Help me with spec to replace Microserver for UnRaid use

[50pence]

Hehe. I go it mine new for 159 quid so it made sense for me. I don’t have access to the board marketplace yet

not happy with the crucial m.2. It running 48 - 50 degrees when the wd nvme is at 34 so I’m getting constant high temp alarms. Loads of space in the case. May return it and buy a wd m.2 (non nvme) as it seems hot to me.

for my setup, I’m gonna put docker, app data and vms on the nvme.

The 250gb ssd will be there as a temp download directory before stuff gets moved off to the array, so when stuff is unraring it doesn’t kill the nvme disk.

The 500gb crucial I was going to put my audio mp3s onto. They are on my Mac at the moment, and cause I have a whole house sonos system, I need to leave the Mac on. I didn’t want them on the array as the Mac is a bit particular with mounted disks spinning up and itunes that manages them goes pear shaped, so an m.2 which is instantly accessible as the iTunes share for my Mac will get the media off the Mac

that’s the plan anyway. I’m sure it will all change.

I only came here to look for a N40L BIOS update but found myself reading through the whole thread. Is there an update to your finalised build and what your current setup is?

 

[rorton]

I eventually settled on the below

• Fractal Design Node 804 Case
• Enclave 600w 80 Plus Gold Modular PSU
• AMD Ryzen 2700 CPU (8 core 16 thread)
• 32gb Crucial Ballistix Sport 2666mhz DDR4 Ram
• Asrock B450M Pro4 M/Board (1 onboard fast NVME slot, plus a second on board M.2 slot)
• Nvidia 710 Graphics card (i did buy a £5 cheep old PCIe card from eBay - it didn't work, and needed to get the system running, so bought the cheapest new card i could find!)
• Western Digital BLACK 500GB SN750 M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E GEN3 SOLID STATE DRIVE (used for Cache)
• Western Digital BLUE 3D NAND 500GB M.2 2280 SOLID STATE DRIVE (used as an unassigned drive in the m.2 slot) - i did buy a crucial M.2 drive here, but it ran SOOOO hot, 50degres idle - so sent that back and got this WD, and its a good 20 degrees cooler
• Dell H310 Perc HBA Card, flashed to IT Mode
• SAS to 4 SATA Forward breakout cable

From the old system, i put in my 4 WD Red 3tbs, these 4 disks connected to the Dell H310

I put in my old 250gb Crucial SSD as a 'download' drive for some docker apps to use, connected to the motherboard SATA



All working really well - all the SSD's trim OK (was worried about this, as some reports of some drives not trimming in Linux)



i have my WD reds in the Array - the 500gb NVME as cache, with VMs and Docker/Appdata

the other 500gb m.w SSD is there for all my audio MP3s that were on my Mac - my whole house sonos system accesses them and i always wanted them off the mac - i tried before on the array, and as i have it spun down, its a pain when using it for sonos to have to wait and timeout when it cant access the media, so i decided to put the audio files on an unassigned SSD, and then back this up to the array. iTunes on the mac also connects to this, so again, it needed to be instant.



I also dabble in music production, and have lots of sample CDs, so these are on the ssd too - keeps them off the main PC, and gives me instant access to them - again - backed up to the array



The Dell HBA card will run 8 SATA disks, so room for expansion. The motherboard can run 4 sata drives, but need to reduce that by 1 if using the second M.2 slot (as i am)



Case will house 10 disks, and its quite compact.

 

[50pence]

I eventually settled on the below

• Fractal Design Node 804 Case
• Enclave 600w 80 Plus Gold Modular PSU
• AMD Ryzen 2700 CPU (8 core 16 thread)
• 32gb Crucial Ballistix Sport 2666mhz DDR4 Ram
• Asrock B450M Pro4 M/Board (1 onboard fast NVME slot, plus a second on board M.2 slot)
• Nvidia 710 Graphics card (i did buy a £5 cheep old PCIe card from eBay - it didn't work, and needed to get the system running, so bought the cheapest new card i could find!)
• Western Digital BLACK 500GB SN750 M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E GEN3 SOLID STATE DRIVE (used for Cache)
• Western Digital BLUE 3D NAND 500GB M.2 2280 SOLID STATE DRIVE (used as an unassigned drive in the m.2 slot) - i did buy a crucial M.2 drive here, but it ran SOOOO hot, 50degres idle - so sent that back and got this WD, and its a good 20 degrees cooler
• Dell H310 Perc HBA Card, flashed to IT Mode
• SAS to 4 SATA Forward breakout cable

From the old system, i put in my 4 WD Red 3tbs, these 4 disks connected to the Dell H310

I put in my old 250gb Crucial SSD as a 'download' drive for some docker apps to use, connected to the motherboard SATA



All working really well - all the SSD's trim OK (was worried about this, as some reports of some drives not trimming in Linux)



i have my WD reds in the Array - the 500gb NVME as cache, with VMs and Docker/Appdata

the other 500gb m.w SSD is there for all my audio MP3s that were on my Mac - my whole house sonos system accesses them and i always wanted them off the mac - i tried before on the array, and as i have it spun down, its a pain when using it for sonos to have to wait and timeout when it cant access the media, so i decided to put the audio files on an unassigned SSD, and then back this up to the array. iTunes on the mac also connects to this, so again, it needed to be instant.



I also dabble in music production, and have lots of sample CDs, so these are on the ssd too - keeps them off the main PC, and gives me instant access to them - again - backed up to the array



The Dell HBA card will run 8 SATA disks, so room for expansion. The motherboard can run 4 sata drives, but need to reduce that by 1 if using the second M.2 slot (as i am)



Case will house 10 disks, and its quite compact.

Impressive and probably expensive! I need to pull my finger out and get my N40L I bought 2nd hand to get to grips with how Docker containers, Xpenology and VMs can make life better for me. I'll keep reading and maybe get around to tinkering.

 

[rorton]

cheers, was about £550 all in, I had the array disks from the old system - I had my HP N40L since new, and only paid £100 when it was on some offer at the time, many years ago and its done me proud - have you thought about unraid instead of xpenology?

Cant remember where I read it, but one person explained it quite well I thought...

Xpenology is a reengineer of existing code designed to run on Synology hardware - while I'm sure it works well on their hardware, the code has been hacked about to run on other devices.
Unraid, is written from the ground up to be what it is - a decent NAS operating system - would you prefer to trust your data on something hacked about to work, or made for the job.

Above was something like that, Im not quoting word for word

If your getting to grips with dockers and vis and stuff, then I'm sure it will be ok - but personally I'd be a bit wary of sticking your data on it that you want to keep

 

[50pence]

cheers, was about £550 all in, I had the array disks from the old system - I had my HP N40L since new, and only paid £100 when it was on some offer at the time, many years ago and its done me proud - have you thought about unraid instead of xpenology?

Cant remember where I read it, but one person explained it quite well I thought...



Above was something like that, Im not quoting word for word

If your getting to grips with dockers and vis and stuff, then I'm sure it will be ok - but personally I'd be a bit wary of sticking your data on it that you want to keep

You make a good point about Xpenology and it being hacked and the reliability of it HAS to be a consideration. I think the most appealing thing to me was Surveillance Station but maybe I could use something similar (possibly as a VM) in UnRaid?

 

[rorton]

Ive not used it, but Zoneminder seems popular - there is blue iris too, although I think that's paid for,

How many cams are you looking to hook up, as I'm wondering if the CPU will be sufficient in the N40?

 

[rorton]

btw there is a docker for zomeminder - so no need for the vm overhead

 

[50pence]

Ive not used it, but Zoneminder seems popular - there is blue iris too, although I think that's paid for,

How many cams are you looking to hook up, as I'm wondering if the CPU will be sufficient in the N40?

Its a proof of concept, so far 2 in mind and though I'll need to have the flexibility to scale that number up (single digits). I understand ill be limited to CPU grunt if I add cameras to the setup. I've just looked at Zoneminder and Blue Iris ( I do like that). Anyway I have plenty of food for thought, thanks for your time

 

[rorton]

no problem, you got me curious, so I d/loaded zoneminder docker into unraid and its running with one of my IP cameras connected - GUI isn't very polished like you get with a decent DVR but it works....