capable and flexible server that will be able to fit in the smallest of spaces  .

1. Virtualizing UnRAID is very easy, runs just fine as an ESX system.

2. Running ANYTHING on those Shingled hard drives is a recipe for disaster. Those drives are built only for storage and NOT for running anything on them. You will cut the life of the drive down by attempting to run anything on the drives.

3. Put all running VM's on your USB hard drive or see if the case can support a 2.5" drive and slap all your machines there, that will free up UnRAID to use 100% of the Seagate drives.

I salute you in using this case and mobo as I wanted one but the price is out of my price range.

1. Virtualizing UnRAID is very easy, runs just fine as an ESX system.

2. Running ANYTHING on those Shingled hard drives is a recipe for disaster. Those drives are built only for storage and NOT for running anything on them. You will cut the life of the drive down by attempting to run anything on the drives.

 

I have no plan to put anything but my (mostly) static media on those shingled drives.  That's precising what I bought them for was to use them exclusively with unRAID.

 

3. Put all running VM's on your USB hard drive or see if the case can support a 2.5" drive and slap all your machines there, that will free up UnRAID to use 100% of the Seagate drives.

 

All my VM's will be going on the SSD's I have listed in my build above.

 

I salute you in using this case and mobo as I wanted one but the price is out of my price range.

sounds like you are good 2 go! Pix when you get the case and system up and running!

Looks good.  By the way, Newegg has a very good price on the 480GB 730's this weekend ($199).  Just ordered one (and thinking about another).

r.e. the 8TB SMR's => I presume you've read this thread:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39526.0

As long as your server is primarily static (i.e. not a workstation storage NAS) they work just fine.

Looks good.  By the way, Newegg has a very good price on the 480GB 730's this weekend ($199).  Just ordered one (and thinking about another).

 

r.e. the 8TB SMR's => I presume you've read this thread:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39526.0

 

As long as your server is primarily static (i.e. not a workstation storage NAS) they work just fine.

I just picked up 2 of those drives an hour ago off Newegg and I'm returning the ones I got off Amazon earlier this week which saves me $90 .

As for the shingled drives, yup I've been up on the thread you created based on dano's testing and I think it should work great for me.  Most of my storage is static media.  The only storage I have reservations about in terms of the performance with these drives is my VM backups.  But considering most of the time they are just incremental backups that are less than 25GB I don't see it causing an issue.

Just a quick update on my server...

I've just purchased 5 new 8TB Seagate SMR drives.  4 are going in my backup server currently consisting of 8 x 3TB drives and 1 will be a cold spare.

I purchased this case to transfer my main server to and I will be adding the 4 x 3TB drives being replaced in my backup server into this  main server to give me a total of 36TB of usable storage (44TB RAW).  The CPU in my current case was getting a little too hot with limited airflow and I obviously need the extra HDD bays.