Creating a NAS/HTPC/Gaming PC using Unraid - various questions

[manuelnoriega]

I saw linus' video on using unraid to make a NAS/gaming hybrid. Looks cool. I've never messed with unraid before but I'm excited to do so.

 

I'm building an i7 7700k NAS + gaming rig/HTPC with a GTX 1080, 32gb RAM, H90, 120gb PCIe4x m.2, four 6tb platter drives. All in a node 304 from fractal. Yes it'll fit. 

I'm planning to use an ASROCK z270m ITX/ac  as well.

 

I plan to use butter FS or whatever the default unraid dealie is for four platter drives plus a 120gb NVME. I was thinking 60GB windows 10, 60gb cache for UNRAID (yes I know there is a data-loss risk). I mostly play games that aren't super CPU bound, no city skylines et al.

 

I'm running up to 3 clients on the NAS (including storing the games on the UNRAID NAS), just streaming media through SMB. If I run plex, it'll be on the windows side.

I have some questions, 1&2 are the big ones:

1. will Netflix 4k BS arbitrary requirements work if only 2-3 physical cores dedicated to windows 10 via UNRAID?

2. What's the best way to setup the processor allocation? Will 3 HT physical cores (6 logical) do fine for gaming? Will 1 HT core (2 logical) serve files appropriately? Should I divide it up half and half? This video was very encouraging for a half/half approach (But my mobo wont OC much, so I might be stuck at 4.5ghz).

3. Apart from the obvious data loss risk from lack of redundancy (once again, don't care), are there any issues with using the same NVMe to cache and run windows? Will that screw with the processor allocation because of the PCIE controller config? 

4. If I don't run a cache (or buy two SATA ssds to do this), will the m.2 work better if I just do a PCIe pass-through to the windows VM?

 

 

If this isn't going to work right, I'll just run the NAS using windows 10 pro (sigh) , but I think Unraid would be really cool and make me more attractive to the opposite sex.

Edited January 22, 2017 by manuelnoriega

[manikyath]

i'm gonna say the same i say in every thread wanting to go VM with gpu passtrough:

 

dont. you're tossing away money.

not only is gpu passtrough already difficult on hardware taking it in mind, but on regular desktop intel, you're essentially asking for trouble. beyond that you'll be cramped on core count dividing things between windows and unraid, and you're wasting expensive M.2 space (not to mention license fees) for a second OS you really dont need.

besides, putting windows on a 120GB SSD is already cramped, 60GB is just asking for storage space issues in the long term.

 

here's my bit of advice: find a mobo that can do hardware raid, has an m.2 slot, and forget about unraid all together. you're wasting money on a wide variety of fields, trying to achieve something trough the complicated way, instead of just keeping things simple.

 

oh, and also;

33 minutes ago, manuelnoriega said:

Unraid would be really cool and make me more attractive to the opposite sex.

if thats your main goal, i suggest you try to talk to some ladies about unraid, and find how many are left after 5 minutes.

[Mr.Humble]

35 minutes ago, manuelnoriega said:

OP

Hi,

 

I have a VERY similar configuration planned for myself (and very similar concerns plus some regarding unRAID). Difference is, my PC upgrade cycle centres around July and August, meaning after Ryzen launch. Might have to alter my plans if mITX boards for AM4 are available.

 

Regarding your questions, as far as I know (which unfortunately is not much):

 

1) wait for someone else to respond

2) in the original video Linus did, he used 3 cores for the gaming rig and one for unRAID, which I don't think would benefit that much from more cores assigned to it.

3) not that I'm aware of

4) if that would be possible at all. It could also mean you wouldn't be able to use it as a boot drive (making it useless basically)

 

I'd suggest you get in contact with LimeTech directly, see what they can tell you.

 

Personally, I plan to get 2 at least 240GB SATA SSDs for a) redundant cache storage and b) higher capacity (I already use 190GB on my OS drive)

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, vojta.pokorny said:

Hi,

 

I have a VERY similar configuration planned for myself (and very similar concerns plus some regarding unRAID). Difference is, my PC upgrade cycle centres around July and August, meaning after Ryzen launch. Might have to alter my plans if mITX boards for AM4 are available.

 

Regarding your questions, as far as I know (which unfortunately is not much):

 

1) wait for someone else to respond

2) in the original video Linus did, he used 3 cores for the gaming rig and one for unRAID, which I don't think would benefit that much from more cores assigned to it.

3) not that I'm aware of

4) if that would be possible at all. It could also mean you wouldn't be able to use it as a boot drive (making it useless basically)

 

I'd suggest you get in contact with LimeTech directly, see what they can tell you.

 

Personally, I plan to get 2 at least 240GB SATA SSDs for a) redundant cache storage and b) higher capacity (I already use 190GB on my OS drive)

i've actually looked into what it would take to go with gpu passtrough and linux/windows on my main rig, intending to add a second GPU, and do all that jazz. i've considered at several points in time, from different angles, considering the vareous possibilities.

 

and honestly, here's my conclusion:

put a second rig in the clouset, and call it a day.

[Mr.Humble]

7 minutes ago, manikyath said:

not only is gpu passtrough already difficult on hardware taking it in mind, but on regular desktop intel, you're essentially asking for trouble.

 

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i've actually looked into what it would take to go with gpu passtrough and linux/windows on my main rig, intending to add a second GPU, and do all that jazz. i've considered at several points in time, from different angles, considering the vareous possibilities.

 

and honestly, here's my conclusion:

put a second rig in the clouset, and call it a day.

I didn't know it was that difficult.

 

9 minutes ago, manikyath said:

here's my bit of advice: find a mobo that can do hardware raid, has an m.2 slot, and forget about unraid all together. you're wasting money on a wide variety of fields, trying to achieve something trough the complicated way, instead of just keeping things simple.

Does Intel RAID controller count in your eyes? If yes, then the board OP mentioned qualifies.

 

So what would your recommended configuration for a M.2 SATA SSD and up to 4 2TB HDDs (my case) be? Just Intel RAID 5 on the hard drives with OS on the SSD? Or do you think it would be easier to go with software RAID through Windows disk manager? Then just sharing the appropriate folders on the local network?

 

I'd really like your opinion on this since you come across as more knowledgeable than me @manikyath.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, vojta.pokorny said:

 

I didn't know it was that difficult.

 

Does Intel RAID controller count in your eyes? If yes, then the board OP mentioned qualifies.

 

So what would your recommended configuration for a M.2 SATA SSD and up to 4 2TB HDDs (my case) be? Just Intel RAID 5 on the hard drives with OS on the SSD? Or do you think it would be easier to go with software RAID through Windows disk manager? Then just sharing the appropriate folders on the local network?

 

I'd really like your opinion on this since you come across as more knowledgeable than me @manikyath.

it's not that it's difficult, it's that it seems to be an endless flow of unexpected problems, and that going two rigs is in the long run, actually potentially cheaper.

 

since you mentioned upgrade cycles: here's an idea: every time you hardware cycle on your desktop, the old gear goes to your NAS, and the gear from your NAS goes maybe to a media center pc or something.

 

if you have old hardware laying around, making a nas is free, and considering you dont need to leave your *actual desktop* running whenever you need your nas, it can actually make a decent edge on the power consumption side of things as well.

--

intel raid is #GoodEnough for me, and would probably, in hindsight have been the smarter thing to do seeing i'm currently fishing a broken hard drive out my server, after spending a not so amazing time on data recovery because my backup scripts failed on me...

 

and in terms of recommendations for storage, it's quite simple: "KISS" or "Keep It Simple Stupid". every layer you add, is another point of failure, unraid VMs are a great party trick, but i really cant recomend going that way for a rig you both rely on as your daily driver, and as storage. if you have a "not in windows" way of setting up a raid array, everything you put on top of that is -as my server kinda demonstrated- another point of failure.

 

the reason i press on "not in windows" is because windows is another, quite large point of failure. if the raid gets handled by the chipset, you can essentially brick windows and not have to worry about your data, if windows is handling it and bicks, enjoy recovering your array

 

beyond that... SMB/samba/windows shares... is hilareously, stupidly broken. i cant for the life of me have 3 different operating systems play nice with each other. having everything on windows at least means it's as *they* intended, and you're not spending a century and a half figuring out which version of backwards compatibility you need to enable on each system if you have *my* kind of luck. just toss everything in a home group, and you should be good to go.

 

another recommendation i'll give you is to have a "failure recovery plan", even if it's one of those stupidly slow seagate archive drives on an external adapter, having a full copy of your data can be a life saver if your array says "oh, lol, i dont exist anymore today." randomly. talking layers of failure, having a full copy of the data on two places, essentially eliminates any points of failure you may encounter. preferably have one of those copies completely disconnected from everything if you're not either recovering from it, or backing up to it.

(this is actually a practisce done by a lot of small buisinesses, who back up critical data to an external drive, which they put in a fireproof/theft proof safe. the price of a drive is easily digestable considering the value of the data, because in their case complete loss of data means "you may as well close up shop".)

[manuelnoriega]

39 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i'm gonna say the same i say in every thread wanting to go VM with gpu passtrough:

 

dont. you're tossing away money.

not only is gpu passtrough already difficult on hardware taking it in mind, but on regular desktop intel, you're essentially asking for trouble. beyond that you'll be cramped on core count dividing things between windows and unraid, and you're wasting expensive M.2 space (not to mention license fees) for a second OS you really dont need.

besides, putting windows on a 120GB SSD is already cramped, 60GB is just asking for storage space issues in the long term.

 

here's my bit of advice: find a mobo that can do hardware raid, has an m.2 slot, and forget about unraid all together. you're wasting money on a wide variety of fields, trying to achieve something trough the complicated way, instead of just keeping things simple.

 

oh, and also;

if thats your main goal, i suggest you try to talk to some ladies about unraid, and find how many are left after 5 minutes.

That's odd that you're the first person to report big issues with GPU passthrough on a small scale.

 

Looks like you're right about unraid. My real goal was to have something like a RAID10 with the 4 drives, or in the case of UNraid's XFS which I'm not familiar with, have two parity drives. Currently I'm just putzing around with JBOD and a nightly backup from one drive to another (obviously keeping an up-to-the-minute backup isn't that important to me). Unfortunately it doesn't look like unraid can do dual parity, and since I've had a ton of these 6TB monsters fail on me I think using the onboard RAID is the way to go. 

 

So since my client usage is low, gaming usage is erratic, and I barely use this stuff for work anymore... yeah I'll probably just chicken out on Unraid as it's more trouble than it's worth. I wish I'd gone with an i5. what am I going to do with all this RAM? whatever.

 

I did read somewhere that shutting down the VMware with the GPU passthrough will save some watts but maybe I'll just put it to sleep and use wake-on-LAN. 

 

As far as SMB, It's been pretty solid for me for about 2 years now, even backing up mac laptops to "time machine" sparseimages hosted on the PC. The only problem is my cheapo external USB backplane disconnects once a week. 

 

Also: I disagree on the win10 boot 60GB is more than enough for a windows 10 boot drive if you're storing your games, media, etc on a separate drive. My daily driver is a laptop with a m.2 boot/user and a 1tb sata SSD, the boot drive is probably at 30gb full, if that.

 

And finally, how do you know so much about all things ? Ladies too? I'm blown away.