Virtualization or two cpus (NAS and Render Server)

[kayo7]

I work for 8 years with 3d rendering and advertising, and for personal reasons I'm going to work from home now.

I'm going to set up a home office, and I've seen the need to have a NAS and a render farm, but I don't have much space.

My question is: do I mount two systems in a single case (Enthoo mini XL DS), or do I mount two systems using a stronger processor and virtualization using Unraid?

 

Here are the part lists from pc part picker:

 

System 2 in 1

CPU: Intel Core i7-6800K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($409.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($57.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($171.58 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Mini XL MicroATX Desktop Case  ($179.00) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($183.80 @ OutletPC) 

 

CPU:  Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Atom C2750 Motherboard  ($379.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 

Other: Kingston Technology ValueRAM 64 GB Kit of 4 (4x16 GB Modules) 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) ECC Reg CL11 DIMM DR x4 Server Memory KVR16R11D4K4/64  ($519.08 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3584.73

 

-------------------

System VM

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2640 V4 2.4GHz 10-Core Processor  ($879.99 @ B&H) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($64.45 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial 64GB (4 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($417.77 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($134.49 @ OutletPC) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3449.58
 

What do you guys think?

 

[grimreeper132]

46 minutes ago, kayo7 said:

I work for 8 years with 3d rendering and advertising, and for personal reasons I'm going to work from home now.

I'm going to set up a home office, and I've seen the need to have a NAS and a render farm, but I don't have much space.

My question is: do I mount two systems in a single case (Enthoo mini XL DS), or do I mount two systems using a stronger processor and virtualization using Unraid?

 

Here are the part lists from pc part picker:

 

System 2 in 1

CPU: Intel Core i7-6800K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($409.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($57.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($171.58 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Mini XL MicroATX Desktop Case  ($179.00) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($183.80 @ OutletPC) 

 

CPU:  Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Atom C2750 Motherboard  ($379.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 

Other: Kingston Technology ValueRAM 64 GB Kit of 4 (4x16 GB Modules) 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) ECC Reg CL11 DIMM DR x4 Server Memory KVR16R11D4K4/64  ($519.08 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3584.73

 

-------------------

System VM

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2640 V4 2.4GHz 10-Core Processor  ($879.99 @ B&H) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($64.45 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial 64GB (4 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($417.77 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($134.49 @ OutletPC) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3449.58
 

What do you guys think?

 

if you run a VM with the second PC, you will get a hell of a lot more power out of it, as a NAS can easily run off of dual core, especially if there is only 1 or 2 people using it. The problem with VMs is that, from what I've heard (I haven't done them myself yet, but possibly will be doing so soon), they can be bitch to set up, so if you are happy to spend time dealing with VMs to get them working then I suggest that, as that with those specs will give you more power for CAD

[Eniqmatic]

Go with the VM, its easier to build, less hardware to manage if it goes wrong, more scalable and just generally a better idea. Its one of the main reasons virtualisation exists, to use resources more efficiently.

 

Virtualisation isn't really hard to do either, if you have no experience in it then choose something easy to work with to get you started.

[kayo7]

So. with the VM system, I will use as render farm, and as NAS.

How much processing (cores/threads) / RAM do I leave for the NAS?

 

I plan to use the NAS as weekly backups, storage, and maybe plex (with max 2 streaming 1080p)

[Sprawlie]

VM!

 

As for NAS, depending on how many users.

 

if it's mostly just you, you can honestly really give it some lowball resources. You can easily get away with a single core and 2gb (or less if you're comfortable in linux) resources for the NAS. 

 

the NAS itself, if it's just being used as a storage share and nothing else, really only needs Samba. Samba itself CAN use a bit of CPU, but it's only when file transfers are occuring. 

 

the question is how are you going to have your drives mounted so that they're visible by the NAS OS partition and the Render OS partition, as I imagine you'd want to setup some form of automatic rendering where you can drop files into the NAS and the Render server picks them up and renders them. You'll want to figure out a way of having the actuall storage drives visible to both.

 

 

[TheCherryKing]

Do you plan to have this system operate 24/7? If so, I highly recommend you use enterprise grade hard drives.

[kayo7]

I work with the distributed rendering of Vray, wich allows the render server to automatically download the missing textures and assets, and save then in a assets cache folder for a period of time.

 

So basically it would look like this:

1º- main machine (Already have)

 

2º- NAS/ Render farm

NAS = 1 SSD, and 6x HDD WD Red - 1 or 2 cores with 2GB RAM

Render= 1 SSD, 8/9 remaining cores with 62GB RAM

 

Would that be it?

 

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, although working with 3D rendering, is my first time building a pc/nas.

 

[Sprawlie]

Curious about the NAS and having an SSD in there. Unless you're just going to use it for storage cache

[tt2468]

On 2/1/2017 at 7:27 AM, TheCherryKing said:

Do you plan to have this system operate 24/7? If so, I highly recommend you use enterprise grade hard drives.

These are NAS drives. They are designed for 24/7 use.

 

On 2/1/2017 at 4:50 AM, kayo7 said:

I work for 8 years with 3d rendering and advertising, and for personal reasons I'm going to work from home now.

I'm going to set up a home office, and I've seen the need to have a NAS and a render farm, but I don't have much space.

My question is: do I mount two systems in a single case (Enthoo mini XL DS), or do I mount two systems using a stronger processor and virtualization using Unraid?

 

Here are the part lists from pc part picker:

 

System 2 in 1

CPU: Intel Core i7-6800K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($409.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($57.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($171.58 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Mini XL MicroATX Desktop Case  ($179.00) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($183.80 @ OutletPC) 

 

CPU:  Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Atom C2750 Motherboard  ($379.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 

Other: Kingston Technology ValueRAM 64 GB Kit of 4 (4x16 GB Modules) 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) ECC Reg CL11 DIMM DR x4 Server Memory KVR16R11D4K4/64  ($519.08 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3584.73

 

-------------------

System VM

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2640 V4 2.4GHz 10-Core Processor  ($879.99 @ B&H) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($64.45 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial 64GB (4 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($417.77 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($169.49 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($145.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card  ($109.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($134.49 @ OutletPC) 
Other: 10Gtek for Intel 82599ES Chip Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2  ($263.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $3449.58
 

What do you guys think?

 

I would highly recommend buying a server motherboard and ECC memory. Getting a server mobo would allow you to have onboard graphics, so you wouldn't need a gpu. I would also recommend getting a dedicated NVME drive for boot, then a raid0 array of sata ssds, or no raid of an nvme drive for vm storage. You cal also save a ton of money by buying an intel card from ebay. Most of the listings are legit, even if the price seems too good to be true. The cards usually come out of datacenter auctions.

 

Here is a single port SFP+ intel card: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-X520-DA1-single-port-SFP-10Gb-Ethernet-server-adapter-network-card-/142247142182

And here is a dual port SFP+ intel card: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-X520-DA2-10Gb-10Gbe-10-Gigabit-Network-Adapter-NIC-Dual-E10G42BTDA-Dell-/222384978465

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 hours ago, kayo7 said:

I work with the distributed rendering of Vray, wich allows the render server to automatically download the missing textures and assets, and save then in a assets cache folder for a period of time.

 

So basically it would look like this:

1º- main machine (Already have)

 

2º- NAS/ Render farm

NAS = 1 SSD, and 6x HDD WD Red - 1 or 2 cores with 2GB RAM

Render= 1 SSD, 8/9 remaining cores with 62GB RAM

 

Would that be it?

 

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, although working with 3D rendering, is my first time building a pc/nas.

 

That nas is very under powered. Id get a dual lga 2011 if you want to render.

 

Cores don't work like that. Id give them all to the vm, and the kernel can split it how it wants to.

 

For the nas, id use centos, and run the rendering in a vm(with all the cores) and then use samba and zfs for the nas.

[kayo7]

Thank you so much guys for the tips.

 

So just to summarize the parts and some question that I have:

 

For the NAS
6x WD Red 4TB as storage, and an raid 0 of ssds for cache (in the videos Linus suggest an raid 1 of ssds for better protection, is not that better?)
2GB ECC RAM (in the plex site, they suggest 8GB, just 2 will be alright?)

and a server motherboard with onboard graphics  for UnRaid

 

For the Render Farm
1 nvme ssd as boot and storage* (windows 10/ 3D rendering software, *cache of 3D files textures)

remaining 62GB ECC RAM

And a GTX 1050 for the passthrough

 

Thanks Electronics Wizardy,  just some questions about this configuration

22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That nas is very under powered. Id get a dual lga 2011 if you want to render.

Would not this increase the cost significantly?

 

Quote

Cores don't work like that. Id give them all to the vm, and the kernel can split it how it wants to.

 

For the nas, id use centos, and run the rendering in a vm(with all the cores) and then use samba and zfs for the nas.

I'm still new to the VM/NAS stuff, but looks like the Unraid is very simple to use ( I know that with the zfs I would get more performance from the NAS, but it looks like I would need an additional knowledge to work with linux, is that right?

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, kayo7 said:

1 nvme ssd as boot and storage* (windows 10/ 3D rendering software, *cache of 3D files textures)

remaining 62GB ECC RAM

And a GTX 1050 for the passthrough

No use getting a ssd that fast, won't make a differene, everything is loaded in ram anyways.

 

NO need for a gpu for the vm, just use the virtual gpu in the vm. Also that board doesn't support gpu passthrough.

 

3 minutes ago, kayo7 said:

Would not this increase the cost significantly?

yep, but much faster. That cpu included isn't very fast. Think slower than a i3 in rendering.

 

 

Unraid is linux.

 

Also why no use windows 10/server 2016 for the nas?

 

Also no reason to get reds, id get cheaper desktop drives personally, the nas features don't really make a different when you not using hardware raid.

 

Run the ssds in raid 1, or get a single bigger one. No reason to use raid 0, just anouther point of failure.

 

[kayo7]

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yep, but much faster. That cpu included isn't very fast. Think slower than a i3 in rendering.

 

What cpus / motherboard do you suggest? (And at this price point It would not be better to do the "dual system one case" that I mencioned earlier?)

 

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Also why no use windows 10/server 2016 for the nas?

I'm new to all this, my first idea was to run two pcs (one with freenas, and the render farm with normal windows and the 3d software), so I'm still looking for the "best"/"easy" option in my case.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, kayo7 said:

What cpus / motherboard do you suggest? (And at this price point It would not be better to do the "dual system one case" that I mencioned earlier?)

If you don't mind a bit more noise, you can get used rack servers. For about 400 you can get dual 6 cores lga 1366 xeons and 12 drive bays. 

 

Id look at something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-FS12-TY-C2100-2X-QC-E5506-2-13GHz-NO-HDD-12xTRAYS-16GB-4x4GB-/381744926594?hash=item58e1c54f82:g:ankAAOSw5cNYZCO7

 

 

[kayo7]

with all these changes, It would not be best to build the setup "dual system in a single case" that I suggested earlier? Leaving one processor for each configuration (nas and render farm) Then I would use freenas because of zfs.