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Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

I'm currently running an Unraid server for my movies and whatnot. It's really old.
Intel® Atom™ CPU D510
Supermicro X7SPA-HF motherboard
4GB DDR2
I've got 5 data drives of WD Reds that total 36GB, and a 12TB parity drive.
I think it's a mini ITX case and only has room for 6 drives.

Now that I'm upgrading my stuff to 4K, I need some more space (drive bays) and I figured I might as well just upgrade the whole thing at the same time.
This server literally only runs Unraid and serves files. My Plex Media Server software is run on my desktop PC and my home automation is run by my Rasp Pi.

Couple questions:
1. Should I get a regular desktop CPU, or look at something lower powered? I get Intel CPUs at half off retail, so I could just throw some beast like an i9-14900K in it for $310ish, but would that be complete overkill? My current server doesn't have any problem serving multiple 4K movie files concurrently, so not sure if going apeshit on the CPU would be worth it.
2. Recommendations on a case that can hold 8+ drives? Preferably somewhere around 12.
3. Are the WD MyWhatever external (Reds inside) drives still cost-effective, or can I just buy a standard internal drive for a similar price and not having to pull off the external enclosure? I also remember having to set a jumper on the drive to get it recognized by BIOS.

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Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001
I think at 12 drives you're looking at a Meshify 2 or Define 7 (maybe others, but I'm a huge Fractal fan for mid-tower and up).

Going batshit on the CPU isn't worth it unless you see making this a heavyweight VM host someday. Your main considerations are the iGPU and ECC support.

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

Acguy Supremacy
Yeah, I'd get a super-low power CPU with ECC support and spend the money saved on as much ram as you can get for the OS to use as cache to help mitigate the latency & speed of repeated access of the same files off that spinning rust.

Computer viking
May 30, 2011
Now with less breakage.

Things we have learned today: We have a mix of SR and LR transceivers, they just happened to be split between rooms and switches in a way that worked out fine, and the switches were interlinked with copper. Also, the guys pulling fiber through the department chose singlemode, so all the SR transceivers were unhappy.

Neither hard nor expensive to fix (we need a single-digit number of transceivers), but it took us an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out why nothing worked before we noticed that some parts said 1310nm and some said 850nm.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I've standardised on single mode for this reason, the savings from being able to use LED optics and multimode cable are too small to have to think about whether the fibre that is going in will be able to do 100Gb in the future, or DWDM or whatever.

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Computer viking posted:

Things we have learned today: We have a mix of SR and LR transceivers, they just happened to be split between rooms and switches in a way that worked out fine, and the switches were interlinked with copper. Also, the guys pulling fiber through the department chose singlemode, so all the SR transceivers were unhappy.

Neither hard nor expensive to fix (we need a single-digit number of transceivers), but it took us an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out why nothing worked before we noticed that some parts said 1310nm and some said 850nm.
This is violence at work.
Quick, someone call OSHA!

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

Shumagorath posted:

I think at 12 drives you're looking at a Meshify 2 or Define 7 (maybe others, but I'm a huge Fractal fan for mid-tower and up).

Going batshit on the CPU isn't worth it unless you see making this a heavyweight VM host someday. Your main considerations are the iGPU and ECC support.

Thanks!

Looking at the Meshify 2 and it says:

quote:

Dedicated 2.5" drive mounts
2 included, 4 positions total

3.5"/2.5" Universal drive mounts
6 included, 14 positions total + 1 Multibracket

Expansion slots
7 + 2

I'm utterly confused at how many 3.5" drives that can fit lol

Henrik Zetterberg fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Feb 2, 2024

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

Acguy Supremacy
If you look at manual, it should be possible to piece it together from the pictures.

Eletriarnation
Apr 6, 2005

People don't appreciate the substance of things...
objects in space.


Oven Wrangler
So, if I'm reading that correctly - there are four places where you can mount a 2.5" drive, but not a 3.5" drive. Brackets are included for only two of these. There are fourteen locations where you can mount either a 3.5" or 2.5" drive, and brackets are included for six. Therefore, if you want to buy extra brackets you can go up to 18 drives total (maybe more, with 3rd-party 3.5"->2x2.5" adapters) but only 8 brackets are provided out of the box.

e: It looks like the Multibracket allows you to mount a drive in a location which would otherwise house a 120mm fan. Seems like if you're pushed that hard for space you should probably just go for the XL variant or a rackmount SAS expander, but I guess if you weren't going to use all of the fan positions anyway then it makes sense.

Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 2, 2024

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

Blarg, sorry, I meant 3.5" drives. Standard HDD, not SSD. Although I may consider getting a SSD for a cache drive or something.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001
Definitely have a look at the manual; there’s some work to convert the case layout but it’s properly dense.

Arishtat
Jan 2, 2011

OK I'm a dummy, what is the CLI command in TrueNAS to get information about a particular disk? I've got two disks which are reporting CRC errors and need to be replaced, but their serial #s aren't showing up in the TrueNAS Core web interface. They're SATA disks attached to an embedded Dell SAS/SATA HBA for what that's worth.

Eletriarnation
Apr 6, 2005

People don't appreciate the substance of things...
objects in space.


Oven Wrangler
hdparm -i /dev/sda, as root.

e: oh whoops, yeah probably not for Core.

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Arishtat posted:

OK I'm a dummy, what is the CLI command in TrueNAS to get information about a particular disk? I've got two disks which are reporting CRC errors and need to be replaced, but their serial #s aren't showing up in the TrueNAS Core web interface. They're SATA disks attached to an embedded Dell SAS/SATA HBA for what that's worth.
Since you mention TrueNAS Core, it's FreeBSD - so the thing you're looking for is:
diskinfo -v /dev/*da*

EDIT: Another way is, when running as root, is:
camcontrol devlist followed by camcontrol identify passN where N is the passthrough device.
It has the advantage that its more driver-agnostic and doesn't get confused by partitions, unlike globbing.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Feb 2, 2024

Computer viking
May 30, 2011
Now with less breakage.

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

This is violence at work.
Quick, someone call OSHA!

Eh, partially my fault. None of us have any idea of what we're doing with fiber, it's a wonder it worked out at all.

On the positive side it's definitely a learning experience.

Arishtat
Jan 2, 2011

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

Since you mention TrueNAS Core, it's FreeBSD - so the thing you're looking for is:
diskinfo -v /dev/*da*

EDIT: Another way is, when running as root, is:
camcontrol devlist followed by camcontrol identify passN where N is the passthrough device.
It has the advantage that its more driver-agnostic and doesn't get confused by partitions, unlike globbing.

Rockin'. This is exactly what I needed.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Been a while since I needed some HDs and going to swap a few smaller ones out for larger. As my Parity is set at dual 14TB right now, looking at 14TBs. What's the current 'sale' price on these that rotate in and out for the Easystores? Currently don't have a pulse on the market to know when to pull the trigger. Thanks!

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

TraderStav posted:

Been a while since I needed some HDs and going to swap a few smaller ones out for larger. As my Parity is set at dual 14TB right now, looking at 14TBs. What's the current 'sale' price on these that rotate in and out for the Easystores? Currently don't have a pulse on the market to know when to pull the trigger. Thanks!

This is all you will ever need

https://shucks.top/

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Moey posted:

This is all you will ever need

https://shucks.top/

God bless you, incredible. Thank you.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006

Moey posted:

This is all you will ever need

https://shucks.top/

This appears to be defunct, sadly.

IOwnCalculus
Apr 2, 2003





It's working for me right now, with a flag that Amazon price tracking no longer works - but they've rarely been the best price anyway. Can always just click through the relevant links.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

IOwnCalculus posted:

It's working for me right now, with a flag that Amazon price tracking no longer works - but they've rarely been the best price anyway. Can always just click through the relevant links.

Newegg normally has the good easystore sales, but the Amazon API access getting yanked sucks.

Korean Boomhauer
Sep 4, 2008
I think the price point of $15/tb or lower is still valid as a rule of thumb as well.

Arishtat
Jan 2, 2011

Arishtat posted:

Rockin'. This is exactly what I needed.

To expand on this what I was missing was the camcontrol command because the disks attached to the server's PERC H310 controller do not display their serial #s in the TrueNAS web console.

In a minor plot twist I logged into the server this morning to offline the faulted disk and sub in a spare only to find that the CRC errors have cleared themselves?

Gwyneth Palpate
Jun 7, 2010

Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

Hey, hope the thread doesn't mind a drive-by question from a lurker. I've had the same NAS (and same drives) for going on 10 years, and it's probably time to replace them. I'm not interested in building out a whole PC for them; I'd rather buy something already built. Are Synology NAS and Western Digital drives still good ITYOOL 2024? Should I be aiming for something else?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Thoughts on buying these cheaper refurbished drives? Comments on the links indicate that you do have some higher risk of failure/not getting warranty honored but generally speaking you'll come out ahead with the cheaper $/TB overall even accounting for that.

https://slickdeals.net/f/16839872-1...=external+share

https://slickdeals.net/f/17269948-1...=external+share

Tornhelm
Jul 26, 2008

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

Hey, hope the thread doesn't mind a drive-by question from a lurker. I've had the same NAS (and same drives) for going on 10 years, and it's probably time to replace them. I'm not interested in building out a whole PC for them; I'd rather buy something already built. Are Synology NAS and Western Digital drives still good ITYOOL 2024? Should I be aiming for something else?

Synology is fine as long as you google the model to make sure there's no glaring issues that mainly apply to the older models - making sure it doesn't suffer from the Atom bug problem and there were a bunch of people reporting the DS918's power supply dying after about 5 years.

Edit:

TraderStav posted:

Thoughts on buying these cheaper refurbished drives? Comments on the links indicate that you do have some higher risk of failure/not getting warranty honored but generally speaking you'll come out ahead with the cheaper $/TB overall even accounting for that.

https://slickdeals.net/f/16839872-1...=external+share

https://slickdeals.net/f/17269948-1...=external+share

Server Part Deals is legit, and if there's any issues with the drives I haven't heard of any real issues with them honoring the warranty - just the hassle of having to ship the drive back and waiting for a replacement.

Tornhelm fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Feb 4, 2024

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Thanks, I may pick up a few as one of my 14TB drives recently started throwing errors, although looking at the SMART report I'm not sure I think it's alarming. Unraid showing 10 errors on the dashboard, but seems like only 1 "Reallocated_Sector_Ct". Is this something that I should be concerned about? Also showing a prefailure warning for Spin up time and Helium levels. Big shrug there on how to interpret that.

code:
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAGS    VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     PO-R--   100   100   016    -    0
  2 Throughput_Performance  --S---   127   127   054    -    112
  3 Spin_Up_Time            POS---   158   158   024    -    420 (Average 412)
  4 Start_Stop_Count        -O--C-   098   098   000    -    11357
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   100   100   005    -    1
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         -O-R--   100   100   067    -    0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   --S---   140   140   020    -    15
  9 Power_On_Hours          -O--C-   096   096   000    -    32986
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        -O--C-   100   100   060    -    0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       -O--CK   100   100   000    -    39
 22 Helium_Level            PO---K   100   100   025    -    100
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK   084   084   000    -    20254
193 Load_Cycle_Count        -O--C-   084   084   000    -    20254
194 Temperature_Celsius     -O----   158   158   000    -    41 (Min/Max 17/48)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count -O--CK   100   100   000    -    1
197 Current_Pending_Sector  -O---K   100   100   000    -    0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   ---R--   100   100   000    -    0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    -O-R--   200   200   000    -    0
                            ||||||_ K auto-keep
                            |||||__ C event count
                            ||||___ R error rate
                            |||____ S speed/performance
                            ||_____ O updated online
                            |______ P prefailure warning

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Has anyone used the Anker SOLIX as an UPS? Brief Googling shows it doesn't auto power-back up after power is restored. Figured I'd ask here (I don't think we have a UPS thread?) since most people with NAS have a UPS on it.

Reasoning: I have a Cyberpower unit that I've had for some time, and an older APC Smart-UPS 1500, but... LFP batteries are so cheap now and I have the space to easily setup a multiple kWh sized backup. I'll have to look into what glue via HA + basic soldering might be possible to get some intelligence -- my objective would still be to trigger a full shutdown of attached machines when battery SoC hits like 15% or something.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001
Anker have lost my trust after their desktop USB charging station consistently fried its own USB-A ports inside of a year and they refused to recall or acknowledge the units were bad. They’re half the size of the equivalent Belkin device and still cram three 120V AC ports on the back with no fuse. I now have to re-evaluate all of their other gear that looks more fully-featured than competitor’s products and wonder if their engineers just went “yeah slap a few more in there; seems fine!”

That said, I wouldn’t try to bolt that kind of smarts onto even a much more solid unit like a GoalZero (who go all the way up to battery-based home backup). Just go for a proper APC or CyberPower unit; you’re trusting it with your data in a way that might be much more difficult to recover from than a failed drive.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Feb 4, 2024

IOwnCalculus
Apr 2, 2003





TraderStav posted:

Thanks, I may pick up a few as one of my 14TB drives recently started throwing errors, although looking at the SMART report I'm not sure I think it's alarming. Unraid showing 10 errors on the dashboard, but seems like only 1 "Reallocated_Sector_Ct". Is this something that I should be concerned about? Also showing a prefailure warning for Spin up time and Helium levels. Big shrug there on how to interpret that.

code:
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAGS    VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     PO-R--   100   100   016    -    0
  2 Throughput_Performance  --S---   127   127   054    -    112
  3 Spin_Up_Time            POS---   158   158   024    -    420 (Average 412)
  4 Start_Stop_Count        -O--C-   098   098   000    -    11357
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   100   100   005    -    1
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         -O-R--   100   100   067    -    0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   --S---   140   140   020    -    15
  9 Power_On_Hours          -O--C-   096   096   000    -    32986
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        -O--C-   100   100   060    -    0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       -O--CK   100   100   000    -    39
 22 Helium_Level            PO---K   100   100   025    -    100
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK   084   084   000    -    20254
193 Load_Cycle_Count        -O--C-   084   084   000    -    20254
194 Temperature_Celsius     -O----   158   158   000    -    41 (Min/Max 17/48)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count -O--CK   100   100   000    -    1
197 Current_Pending_Sector  -O---K   100   100   000    -    0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   ---R--   100   100   000    -    0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    -O-R--   200   200   000    -    0
                            ||||||_ K auto-keep
                            |||||__ C event count
                            ||||___ R error rate
                            |||____ S speed/performance
                            ||_____ O updated online
                            |______ P prefailure warning

Prefailure is a type, not an alert - meaning that those attributes should theoretically alert before catastrophic drive failure occurs. In practice, good luck.

The only attributes that give me any concern on your drive are the reallocated ones. A single reallocated sector one time can just be a fluke, but it can also be a sign of more to come. If that number starts climbing I'd treat the drive as dead.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

IOwnCalculus posted:

Prefailure is a type, not an alert - meaning that those attributes should theoretically alert before catastrophic drive failure occurs. In practice, good luck.

The only attributes that give me any concern on your drive are the reallocated ones. A single reallocated sector one time can just be a fluke, but it can also be a sign of more to come. If that number starts climbing I'd treat the drive as dead.

Thanks, very helpful. Think I'll keep it on for the time being and keep a close eye on it. Likely to pick up two of those refurb 18TB and replace my dual 14TB parity. Then move those 14TBs into the array, replacing 2x6TB that are pretty old drives (but no errors).

TwoDice
Feb 11, 2005
Not one, two.
Grimey Drawer
Is there a good near-silent external sas drive enclosure for 8-16 drives? I'm out of space in my fractal case after 15 drives and I want to add more without getting a screaming rack mount box.

post hole digger
Mar 21, 2011

Whats the recommended Synology for a plex host and home file server these days? I was looking at a DS224+. I think right now I could probably get away with a 2 drive but would consider a 4 if the specs make more sense. I'm not terribly leveraged on space right now though. I'm familiar with Synology's NAS picker thing but not sure if there is some esoteric nerd community reason i should second guess it. I feel like there used to be?

post hole digger fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Feb 6, 2024

Splinter
Jul 4, 2003
Cowabunga!
For Plex a Synology with an Intel chip is probably what you want. So you’re on the right track with a 224+ or 423+.

spincube
Jan 31, 2006

I spent :10bux: so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
Grimey Drawer
I'd personally feel greater peace of mind having (e.g.) four 2TB drives, than two 6TB drives, even though they'd have more or less the same usable space: losing one of four drives would be an inconvenience, whereas losing one of two drives would have me clenching until the replacement was in my hands.

Whatever you go with, assuming you do go with a Synology box in the end, I'd recommend you check that it's on their Container Manager compatibility list first, so you don't end up chained to Synology's 'it exists' appstore: and I'd stick as much extra RAM in there as the spec sheet will take as well, especially if you're going to be streaming video from it.

Quixzlizx
Jan 7, 2007

spincube posted:

I'd personally feel greater peace of mind having (e.g.) four 2TB drives, than two 6TB drives, even though they'd have more or less the same usable space: losing one of four drives would be an inconvenience, whereas losing one of two drives would have me clenching until the replacement was in my hands.

Whatever you go with, assuming you do go with a Synology box in the end, I'd recommend you check that it's on their Container Manager compatibility list first, so you don't end up chained to Synology's 'it exists' appstore: and I'd stick as much extra RAM in there as the spec sheet will take as well, especially if you're going to be streaming video from it.

Unless I'm missing something, 4 2TB drives that have the same capacity as 2 6TB drives in RAID 1 would have to be in RAID 5/Z1, which would mean both arrays would only have one spare.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

Quixzlizx posted:

Unless I'm missing something, 4 2TB drives that have the same capacity as 2 6TB drives in RAID 1 would have to be in RAID 5/Z1, which would mean both arrays would only have one spare.

Yeah, the mirror here is going to have something like an estimated 3x higher failure rate than RAID 5 array. Both insanely low.

This has tons of details, but should give you a rough idea. https://wintelguy.com/raidmttdl.pl

Branch Nvidian
Nov 29, 2012



Is there a recommendation for a NAS backup solution for 1 PC and 4 Macs? Total storage across all devices is 5.75TB (each Mac has 256GB, the PC has 4.75 across 3 SSDs). I'd prefer something I can plug in and "just works" over building my own NAS or having to do more work than just putting hdds into an enclosure. It doesn't need to be a media server or anything else, just backup.

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Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Branch Nvidian posted:

Is there a recommendation for a NAS backup solution for 1 PC and 4 Macs? Total storage across all devices is 5.75TB (each Mac has 256GB, the PC has 4.75 across 3 SSDs). I'd prefer something I can plug in and "just works" over building my own NAS or having to do more work than just putting hdds into an enclosure. It doesn't need to be a media server or anything else, just backup.

Synology's really easy to use, you basically put the disks in and do the initial config with a GUI in your browser. You can set it up as a network device with shares and configure some backups to it. Apple's got time machine or something?

Anyway there's 2 bay, 4 bay, and bigger. For your use case I'd probably get a 2 bay and a couple of 8tb or 12tb disks. You want more than one so the data can be redundant on the device and you want larger disks so you have room to grow your backups.

I don't know what all of their models offer but this seems like it'd be fine for that use case (currently $250):
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-2-Bay-NAS-DS223-Diskless/dp/B0BRNBVTJK/

The reason a lot of us build our own or use small PCs with freenas/truenas or unraid is because we often have old hardware lying around to get started with, or just want more control over the system. I set up a Synology at a client's place though and it was really simple to get going.

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