NAS build - any good!

eeek said:
Unraid boots from a usb key where the id of the usb drive is used as the license for the software - and usb key speed isn't a problem as once booted it runs in memory
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I'd never personally used UnRaid before, I personally use Proxmox as my virtualization and ZRAID as my file system parity provider. I always assumed it was a choice whether or not you install UnRaid on a usb device. Apologies if my assumptions spread misinformation here.

eeek said:
For instance what is he doing that requires 64gb of ram and yet only 8 cores.
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I at least have the 64 GB of VRAM as my current 16 GB Quad core virtualization/Nas server it a little RAM starved. I agree that 64 GB is a too much, but also want to beable to upgrade to a 12 or 16 core if the price of those chips drops enough. At 16 core 64 GB is just right. I've had issues in the past not being able to find QVL server RAM in the used market retrospectively, and given the (relatively) small proportion of the cost £140 represented I decided to just go with the larger capacity, I had budget for either another 10TB of disk or the step up from 32 to 64 GB of RAM. To be clear I also didn't (deliberately) mean to suggest 32GB, I personally value ECC so would suggest the KSM32ES8/16ME stick of CL 22 3200 speed ECC RAM, which would have come in at between £143 to £181 for a 32GB kit. Even then I can justify 64 GB given that ZFS can make use of large amounts of RAM, as ZFS runs best with 8GB+1GB per TB, which would be 48GB of RAM for the 2 cores running the file server and providing the file system parity. That then leaves 16 GB of RAM for the remaining 6 cores worth of VM's to use.

In any case all I was trying to say was that OP's kit isn't exactly cheap, which I assume others were also trying to communicate. I also don't expect that OP justifies the RAM usage in the same way I do.
 
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Appreciate all the input :) I’ve fine-tuned the parts list and now have the following with indicative pricing:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (£270)
MOBO: AsRock Rack X570D4U-2L2T Motherboard (£450)
MEMORY: 2x Kingston KSM32ED8/32ME (£290)
PSU: Seasonic Focus PX 550 (£90)
STORAGE CACHE ARRAY:
- 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus V-NAND M.2 1TB SSD (£290)
STORGE ARRAY:
- 6x Seagate IronWolf 4TB ST4000VN008 NAS Internal Hard Drive/HDD (£570) (4 for data, 2 for parity)
- 6x SATA Cables (£40)
STORAGE OS:
- SAMSUNG 32GB Flash Drive (£10)
FAN: Stock CPU fan
CASE: Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL (£175)

Comments welcome - thanks !
 
spoiler said:
Appreciate all the input :) I’ve fine-tuned the parts list and now have the following with indicative pricing:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (£270)
MOBO: AsRock Rack X570D4U-2L2T Motherboard (£450)
MEMORY: 2x Kingston KSM32ED8/32ME (£290)
PSU: Seasonic Focus PX 550 (£90)
STORAGE CACHE ARRAY:
- 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus V-NAND M.2 1TB SSD (£290)
STORGE ARRAY:
- 6x Seagate IronWolf 4TB ST4000VN008 NAS Internal Hard Drive/HDD (£570) (4 for data, 2 for parity)
- 6x SATA Cables (£40)
STORAGE OS:
- SAMSUNG 32GB Flash Drive (£10)
FAN: Stock CPU fan
CASE: Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL (£175)

Comments welcome - thanks !
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That gives you 16tb of Data and a pain for future upgrades.

I would to at least get bigger drives for parity (otherwise to add a single 6tb drive to increase storage to 18tb you would need 3 x 6tb drives, 2 for parity and 1 for data).

Also I wouldn't buy 6 identical drives who will all be coming from the same production run, you would be safer going for different brands at as a minimum same brand from multiple suppliers in the hope of different production runs.
 
eeek said:
That gives you 16tb of Data and a pain for future upgrades.

I would to at least get bigger drives for parity (otherwise to add a single 6tb drive to increase storage to 18tb you would need 3 x 6tb drives, 2 for parity and 1 for data).
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Thanks, sounds good - could you just explain the upgrade pain please? Is it an issue replacing parity drives ??
 
I’m sure this has been asked but I can’t see the answer in the thread - why two SSDs? If you’re going to be running Unraid then one will be enough.
 
spoiler said:
Thanks, sounds good - could you just explain the upgrade pain please? Is it an issue replacing parity drives ??
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To add a 6 tb drive to your 6 x 4tb array you would:-

1) need to add a 6tb parity drive and rebuild parity
2) add a second 6tb parity drive and rebuild parity
3) add a 6tb data drive and rebuild the array

Unraid is built around a system where the quickest and easiest way to expand is to add more disks (my array was eventually a 36tb array across 12 3/4tb disks where I added another 4tb disk as and when I needed to expand the array. Last month that became a 40tb array (1x4tb, 3x12tb data, 1x14tb parity) but the rebuild took 3 weeks of carefully planned migration.

Replacing a disk requires a full rebuild, adding another disk requires just running a pre-clear operation on it (sensible for checking the drive quality anyway) and then adding the newly cleared disk to the array.

So personally I would be starting with as big a disk as you can afford

1 x 10/12tb for parity and 2x8tb will give you the same space but way more options (and spare sata connections) down the line to expand things....
 
Bluecube said:
I’m sure this has been asked but I can’t see the answer in the thread - why two SSDs? If you’re going to be running Unraid then one will be enough.
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The 2x M.2 SSDs are for cache, which I read is where it’s best to run Dockers from. And 2 of them so they are in a cache pool with RAID 1 for redundancy. That’s how I’ve understood it anyway :).
Else, if it’s a single SSD with the Dockers on and there’s an issue they would need restoring from backup.
 
Not necessarily so. In Unraid, the cache is just that - a cache for files that live on the main storage drives. So if the cache goes down then the docker files remain on the main storage. Unraid will use the cached files for every day use and, usually every 24hours, copy the changes to main storage.
 
Buy the biggest disk you can afford at the time for parity. Or buy two if you want dual parity. This massively eases adding more space later on as explained above by eeek.
USB drive is fine and as said above, is the way unraid is installed as it uses the GUID of the USB for licencing. Or it did...not sure if that changed. Most people run USB drives with no issues.
Why do you need such big cache drives? I guess since you will host dockers and other things on them...fair enough.

That motherboard... have you read up on people's experiences of it online? I did, hence why I didn't buy one. ;) It seems to have some quirky issues you might want to read up on. The IPMI I think was poorly implemented and buggy, along with some of the BIOS releases. At that price you can buy a high end B550 or X570 board which would suit your requirements.

For unraid you might want to stick with running Asrock or Asus if you want the best ECC unbuffered ram support. I refused to go with x570 as didn't want a chipset fan so went with an Asus ROG E B550 board paired with a 3700x and 32gb of ECC 3200mhz micron low profile ram. Haven't had any issues. I run the board fairly well populated with 2 x Nvidia GPUs, a HBA, an nvme, SSDs for cache off the sata ports, and the mechanicals off of the HBA card. I will also install an additional NVME in time. I run a gaming VM inside it running 6 cores and 20gb ram I think at the mo. I also run plex docker and have some plans for other things. It all runs inside an ancient Coolermaster Stacker case with 8 x ancient Yate Loon 120mm fans and a modern 750w Seasonic PSU.
 
jaybee said:
Buy the biggest disk you can afford at the time for parity. Or buy two if you want dual parity. This massively eases adding more space later on as explained above by eeek.
USB drive is fine and as said above, is the way unraid is installed as it uses the GUID of the USB for licencing. Or it did...not sure if that changed. Most people run USB drives with no issues.
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Yes, I’m now planning on getting a 12TB disk for parity from the start :)

jaybee said:
Why do you need such big cache drives? I guess since you will host dockers and other things on them...fair enough.
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Yep.

jaybee said:
That motherboard... have you read up on people's experiences of it online? I did, hence why I didn't buy one. ;) It seems to have some quirky issues you might want to read up on. The IPMI I think was poorly implemented and buggy, along with some of the BIOS releases. At that price you can buy a high end B550 or X570 board which would suit your requirements.

For unraid you might want to stick with running Asrock or Asus if you want the best ECC unbuffered ram support. I refused to go with x570 as didn't want a chipset fan so went with an Asus ROG E B550 board paired with a 3700x and 32gb of ECC 3200mhz micron low profile ram. Haven't had any issues. I run the board fairly well populated with 2 x Nvidia GPUs, a HBA, an nvme, SSDs for cache off the sata ports, and the mechanicals off of the HBA card. I will also install an additional NVME in time. I run a gaming VM inside it running 6 cores and 20gb ram I think at the mo. I also run plex docker and have some plans for other things. It all runs inside an ancient Coolermaster Stacker case with 8 x ancient Yate Loon 120mm fans and a modern 750w Seasonic PSU.
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Honestly, this is where I start getting in a spiral of despair where different info suggests different things, and in the end I do nothing :D I’m okay with at mobo, and if I start looking at others I’ll stagnate. So, unless there is no stock i reckon I’ll just stick with it, thanks ;)
Forgot - the one thing i liked about this mobo was no need for a dedicated graphics card, as it’ll be headless in a cupboard!
 
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spoiler said:
Yes, I’m now planning on getting a 12TB disk for parity from the start :)


Yep.


Honestly, this is where I start getting in a spiral of despair where different info suggests different things, and in the end I do nothing :D I’m okay with at mobo, and if I start looking at others I’ll stagnate. So, unless there is no stock i reckon I’ll just stick with it, thanks ;)
Forgot - the one thing i liked about this mobo was no need for a dedicated graphics card, as it’ll be headless in a cupboard!
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That still doesn't justify spending £450 on a motherboard when a £150 B550 with a £30 GT 730 will do the same job.

And that extra £200 would allow the 3700X to be a more usable 3900X or even a 5900X
 
eeek said:
That still doesn't justify spending £450 on a motherboard when a £150 B550 with a £30 GT 730 will do the same job.

And that extra £200 would allow the 3700X to be a more usable 3900X or even a 5900X
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Sure, makes absolute sense :) Could you recommend something please?
Here’s a few i found from a search - any thoughts ? Thanks
  • Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA
  • ASUS PRIME X570-PRO
  • ASRock X570 Pro 4
 
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From that list the ASROCK - I was looking at the matx version and a Node 804 to replace what is now a very empty and old lian li case
 
Okay, been tinkering and here is what i have for the build now:

MOBO: ASUS PRIME X570-PRO (£235)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (£400)
GPU: GT 730 (£30)
MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance RG Pro DDR4-3200 Memory 32GB (£175)
PSU: Seasonic Focus PX 550 (£90)
STORAGE CACHE:
- 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus V-NAND M.2 1TB SSD (£290)
STORGE ARRAY:
- 1x Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB (£370) [for Parity]
- 1x Seagate IronWolf NAS 8TB (£215) [for data]
- 1x WD Red Plus 8TB (£208) [for data]
- 3x SATA Cables (£18)
STORAGE: OS:
- SAMSUNG 32GB Flash Drive (£10)
FAN: Stock CPU fan
CASE: Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL (£175)

Thanks :)
 
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