Unraid setup opinion

[aSPIRIn4]

I`m new to this but after some days of research i`ve come up with this:

I want to run unraid and start with only 1HDD due to a lack of money right now ( i can easily add more in 2 months)

 

Processor: Intel i5 12400

Cooler: stock

Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B760M-A

Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 Dual Channel Kit

PSU: be quiet! Pure Power 11, 80+ Gold, 600W (or the 400W)

Storage: Samsung 980 PRO 500GB PCI Express 4.0 (for cache)

               Seagate IronWolf 8TB SATA-III 7200RPM 256MB 

Case: Corsair 4000D Tempered Glass Black (i`m trying to find a better one with more mounting if not i`m going to 3d print them)

 

i`m going to start only with 1 HDD without parity data and then add more as time goes

 

I want my NAS to do 2 things well and if there`s room for more that`s even better

-I want to download torrents directly on the NAS 

-I want to be able to access my NAS over LAN with my TV and watch 1080p and 4k movies from my NAS

Extras:

-If i can run plex (1 4k or 1080p stream is nice)

-If there`s a plugin or something that can grab my photos from my phone and back up to my NAS automatically that`s awesome

 

Am i on the right path?

 

[manikyath]

what's your reason for wanting unraid? going with truenas or something else would put at least the 60 bucks for the unraid license back into your lack of budget otherwise.

[ChrisLoudon]

11 minutes ago, aSPIRIn4 said:

Am i on the right path?

Potentially, yes.

 

Unraid's biggest strong point is its ability to pool drives of different sizes.

 

The only stipulation is that the Parity disk(s) need to be the same size (or larger) than the largest disk in the storage pool.

 

My Unraid setup is as follows:

 

8TB + 6TB as Double Parity (all spinning metal)

6TB + 4TB + 4TB + 4TB + 2TB + 1TB as storage (all spinning metal)

1TB SSD as cache

4TB SSD - spare

 

Core i7 3770k (I think) + 16GB DDR3 + Nvidia 1650 + Fractal Node 804.

 

If I ever run low on space I can either add an other drive to the pool as long as is 6GB or less OR reduce to single parity and move the 6TB to the pool.

 

As all writes to the pool require parity data to be written, if you do have a parity drive you will almost certainly want a fast SSD to act as a cache disk to speed things up. Data is written to this disk first then scheduled to move to the pool at a later date.

 

I also have Plex, Torrent and Usenet (nzb) dockers running but for Torrents, you will need to do a bit of homework on how to get a VPN up and running. That's my project for this weekend. I have an active PIA subscription so just need to work out how I can get this working on Unraid.

 

Unfortunately, Unraid isn't free but it isn't too expensive.

 

As @manikyath mentioned, TrueNAS is an alternative but from what I gathered, it does require that all drives be the same size or you'll end up wasting space.

[aSPIRIn4]

40 minutes ago, manikyath said:

what's your reason for wanting unraid? going with truenas or something else would put at least the 60 bucks for the unraid license back into your lack of budget otherwise.

I want unraid for the ease of adding more HDD and not having to be all of them the same size 

[aSPIRIn4]

19 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Potentially, yes.

 

Unraid's biggest strong point is its ability to pool drives of different sizes.

 

The only stipulation is that the Parity disk(s) need to be the same size (or larger) than the largest disk in the storage pool.

 

My Unraid setup is as follows:

 

8TB + 6TB as Double Parity (all spinning metal)

6TB + 4TB + 4TB + 4TB + 2TB + 1TB as storage (all spinning metal)

1TB SSD as cache

4TB SSD - spare

 

Core i7 3770k (I think) + 16GB DDR3 + Nvidia 1650 + Fractal Node 804.

 

If I ever run low on space I can either add an other drive to the pool as long as is 6GB or less OR reduce to single parity and move the 6TB to the pool.

 

As all writes to the pool require parity data to be written, if you do have a parity drive you will almost certainly want a fast SSD to act as a cache disk to speed things up. Data is written to this disk first then scheduled to move to the pool at a later date.

 

I also have Plex, Torrent and Usenet (nzb) dockers running but for Torrents, you will need to do a bit of homework on how to get a VPN up and running. That's my project for this weekend. I have an active PIA subscription so just need to work out how I can get this working on Unraid.

 

Unfortunately, Unraid isn't free but it isn't too expensive.

 

As @manikyath mentioned, TrueNAS is an alternative but from what I gathered, it does require that all drives be the same size or you'll end up wasting space.

Can i run torrent without a VPN on my NAS? In my country torrenting isn`t a problem

[ChrisLoudon]

3 minutes ago, aSPIRIn4 said:

Can i run torrent without a VPN on my NAS? In my country torrenting isn`t a problem

Absolutely, yes.

 

Lucky you if you can Torrent without any issues.

[ChrisLoudon]

I should have also mentioned, if the spec you detailed in the original post is JUST for the NAS then you've massively over specced for what you need.

 

The only component that might need a bit of extra grunt would be a GPU that can handle multiple 4k transcode streams but even my puny 1650 Ventus can do 2 or 3 simultaneously.

 

The only reason you might want to have something faster would be if you want to run multiple VMs or game servers / game instances.

[aSPIRIn4]

25 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

I should have also mentioned, if the spec you detailed in the original post is JUST for the NAS then you've massively over specced for what you need.

 

The only component that might need a bit of extra grunt would be a GPU that can handle multiple 4k transcode streams but even my puny 1650 Ventus can do 2 or 3 simultaneously.

 

The only reason you might want to have something faster would be if you want to run multiple VMs or game servers / game instances.

For the price of i5 12400 i can get a Ryzen 5 3600 and a mobo but I was reading that amd processors have a hard time transcoding. I`m not sure if the 3600 will be enough for 1 stream 4k transcoding and some extra room for torrenting

[ChrisLoudon]

3 minutes ago, aSPIRIn4 said:

For the price of i5 12400 i can get a Ryzen 5 3600 and a mobo but I was reading that amd processors have a hard time transcoding. I`m not sure if the 3600 will be enough for 1 stream 4k transcoding and some extra room for torrenting

Personally, I would take the transcoding away from the CPU and get the GPU to do it.

 

Like I said earlier, I have a crappy old 1650 Ventus that does all the heavy lifting. Its rubbish for gaming but great for Transcoding. Even a GT1030 will a single 4k stream.

 

If you can't use a dedicated GPU for transcoding then yes, Intel with Quicksync on their iGPUs is a good 2nd choice.

 

Nvidia's NVENC is the way to go if you have the space / budget.

 

Just check PLEX's website and there's either a list or a link to a list that shows pretty much every GPU and what kinds streams its capable of transcoding.

 

https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding

 

Just found the above link