Advise for a unraid NAS build.

[Kapoue]

Hello

 

My studio doing 4k video and very long timelapse (few years on some project).

I work in a Mac OS environment and I want to stay with it. I use external (USB 3) and internal storage (Mac Pro 2012 workstation) with raid5. Without our backup I currently have 2 Raid5 volume : 12To internal & 6To external.

 

I want to increase and centralize my storage with a unraid serveur with 10G ethernet connection.

 

I want to re-use a old PC workstation as unraid serveur.

 

Below the configuration of the old workstation : 

 

CPU : Intel 3930K 6 Core 3.2GHz CPU 

CPU cooling : Corsair Hydro Series H80i

Power Supply : Corsair HX - 850W

Motherboard : Asus Sabertooth X79 

Memory : 32GB Corsair Vengeance  4 x 8GB

PC Case : Fractal Design Define R4 - Arctic White

SSD : OCZ 128Go SSD 2.5" Vertex 4

GPU : I have 3 old GPU that can fit in this PC.

GeForce GTX 660 or GeForce GTX 580 or GeForce GTX 970

 

Storage capability of the motherboard : 

 

Intel® X79 chipset

2 x SATA 6Gb/s

4 x SATA 3Gb/s

Marvell® PCIe 9128 controller 

2 x SATA 6Gb/s

 

My questions : 

 

May be this old PC is to much for a unraid serveur, we can use a much power efficient PC?

 

If we use this old PC do I need to add a additional sas raid card?

 

Is it possible to use NVME on PCIE card with this motherboard? Better for caching?

 

If I read the spec of the motherboard correctly I can fit 8 HD inside? 

 

Can we have Raid with 2 different SATA controller?

 

Is there a better solution?

 

 

Thank you very much for all the answer. Sorry for all the mistake english is not my native language.

[Bacon soup]

1 hour ago, Kapoue said:

May be this old PC is to much for a unraid serveur, we can use a much power efficient PC?

 

This CPU will run at its lowest frequency and power setting when used as a fileserver. Look at it's idle power usage. I think you will find it is quite low. You might find you can disable some CPU cores in BIOS to save power. Remove the GPU to save power.

1 hour ago, Kapoue said:

If I read the spec of the motherboard correctly I can fit 8 HD inside? 

 

two of your sata ports are external. They are on the backplate. You should be able to use them.

1 hour ago, Kapoue said:

Can we have Raid with 2 different SATA controller?

 

you have to use software raid across different controllers. Your motherboard will not raid across them.

1 hour ago, Kapoue said:

If we use this old PC do I need to add a additional sas raid card?

 

na just use software raid.

 

 

 

 

[2FA]

I don't think that unRAID is a good fit for this unless you have a decent sized SSD cache. You'll have good write speeds to the server but once your data moves off the SSD cache to the array, then you're limited by the speed of an individual mechanical drive.

[Kapoue]

Thank you 2FA and Bacon soup.

 

Is there is a way to have more fast storage without a thunderbolt interface.

 

I was thinking buying a macmini with 10G erthernet and a thuntherbolt tower? Any other idea?

[Salacious B Crum]

just to add you should ditch the Marvell controller it does not play nice with unRAID add an LSI card instead

[Kapoue]

Is this totally stupid or possible. I have a soft raid licence, I can create a big raid 5 volume.

[Nick7]

If you intend to use pcie riser, use x16 one, as one in picture you put is x1. You need x8 (8 lanes) for proper SAS RAID controller.

I'd just stick RAID card into motherboard directly....

[Kapoue]

On 10/17/2019 at 12:10 PM, Nick7 said:

If you intend to use pcie riser, use x16 one, as one in picture you put is x1. You need x8 (8 lanes) for proper SAS RAID controller.

I'd just stick RAID card into motherboard directly....

The goal is to build o storage tower independent of my computer.

[Nick7]

11 hours ago, Kapoue said:

The goal is to build o storage tower independent of my computer.

Ah.. now that I look more closely to pic you posted - yes, that'll work

Only one thing to take notice of - is where to connect SAS cables from SAS card to expander card - as it has specified ports for connecting to SAS card (and that will generally not be external port).