What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

[Manni]

Re your other post, yes I had checked that thread, it's the controller they recommend. It's a PCI 2.0 8X so there won't be any bottleneck, I had checked that too. I have my GPU in the 16x slot and the SATA card in the 8x slot, so I should be fine. Here is a nice video about these LSI cards by the way:

I don't have any Seagate drives currently, but I was planning to so it's good to know if there is an issue even with current f/w and drivers, thanks.

[Pauven]

Here's the thread on the Seagate 8TB drive issue: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/103938- ... mmary-fix/

What confuses me is that the description of the problem is only for certain Seagate Ironwolf drives on LSI controllers. I have the issue, but my drives are a different model, and I have a Marvel based controller. Go figure. That makes me think we don't truly understand the issue.

Additionally, since LSI controllers seem to be the most recommended, it seems odd to me that reports of this issue are not more prevalent. Maybe not many users are using the affected drives, but they're such a good value that seems unlikely.

That's a good video, thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen it before, watching it now. Seems weird that he's only showing LSI cards, I know other stuff exists.

[Manni]

I followed your instructions and I'm mostly set-up with MC, with two issues:

1) The mouse doesn't seem to work (DOS was a nice evolution, I started with a ZX81, so I can survive)
2) I can point to the local shares easily, but I can't select the SMB share that I've mounted with unassigned devices. It tells me the mount point is TS859_4K UHD BD Movies DL, but how do I get there with MC?

Thanks!

[Manni]

Re the video, the guy has an e-bay store and he preps cards for unraid before selling them, so I think he's just showing those he's selling, and he's probably concentrating on the LSI one (or clones) because they are the most recommended/compatible.

[Pauven]

Okay, just watched that video. My takeaways are this: pretty much any LSI card, even the old stuff, has sufficient bandwidth for HDD's. And he only covered LSI based products, ignoring the rest of the industry, so that's not an all-encompassing review. He did hit the most popular/common models, so that part is good, but he also only seems to be covering what he sells.

Since he mentioned faster PCI-e speeds for SSD, let me take this opportunity to warn you away from using SSD's in your array. Cache is fine. But there are documented issues with using SSD's for array drives with Unraid. I know some users have done it (JohnnyWalker springs to mind), and I don't recall what the issue is, but it has been discussed that proper SSD support is coming in a future Unraid version.

It's been a wet dream of mine to build an SSD Unraid server. I've priced it out a few times, and it's always ridiculously expensive, so I probably never will. But if I wanted an SSD storage server today I'd go with a different platform (FreeNAS/OpenNAS/FastNAS, whatever it's called these days). If I can ever build a 100TB plus SSD server for less than $10k, I might go crazy and do it, but memory prices aren't dropping much lately so this is probably 10 years out.

[Manni]

No interest in SSD array (which is why there is no bottleneck with PCI 2.0 8X for me). Have you seen my questions about MC above?

[Manni]

Also forgot to reply to your comment re the case, I had edited the link in the meantime, I found a better one with hot swap bays: https://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/serve ... ujEALw_wcB

[Pauven]

Also forgot to reply to your comment re the case, I had edited the link in the meantime, I found a better one with hot swap bays: https://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/serve ... ujEALw_wcB

Is 16 enough? You were talking about more before. Also, the 3U height is a big restriction on what CPU coolers you can use. My 24 is a 4U, and I would love a few extra millimeters in height for better (quieter) CPU coolers. When it comes to rackmount cases, the lower the Units, the louder the fans for cooling CPU and HDD's.

I'm researching the MC stuff now...

[Pauven]

1) The mouse doesn't seem to work (DOS was a nice evolution, I started with a ZX81, so I can survive)

I'm using Putty 0.75 on Win10. That gives me the mouse support.

image.png (24.04 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

2) I can point to the local shares easily, but I can't select the SMB share that I've mounted with unassigned devices. It tells me the mount point is TS859_4K UHD BD Movies DL, but how do I get there with MC?

The path is /mnt/disks/, as shown below. /cctv is my only Unassigned Devices mounted disk:

image.png (53 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

[Manni]

I know I was talking about more than 16 disks, but the cost of these cases 24-bay+ is crazy, and if you add the other costs (24 port controller, max license for Unraid, it all adds up). That's more than I'm happy to spend now. Also, I'm thinking that with 2 parity drives, I don't really want more than 16 drives in the array. With 16 drives, I can re-purpose the 16 WD Pro 6TB that I'm using in the two QNAPs (the dead one and the survivor) for a reasonable cost and repurpose the still working QNAP as a smaller backup unit with unused 3TB drives.

My new HTPC is a 3U case and I use a very good CPU, silent cooler for my Monster Ryzen, so I have no doubt what I'm using for the 3770K will fit (it might be the stock intel cooler, I can't remember!).

At a later stage I might build a proper 24-bay or more, starting with new disks of larger size, but that's a plan for a few years down the line, when/if I have some budget for that.

For now I just want to retire the older QNAPs, as they are more likely to fail than the more recent Synology.

Re MC, thanks, I'm using the latest 0.76 of Putty, so should be the same. I had looked into disks and remotes, but the folders were empty. I then realised that for some reason the SMB share was unmounted. I mounted it and it showed up in remotes. So all is good! I'll run a few tests and I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again!