[Planning] UnRaid box

[Aelita Sophie]

So first things first. I don't want to do this because it would be praticable. Mainly 'cus it seems like good fun! So if you see my rigs in my signature, you'll see my home network can be a lill clouded. (Not mentioning all the vms, ESPs, raspberries etc) So I've been meaning to redo my network. Mainly I made 1 very big oopsie which is so dumb.

 

So my oopsie:

From my ISP I've got a Cable (COAX) modem/router, which I've set to Bridge/Switching. Meaning no DHCP, just having the switching part working and the gateway. From there it just acts as a switch to connect the rest up.

From the modem, there goes 1 CAT5e (Better is no use unless I would go 10Gbit, which I can't afford sadly) cable to my Shed. In there it goes into a switch again. And on that switch I've connected the VM Server and Storage node. On the VM Server I've got PFSense. Which acts as the actual gateway for my home network and well handles everything. I think some now know my issue. I've got a 400mbit line. If I fully saturate that upstairs. This means the following;

From the modem, 400mbit goes to the shed on that 1 wire. Then PFSense sends it back over that same wire so it can go upstairs. Making me use 80% (roughly) of the line's capacity. So lets say I want to, besides downloading or whatever want to stream or access files from my storage node. It only leaves me 200mbit (roughly again) and then the initial wire is completely saturated. So that doesn't work well.

So, I'll be pulling another wire across the house as a dedicated line from the modem to a hardware PFSense box. (As I tend to restart that VM box a lot, 'cus I love tinkering, yay me) So I solve that issue.

 

This had me thinking, as I'll be moving my setup downstairs again. My shed is next against the wall to that room. I could easily make an isolated hole to push cables through, but I'm bored with my i7 or the guest setup. My mining rig is..well.. not my best investment (it was for fun >.>.. Yes ok I'm sad!) It has very capeable GPU's inside them. But I love the idea to have everything on 1 machine. So uhm.. Unraid =D

 

My plan: Stuff the 2 GTX 1060s in it, among with a Xeon rig. I.e. 2x X5690s, 2 USB 3.0 cards and like.. As much ram I can throw at it. Going to be using ECC as.. well.. it doesn't matter, just sounds cool. Only issue I'm having (well actually more), what to do with my i7 rig, FX6300 or even the A6-9500? I mean obviously I can sell them, but that is no fun. My i7 has an NVMe SSD, which Ill probably reuse in the machine (Got a PCIe to M.2 PCIe card)..

 

As you noticed, plan is not solid and only speculation so far.

 

What would you guys recommend as an unRaid machine? My purposes are: 2 "Gaming Rigs" in one and a Third one for "Ahum Work". Gaming is only light. My GF loves to play Sims 4 and the most demanding game I play right now is FFXIV. Which the HD 7870 is handling alright on Medium settings 1080p, but I kinda wanna go with max settings 1080p. The work rig will be Ubuntu or something in the like, just as my work laptop. I'll do server management, network management and some webdevelopment on it. I personally tend to use a lot of tabs in any instance. As peripherals: My Gaming rig will have 3 monitors, keyboard, mouse, studio mic, speakers/studio headset. GF Gaming rig will have 1 or 2 monitors at most, keyboard, mouse, USB Headset (G9xx something from logitech piece of crap). And work rig merely 1 screen, keyboard, mouse.

Wiring of the screens will be going with HDMI over Ethernet. (With DP to HDMI converters galore) to save the amount or the size of hole I need to make. USB 3.0 Cabling won't be an hassle.

The reason I want to go Unraid: Seems like fun. And I love scaleability even though I might never use it at all.

 

Anyhow, give your thoughts!

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Aelita Sophie said:

400mbit goes to the shed on that 1 wire. Then PFSense sends it back over that same wire so it can go upstairs. Making me use 80% (roughly) of the line's capacity.

gigabit is full duplex, so you can send 1gbit at the same time as reciving 1gbit. So your only using 40% of the max here

 

Virtualized gaming pcs are a pain. id just use more single user systems

 

Id probably look at proxmox, much better vm features(you can do gpu passthrough with it aswell). And you can do clustering. And it has much more storeage options(you can do a unraid like array if you want)

 

Id just do it over ip and use thin clients instead of doing hdmi over cat6

 

 

 

 

[Aelita Sophie]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

gigabit is full duplex, so you can send 1gbit at the same time as reciving 1gbit. So your only using 40% of the max here

 

Virtualized gaming pcs are a pain. id just use more single user systems

 

Id probably look at proxmox, much better vm features(you can do gpu passthrough with it aswell). And you can do clustering. And it has much more storeage options(you can do a unraid like array if you want)

 

Id just do it over ip and use thin clients instead of doing hdmi over cat6

 

 

 

 

But thin clients would add up in complexity? Or am I seeing this wrong?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Aelita Sophie said:

But thin clients would add up in complexity? Or am I seeing this wrong?

They would, but youu don't seem to be going for the simple solution here.

[Aelita Sophie]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

They would, but youu don't seem to be going for the simple solution here.

Oh  It seemed pretty straight forward enough.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Aelita Sophie said:

Oh  It seemed pretty straight forward enough.

Running vm's with gpus is a pain in general, so the simple solution is multiple desktops.

[Aelita Sophie]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Running vm's with gpus is a pain in general, so the simple solution is multiple desktops.

But that would require more space. And I would need to buy more rackmount cases.. Trying to make something space efficient

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Aelita Sophie said:

But that would require more space. And I would need to buy more rackmount cases.. Trying to make something space efficient

How about compact desktops?

 

Does it need to be in the rack?

 

id just get a few of these personally and put gpu's in them https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-7010-SFF-Core-i5-8-GB-RAM-250GB-HD-Win-7-PRO/152939747864?hash=item239beb5a18:g:fLwAAOSwPh5ZIMkC

[Aelita Sophie]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How about compact desktops?

 

Does it need to be in the rack?

 

id just get a few of these personally and put gpu's in them https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-7010-SFF-Core-i5-8-GB-RAM-250GB-HD-Win-7-PRO/152939747864?hash=item239beb5a18:g:fLwAAOSwPh5ZIMkC

Rack is a requirement yes. I've got a 24U rack, currently used by a 1U, 3U and a 4U. Besides that I've got several systems around the house, which are mainly bigtowers.

Also I want to push the noise outside the house in general. The shed is mostly dry and very well ventilated. Gets slightly toasty in the summer, but I've got plans to solve that. Winter times its naturally cooled and is mostly below freezing point.

Putting desktops inside the shed would also take to much space, as it isnt that big.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Aelita Sophie said:

Rack is a requirement yes. I've got a 24U rack, currently used by a 1U, 3U and a 4U. Besides that I've got several systems around the house, which are mainly bigtowers.

Also I want to push the noise outside the house in general. The shed is mostly dry and very well ventilated. Gets slightly toasty in the summer, but I've got plans to solve that. Winter times its naturally cooled and is mostly below freezing point.

Putting desktops inside the shed would also take to much space, as it isnt that big.

Then id go remote desktop/thin clients instead of hdmi over cat 6. Makes its much easier to wire and seutp.

 

Then go fo rhte gpu setup. Id go proxmox personally, and get something like a dell r720

[Aelita Sophie]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then id go remote desktop/thin clients instead of hdmi over cat 6. Makes its much easier to wire and seutp.

 

Then go fo rhte gpu setup. Id go proxmox personally, and get something like a dell r720

But does remote desktop support for example DX12? Or triple monitor? And wouldn't that saturate my network more and create more latency? I get the easy to wire, and I am aware the overhead/latency a vm can create. Proxmox I've used before, but it didnt felt very.. stable to mess around with.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Aelita Sophie said:

But does remote desktop support for example DX12? Or triple monitor? And wouldn't that saturate my network more and create more latency? I get the easy to wire, and I am aware the overhead/latency a vm can create. Proxmox I've used before, but it didnt felt very.. stable to mess around with.

Proxmox is running on basically the same code as unraid(linux + kvm), its stable and works well, with more storage options.

 

Yep you can do that on remote desktop, use something like vnc and this will be fine.

 

 

[Aelita Sophie]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Proxmox is running on basically the same code as unraid(linux + kvm), its stable and works well, with more storage options.

 

Yep you can do that on remote desktop, use something like vnc and this will be fine.

 

 

But VNC it itself is, not responsive enough for gaming (Imo). Think pushing a few Cat6 wires would be easier