Home server questions - unraid

Associate
Joined
26 May 2008
Posts
227
I posted on the forums earlier in the year regarding building a home server with Unraid being a popular suggestion. Due to one thing or another, mostly financial, I could not build at the time however the Unraid server idea has stuck with me - and I do like to tinker, so I am back to try again!

I have recently been shuffling kit around the house and I have a machine which might do the job, its specs are
  • CPU - Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor
  • Mobo - Gigabyte Z390 UD Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX
  • GPU - none - onboard graphics
  • RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 3200
  • CASE - Pure Base 500 Midi Tower Case
  • HDD - 240GB SanDisk ULTRA II PLUS 2.5" SSD
  • Cooling - Noctua NH-U12A x2 fans
  • PSU - Be Quiet Pure Power 11 300W 80 Plus Bronze

I also have Synology 918+ NAS which has 4x WD HDDs in it, three 8tb and one 10tb. I am thinking of pulling the 10tb and adding it to the above PC as a start. I could then buy a replacement 8tb to go into the NAS if I was going to keep it. Alternatively, I could grab all the drives for the Unraid server from the NAS and decommission it and then sell it. I could then perhaps backup to the Unraid server and then also to the cloud for critical things, thinking photos etc. I currently use Synology C2 for the NAS for main files and photos but not for media (too big).

I also have a gaming PC, running Linux, but I think I would keep as is, i currently back stuff to the NAS. Plus then the usual assortment of mobiles, laptops etc. Running Orbi mesh across the house, with most static stuff conneted via ethernet.

I am interested in running
  • NextCloud
  • Plex media server - replacing NAS
  • Pihole - replacing pi3b??
  • Roon server
  • Scynthing - (might not need with next cloud??
  • HQ Player (although server may not be powerful enough)
  • Sonarr
  • Radarr
  • Bitwarden
  • Notes - probably joplin
  • Calibre
  • VPN - probably 24/7
In terms of power, I used a online power calculator and it estimates around 100w, and the CPU has a TDP of 65W.

Should I consider replacing/changing the kit, and if so, to what? Any thoughts on the power draw of the server? I intend to add it to my UPS, which also runs the NAS. Any other software to consider? Any thoughts on how to shuffle drives from the NAS to the Unraid without loosing anything? I have about 11TB currently.

Happy for any feedback/comments. Thanks for reading!
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2002
Posts
7,175
What’s the connection speed? Torrent or news?

Server spec is overkill, Teracopy or similar to move data - it’s only 11TB. If you’re using parity on UnRAID, it needs to be the largest drive. If you aren’t running parity, that’s not going to end well sooner rather than later. Your power estimate is ridiculous, you shouldn’t need to transcode locally, if you do transcode, buy a PlexPass, all the *arr’s and your download client are best off going to a SSD along with Plex meta data/docker, as low power/silent/fast. Even my ancient v3 Xeon’s doing software transcoding would struggle to hit 100w under load and did everything you describe and more in software.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
26 May 2008
Posts
227
Thank you for the response, it is much appreciated.

What’s the connection speed?

Not fast unfortunately, around 80 meg down, 20 up. Fibre to the cabinet and copper to the house.

Server spec is overkill,

Its just what I have available really. I need two PCs in the house, but have enough bits and bobs for three fortunately. The other processor I have is an i3 6100, so I thought underpowered.

Teracopy or similar to move data - it’s only 11TB

Thanks, I will look into it!

If you’re using parity on UnRAID, it needs to be the largest drive. If you aren’t running parity, that’s not going to end well sooner rather than later

Yes, I would be using parity, so the 10tb drive then as parity.

Your power estimate is ridiculous

This gave me some pause. I assume you mean its too high. I will look again.

buy a PlexPass

Yes, I have one already.

I havent had much time yet to think through, so I will spend some time doing this over the weekend I think. Any other comments welcome. Thanks!!
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
8,543
Location
Liverpool
Its just what I have available really. I need two PCs in the house, but have enough bits and bobs for three fortunately. The other processor I have is an i3 6100, so I thought underpowered.

For Plex, if you want to transcode, ideally you want a 7th gen or newer Intel chip as that is when Quick Sync 6 was introduced. Although the i3 will be fine for Unraid, your 9th gen i7 would be better for Plex, if not overkill, unless you knew you weren't going to transcode! I was running on a i5-7600 for years until I had a 9500 spare recently so swapped it out. If it was me, I'd sell the 9700k, buy a lesser 9th gen and put the difference towards a larger SSD.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2002
Posts
7,175
For Plex, if you want to transcode, ideally you want a 7th gen or newer Intel chip as that is when Quick Sync 6 was introduced. Although the i3 will be fine for Unraid, your 9th gen i7 would be better for Plex, if not overkill, unless you knew you weren't going to transcode! I was running on a i5-7600 for years until I had a 9500 spare recently so swapped it out. If it was me, I'd sell the 9700k, buy a lesser 9th gen and put the difference towards a larger SSD.

Did you read the op’s reply or just the initial post? They stated they have a PlexPass, combined with a 9th gen non F chip, any transcodes are going to be done in hardware, Plex usage should be low single digits in general operation even while transcoding as audio uses next to nothing. Excluding out of generation iGPU which is bizarrely a thing in some generations (usually mobile), unless you are doing 10bit, Sky Lake is fine and should easily manage 15+ transcodes.

Thank you for the response, it is much appreciated.

Not fast unfortunately, around 80 meg down, 20 up. Fibre to the cabinet and copper to the house.

Its just what I have available really. I need two PCs in the house, but have enough bits and bobs for three fortunately. The other processor I have is an i3 6100, so I thought underpowered.

Thanks, I will look into it!

Yes, I would be using parity, so the 10tb drive then as parity.

This gave me some pause. I assume you mean its too high. I will look again.

Yes, I have one already.

I havent had much time yet to think through, so I will spend some time doing this over the weekend I think. Any other comments welcome. Thanks!!

The actual idle power will be way, way lower than the 100w estimate, TDP is just a horrible imaginary number that can be generally ignored (don’t get me started on how accurate it is or the variances between how say Intel come up with TDP vs AMD, it will just make your head hurt), idles will be circa 20-25w at a guess with a mechanical drive spun up, load I would expect to be under 70w based on personal experience, lower as an average load figure - you don’t have a fast enough connection to do massive concurrent RAR/PAR repairs and you aren’t an obvious candidate to exceed the 20+ HW transcodes your system is capable of (1080/H264). I had a 8th gen NUC doing a similar job, average was under 20w, it wasn’t massively more for the i5 8400 ITX build I have.

Use Teracopy or similar to CRC verify each file when you move them, better to discover the issue now than later on, add parity to the UnRAID pool after initial copy (you still have the data on the Synology at that point). Use SSD for dockers/cache, but not initially as cache - it’s way too small as a landing zone for 11TB of data and writing 11TB to a relatively small SSD via gigabit is just a pointless waste of NAND life/resources.

Whatever you do, use a decent USB drive and make use of the UnRAID trial, but do it when you have time to play and learn. SpaceInvaderOne on YouTube had some decent videos that are beginner friendly.
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
8,543
Location
Liverpool
Did you read the op’s reply or just the initial post? They stated they have a PlexPass, combined with a 9th gen non F chip, any transcodes are going to be done in hardware, Plex usage should be low single digits in general operation even while transcoding as audio uses next to nothing. Excluding out of generation iGPU which is bizarrely a thing in some generations (usually mobile), unless you are doing 10bit, Sky Lake is fine and should easily manage 15+ transcodes.

He then said he also had an i3-6100, hence why I said the 9th gen would be better for Plex as he has a Plex pass and can utilise the Quick Sync on it. :)
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Nov 2007
Posts
3,358
Location
West Lothian
Server power for Plex is entirely dependent on whether you are planning on transcoding, and if so, how many streams. Without transcoding, Plex could easily run on a medium sized baked potato :p

Either way, what you plan on using will work, but as mentioned, it's way over-specced, especially if you're not planning on transcoding. For long term usage going forward, I'd be aiming for something Xeon based with ECC RAM.

UnRaid is awesome though, here's what I'm running on mine....

unraid-dash.jpg
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2002
Posts
7,175
Server power for Plex is entirely dependent on whether you are planning on transcoding, and if so, how many streams. Without transcoding, Plex could easily run on a medium sized baked potato :p

Either way, what you plan on using will work, but as mentioned, it's way over-specced, especially if you're not planning on transcoding. For long term usage going forward, I'd be aiming for something Xeon based with ECC RAM.

UnRaid is awesome though, here's what I'm running on mine....

That’s not really relevant here, op has iGPU and PlexPass, they can transcode H264/5 with very minimal CPU usage per stream, heck even a humble modern Celeron can do 15+ H264 1080 HW transcodes with minimal CPU/power usage. Unfortunately your dual 2670’s are lovable technological dinosaurs at this point, as are my V3/V4’s, the Plex published metric is 2K of CPU Mark per 1080p transcode, you have a combined 15.7K for a dual set-up, that’s 8 software transcodes with frankly obscene - by modern standards - power usage that’s going to be 150w+ from memory. Due to the way transcoding is done at faster than real-time you can push that 8 figure out a little, but iGPU won this battle a long, long time ago and a single mid tier Ryzen won the CPU mark/power efficiency war vs. E5’s, that’s why my E5 V4’s were replaced by a single i5 8400 - 9K of CPU Mark and I got bored of testing after 20 HW transcodes on iGPU didn’t stress it.

Also while ECC is always a nice to have, has it ever actually done it’s job for you? I mean personally in 30+ years of running it across multiple boxes and actually bothering to check them periodically, it’s done it’s job twice for me. Once on a dual P3 set-up decades ago in testing, and once on a remote Xeon v6 rental that was broken on delivery and was identified in pre-commissioning testing. The example that generally gets used was that of a ZFS dev who made a quite balanced statement about the potential benefits of ECC, unfortunately the section often quoted out of context became the widely used point of reference. Besides the ‘bit’ everyone seems to overlook with ECC is where did the data you are protecting from but-flip come from? Because unless you can guarantee the source integrity and pathway to your box all employed the same level of protection, it is only protecting data created on the local box and everything coming in is just treated as ‘good’, I mean obviously you are doing a hash compare on each file you bring in if it’s important right? I know what I would choose to put my faith in.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
26 May 2008
Posts
227
I was doing a bit of 'practice' over the weekend and I managed to install Ubuntu Server, HQ Player and Roon server. This is a large step for me, its the first time I have managed stuff (albeit fairly simple) and run a server like this. I have run rpi's, routers etc headlessly but not a server. Anyway, the i7 is needed when I run HQ Player (msuic software DSP engine - I think thats how I have seen it described) which is very demanding depending on what filters and modulators you choose.

I think Unraid is still the way to go, but in the end I thought I needed to spend some money, essentially for the drives and a few other bits (a case maybe), so I thought this was a good way to get going with a server. Next step, move the server from under my desk into the server cupboard (this is very grand desciption) where I need to see how things fair tempreture wise.
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2002
Posts
6,579
Location
South Coast
Keep looking at Unraid more and more, at the moment I'm on a TrueNAS path with a Dell PowerEdge T340 (Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2244G CPU @ 3.80GHz / 32GB ECC) and 4 x 3TB drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration. I've got 3 x 3TB Red plus drives to come out of a QNAP and 2 x 4TB WD Red Plus spare as I purchased in haste tbh.

The Power Edge can take 8 x 3.5" drives and 4 x 2.5" drives via an icy dock bay. Atm I'm not looking to go about 4 x 3.5" drives as it all adds to the power consumption.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
4 Nov 2002
Posts
15,508
Location
West Berkshire
In theory, Unraid will be more power efficient as it can be set to only spin up the drives it needs, whereas ZFS (or any RAID) will need to have all the drives spinning. That being said, I'm not yet sure PowerEdge servers support that power-saving feature.

Guess I'll find out when I get around to configuring the array on mine - I got a T640 as given the seemingly never-ending work from home culture I figured I could offload a few VMs from my over-worked laptop as well as running a bunch of Docker containers for the fun stuff. Its 'only' drawing 250W under sustained load with all drives spinning which is expensive, but also about half the power draw from the hardware its replacing, so will cost about the same to run as I was paying pre-energy crisis, at least until April.
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2002
Posts
6,579
Location
South Coast
What disks are you going to be using in it, Dell OEM disks or WD Red etc? I got 2 x 4TB Red Plus drives that were delivered before Christmas, but I may send them back and stick with Dell drives, 4TB Toshiba unit, but with Dell firmware etc.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
4 Nov 2002
Posts
15,508
Location
West Berkshire
I'm putting 10TB WD Gold (Enterprise) drives in mine. WD Red Plus would be fine in a T340 as its 8-bay, but I got the 18-bay chassis as it wasn't much more than the 8-bay version and came with a decent hardware RAID controller should I ever want to go there. I found new Dell drives to be ridiculously expensive but if you're not personally paying then sticking with OEM drives is justifiable.

To be clear, I don't intend to fully-populate it any time soon. I'm replacing an old and nearly full Drobo with 16 TiB usable, so 6x 10TB will more than double that. Hopefully that'll be good for another 5-10 years, but if not, I have 10 empty drive bays to play with. :)
 
Permabanned
Joined
5 Jun 2010
Posts
15,459
What is the best way to install Docker containers in terms of where to locate them?

I want to install the BinHex versions Radarr, Sonar and Tdarr. Is it best to let them install in their default locations or move them?
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Oct 2009
Posts
13,823
Location
Spalding, Lincs
What is the best way to install Docker containers in terms of where to locate them?

I want to install the BinHex versions Radarr, Sonar and Tdarr. Is it best to let them install in their default locations or move them?

Make sure your appdata share is set to cache only so it runs off your SSD (if you have one, of course). The rest is simple, install them as default. The only directory you will need to change is if a docker ever needs access to the array, such as a downloads or media folder.
 
Permabanned
Joined
5 Jun 2010
Posts
15,459
I have a 128GB SSD along with a 4 disk array.

One parity drive, and the other three as the array.

I have two folders:

Movies
TV.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,506
Location
UK
What is the best way to install Docker containers in terms of where to locate them?

I want to install the BinHex versions Radarr, Sonar and Tdarr. Is it best to let them install in their default locations or move them?

As has been mentioned, you set your appdata share to use the cache disk which should be solid state and then all your dockers will sit on the fastest drive and be as snappy as they can - most by default have their appdata share as mnt/user/appdata but be sure to check. One important mapping to change is where your media is on the array and mapping that correctly in the config - the default is unlikely to be right as everyone does it differently.

Think carefully about how you set up your media share(s), particularly your split levels across disks. For example I have two different shares for TV and movies. Movies is mapped to the container config for Radarr, TV in the container config to sonarr, Plex has both mapped as sources of media in the docker config and added in the library through the GUI. Then for TV shows I then have shows at the top level, series underneath that and then the episodes - basically the default way Sonarr like it. Chances are I will watch maybe a few episodes of a show in a row so by ensuring the split settings of the TV share choose to group series or shows together on a single disk then I ensure that only one disk in the array is spun up to binge watch something. As the array fills up it puts entire series (my personal preference) on a different disk. As long as a I set my threshold for enough space to be as high as a TV series is likely to be then the automation won't attempt to overfill a disk.
 
Permabanned
Joined
5 Jun 2010
Posts
15,459
So the appdate share is set as follows.........

4voHANC.png

I have two shares for my media.

Movies (Set to use Disk1 and Disk 2)
TV (Set to use Disk 3)
 
Back
Top Bottom