unraid setup

[Ricotta Elmar]

hello guys,

 

i have 0 knowledge of all these kind of stuff,

i ask alot questions without doing any research that i don't understand,

 

i want to move from my qnap nas to a unraid to make a custom nas,

my left over hardware from previous build,

 

current hardware
motherboard: asus rog strix gaming-e x570

cpu: amd ryzen 7 3700x

gpu: gigabyte aorus 1080ti

memory: dual channel 32 gb ddr4 3600mhz

gpu 2 nvidia gt440 probaly in slot 2 for 2nd vm

storage:

              6x 14tb toshiba enterprise (mg07aca14te)

              4x 10tb wd red (wd100efax)
              2x 2tb wd red (wd20efrx)

              2x 2tb wd green ssd (wd200t2b0b-00ys70) (will be cache)

             

              i want to give these drives also another use ,

              some 3.5" hdd's

              1x 1tb toshiba (dt01aca100)

              1x 640gb wd blue (wd6600aaks)

              2x 500gb seagate pipeline hd 2 (st3500414cs)

              1x 500gb seagate barracuda 7200.10 (st3500630as)

              1x 250gb hitachi (hds721025cla382)

              1x 160gb wd 1600 (lba 312500000)

             

              some 2.5" hdds

              1x 1tb wd blue (wd10spzx-24)

              1x 500gb hitachi (hts545050a7e380)

              1x 80gb (Hitachi hts541680j9sa00)

 

but now my questions,

1. unraid have 2 parity right? so how would i config this when i use 2x 2tb, 4x 10tb, 6x 14tb, and some left overs ,

    do this mean i have to use 2 of the largest drivers i have ? like 2x 14b ?

    or do i have to buy drives that are larger than the 14tb's like 18-20tb for parity?

 

2. since i am most likely gonna use 2 gpu's,

    i need to use a hba because i have lots drives ,

    but if i use a pci-e 3.0 x8 in a pci-e 4.0 x4, and a expander, is that a bad idea?

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

UnRAID allows the user to use one or more drives for parity.  For every parity drive you have, you can survive one total drive failure without data loss.  You can do 1, 2 or more parity drives if you wish.

The parity drives must be as large or larger than your largest storage disk.  In your case that would be 14TB drives.

 

It'd make more sense to use the two GPUs and adapt the GT440 in a PCIE x1 slot either by modifying it or a bracket/riser, then using an HBA in the second expanded slot.

[Kilrah]

Seems using the 1TB and smaller drives would be more trouble than it's worth and just add failure points.

[Ricotta Elmar]

well i probaly have to use a riser becasue the gpu is a x16 ... and nvme is in the way or the bios battery,
while my aorus 1080ti is like 2.5/3 slot i cant even use the  pcie x1 where the battery is,
also i was thinking ot use 2 parity for the 6x14tb and 4x 10tb  and if unraid have some tool to allow another parity , i would use that for the left overs,

 

 

[Ricotta Elmar]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Seems using the 1TB and smaller drives would be more trouble than it's worth and just add failure points.

yeah i guess so , but what should i do with them ? maby use the 4x 500gb and 2x 1tb and leave the rest out of it ?

[Kilrah]

Sell/dump them/keep them for other builds/spares, they're essentially useless... You've got 130TB with the first 14 drives, makes no sense to add another bunch to get a couple more TB.

Also the old drives will likely have lower performance, if it was me I'd use the 14 and 10TB and just forget about the rest.

[Liam Ianto]

I've just finishing upgrading my server aswell. Your parity drives are for backup CerealExperimentsLain said. They have to be as big as your larges drive in the array.

I've inserted an image to give you a little idea on how the parity works but it's a bit more complicated.

When you start adding loads of drives you run the risk of killing them all with vibrations. I chose Ironwolf Pro drives, they're rated to be in a case with up to 24 similar drives. For instance if I went with the normal Ironwolf Nas drives they would only be rated for 8. So with you sticking in so many drives that aren't server spec'd like the WD blue drives or the Barracuda drives you run the risk of them failing and losing the data on them (if your parity isn't set up) and you run the risk of losing some of your bigger drives if you add too many of these worse ones. They vibrate more and can handle less essentially.

 

With the smaller one's I would suggest you either smash them to bits or give them a very good data scrub and get rid of them. Stick with the 14TB drives because they're very good for this use case being designed to stay on all year round. The beauty of unraid is you can just add more and more over time without having to move large chunks of data around.

 

 

As for the GPU thing, put your GT440 on the very bottom slot of the board. It won't need that much bandwidth, you could even set your BIOS settings to PCIE gen 2 for it if it's an option and it still wouldn't hurt the card. I'd prioritize your HBA because that's going to be doing more work for you with your data than what an 8 year old graphics card be wanting to do.

 

[Ricotta Elmar]

oh guys, i am looking for a hba that work well with unraid,
but what should i do?
8port hba+ expander ?
16/24port hba ?

also should i use the pci-e slot 2 8x or pci-e 3 slot 4x
putting it in the 2nd pci-e slot limits my gpu performance to though
 

i have my 1080ti gpu at top for well gaming vm win 10

 

[Ricotta Elmar]

14 hours ago, Liam Ianto said:

I've just finishing upgrading my server aswell. Your parity drives are for backup CerealExperimentsLain said. They have to be as big as your larges drive in the array.

I've inserted an image to give you a little idea on how the parity works but it's a bit more complicated.

When you start adding loads of drives you run the risk of killing them all with vibrations. I chose Ironwolf Pro drives, they're rated to be in a case with up to 24 similar drives. For instance if I went with the normal Ironwolf Nas drives they would only be rated for 8. So with you sticking in so many drives that aren't server spec'd like the WD blue drives or the Barracuda drives you run the risk of them failing and losing the data on them (if your parity isn't set up) and you run the risk of losing some of your bigger drives if you add too many of these worse ones. They vibrate more and can handle less essentially.

 

With the smaller one's I would suggest you either smash them to bits or give them a very good data scrub and get rid of them. Stick with the 14TB drives because they're very good for this use case being designed to stay on all year round. The beauty of unraid is you can just add more and more over time without having to move large chunks of data around.

 

 

As for the GPU thing, put your GT440 on the very bottom slot of the board. It won't need that much bandwidth, you could even set your BIOS settings to PCIE gen 2 for it if it's an option and it still wouldn't hurt the card. I'd prioritize your HBA because that's going to be doing more work for you with your data than what an 8 year old graphics card be wanting to do.

 

 

i most likely will use SuperMicro Supermicro SATA Mobile Rack CSE-M35T-1 in the cm stacker tc-01 ,

i think vibration will not be an issue or will it ?,

my best drives are toshiba and wd reds ,

reds are nas drives,
toshiba enterprise,

my main gpu will be at top, also i am not sure if i gonna use the old shit gt440 gpu , might as well stay with 1080ti only , depents on situation,

i can put the hba in the 8x slot if need but that would block my gpu cooling so i might swap them and put the hba in slot 1 and gpu in slot 2

 

the shit thing is i only have gaming left over parts, but to make use of them and get rid of the old qnap nas before it die, witch is already 4-5 years old and i wont be spending like 900 bucks for a nas again because the limitations,