Unraid build planning....lots of questions

[bimmerman]

Hi all,

 

Cross posting from the NAS subsection as I just discovered this section and this might be more applicable here. I just built a Ryzen 3600 based system, which has left my old trusty X58 rig pretty much collecting dust. I'm debating repurposing it for an Unraid/Freenas style build, as I think it'd at least have some utility there. But, before I do, I have a few questions where I'm uncertain of what the right route to go is. I'd appreciate any insights! Even if the answer is 'buy a Synology'.

 

My goal with this system is to primarily be a NAS, but to also play around with virtualization and maybe Plex too. The NAS functionality is key, the rest are nice to haves but it's why I'm primarily leaning towards Unraid. Budget is ~$5-600 or so, ideally for drives.

 

Format below is organized somewhat by section, each bullet point is something I'm curious about for planning.

 

Current (idle, unused) System:

Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R rev2.0 + Xeon X5675 + 24 GB rams + Coolermaster AIO

R9 290 GPU

2x 1TB + 1x 2TB storage HDD

1x 950 Pro NVMe as PCIe boot drive

850W power supply

HAF 932 case

 

Desired changes to use as NAS/VM/Server box

Revert to stock clocks from current 4.5GHz overclock

add 4-5 NAS HDDs for an array

add SSDs for cache drive(s)

use Unraid for array managment, virtualize Win 10 at least one instance

 

but...before I do........here are some questions! I'd appreciate any insight you all can provide.

Hardware bottleneck questions.

• Specifically, Sata II vs III. My motherboard does not have the best storage controllers-- all the Sata ports are behind the chipset, which definitely isn't modern-system-fast. I have  a bunch of Sata 2, and two Sata 3 ports, all sharing the chipset link bandwidth to the CPU.
• Is this an issue for HDD-based Raid 5?
• While I have a bunch of excess PCIe lanes, PCIe 2.0 is all I have on the board, and 16x of it will likely be for GPU. That leaves 16x remaining since the other slot sharing bandwidth with the GPU is blocked by it.

 

Network bottleneck questions.

• The motherboard has a single onboard 1Gb nic. I don't have fancy networking equipment (currently), but do have a multiport switch.
• Would it be a benefit to add in a PCIe network card for teaming/link aggregation?
• Or am I unlikely to saturate the 1GbE link with maybe 2-3 concurrent device requests? 

 

Storage setup questions.

• I'm looking at adding 4-5 4TB NAS HDD drives in a Raid 5 or whatever ZFS/BTRFS does, maybe paired with a couple small SSDs for caching.
• The system currently has 1x 2TB HDD + 2x 1TB HDD (old!) + 1x 256GB 950 Pro NVMe boot drive (yep!). I am not tied to reusing these for the main storage array due to age, but maybe the NVMe for Cache and the others for backup/spares?
• Is it better to add another PCIe card for M.2 cache, or to run all drives via SATA? Cheaper, certainly, to run Sata drives.
• Is there a benefit to running 4 vs 5 drives in the storage array?
  • Reason I ask is that, should this system fail AND the drives will be transferable, most (Ryzen) ITX systems I've seen are hard-capped at 2x M.2 and 4x SATA, and that would likely be the replacement build's form factor.
  • Why Ryzen ITX? Because my current 3600 is likely to be replaced with a 3950X in the next few months, so....will have a CPU floating around. Not tied to this idea, if there's a better solution though, for the replacement NAS CPU/Mobo, but it IS the easy button currently.
• If the array is built with 5 drives at first, can the array be shrunk (assuming it's not full of data) to 4 drives should the underlying system fail and the new system doesn't have enough SATA? (see above question)
• Does Unraid/Freenas play well with PCIe SATA cards (to get more ports) when the array is split between the mobo-SATA and PCIe-SATA?

 

Failure tolerance questions.

• Let's say I put 4-5 drives in the rig for the storage array, two cache drives, and am running Unraid, when the old Xeon and Mobo decide to let out the magic smoke.
• Can I transfer the drives to a new platform (likely this Ryzen 5) without losing stored data?
• Or will losing the CPU/Mobo mean the array is unreadable and needs to be completely started over from wiped/blank drives? This is by far my biggest concern.

 

Virtualization questions.

• How does virtualization on Unraid work with respect to storage drives? Does each VM need its own drive that is separate from the cache/storage arrays?
• Do the array and VM-drives, if separate, need to be on different controllers?

 

Expanding existing system question

• I'm not sure if this is doable, but do external enclosures exist for 5-7 SATA/M.2 drives that aren't a full blown NAS? My new case (Meshify C) doesn't have room to transfer the drives from this hypothetical build (HAF 932) in case of total failure. Being able to connect the drives to some sort of break out enclosure would be great, which could connect via USB-C/A/ PCIe / who knows.

 

Hardware age -- old stuff is old.

• The core of my X58 system has stayed with me since buying in 2010. Mobo, Power supply, case, 2x 1TB drivers are since 2010. CPU/RAM/cooler/GPU/storage has changed over time.
• I am moderately concerned that the age of my components will cause an eventual failure-- while there's no way to prevent this, I'm flagging it as a concern that may mean it's not wise to do this, depending on fault tolerance.

This system won't be up 24/7 due to hilariously bad power consumption from old tech. This'll be more a backup server and media when I want it device-- will that pose any issues w/r/t Unraid/ Unraid-VMs?

 

Thanks all! I tried to organize it, but TL;DR: lots of questions in the build planning stages for repurposing an old computer for NAS/VM/Server duty.

[samcool55]

Those are a lot of questions but I'll try to answer them (i have an unraid server myself, just so you know)

 

Quote

• Specifically, Sata II vs III. My motherboard does not have the best storage controllers-- all the Sata ports are behind the chipset, which definitely isn't modern-system-fast. I have  a bunch of Sata 2, and two Sata 3 ports, all sharing the chipset link bandwidth to the CPU

Sata wise, you are fine. Most HDD's top out around 150MB/s, enough to saturate 1gbit link so unless you are planning to go multi-gigabit network wise, no worry.

Quote

• Is this an issue for HDD-based Raid 5?

This will probably answer a few questions but, what unraid does it allows you to create a sort of raid array (not exactly a real one, i think it's XFS, not sure) that allows 1 or 2 drives to die at any point (in your case probably 1).

I will use my array as an example. I currently have 4 drives, all 4TB, 3 of them are normal disks in the array and fully usable. The 4th drive is a parity drive which gives me 0 usable space BUT it makes the array redundant for 1 disk. This means that 1 disk can die at any time and i lose 0 data.

Now, the array is quite flexible. If i want to add a 5th 4TB drive, i can. Just plug it in, add it to the array and i have another 4TB available.

Unraid allows up to 2 parity drives so if i want to increase the redundancy i can add another parity drive and be perfectly fine.

 

Little note, the biggest drives HAVE to be parity drives. So in my case they are all 4TB drives, i can't add an 8TB drive because my parity drive is only 4TB. Of course i can swap the parity drive for an 8TB one and then add another 8TB drive for storage but this means i need to buy 2 drives.

Quote

Would it be a benefit to add in a PCIe network card for teaming/link aggregation?

You WILL saturate that 1gbit link easily because you can basically read and write as fast as the disk you are using in the array can handle.

That said, i have no experience with link aggregation. To keep it simple I would just go the 10gbit route.

Quote

Let's say I put 4-5 drives in the rig for the storage array, two cache drives, and am running Unraid, when the old Xeon and Mobo decide to let out the magic smoke.

I am absolutely NOT sure about this but because unraid doesn't really install anything a platform change shouldn't be too difficult. As long as the array finds the disks again it should be fine but again, NOT sure about that. The only "big" problem i know you could have is when the USB drive fails because the key you buy is linked to some unique code of the USB drive.

 

I'm a bit tired, it's quite a bit of work answering everything but i'll try to answer more after a little break

 

[2FA]

Just to be clear, unRAID is effectively a JBOD array that has an extra disk (or two) that adds a layer of parity. There is zero striping done so there isn't disk performance increase, really write speeds can be worse because of the parity. On the flip side, if a drive fails, it doesn't affect the data on the other drives, you would only lose the data on that specific disk if you couldn't rebuild it for whatever reason.

[samcool55]

'Kay, round 2

Quote

How does virtualization on Unraid work with respect to storage drives? Does each VM need its own drive that is separate from the cache/storage arrays?

A VM is basically 2 files.

1 is an XML file that's basically the complete config of the VM so Unraid knows what it needs to do with it.

The other one is the virtual HDD, which is 1 file. Nothing more than that. You can put it wherever you want! Just on the array, on a specific drive of the array or on a specific cache drive, it's all possible!

I had my VM's originally on the array but that was slow AF so i moved them to the cache drive and now they run fine! So while you can put them on the array, i recommend them putting them either on an unassigned drive or a cache drive (SSD is basically a must).

 

Also, talking about cache drives and unassigned drives. There's a difference!

So, cache drives are basically a bridge between whatever comes in and your array. If you copy files to your array and you have a cache drive, they will be placed on the cache drive first and depending how you schedule the mover whatever is on the cache drive will be copied to the array eventually.

That said, you can allow certain shares to ONLY use the cache or skip the cache completely.

Just know that files on the cache are not redundant so if your cache drive dies and contained data that wasn't on the array yet, it's lost.

 

Unassigned drives are basically drives that are separate from the array and available for you to do whatever you want. If you want a random drive to do whatever but don't want to attach it to the array in any way (so not part of the array or as a cache drive) going the unassigned route is perfect for that.

[bimmerman]

Awesome, thanks for the help @samcool55 and @2FA!

 

I'm not sure Unraid is the right solution for me vs something like Freenas, but the VMs are certainly intriguing. The cache drive, as I understand it, ultimately is still bottlenecked by the platter drive write speed, no? Unless the cache drive is greater in size than what you're transferring, I don't see how it wouldn't eventually fill up and slow file transfers to a (relative) crawl.

 

Super helpful, I really appreciate it. Much to think about.