Feedback: unRAID media + workstation

[Niluan]

Hi Guys and girls.

 

Im looking for some feedback on my future setup.

 

I looking for a unRAID setup. unRAID should be used for media server (Plex, mostly local streams or direct streams), and my personal Windows installation for study and games.

 

Im not that good to raid controllers, and not that experienced with unRAID. So Im also looking for some help to this. I'm looking at LSI 9200-8i on eBay but I don't know if it will run with unraid without problems.

 

I currently have a DS1515 + which contains four WD RED disks. That setup will no longer be used and will therefore move the four disks to unRAID. In addition, I want to move my SSD hard drives from current computer to cache disks in unRAID and buy a NVMe disk for my Windows installation.

 

The hardware so far is:
Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-E
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER STRIX
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 32GB
SCREEN: ASUS 27" Skærm ROG SWIFT PG279Q
PSU: BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 11 (1000W)

CASE: Corsair Obsidian 750D

 

HDD/SSD:
SSD #1: Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD M.2 2280 - 500GB (My thoughts are that it should be dedicated to Windows)
SSD #2: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (Cache drive)
SSD #3: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (Cache drive)
HDD #1: WD Red 4TB (To shared folders)
HDD #2: WD Red 4TB (To shared folders)
HDD #3: WD Red 4TB (To shared folders)
HDD #4: WD RED 4TB (Parity)

[Jarsky]

1 hour ago, Niluan said:

I'm looking at LSI 9200-8i on eBay but I don't know if it will run with unraid without problems.

The controller works just fine on UnRAID. I believe off memory its just a non retail 9211-8i. Its still a SAS2008 card anyway. 

Just make sure its flashed (or you flash it) with the P20 IT firmware

 

1 hour ago, Niluan said:

In addition, I want to move my SSD hard drives from current computer to cache disks in unRAID

You don't necessarily need cache, it's only a write cache; it gives you no performance benefit for reading, but If you have the drives spare then no harm. 

 

1 hour ago, Niluan said:

and buy a NVMe disk for my Windows installation.

You'll want to pass through the NVMe controller for the best performance from the drive, rather than using the VirtIO controller. 

SpaceInvader One has a good video on the work around to make this happen

 

 

1 hour ago, Niluan said:

Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-E
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER STRIX

 

With AMD you'll need to enable the advanced IOMMU settings in your BIOS. It should be under CPU Configuration and something called AMD CBS, depending on your BIOS

That will allow you to pass through the Nvidia GPU. 

 

 

[Niluan]

Thanks for the reply Jarsky!

Quote

The controller works just fine on UnRAID. I believe off memory its just a non retail 9211-8i. Its still a SAS2008 card anyway. 

Just make sure its flashed (or you flash it) with the P20 IT firmware

Thank you for information, I've looked at the following: eBay Link    -    It should fine for my needs, right?

 

What type of cable should i use?

 

Quote

You don't necessarily need cache, it's only a write cache; it gives you no performance benefit for reading, but If you have the drives spare then no harm. 

If it does not provide any performance benefits, what could be their purpose? Just part of shared folders?

 

Quote

You'll want to pass through the NVMe controller for the best performance from the drive, rather than using the VirtIO controller. SpaceInvader One has a good video on the work around to make this happen

Thanks, I have been watching some of SpaceInvader's videos, but I haven't seen the one you link to. I had definitely overlooked that upon installation. Are there other videos you could recommend?

 

What do you think about the hardware, it is alright for my use case? Thinking about give my Windows VM for gaming 8 of the cores.

[Mihle]

Unraid cache drive can usually also be used for a place for dockers and VMs to store non media data if you want that (for example temporary files or files for the dockers itself or whatever), that is usually not much, but the HDDs will be used less.

[Salacious B Crum]

10 hours ago, Niluan said:

Thanks for the reply Jarsky!

Thank you for information, I've looked at the following: eBay Link    -    It should fine for my needs, right?

 

What type of cable should i use?

 

If it does not provide any performance benefits, what could be their purpose? Just part of shared folders?

 

Thanks, I have been watching some of SpaceInvader's videos, but I haven't seen the one you link to. I had definitely overlooked that upon installation. Are there other videos you could recommend?

 

What do you think about the hardware, it is alright for my use case? Thinking about give my Windows VM for gaming 8 of the cores.

Depending on your setup the cache provides a fast (relatively speaking) place to dump files then on a pre-defined schedule usually at night it can upload to your spinners, I keep my appdata and docker files there you can also leverage a bit of performance by using the unassigned device plugin with some ssd's if that's something that is needed

[Jarsky]

18 hours ago, Niluan said:

Thanks for the reply Jarsky!

Thank you for information, I've looked at the following: eBay Link    -    It should fine for my needs, right?

Yup that card will work just fine. 

 

18 hours ago, Niluan said:

What type of cable should i use?

For connecting direct to hdd's you want SFF8087 to SATA breakout cables

18 hours ago, Niluan said:

If it does not provide any performance benefits, what could be their purpose? Just part of shared folders?

There could be performance benefits for writing if you have more than gigabit, but typically hdd's today can do the ~110MB/s of synchronous writing to saturate gigabit. 

 

18 hours ago, Niluan said:

Thanks, I have been watching some of SpaceInvader's videos, but I haven't seen the one you link to. I had definitely overlooked that upon installation. Are there other videos you could recommend?

I havent watched too many videos, but if you look through his stuff hes one of the better for UnRAID videos.

 

18 hours ago, Niluan said:

What do you think about the hardware, it is alright for my use case? Thinking about give my Windows VM for gaming 8 of the cores.

Hardware should be fine, my server is similar with an ASRock X570 Taichi, 3950x & RTX2080Super. 

Nvidia can be a bit funny about being passed through to a VM when its the only GPU, I don't know too much of how to do that

[Niluan]

14 hours ago, mrbilky said:

Depending on your setup the cache provides a fast (relatively speaking) place to dump files then on a pre-defined schedule usually at night it can upload to your spinners, I keep my appdata and docker files there you can also leverage a bit of performance by using the unassigned device plugin with some ssd's if that's something that is needed

Thanks for the feedback! :)
 - My plan is to run some Docker containers and a VM with Ubuntu with OpenVPN Client, to pass data from Docker containers through. So locate appdata, VMs and Docker on them. So could boost them with it SSD's. :)

[Niluan]

Quote

For connecting direct to hdd's you want SFF8087 to SATA breakout cables

Okay, thanks!

Quote

There could be performance benefits for writing if you have more than gigabit, but typically hdd's today can do the ~110MB/s of synchronous writing to saturate gigabit. 

Cool. I'm moving into a new apartment soon. There I will get 1000/500 Fiber connection but i don't know if there is ethernet in the rooms so if I have to run on WiFi, so the HDD speed will not be where the bottleneck.

Quote

I havent watched too many videos, but if you look through his stuff hes one of the better for UnRAID videos.

Okay, I have to go through his library!

Quote

Hardware should be fine, my server is similar with an ASRock X570 Taichi, 3950x & RTX2080Super. 

Nvidia can be a bit funny about being passed through to a VM when its the only GPU, I don't know too much of how to do that

Spaceinvader's latest new video is about advanced GPU passthrough, so hope it doesn't tease.

 

I'm thinking about giving follow cores:
Windows installation (Gaming/Study): 6 Cores

Plex: 4 Cores

unRAID and Docker: 1 Core (Shared?)

Ubuntu OpenVPN Client: 1 Core

 

it should be allrigth to run the latest game titles, and running Plex right?

 

[jazzy192]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:48 AM, Jarsky said:

Yup that card will work just fine. 

 

For connecting direct to hdd's you want SFF8087 to SATA breakout cables

There could be performance benefits for writing if you have more than gigabit, but typically hdd's today can do the ~110MB/s of synchronous writing to saturate gigabit. 

 

I havent watched too many videos, but if you look through his stuff hes one of the better for UnRAID videos.

 

Hardware should be fine, my server is similar with an ASRock X570 Taichi, 3950x & RTX2080Super. 

Nvidia can be a bit funny about being passed through to a VM when its the only GPU, I don't know too much of how to do that

Hey,

 

I have the same board (X570 Taichi) but cannot get anything to pass through. Just wondering what BIOS settings you have and also what version BIOS?

 

Cheers

[Jarsky]

13 hours ago, jazzy192 said:

Hey,

 

I have the same board (X570 Taichi) but cannot get anything to pass through. Just wondering what BIOS settings you have and also what version BIOS?

 

Cheers

I have the latest version P2.70 but it was working fine before that. 

Make sure that SVM is enabled (which is virtualisation), then enable IOMMU in

Advanced > AMD CBS > NBIO Common Options. Set IOMMU to Enabled. 

Also make sure that Enable AER Cap, and ACS Enable is set to Auto.