Recommendations on support for 22 drives.

[Spontaneocus]

I am currently building a new case for a nas that I am looking to build. Overall system will have four ssd's in raid 10 for the OS drives and 18 mechanical drives. Looking for recommendations on cards etc that will support 18 mechanical + 4 ssd drives.

 

mj

[Windows7ge]

Are you trying for Hardware RAID or Software RAID? Which OS?

[Spontaneocus]

It's less of a NAS and more of a storage server, even though storage will be its primary function. Was thinking unraid which would allow me to setup certain things in containers but also to setup and run a few VMs if required. 

[Windows7ge]

57 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

It's less of a NAS and more of a storage server, even though storage will be its primary function. Was thinking unraid which would allow me to setup certain things in containers but also to setup and run a few VMs if required. 

So Software RAID? (Technically UNRAID isn't RAID)

 

I can recommend HBA's such as the LSI 9207-8i or LSI 9201-16i both have been solid for my storage servers.

 

If you have a tight budget and don't really need a SASII link per disk you can look into SAS Expanders. Connect the SSD's directly to the motherboard or HBA then all your spinning drives to the SAS Expander. Performance won't be hurt significantly (or at all) and it'd be a cost saver.

[Spontaneocus]

On 11/15/2019 at 7:41 PM, Windows7ge said:

So Software RAID? (Technically UNRAID isn't RAID)

 

I can recommend HBA's such as the LSI 9207-8i or LSI 9201-16i both have been solid for my storage servers.

 

If you have a tight budget and don't really need a SASII link per disk you can look into SAS Expanders. Connect the SSD's directly to the motherboard or HBA then all your spinning drives to the SAS Expander. Performance won't be hurt significantly (or at all) and it'd be a cost saver.

I had a look at the  LSI 9201-16i's - seems to be exactly what I am looking for. 

 

Thinking about making the underlying processor something like a Ryzen 5 2600x, just not sure whether it will be able to handle running 2 windows VM's at the same time as plex in a docker and general dutiies of being a NAS. What you think?

[Windows7ge]

54 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

I had a look at the  LSI 9201-16i's - seems to be exactly what I am looking for. 

 

Thinking about making the underlying processor something like a Ryzen 5 2600x, just not sure whether it will be able to handle running 2 windows VM's at the same time as plex in a docker and general dutiies of being a NAS. What you think?

6C/12T @ 3.6GHz. Depending on what the Windows VM's are doing they should handle that no problem. I don't have extensive knowledge on PLEX but I've been told when it's transcoding high ress videos it does eat quite a bit of the CPU. I'm not sure if it's heavily single or multi-threaded but the high core performance should help that.

[Spontaneocus]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

6C/12T @ 3.6GHz. Depending on what the Windows VM's are doing they should handle that no problem. I don't have extensive knowledge on PLEX but I've been told when it's transcoding high ress videos it does eat quite a bit of the CPU. I'm not sure if it's heavily single or multi-threaded but the high core performance should help that.

Well from my understanding, plex has the ability to hardware encode, so might shove something video card wise in and pass it through to the VM, offload the transcoding to that. Although to be honest with you. I prefer to use Tdarr to transcode my video files rather than plex. That way all of the files on my drive are the same format. Which will actually be what one of the VMs are for. 

[Windows7ge]

17 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

Well from my understanding, plex has the ability to hardware encode, so might shove something video card wise in and pass it through to the VM, offload the transcoding to that. Although to be honest with you. I prefer to use Tdarr to transcode my video files rather than plex. That way all of the files on my drive are the same format. Which will actually be what one of the VMs are for. 

What core components are you going to be using if you don't mind me asking?

[Spontaneocus]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

What core components are you going to be using if you don't mind me asking?

Still up in the air. 

[Windows7ge]

7 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

Still up in the air. 

Well, make sure it supports PCI_e device pass-though if you want to give a GPU to a VM. Not all hardware supports that function.

[Spontaneocus]

13 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Well, make sure it supports PCI_e device pass-though if you want to give a GPU to a VM. Not all hardware supports that function.

IOMMU virtualisation right?

[Windows7ge]

19 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

IOMMU virtualisation right?

IOMMU groups. Yep.

 

If you go with Intel you need VT-d support. This is a CPU feature.

If you go with AMD you need your South Bridge to support enabling IOMMU groups.

 

What OS were you planning on having host this? I think a RAID10 for your boot drive is unnecessary depending on how you plan to set this up.

[Spontaneocus]

Will definately be AMD - I'm "one of them" who stuck with AMD. LOL

[Spontaneocus]

Having to build the rack case myself because I just cannot find one I like which has enough space for what I need, but vertically rather than front to back (I have a short depth rack). The choices are quite pathetic. So I am aiming to build a 6u short depth case which should allow me to go full ATX mounted vertically. Also gives a hell of a lot of space for placing drive caddies in rows down the front for hot plug and play (or just easy access).