OS on New Build for Gaming NAS VMs Editing survilence

[Bobbyblowfish]

I need thoughts and critiques of my OS choices and storage build design. 

I have a new build that I have almost entirely ordered but are awaiting on delivery. 

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6850K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE II ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (8 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive Have
Storage: Western Digital Red 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive New
Storage: Seagate Archive 8TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive New
Storage: Seagate Archive 8TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive New
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Have
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Have
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Have
Video Card: NVIDIA Quadro K4000 3GB Video Card Have

Video Card: Older AMD, going to be upgrading to a RX480 or one of the 1080/1070s but not sure yet
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case 
Power Supply: Corsair RMx 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-2209 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Monitor: HP 27vx 27.0" 60Hz Monitor 

I have more hard drives then that but do not fit in the R5.

 

I need some help from the community on their thoughts of what I should run for the OS(s). My largest reason for this build is to have a NAS on my Gigabit network at home. I have a PoE switch that when I move to my new home will be used for IP cameras. I want to use my rig to act as a storage server for them and have a offsite backup for the surveillance.(August 2017). I used to do a lot of photo and video editing, which is why I have so many hard drives, but my old Dell XPS system gave up the ghost and with this rig I can go back to it. I want to also be able to run a media server in the house for Plex or something. I have the apps on my phones but no server lol. I want to be able to have the kids access VMs to use it resources. I have an XBOX one but would really come back to the world of PC Gaming and get a VR setup (at new house for the space August 2017) and Dolby ATMOS.  

 

I currently have about 20HHDs (from 500GB to 8TB) that I want to consolidate and protect their data and 

2 Dual drive docking stations,

1 Mediasonic? 4 bay 3.5in bay

1 Two drive Lacie raid drive (only has 2 1tb in it right now)

3 Seagate external drive enclosures

8 WD extnernal drive enclosures

 

I  have thought of using a smaller hp AMD A10-5700 with freeNAS and moving the uATX board into a older Antec 1080plus full tower and using a 3ware 9650SE raid card in IT mode but I was doing some research on the motherboard and the Atheros onboard NIC is not supported by BSD so I would need a gigabit NIC for that.  So that is my deterrent from using a second machine even though I can but I really want to take advantage of the horsepower out of this new rig.

 

So I was thinking Unraid which is not a problem paying for especially since they are doing all the work I don't have time for setting up the kernel and getting the right packages installed. I have a CentOS build at work which is fine for an OS but I am not sure about spending all the time and hassle to set up the intricacies. 

 

One thing I can do besides the Unraid is set up VMware but am a bit confused on the licensing of the free ESXi hyper-visor. I use Vsphere and Vcenter at work so I am familiar with the interfaces here but I don't do the onboarding for the servers (we have the enterprise license so virtually everything they have) so I am not sure about licensing for the free  hyper-visor. I know I can pass though the GPUs to the VM and that is fine but doing it remotely is best done with horizon with view as it allows the work to be done directly. 

 

One of the things that I don't know about and am concerned about is wanting to do a RAID 1 on the 2 Seagate Archive drive and if you can do that within Unraid(not as a parity since it is slow) or do it as a software RAID within the ASUS MB or do it on the 3ware 9650-8i card. That is where I want to store all my photos and videos.(besides keeping a copy of the them on the older smaller WD external drives). My biggest concern on this is compatibility and whether or not it will work with each setup. Once the data gets on there I wont be changing it much. So write speed is not that important. Also for workflow I can copy the files I want to work off into a RAM drive or the 950pro. 

 

Another issue is the 950pro. I want it to be my primary "machines" drive for Windows 10. I have some stuff but nothing solid or concrete if there is a way to pass through a single drive in Unraid. I bought the 850evo for use as a cache disk. Also my plans before I thought about using Unraid was to buy 4 WD Red 6TB drives and do a RAID 5 thought the ASUS board. So I bought one that I can use for the parity drive and if later I will buy the others for what ever I end of going with.

 

For that setup it would have been

OS drive: 950pro 512GB

RAID5 Array: 4*6TB WD Red for an array of about 20TB for ebooks movies music etc

RAID1 Array: 2*8TB Seagate for an array of 8TB for Video and Photo storage

Future Array: 2-3*6-8TB WD Purple for Surveillance system. (this would need probably an external enclosure and LSI RAID card ( I don't want to rely on my 3ware card) to run since my ASUS board only has 10(8+2) SATA Connectors and 4 of them cant be used for RAID and 3 U2/M.2 connections. The R5 case can hold 8 *3.5inch drives and 2*SSDs and will have one open 5.25" by I can use.) 

 

Now I'm thinking if I do Unraid

USB drive: for unraid

Cache drive: 850EVO 500gb

Parity drive: WD 6TB Red 

Data drives: 3*WD 6TB Red, 1*WD 4TB Red, 2*WD 3TB Black

Somehow a raid array of 2 Seagate 8TB Archive (also I could do one in this case and one in another case that runs rsync or something. )

 

OK Sorry about the jumping and incongruity my ADD is taking over. Please let me know your thoughts and what you think. 

 

Thank you very much!!

 

 

[tt2468]

For unraid or any sort of ZFS, ECC ram is basically a must. A xeon processor would have probably suited your needs better, as it supports ECC, and is designed more for constant use. I dont really understand what kind of enviornment this 'server' will be used in. Generally, a server would be put into a closet and logged into remotely, but judging by the quadro in your parts list, it will be used for some sort of video editing? A quadro is kind of a waste of money unless it is used with software that can put the thing to use. So if you are going to be putting this in a closet somewhere, be sure to put that thing to good use somehow. Sorry if I missed anything, I tried my best to skim through as much as I could, but im not very good at it lol.

[Bobbyblowfish]

I got the quadro from another upgrade (that went to a k5200) so I didn't pay for it. I have an old AMD that will sit in for my next board until I hear about the RX 490 or what ever it is and make my GPU decision then. Most of the use is in the General purpose PC world with research, chrome, gaming, remote admin, surfing, some programming, electrical engineering programs and CAD, youtube streaming, SQL work, streaming content, adobe creative suite, etc. I wanted faster cores than what I wanted to spend on Xeon for gaming and didn't want to spend that much on ECC as storage safety is paramount. I was looking at ASUS WS X99 but they didn't do a refresh so I went with the deluxe 2. There won't necessarily be constant use on this but I want the power when I do.  This will be sitting in my living room where I have my desk. This should be a fairly quiet build as it has 2 of the fractal fans and I bought 1 more and it is using the D15 which is fairly quiet.  My kids can VNC from their laptops to do some programming or content creation. I have servers I log in remotely at work but I going remote doesn't help me on the Gaming aspect perse' as I can just directly plug in with a 2M cable and not need another box to connect with.  

[leadeater]

Realistically you are trying to do too many roles with a single computer, regardless of even upgrading to a Xeon CPU. Too much reliance on a single system plus it will actually be much harder to assign resources to the various roles and VMs than you would expect.

 

Have your workstation and server as separate machines, it will be tons easier. Also too many different drive types, pick one HDD and one SSD type, my pick would be WD Reds or Se and Samsung 850 Pros.

 

Personally I use ESXi but I think unRAID may suite you better as it has native NAS functionality. Buy a used dual socket system off ebay (just MB/RAM/CPU), tons for cheap, and LSI 9211/IBM M1015 IT mode then put this in to your case of choosing. Install unRAID with 2 Samsung 850 Pros as cache disks for the storage pool and fill with WD Red/Se till you meet the capacity required, you can reuse the WD blacks but they don't support TLER so may have slight issues.

 

Later on as you need more disks I would buy a 12/24 bay server chassis with a built in SAS expander.

 

For the workstation build as normal with the Samsung 950 Pro, no real need to give any advice on this you can handle that.

 

Foot notes: ESXi GPU passthrough is for compute not graphics output/gaming, Horizon expands the GPU support to GPU rendering output etc over remote connections but is also not for gaming. Basically no ESXi should not be used for VM gaming, stick with unRAID if that is needed but really isn't that good of an idea.

 

Happy to discuss further and amend advice with your feed back. Way too much to discuss in a single reply, also 3:30am and hit my limit of bothering to type .

[Gerr]

You said you want this to also be a gaming system, I presume Windows 7/8.1/10?  How well do you trust a long term VM solution for that?

 

Because I don't, when I was upgrading my systems this past Xmas, I split my build into two boxes, one for gaming and everyday PC use and the 2nd as a pure dedicated server.  Ya it was more money, but I couldn't see a way to get gaming & server usage going on a single system with a single OS.  Yes a VM system would work, but am a newb on that, plus having a single system take on so many roles seemed dangerous if something failed and generally not a good idea.

 

For extra drives, I used an LSI 9211-8i PCIe x4 card, which gives me 8 SATA ports.  I used 6 of those ports for internal drives and bought an adapter that turns two of them into eSTATA ports where I plug my back drives into.  My server, which uses an R4 case, has 12 internal drives and two external 2-port Raid enclosures.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id personally run windows 7/10 on it. Then buy a set of 4/6tb drives and if you want to share files use the folder sharing in windows. You can setup a drive pool, but its normally a hodgepodge solution and kinda bad and slow. If you need it id use storage spaces in windows or btrfs in linux(does raid 5/6 with different sized drives and can use all the space in different drives)