'Best' Home Everything Server Setup For Cheap?

[mlow]

Hi new to the forums, but a long time channel follower. So I'm finally getting around to making a proper server setup at home, by that I mean not using some re-purposed machine that just barely gets by with the task.

 

Now I'm not going to jump into it all at once, I want to test the waters, and I want to do it on the cheap. So that means I'm going incremental with it, but with the end result hopefully being a solid solution that isn't janky af.

 

So, I do have tons of parts ordered from eBay(holy smokes the used server market is cheap). Before I get on with the goodies I snagged for what I think was a steal, let's lay all cards on the table as far as what I have right now and what it does currently and then get more into where I want to be.

 

The Old

 

Current hardware: Dell AIO(i5, 8gb ram, 300gb internal...touchscreen), a 24 port D-Link gb managed switch($50 eBay) and a 4 bay IcyDock(usb 3 and eSata). The dock has a 4tb drive in it as well as a few smaller ones, connected via usb 3 to the Dell. No fancy drive stuff just folders. Dell is running server windows 2012 r2, but for no particular reason at all. A few power failures ago the internal single blower fan failed, causing some fantastic overheating problems. So I DIY'd a fan setup on it. No UPS.  I'm cheap.

 

 

Current software:  Sonarr/CouchPotato/SabNZBd/Plex combo, znc running in cgywin(irc bouncer), a few game servers(mostly windows dependant), Photon Enterprise(windows dependant), bonobo for git server, bits and bobs. Splashtop for remote desktop.

Overall pretty boring, git is for projects I sometimes rarely work on in what little free time I have.

 

New server time!

Ok so after being out of work for far too long, I'm now employed, great because now I have disposable income(however small) instead of none. At this point, if you have read this far, you're probably wondering what exactly this post even is. Is it a brag post, a build log, a plea for sympathy, a server gore post??? Well, maybe it's a couple of those, but it's mostly a bunch of details to lead into questions I have that I feel need a bit of backstory to make sense. So what follows is what I have bought so far.

 

First is what I think was the big deal snag.

Dell PowerEdge R710 2x X5675 Perc 6/i 2U 2.5"x8

for ...$155 shipped. So I made the call the get the 8 bay 2.5" one, mostly because there were basically no 3.5" to be found on eBay, the deal was good IMO and listing ending soon. Could I have waited and got a 3.5" for close to the same price, IDK maybe, but with listings with similar specs for $200 more I pulled the trigger. This may bite me in the short term, but long term I think this was a solid deal, really wish it had 3.5" drives tho now that I'm getting into things.

(eBay listing photos, not mine)

 

2x 146gb 15k sas 2.5" drives - $11 ea on eBay

I know, used drives. These guys are the 'just get things running' drives. I also picked up some drive caddies for these off eBay.

 

24GB (6X4GB) DDR3 ECC REG 1333Mhz - $39 on eBay

 

I went back and forth of whether I should go for bigger capacity sticks, but the price is really prohibitive. With 4GB sticks I can max the R710 at 72GB, I think that's enough room to expand for now...

 

Researching software:

So while I'm waiting patiently(or not) for these items to be mishandled by the postal service I've been researching what I should actually run on it. I am 90% certain I will go with unRaid at this point in time. For me the selling point is the whole Docker thing combined with the ability to do VM's easily and the storage options/management looks a treat as well. However, this is new territory for me and I'm unsure if it's the best hammer for my nails. Feedback needed.

 

The... still up in the air stuff:

Speaking of storage.... Let's get back to that whole 2.5" thing. So currently I'm using an IcyDock 4 bay with some 3.5" drives in it, connectivity is provided by USB 3.0. So far I have been 99% sure of what I'm doing, here is where it all falls apart. I have no experience with unRaid, and even less experience with storage options and connectivity with server hardware. I've got a 2U server with 2.5" sas/sata bays, clearly I can't put my 3.5" storage hard drives in it. It has USB ports, but definitely not USB 3. It has PCI slots, tho I'm not even sure if they are PCIe honestly. But it has 4 of them! Maybe I can get a USB 3 card? Will that even work? Will unRaid let me assign those drives to the array? Is that dumb? The dock also has an eSata port, if that makes for more options, I'm not even sure. What research I have done on the unRaid reddit and forums shows that the general suggestion is a SAS enclosure/expansion. My first thought is 'that sounds expensive'.... I also have no idea what that even entails hardware/software wise to implement. So feedback on that is very welcome. I am assuming I need to get some kind of PCI card for external SAS, some kind of fancy SAS hard drive enclosure, and some fancy cables? The problem is that sounds like it's going to run me more than I've already spent on the hardware in the mail, and honestly I've pretty much run dry already. Have I foolishly bitten off more than I can chew?! 

 

So as it stands right now, it looks like I've got a solid setup for a server but lack any kind of concrete plan for storage...ouch. ....Not to mention I still know nothing about UPS's....and how I should go about that.

 

 

So there it is as of now folks. I've got what I believe to be some cool hardware in the mail. I've only spent $225, and I've got myself a 24GB ram dual X5675 setup with some basic temp storage for me to play around with some software on while I wait for my next paycheck to solve the storage situation for reals. Basically, I need to figure out a way on the cheap to do 3.5" drives externally to this server in a way that unRaid will see and let me assign as an array. From the looks of it that rules out my current USB dock solution, and I don't know anything else about external storage. So thanks for reading, please give me some feedback and ideas. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, mlow said:

Researching software:

So while I'm waiting patiently(or not) for these items to be mishandled by the postal service I've been researching what I should actually run on it. I am 90% certain I will go with unRaid at this point in time. For me the selling point is the whole Docker thing combined with the ability to do VM's easily and the storage options/management looks a treat as well. However, this is new territory for me and I'm unsure if it's the best hammer for my nails. Feedback needed.

Id run proxmox or esxi instead. They have many more features that unraid and better for hosting vm's. Also much better suport out there.

 

For drives, id get a md1000 or a sa 120 and store the drives in there and use a sas connection to the main system, much faster and more reliable.

 

 

For UPS, are power outages a big issues? If not I wouldn't worry about it too much. If they are, look at surplus shops for something used. For this system you don't need much so any old 500va ups will work fine.

[ProjectBox153]

26 minutes ago, mlow said:

No UPS.  I'm cheap.

Careful there. If the server is in the middle of writing important data, you may have some issues there. Two of my servers have recently been affected by power loss, and considering one of the hard drives is weak, I don't want to stress them like that, so I'm going to be shopping for a UPS. It's always nice to shut them down manually and safely when you must. 

[mlow]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id run proxmox or esxi instead. They have many more features that unraid and better for hosting vm's. Also much better suport out there.

The main thing that draws me to unRaid is how friendly it appears to be to use and setup. The Docker stuff really looks up my alley to run basically all I need minus the couple windows only things, and from the looks of it also updates them more easily. VM's is sort of a plus, not a main thing. There would likely just be one windows VM and just for running a few of the windows stuff I need so nothing heavy. Mostly just the fact it seems to be marketed toward consumers, not IT experts, and hopefully it is easy to use for a novice like me. Though I am uncertain if it would be able to run a windows VM in the way I would use it, just setup and remote into, no need for a display after that. Everything I see is usually people running dedicated graphics. 

 

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For drives, id get a md1000 or a sa 120 and store the drives in there and use a sas connection to the main system, much faster and more reliable.

I'll be honest with you, that looks up my alley for what I want to do, but I don't follow at all when it comes to the connect it to the main system part. I get that hard drives go in tray things and slot in. I get that SAS is basically like SATA but a bit different, but that's about it. I'm assuming that I should go for a storage enclosure first, then match the connectors with a PCI card that works with the server, and get the right cable, but I don't know where to start on that. I don't know the different connectors and I don't know what speeds and such I am looking at on which connectors.

 

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

are power outages a big issues?

We have had a few this year during storms and lost some data due to it.

[mlow]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Careful there. If the server is in the middle of writing important data, you may have some issues there. Two of my servers have recently been affected by power loss, and considering one of the hard drives is weak, I don't want to stress them like that, so I'm going to be shopping for a UPS. It's always nice to shut them down manually and safely when you must. 

Exactly, that stuff keeps me up at night. I should bite the bullet and buy something off eBay at the very least. I'm just not sure how to size it really. "Electronics Wizardy" says for a R710 with dual X5675 I should go with something in the 500VA ballpark, so I'm doing some hunting. If I'm going with a SAS enclosure with the possibility of expanding to a sizable amount of drives I would think I need to increase that a bit to be future safe though. Those suckers look to start getting pretty darn expensive quick when you go to higher output. Honestly, I'm not so knowledgeable about the ratings either. So the R710 has dual 870w psu's, so I would think if I load it up with 8 drives, some pci cards, and put it under full load...I'd need say a 900w UPS, but how do I derive a VA rating from that. Add into that a SAS enclosure full of drives and what am I looking at?

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, mlow said:

We have had a few this year during storms and lost some data due to it.

You didn't lose data because of the power outage, you lost it due to a lack of backups

 

For the sas, this should work

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Perc-H800-512MB-RAID-Integrated-SAS-Controller-N743J-w-Battery-/182603670838?hash=item2a8406e536:g:bIsAAOSw42dZE~Ma

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkServer-SA120-DAS-Array-70F10000UX-3-Year-Warranty-/331679421979?hash=item4d39a2561b:g:-5AAAOSwT5tWGx5V

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Molex-407344-001-0-5M-Mini-SAS-External-Cable-/382115497718?hash=item58f7dbc6f6:g:d8AAAOSwq1JZNKWF

8 minutes ago, mlow said:

he main thing that draws me to unRaid is how friendly it appears to be to use and setup.

 

 

But its also limited in some annoying ways. You can't install the os on a harddrive, vms are kinda messy the way it does it, limiting storage setup.

 

Its really not that easy to use, id just install proxmox, its just about as easy to use, but there are a lot more things you can do if you want.

 

 

For ups, 500va is on the small side thinking about it, id probably go 650 or bigger. Normally you can find these for about 50 bucks used.

[mlow]

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You didn't lose data because of the power outage, you lost it due to a lack of backups

True, but I'm not exactly going to cry over a corrupted episode of some TV show or a movie. It's just a pain, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to backup media unless it's of my own creation. Which I do backup to amazon.

 

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For the sas, this should work...

Thank you very much for the links, I think this is a good start and looks plenty expandable. If a bit on the pricey side, I did take a quick look and seem some much cheaper PowerVault stuff if you have any words of advice on what I should be looking for specifically.

 

As for the PCI card, any reason for that one in particular? What about this one? http://www.ebay.com/itm/322521286220 4 ports better than 2? or am I missing something obvious.

 

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can't install the os on a harddrive, vms are kinda messy the way it does it, limiting storage setup.

I'd love it if you could expand on this a little more, first time I've heard of some negative sides of unRaid. Everywhere I seem to look people rave about how easy it is and all the cool stuff you can do. If you have some insight I'd love to heard it, like I said I honestly don't know what the best solution is or anything really about unRaid besides that it, in theory, should let me spin up all the apps I want to use from a neat webGUI, and a VM for the ones that run on windows only. Which is all I really need, but I also really like the idea of using faster but smaller drives as cache and big slow drives as cold storage.

 

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its really not that easy to use, id just install proxmox, its just about as easy to use, but there are a lot more things you can do if you want.

You make it sound great, but I'm just curious how technologically inclined you think I am when it comes to server stuff, I don't want to end up in over my head and not be able to figure stuff out. Like I said above, really all I need to do is be able to easily start apps like plex and sonarr, easily update them, preferably just from a web GUI. Aside from that I would like a more robust and easy to use storage config, without diving into a terminal to setup(or in my case mess up). 

 

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For ups, 500va is on the small side thinking about it, id probably go 650 or bigger. Normally you can find these for about 50 bucks used.

Sounds awesome, I must not have been looking hard enough I was initially sticker shocked by stuff in the $300 range.

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 hours ago, mlow said:

As for the PCI card, any reason for that one in particular? What about this one? http://www.ebay.com/itm/322521286220 4 ports better than 2? or am I missing something obvious.

That card will work, but its a hba, not a raid card if you want hardware raid, get the h800. The extra ports won't help, your only gonna be using one here.

 

f

9 hours ago, mlow said:

I'd love it if you could expand on this a little more, first time I've heard of some negative sides of unRaid

Unraid is made for a home nas/server, and does that well, but not much more. It looks like it will work fine for your use. But its missing features of most enterprise grade solutions like clustering. Id give it a try and see if it works.

[mlow]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That card will work, but its a hba, not a raid card if you want hardware raid, get the h800. The extra ports won't help, your only gonna be using one here.

Oh, hm, so would I then be limiting myself of the whole DAS to 6Gb/s? I mean that's plenty for my use, just curious if that's how that works.

 

It looks like the Dell MD1000 uses a different type of SAS cable connector, I can't seem to find info on but I'll keep digging if that's the one I go with. 

 

Thanks again for all your help, I'll update this thread as I go along. Definitely excited to learn as I go.

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 hours ago, mlow said:

Oh, hm, so would I then be limiting myself of the whole DAS to 6Gb/s?

Nope, 24gb/s, its 4 6 gig link in that cable

 

The md1000 can be sued with a adapter.

[Jarsky]

R710's are boss for the money.

 

I would also recommend going with VMware or Proxmox. The hardware is completely compatible with VMware, and its so purpose made that there are still firmware updates to fix any issues that creep up with VMware.

 

You can install the base OS to an internal USB or you may wish to get one of these (i got one for my Dell R610): http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-R710-R610-T710-SD-Card-Reader-Module-RN354-and-Cable-KY386-/201820519193

 

Personally my Dell is for virtualising everything so I run SSD's (but SAS drives are just as good) in mine for all my VM's, and then target external storage for all of the 'shares' much as ElWiz is suggesting.

[mlow]

Thanks for the help guys. I definitely can't wait until I get paid and can get started, this has been long overdue. I think since my needs are pretty small in functionality, but big on data, I'll give unRaid a try first. If I find that easy, do you guys have any advice for how I could go about using Proxmox to do a lot of the same things unRaid does?

 

Mostly just the easy setup and maintenance of the apps like sonarr/plex/etc, and the simple management of storage. I'd like to be able to add in drives slowly without a lot of fuss, I don't need bulletproof redundancy or anything like a crazy raid array. Just enough that should a drive fail it's not the end of the world, which is why I liked the idea of unRaid in that each drive has its own files/folders and isn't tied to something unusable until a replacement drive is stuck in like RAID. The way I understand unRaid is that when a drive fails the parity drive can rebuild it on a new one put in, or function just fine without it and you can clear a drive and set it as parity to go on. Or should several fail, you only lose what was stored on those drives. 

 

Being able to run a VM is just icing on the cake to me, ElWiz mentioned it is fussy with unRaid but I'm still unclear of how it is. I've watched a few videos on it and it seems like even I could manage setting it up. 

 

Again, awesome of you two to pitch in a help me learn a great deal about this. I feel like I have much more of a direction to go in now.

[Jarsky]

@Electronics Wizardy has a video guide on proxmox. It's just as easy to setup as unraid, it has less limitations and its free

[mlow]

9 hours ago, Jarsky said:

@Electronics Wizardy has a video guide on proxmox. It's just as easy to setup as unraid, it has less limitations and its free

Thanks, I'll look it up. Right now I'm deep in researching what kind of SAS card to get. I don't want to do raid because I'm not buying 24 hard drives at once. The way I understand it is that if I did raid I would have to basically, or adding drives would be a pain. unRaid looked attractive in the way you just add drives and go, increasing capacity or redundancy as you wish.

 

I can't find any info relating to Proxmox as to if I can accomplish something like that. Basically, I have a few large drives right now, I don't want to raid them and buy more drives later and re-do a raid or make another. I just want to setup a cache with 2 fast drives for redundancy, with the ability to expand later on those, and set up an array of storage drives. Most importantly to have that storage array expandable later as I get more cash and buy more drives to expand it as needs increase and budget allows. I don't mind that unRaid charges for what I see as a good feature set. Correct me if I'm wrong, it just doesn't look like I can do that with anything else. Maybe windows storage spaces? I've never liked storage spaces tho.

 

So in research, it looks like unRaid and in general, if I don't want to do RAID I need to get a card that supports that specifically. Like I can't just get a random card and expect unRaid to work and see the drives. The Dell r710 arrives on Monday and comes with a PERC 6/i, I still can't find out information as to whether unRaid actually supports it. Even if I don't end up going with unRaid after the trial it seems like having the ability to individually see the drives without RAID is a good idea for me in my use-case. 

 

So still some big questions up in the air, but a lot is solved. I just need to pick up a card that has SFF-8088 ports to hook up to a DAS that supports unRaid and freenas etc via directly seeing the drives. That way if I want I can just not use unRaid or whatever and set up a RAID array. I also need to figure out if I can do that with the PERC 6i that is in the Dell server. I feel like I'm close but still shooting in the dark a bit.

[Electronics Wizardy]

40 minutes ago, mlow said:

The way I understand it is that if I did raid I would have to basically, or adding drives would be a pain.

most raid cards allow you to add drives to a raid 5 or 6.

 

Id stick with a hba though. You can do raid in software and its normally better than hardware raid for your use.

 

41 minutes ago, mlow said:

I can't find any info relating to Proxmox as to if I can accomplish something like that.

You can with snapraid and mergerfs, but its a pain and id stay away from it unless into the linux thing. Unraid gives you all of this in a premade distro. 

 

41 minutes ago, mlow said:

I just want to setup a cache

won't help on a gigabit network

 

42 minutes ago, mlow said:

Like I can't just get a random card and expect unRaid to work and see the drives

You can, unraid should work with all raid cards that work under linux. 

 

42 minutes ago, mlow said:

I still can't find out information as to whether unRaid actually supports

It does, but that card suck for a os like unraid, if you can get the h200 in there. That lets it work as a hba and is faster than the 6/i. Also the 6/i has a 2tb limit.

 

 

[mlow]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

most raid cards allow you to add drives to a raid 5 or 6.

 

Id stick with a hba though. You can do raid in software and its normally better than hardware raid for your use.

 

You can with snapraid and mergerfs, but its a pain and id stay away from it unless into the linux thing. Unraid gives you all of this in a premade distro. 

 

won't help on a gigabit network

 

You can, unraid should work with all raid cards that work under linux. 

 

It does, but that card suck for a os like unraid, if you can get the h200 in there. That lets it work as a hba and is faster than the 6/i. Also the 6/i has a 2tb limit.

 

 

I managed to snag a NetApp DS4234 for $122 with all the trays and 2 psu 2 controller with 24 imposers for sata. All in all I think a good buy. Was pretty close by as well so shipping is 1 day for cheap. Got an H200e I'm eyeballing for cheap as well.

[VolkovBrad67]

I've been using Proxmox and UnRaid for about 2 years, so I'll be following the thread, let me know if you have any questions. I haven't messed too much with Proxmox since I first configured it though, as I only use it for some headless servers (JIRA / PHP / GitLab). I do however use and keep up to the latest UnRaid news daily, it's a fantastic OS and pretty much changed the way I work / live.

[domandric034]

On 07. 06. 2017. at 5:51 PM, mlow said:

Hi new to the forums, but a long time channel follower. So I'm finally getting around to making a proper server setup at home, by that I mean not using some re-purposed machine that just barely gets by with the task.

 

Now I'm not going to jump into it all at once, I want to test the waters, and I want to do it on the cheap. So that means I'm going incremental with it, but with the end result hopefully being a solid solution that isn't janky af.

 

So, I do have tons of parts ordered from eBay(holy smokes the used server market is cheap). Before I get on with the goodies I snagged for what I think was a steal, let's lay all cards on the table as far as what I have right now and what it does currently and then get more into where I want to be.

 

The Old

 

Current hardware: Dell AIO(i5, 8gb ram, 300gb internal...touchscreen), a 24 port D-Link gb managed switch($50 eBay) and a 4 bay IcyDock(usb 3 and eSata). The dock has a 4tb drive in it as well as a few smaller ones, connected via usb 3 to the Dell. No fancy drive stuff just folders. Dell is running server windows 2012 r2, but for no particular reason at all. A few power failures ago the internal single blower fan failed, causing some fantastic overheating problems. So I DIY'd a fan setup on it. No UPS.  I'm cheap.

 

 

Current software:  Sonarr/CouchPotato/SabNZBd/Plex combo, znc running in cgywin(irc bouncer), a few game servers(mostly windows dependant), Photon Enterprise(windows dependant), bonobo for git server, bits and bobs. Splashtop for remote desktop.

Overall pretty boring, git is for projects I sometimes rarely work on in what little free time I have.

 

New server time!

Ok so after being out of work for far too long, I'm now employed, great because now I have disposable income(however small) instead of none. At this point, if you have read this far, you're probably wondering what exactly this post even is. Is it a brag post, a build log, a plea for sympathy, a server gore post??? Well, maybe it's a couple of those, but it's mostly a bunch of details to lead into questions I have that I feel need a bit of backstory to make sense. So what follows is what I have bought so far.

 

First is what I think was the big deal snag.

Dell PowerEdge R710 2x X5675 Perc 6/i 2U 2.5"x8

for ...$155 shipped. So I made the call the get the 8 bay 2.5" one, mostly because there were basically no 3.5" to be found on eBay, the deal was good IMO and listing ending soon. Could I have waited and got a 3.5" for close to the same price, IDK maybe, but with listings with similar specs for $200 more I pulled the trigger. This may bite me in the short term, but long term I think this was a solid deal, really wish it had 3.5" drives tho now that I'm getting into things.

(eBay listing photos, not mine)

 

2x 146gb 15k sas 2.5" drives - $11 ea on eBay

I know, used drives. These guys are the 'just get things running' drives. I also picked up some drive caddies for these off eBay.

 

24GB (6X4GB) DDR3 ECC REG 1333Mhz - $39 on eBay

 

I went back and forth of whether I should go for bigger capacity sticks, but the price is really prohibitive. With 4GB sticks I can max the R710 at 72GB, I think that's enough room to expand for now...

 

Researching software:

So while I'm waiting patiently(or not) for these items to be mishandled by the postal service I've been researching what I should actually run on it. I am 90% certain I will go with unRaid at this point in time. For me the selling point is the whole Docker thing combined with the ability to do VM's easily and the storage options/management looks a treat as well. However, this is new territory for me and I'm unsure if it's the best hammer for my nails. Feedback needed.

 

The... still up in the air stuff:

Speaking of storage.... Let's get back to that whole 2.5" thing. So currently I'm using an IcyDock 4 bay with some 3.5" drives in it, connectivity is provided by USB 3.0. So far I have been 99% sure of what I'm doing, here is where it all falls apart. I have no experience with unRaid, and even less experience with storage options and connectivity with server hardware. I've got a 2U server with 2.5" sas/sata bays, clearly I can't put my 3.5" storage hard drives in it. It has USB ports, but definitely not USB 3. It has PCI slots, tho I'm not even sure if they are PCIe honestly. But it has 4 of them! Maybe I can get a USB 3 card? Will that even work? Will unRaid let me assign those drives to the array? Is that dumb? The dock also has an eSata port, if that makes for more options, I'm not even sure. What research I have done on the unRaid reddit and forums shows that the general suggestion is a SAS enclosure/expansion. My first thought is 'that sounds expensive'.... I also have no idea what that even entails hardware/software wise to implement. So feedback on that is very welcome. I am assuming I need to get some kind of PCI card for external SAS, some kind of fancy SAS hard drive enclosure, and some fancy cables? The problem is that sounds like it's going to run me more than I've already spent on the hardware in the mail, and honestly I've pretty much run dry already. Have I foolishly bitten off more than I can chew?! 

 

So as it stands right now, it looks like I've got a solid setup for a server but lack any kind of concrete plan for storage...ouch. ....Not to mention I still know nothing about UPS's....and how I should go about that.

 

 

So there it is as of now folks. I've got what I believe to be some cool hardware in the mail. I've only spent $225, and I've got myself a 24GB ram dual X5675 setup with some basic temp storage for me to play around with some software on while I wait for my next paycheck to solve the storage situation for reals. Basically, I need to figure out a way on the cheap to do 3.5" drives externally to this server in a way that unRaid will see and let me assign as an array. From the looks of it that rules out my current USB dock solution, and I don't know anything else about external storage. So thanks for reading, please give me some feedback and ideas. 

ESXi with VM's of Windows Server and Ubuntu server is good option

[mlow]

I'll add more details as I settle in with the hardware, but aside from a couple hiccups almost everything is working and ready for more drives. So far I've only added a few but it's working, I'm just optimizing and getting used to unRaids web GUI. It's really good and the dockers list is massive and basically two clicks to install something. I tested handbrake and plex so far, works a treat.

 

The 15k SAS 146GB drives for cache may or may not work out in the end, I may go with a couple SSD. I can already saturate them, and while I initially thought 146GB would be enough it's just a little too small. Though right now I am installing and copying a massive amount of stuff, I suspect once I reach a steady state of the system it may be fine.

 

I'm using mode 0 on the Dell Power edges 4 GB ports to a managed switch, and I am having a bit of trouble configuring it. I thought it would be mostly set and forget but it's turning out a bit more complicated than that. Either that or I'm bottlenecked by the cache drives.

 

Either way once I get a few real drives in it and not the couple I had laying around I'll post more details on how it went.