Unraid Server Secrets: Mastering 20-Drive Storage

[@IBRACORP]

Thank you for watching and for your patience while we worked on this project for the past few months, we really appreciate you. Built another server and have some tips for everyone? Drop them below. P.S - enjoy the higher res!

[@glepa]

and great to see new videos from you and the team, was getting restless waiting for new videos. One of the best quaility videos on YT.

[@shadowr2d2]

Thank you for posting this video 🎉. You have a new subscriber. Keep up the great 👍 work. Your video was very informative, & educational as well. Right now I don’t have a computer. Just a Tablet, & cellphone 📲 for now. But it’s no reason to keep learning more on my favorite 🤩 subject.. Technology on the world 🌎 of computer 💻..

[@QuestionTheTruth]

How do you group the Docker containers? Is it too lat after you have already created them?

[@meccu19]

Finally something more about unraid

[@IBRACORP]

Hope you enjoy.

[@planetman1775]

I'm setting up a supermicro 36 drives (8TB) 288TB + 4 cache SSD's. This video is just what i was looking for, thanks.

[@stokley121]

Love your channel and enjoyed this video. This type of build might be my next project to migrate off of Synology platform.

[@zorbad]

Your videos have been a huge help for building my Unraid server. I've been learning on the fly as well but you've saved me many times 😅 Thank you so much! 💙

[@IBRACORP]

Our pleasure, thank you for stopping by. We're all learning on the fly!

[@jonathandoe7490]

Thank you, watching this has confirmed i am doing things correctly.

[@MexicanWithaHat]

The legend returns

[@IBRACORP]

💫

[@Prickle28]

I bought one of these in January to upgrade my Unraid server from an old T620 Dell. Quite happy with it. I swapped out the 3 case fans for Noctua PPC fans to save a bit of power and reduce the noise. It has an Epyc 7401P on a Supermicro H11SSL-i motherborard and a Corsair RM1000x PSU. I have an LSI9300-16i 12Gb/s SAS card connecting the top 4 rows of bays and a reverse breakout cable connecting the bottom 4 to SATA ports on the motherboard. Currently has over half the drive bays filled. Very happy with it.

[@IBRACORP]

Great to hear from you! Not sure how many people know about this case so it's great to get some tips (definitely louder in here right now!)

[@Prickle28]

@@IBRACORP You were on point on how hard it is to find a decent server case with hotswap bays in Australia. Most of the ones i came across only had a few trays and most only had 6Gb/s SAS or SATA only connections. Only real complaint i have with this case is that it would have been nice to have an opening on the fan wall at both ends to make running the front IO and Backplane power cabling a bit easier and neater.

[@IBRACORP]

Spot on mate exactly right. Same experience here. My complaint would be quieter fans. Some comments have suggested a certain Noctua fan to replace them. Did you change anything there?

[@neggleston]

Thanks for this video. Helped me out understanding the role of the SAS expansion card.

[@chrispkings]

M8, ya videos are awesome! I just picked up a RM21-308. Can't wait to start the build!

[@chrisumali9841]

thanks for the demo and info, have a great day

[@chrisumali9841]

Do you have the info on the motherboard? and CPU? Thanks

[@thecoo2880]

Back at it again! Loved seeing your setup

[@IBRACORP]

Thanks, we have a solid team.

[@unicronbot]

Nice server build and info.

[@ChrisRider]

Curious how loud the fans are on this unit? I have used a few different Supermicro chassis (live in the US - easy to find on eBay) - current chassis is "moderate" - when the fans rev up, it sounds like a jet engine. It's mostly not a busy server, so the rev up does not happen frequently. I had a different Supermicro chassis that was extremely loud - I had to get rid of it. My rack sits in a basement of a 2 story house. I could hear the old one in my bedroom at night (when your wife asks what the hell that noise is, you know it is too loud). Way too loud (and it had an old backplane that was going to cost a lot to replace, so parted ways with that beastie).

[@TootNuggetEdits]

Nice build!

[@sillycoda1084]

fantastic video thank you so much!

[@majorgear1021]

Great video. I’m looking at this case but the price gave me pause. How are the rails? I looked at a similar Rosewill RSV-L4500U with 15 bays case but people reported the rails were horrible. The backplane also concerns me. I have an LSI 9201 with a SATA “splitter” cable for 16 drives and I don’t if I can plug that into the Silverstone’s backplane or not.

[@brandanweeks2625]

As a fellow Australian, I laughed so hard when you pointed out your coke with cigarette butts in it. I was thinking to myself "he's gonna mention the coke". Great video!

[@IBRACORP]

Wouldn't be a workshop without a coke bottle with ciggies in them

[@danielmackney6236]

Did you have any issues with connecting the sas hba to the expander? It looks like you have it plugged into port (a) instead of (g) as in the instructions it says that port (g) shouldn't be plugged into a backplane. My bad it says it shouldn't be connected directly to disks.

[@Legion-495]

Damn... I feel so compelled to also do this xD

[@loweofthed]

Thanks for this info on your updated setup. I noticed the "Power" section on the dashboard. What app, plugin, or setting are you using to add that?

[@loweofthed]

I think I found it. "NUT - Network UPS Tools"

[@IBRACORP]

It's actually the built in UPS settings of Unraid, go to Settings > UPS and enable the daemon if you have a UPS plugged in. Alternatively you can use NUT also

[@Techie4life]

would love to see a zfs unraid server build from scratch. Thnx Ibrahim

[@BLKMGK4]

I was surprised you weren't using a Supermicro until you mentioned the supply issue for those. I used a 4U case with a backplane that was known to have issues prior to getting my Supermicro chassis and while I never had the issues others had I was always worried. The Supermicro are rock solid and parts are readily available for the US but the selection is so varied that you have to spend a ton of time researching to know what to buy. Cooling and noise was an issue and using regular PC fans was a disaster but stock fans too loud, swapping in different Supermicro fans was the ticket along with an SQ PSU. It's not whisper quiet but it's at least 50% quieter than stock! Finding AMD heatsinks that weren't too tall for the chassis was an issue for me as I wanted to have active cooling. You did really well with the heatsink you've got, I'm jealous! That's a damn nice SAS adapter too! If you're using enterprise adapters for SAS make sure they're cooled well, they're usually designed for cases that are damn near wind tunnels to they might need active cooling. Likewise network adapters. Hot swapping drives is pretty easy powered up, stop the array, swap the drive, refresh the page, select the correct drive, start the array! You may want to tape off some of the vents up top by the SSDs, at least a little bit. That fan wall should be sealed up as much as possible from the back of the system and you want the air to draw over the drives. Those vents are a shortcut and you may not be getting as much HDD cooling as you could. You could check temps with and without them blocked to see. You may want to consider blocking empty drive cages too. Looks good man, congrats on the new build! P.S> Appreciate you mentioning Docker Folder - was wondering how you did that! Always very interesting to see what others are running :) I'm now down the rabbit hole of sorting my containers!

[@Legion-495]

Got a 24 Bay Unykach Chassis reserved for me c:

[@28469]

What CPU and motherboard did you go with?

[@glonch]

Excellent review and setup. This is the case that I have been looking for - thanks!

[@IBRACORP]

Thank you for watching glad it helped!

[@shephusted2714]

you really need 2 or 3 of these bad boys cause they break #dual nas

[@basdfgwe]

Hey you live in the same city as me, when i started watching your vids i thought your accent fealt familiar. Then realised you live in the same city. 😅

[@DrunkMonkeybom7]

So I was wondering, what kind of logging do you use to keep check of all your containers logs because I wanne have one for my unraid server. But I am not sure which one is good for unraid. I saw one called grafana but I don't know if it is any good.

[@bsesilverstar2229]

Gr8 video can u do a video on Kimai docker in unraid

[@IBRACORP]

Will check it out!

[@Matt-re8bt]

Thanks for the video review! What length of cable was necessary between the expander and backplane?

[@IBRACORP]

The options we found were either 0.5m or 1m. We used 0.5 from the expander to RAID card. 1m from expander to the backplanes

[@Fender19781570]

@IBRACORP - Would the 0.5m SAS cable be long enough to go from the expander to the backplane? Only asking as I'm planing to build in a similar case soon and dont want lots of extra cable restricting air flow. Thanks!

[@VictorCaoCA]

What's power consumption look like on this setup?

[@ronsafranic5177]

Excellent Video! I haven't seen this content anywhere else on KZbin! I will be doing something similar very soon! That Adaptec SAS expander seems pretty cool. I would have liked more info on that!

[@IBRACORP]

Thanks for watching Ron. We found it difficult to find good information during the build so happy to share what has been learned!

[@glepa]

hi, did you swap out the orginal fans? of so did you find any that are a bit more quiet?

[@Carts.]

Which port on the adaptec expander did you plug in the lsi HBA? The instruction manual online would suggest port G, but you look like you have yours plugged into port A

[@IBRACORP]

From our reading it didn't seem to matter and works though I guess you can follow the manual

[@Carts.]

@@IBRACORP great! Thanks for the reply!

[@Carts.]

One last question, the mini sas hd cables (8043 connectors), what length did you get? The short one between the sas expander and hba - where did you get that one?

[@acrusso1]

can you swap the backplane to something that would support u2 (nvme drives in a ssd format) ?

[@InvaderZim2189]

Hey, i am curious what cooler youre using in this for an i9, please let me know am I am looking at this case and will be using a i7 13700k. Thanks

[@kevinhawkes9976]

This video could not have come at a better time, as I just ordered that case to make my unraid server. I cant find what HBA card i need for it though? Any thoughts? as i want to get the one card, instead of the two cards.

[@IBRACORP]

Search for the LSI card in IT mode and see what options turn up. Hope this video is helpful 👍

[@albergaharriott5257]

@ibracorp I am new to your community and would like to create a build like your on my Suoermicro 846 for NAS duties, dickers, VM etc. I would rather use more efficient component than the proprietary system. What motherboard would you suggest? Which one did you use in this build.

[@郝帥-r2q]

好久不见😂

[@RussellMoran]

What’s the power consumption and speed compared to a Dell r720xd with Xeon e5-2697 v2 @2.70Ghz? Thanks

[@sheldondmanson]

is there any benefit having a gpu for transcoding? I tried using it with docker on unraid but I couldn't get it to work with my old pc that used a nvidia gpu.

[@GaMeOvErRules]

my understanding is that having a GPU is a waste of resource for transcoding. you are better off using a igpu.

[@glepa]

how long is the server case? was thinking of using it for my next build but i have to find a server rack 12-15u that have wheels to use in my lab

[@IBRACORP]

660mm

[@maknilsin]

What CPU cooler did you use for this chassis? Unfortunately my existing one is just ever so slightly too big so I'm unable to close the chassis with it in use.

[@IBRACORP]

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black. Warning though it just barely fit the lid on!

[@maknilsin]

@@IBRACORP I’ll take barely fit compared to the 2-3 cm I’m currently missing by haha.

[@maknilsin]

@@IBRACORP what idle temperatures are you generally getting for your server chassis? Mine is running a little hot

[@jj-icejoe6642]

Electricity bill ?

[@IBRACORP]

We don't talk about that. But really, probably $20 a month with the current load of disks and usage

[@olpeener]

hey where can i find your meshify 2 server icon on your dashboard?

[@IBRACORP]

Sorry we made it ourselves but can't seem to find the source file anymore!

[@MrLongy]

Do you use your Unraid server as an NFS share? If so, do you get stale file id after a while from the linux machine mapping the NFS unraid share?

[@IBRACORP]

Not that we've noticed. However we really only use SMB to access appdata or media shares when manual work is required.

[@maknilsin]

What cabinet are you using to house the chassis?

[@maknilsin]

Also what cables are you using for the backplane? Just trying to put my own parts list together so a steer on those would be fantastic!

[@IBRACORP]

Cabinet doesn't really have a brand just one found in a warehouse in Melbourne. About $500 at the time of purchase. The cables to the backplane are SFF8643 on both ends to the SAS expander. From the expander to the RAID card it's SFF8643 to SFF8087

[@maknilsin]

@@IBRACORP legend! Thanks mate! Getting keen to put this together

[@IBRACORP]

Our pleasure mate, get building! Watch the build video to see our journey if that helps

[@maknilsin]

Where can I find the build video?

[@scockman]

Thank you for another great video. I just pulled the trigger on this case after watching the video. This case looks very promising, looks to be solid. Could be better than the Norco 4224, which I also own, but I hated the backplanes in it. Anyway looking forward of build a new unRAID system, will be moving my TrueNAS Plex to this.

[@IBRACORP]

You'll be happy with the purchase. Our next upgrade will be replacing the fans with some quieter Noctua fans but otherwise a solid chassis

[@scockman]

@@IBRACORP Yea, I was wondering about that as well. Since this server is going to be in my office. I don't have a basement and the garage is too hot during summer months. I am waiting for all of my parts to come in. The longest part is going to be waiting for the preclear to complete. I will be putting 12x16TB WD Red Pros right away, so that is take a long time. Please let us know how the fans work and whether it will need spacers to hold them in so they don't rattle.

[@Ballzac212]

Bruh can you link your sas expander please

[@IBRACORP]

Oops! Will update that now but here's the model: Adaptec 2283400-R

[@deedub7558]

What is the max storage that your motherboard can handle? What size drives do you use on your server and how many drives are in your server?

[@Rmilyard]

What iis Discord link? Not working on webpage.

[@Goldmaster]

NBN: I'm in danger!

[@IBRACORP]

HFC cable for the win

[@andygonzalez7012]

great setup, great review, thank you. going to think about this case. Hot swappable is the way to go. One question; you don't have a video card for transcoding. How does ram work for transcoding compared to a video card

[@madtc74]

Is the LSI card a passthrough (IT-MODE) or do you have to configure RAID 0 to be used for uNRaid?

[@TrojanHorsePower]

Quick note, I've noticed that at 27:00 you use /dev/shm for ram transcoding. I see a lot of people suggest using this instead in extra parameters. --no-healthcheck --mount type=tmpfs,destination=/tmp,tmpfs-size=4000000000 You'd also need to change the transcode folder in the Plex transcode settings to /tmp (not the docker path, since you'd have to delete it anyway) to prevent over usage of ram and some people claim more stability and security etc. (don't quote me on that tho fact check yourself) (right now it's at 4 GB, you could always change tmpfs-size=4000000000 to something like 16000000000 if you have plenty of ram to spare)

[@IBRACORP]

That path specified will use half the ram available which in my case is ok as 32GB would be plenty. But yes, previously we actually shared that information in our Plex Transcoding video also 👍

[@mykpearson8085]

Do you use the same path (/dev/shm) in the Plex transcode settings as well? @@IBRACORP

[@gearspider]

Great video! I'm looking to build a rack setup, and finding a case is definitely hard in Australia!! I was planning to do everything in 1 chassis, and virtualize everything, including the NAS inside Proxmox. However, I've come to the conclusion that it will probably be better to keep things separate for the most part. I only just found ya channel, this video earned a like and sub 👍 Edit: I'm considering the 8-bay 2U version of this case (RM21-308) because it's the closest thing to what I want, and I'm trying to fit everything in a shorter network-style rack.

[@IBRACORP]

Thanks for joining mate! Let us know how the smaller chassis goes. We just finished putting together another Silverstone for a customer and they are a pleasure to work in

[@ikkuranus]

It seems like 8 of the 20 drives in your build aren't showing up or you forgot to purchase them.

[@IBRACORP]

Haha yet to purchase them all. But all 20 bays are set up and ready 🙂

[@CampRusso]

How come plex is running as host but the other dockers are custom network? 🤔 Sorry unraid/docker noob. 😆

[@leboromeo]

Plex seems to just work much better with the network side of things as host. Personal experience anyway

[@IBRACORP]

Absolutely

[@jmalmsten]

I must be inredibly dense. I've seen the whole video. But... Uhm... What problem is this... thing... solving? What is a "media request" thing? So I can connect it to my Jellyfin Server... Ok. Then what?

[@dan_lev]

$900 USD. It's not cheap by any country's standards. lol

[@IBRACORP]

Absolutely! In our case though it was the only option at that price point

[@jacobburgin826]

Umart regularly has them on sale for $800 AUD which is what I paid for mine. @ibracorp did you use the Silverstone hba cables?