Unraid Server Secrets: Mastering 20-Drive Storage

hi guys welcome back to the channel good to have  you back now we've been pretty quiet here on the   channel been busy doing all sorts of stuff but  I'm glad to find some time here and there to put   stuff together and I was working on a very big  personal project that I thought you know what I   might as well record it um in bits and pieces and  put it together for you because who knows maybe   it'll help someone out thanks for watching anyway  we appreciate you so right now you're looking at   my new unread server and uh well you might be the  wrong word this is actually the original server   from last year uh resurrected though on a new  skeleton if you will we're going to talk about   building a server in a large Server Chassis and  you know the complications that came with that   and things that I that I stuffed up on that will  hopefully help you out this will include knowledge   on you know the type of cabling that we had to  use you know the restrictions on certain parts   that you can use or you know just just a journey  along the way there's a lot I had to learn on the   Fly that I'd basically never knew before um  and I'm going to share that with you today all right guys well thanks for jumping in so  here we are on the server Osiris and you can   see that there's quite a bit going on in terms of  information the first thing you'll notice is that   we have our I9 processor down here we've got our  containers already running we have our shares set   up and we have all of our disks showing up as well  we've also got our ups plugged in at the moment   we've got 64 gig of RAM we've got a dual Nick card  which is separate to the one on the motherboard   and that's an Enterprise server network card so  that's why I use it it's not 10 gig though so   it's a bit you know it's a bit older that'll be  an upgrade in the future though but for now it's   just a standard one gig card with dual Nix we then  also have our built-in GPU of course on the actual   Intel chip we don't have a dedicated GPU if I just  quickly jump into the main screen you'll see all   of our devices here here's our drives here's our  two cache pools that we have and we have our USB   that we're using for unraid itself and we've got  a whole bunch of setup in unraid that I'd like to   share with you guys as well because it's pretty  helpful to know and the things that you know if   you don't have to reset your system for a long  time and then you decide you want to you know   build a new one maybe or you had to restart on  your current server that's running on raid these   are some pretty useful tips that might be helpful  uh then we've got plugins I'll go through you know   a quick overview of those as well some important  ones that you know are pretty helpful and then we   have our containers I'll show you an overview of  our containers and what we're doing with them so   if I open these up at the moment you'll see these  are the full list of containers now you might be   asking where's the rest of them because you've  watched previous videos we usually have gone   through you know heaps of different containers  that we use well I've taken a different approach   with this server setup which is also what I'm  going to talk about previous obviously I had a one   server that was both a Nas and a server working  in one machine now for the most part that's fine   but in my scenario I found you know I ran into  issues where I did a lot of Maintenance tasks and   that would take down the nas server would impact  other people and I may be working on something   completely separate so I started eliminating that  by creating separate containers for things you   know like an lxc container runs just for a proxy  an lxc container runs just for Adblock so that way   I could work on something like sonar and radar but  leave Plex up and running and not impact it I love   the case by the way the case is absolutely amazing  I just outgrew wanting to go into a case to change   out hard drives and cabling and all that I really  wanted to go through a hot swap setup you know   maybe not necessarily the technical definition of  hot swap where I'm doing it while it's on but the   ability to just be able to slide drives in and out  is huge for me personally and obviously to want to   expand in future because I just kept finding  I hit the the capacity with whatever case I   was in so in this case everything's set up we've  got all these containers running I want to take   you through the Journey of the actual server to  getting to this point because what you're looking   at here is the end result so why don't we go  back to the start which was about two months ago   so two months ago I'm searching the web and  I'm looking for a server rack chassis I looked   fine wide you know up and down inside out you name  it and unfortunately here in Australia we're not   blessed with a lot of the options that a lot a  lot of other International customers have access   to I stumble across this case and again like  I said not a lot of options here in Australia   we don't have a lot of Super Micro Services  just you know refurbished every day I really   struggle to find anything here in Australia so  I found this cave come up and I thought okay   that looks pretty interesting um don't know much  about Silverstone would like to know more so we   support 20 drives they're hot swap trays they've  got a small little um if you want to call it a   bracket inside that will also hold a 2.5 Drive  which is huge you know everything comes with it   it has this lovely little set of switches and USB  ports here with some light indicators as well it   has a spot for two ssds inside the chassis uh  optionally you have the DVD drive bay otherwise   if you're not going to be using that you can  just take that out and put another SSD if you   want to as well it fits in there as well and it  comes with sliding whales you know very sturdy   looking thing I thought wow this looks this looks  interesting I'm gonna I'm gonna think on it for a   while that wall didn't last long I think about  a week later I decided to pick one up and you   know I had to drive across the state to get it  but I ended up finding one and picking it up   I'm not gonna lie it wasn't cheap uh it was you  know expensive especially by our standards here   easily in the 1 000 range Australian and here's  what the back plane looks like now the back plane   is probably one of the most important parts  right all the drives that you see in the front   over here they're plugging into this back plane  so now we're looking at the back you can see   that's the back plane there the back plane has to  connect to somewhere else now as you guys saw in   our Series where we built a proximox server with  true Nas and all that stuff you know we have a LSi   RAID hard which is basically essential if you're  going to be running this unless your motherboard   has enough ports which I doubt in most most cases  people don't have those kind of motherboards you   will need this card now this card for me was  about 70 bucks at the time Australian and it   sits inside here and it lets you plug SAS cables  now the problem is the card that I had at least   did not have enough ports to support this many SAS  cables what you're looking at here is five cables   uh the card that I have only had two so I had to  purchase something called a SAS expander so they   had to go do some research with that and I'll show  you that shortly and the SAS expander then allows   you to plug the expander into your LSI card and  then from the expander you know you've got heaps   more ports I think I've got six on mine and that  basically supported all of these but then also   supported a spare when I decide if I need it for  whatever reason SATA ports on my motherboard to   use for other things just like the ssds that are  on the front it came with modular fans which was   really cool and one of the best parts about it  is that it supports full height equipment the   power supply was just a normal standard power  supply that I picked up and I'll show you that   motherboard standard ATX you know all the rest  of it it's just all came out of a PC case so   no special server Hardware I was able to build  that this was a normal computer but the best part   is that you had so much room to work in that it  was actually really fun to build inside it and   um you know once this is a kind of chassis that  you would not just be changing out in your next   build this is something that you invest in and  you keep for a very very long time most of the   components are probably replaceable the back  plane I have a bit of reservations about I   mean I'm not sure how hard that would be to  replace the company is very responsive with   support and things like that from what I've  seen so you know maybe it's not an issue but   um oh I still have some reservations about  that part and the fact that it comes with   sliding routes is just amazing because the  one thing that none of this information really   hit me with and this is probably my own fault  is just how big this bad boy is width is fine   very standard width um for any server rack but  the depth is longer than what I have in my rack   currently so I had to make some small adjustments  to make it work and I'll talk about that as well   so anyway that's the chassis guys it's the  Silverstone chassis uh SST rm43 320 RS that's   the model number for the chassis and it's a 4u  chassis with 20 drives inside of it now by far one   of the most critical points of this build is this  expander I basically waited very long time this   came from China um you know the unit's in great  condition off eBay verified seller and all that   so very happy with my purchase but it just took  a while coming from China I think it took about   maybe two weeks in today's day and age I suppose  that's not too bad but nevertheless now when I   tried to look this chassis up and I tried to  understand a lot of information about how to power   up the back plane I found very little information  and the information that was there was you know   maybe not the most clearly explained so you  just kind of have to read between the lines   uh long story short the back plane has obviously  five planes on it each plane has two four pin   Molex ports to allow you to Power It Up and  you know one of one row is supposed to be the   Redundant power the other row uh sorry the other  column I should say is supposed to be the main   power so I had a lot of conflicting information  did I need hand ports for a four pin if so that   it's going to be pretty difficult to come by in a  standard power supply that you see on the market   or it doesn't mean I can just power them with one  per back plane and anyway long story short save   you guys some time you can use one per backplane  however it's not recommended obviously because   the whole point of having a redundant one is that  if you lose one you know your drives aren't just   going to die and stop with the power off it's  going to allow it to switch to a redundant power   supply and here you go this is the power supply  I ended up finding which gives me six SATA ports   peripheral and SATA importantly as well being  very careful that you got the right wording   in the power supply then came the next question  how many cables do they give you do they get are   they going to give me enough if I want to use one  port per backplane which is the recommended setup   because of the power distribution this  one has six and it came with I believe   two cables so it came with two and that left  me four ports I had to order a few more cables   off eBay but I was very very nervous about making  sure that it was the exact same brand or at least   verify that works with this power supply because I  have had instances where I've fried my drives and   that's something no one should have to go through  so make sure whenever you're buying cables they're   definitely 150 verified for your power supply  uh exact model and everything otherwise you   risk damaging your devices using cables from  other power supplies okay so never do that   so that gave me enough ports and eventually those  cables arrived and you know I could set it one per   backplane and I felt pretty comfortable that that  was going to be okay also of course is known for   their good quality builds and this power supply  is no exception the the thing is when you want   something with that many peripheral reports it  tends to go up in the wattage and 1200 watt is   a big boy uh power supply so definitely going to  get you through you know a decent setup or if all   20 drives were to spin up I know that this would  be able to support that and it's obviously good   quality all right so let's get to some building  now what you're looking at here is the picture   of the office I didn't get a chance to show you  guys uh up until now the picture of the office   um now that it's basically complete you can see  there's a lot of work done in here with the design   you know it's not a million dollar Studio by  any means but it's something that really gives   you a space to work in you can see I haven't  done the conduit for the Cat6 cabling up here   yet and I kick myself every day that I haven't  done it yet but I really need to get it done   what you're looking over here is my personal  desk and over here is my work desk so I've got   two different desks they're set stand desks  as well and that has a second benefit which   I'll talk about shortly just another picture  there and here's the chassis opened up opened   up this bad boy and you can just see right into  it as you can see very decent quality I started   going through it and just trying to figure it out  uh inside came with all the extras and cabling   and uh caddies for your ssds all ready to go  so over here you can see one slot for the SSD   and another slot here for an SSD and then you have  one that can fit here if you wanted to mount one   here as well otherwise you put a drive obviously  DVD drive here these are the moles connectors that   I was talking about so if you just come in here  you can see there's there's two on each backplane   this is one back plane then there's two underneath  that on that back plane and so on and so forth   under here there's a cut out an oval cut out  underneath this fan and another one underneath   this fan you can just see it a little bit  probably find it in another photo as we go along   and that's where the cables are coming  through so they they are the parts that   give you somewhere to run cables from and sorry  there's another one here as well in the middle   and that's how you're able to wire stuff  underneath these fans so that you know you   can still take the fan in and out and it doesn't  affect any of the cabling again just usual service   stuff you'll see I'm sure it's nothing new then  you have all these uh pwm headers for your fans   if you had additional fans you wanted to put in  the case you know you could run them off either   the back plane or your motherboard depending what  you prefer and this space here is absolutely huge   now when I first saw this I thought okay great you  know my motherboard will definitely fit in that   but not only does it fit it takes half this space  so my motherboard fits into these dab slots so one   here so here to here to here okay so this whole  section is extra space just empty at the moment   here's that power supply that I was talking  about uh it's 80 plus Platinum you know again   just trying to be more efficient as well if we  have to spend money on a power supply like this we   want to make sure it's doing its job efficiently  uh here's my first Samsung drive that I've mounted   so this is a Samsung one terabyte SSD I believe  it's an EVO 980 something like that and this is   the first SSD that I mounted in the front of the  chassis here this is a front of the case just a   bit of a close-up for you so you can see you  just push down on that red button and the lever   will fling open and allow you to pull the drive  caddy out and replace those drives as you see fit   the other part here that I really like is this  part if you just push down on this that releases   like a locking mechanism when it's in the rack  allowing you to slide it out just an added little   ah just feels nice you know when you're grabbing  these metal handles here and you just push down   on that thing it feels really cool feels like  you're almost pushing like an injector seat   now this is the other server that I was talking  about I said you know I'm running two servers   this is a dell r710 and this guy is basically  if you want to call him brains of the operation   um he's doing all the really high intensive  processor stuff or you know I want to keep uh   basically the unread server as a Nas I want that  to be its primary server capability and I want it   to do you know media automation all that all in  the one machine obviously for the storage as well   that's what it does anything else I run off this  virtual machines blah blah you name it this is uh   there's a esxi host running on that and it's got  virtual machines containers you know Docker LXE   uh you name it it's all running on there now you  guys saw what the office looked like clean this   is what it looks like a week in this is outside so  it gets a bit dirty and as you can see I haven't   vacuumed it for a while and you can see just  how much of a mess all this stuff is generating   is the r710 just down here there is a toolkit  there's a plastic bottle of nearly empty coke with   Siggy butts in there then we have a then we  have the new chassis just up here and this   is the benefit I was going to talk about with  a sit stand desk something that I don't think   about actually when I was buying it but the  beauty of having something like a table that   can go up and down is that it's really easy on  your back you can do things a lot safer and more   enjoyable So This Server Chassis all my buildings  I I could do sitting down standing up leaning over   and I can get this really heavy chassis keep it  low when it's being pulled out of the rack you   know and put it on the table while the table's  low and then lift it up to me let the table lift   it up to me and that was really really cool so  that's actually something that I didn't think   about having a sit stand desk but very useful  just a little night shot for you of our rack   that it lives in so this is where you can see the  old server okay sitting right here the fractal   here's the Dell server living here and the  new server's meant to go just underneath   our terminal screen getting set up on getting  everything set up and here we go our first sign   of life we have our our Hardware moved over from  the old system to the new one now what you can see   is a Cooler Master radiator now this thing was  interesting because it just fit I was very very   cautious whether this was going to fit I realized  later on after I already had everything ready that   the website that I showed you you know where it's  talking about the actual case it tells you the   maximum height that will fit and that's something  I didn't check so just something is worth checking   when you're going to do this that your you know  radiator is going to fit so mine just fit it   literally touches the top of these pins When I  close the lid but nothing that really worries me   so I don't care here you can see the side reports  on my motherboard some more here and I was taking   all the chips out obviously while I was moving  the hardware over and our power supply all wide up   what you're looking at here is our two ssds I've  got one just over here this is an older one so   it's kind of like an extra really this one's the  main SSD wired up through there you see I've just   got all these SAS cables hanging over the edge  while I'm working just to keep it out of my way   and here's a top-down picture probably actually  one of the best pictures so what you're looking   at here is the back planes just there the fans  and you can get a good idea of how the cabling   runs underneath here through these channels and  out around here and one thing worth noting is just   how much space we have look at the huge amount  of space you've got just here to you know get   those SATA cables in move stuff around do a bit  of cable Tiding and I'm going to tell you guys I   hate cable tying stuff uh I am not a tidy person  inside of most computers this is no exception   I do make it a little bit better by the end you  know I try to clean it up a little bit once it's   all in there but unfortunately I got these cables  a little too long these SAS cables so they're very   hard to move around once they're all in this  braided sheath here um so something to keep in   mind maybe measure the distance if you can and  try and get ones that fit a little bit better   over here you'll see the LSI raid card so that's  that's the one I was talking about with the two   ports on it and it has a short cable that  I purchased to fit with the different end   on the expander when it arrive so it hadn't  arrived at this point just another shot this   is the SAS expander card by adaptek okay  which comes under like the Lenovo brand   um there's our Port so we've got one two three  four five six seven uh and you've got two to go   external now what a lot of people do is and then  you may be doing this yourself is have a server   chassis like the one we've bought but has nothing  in it except for the drives right and inside   they connect a cable from those back planes  up to another computer that might have this   chip in it so I could basically have you know more  storage attached to this chassis by plugging into   those so very very useful for that as well and  just another shot there with the cabling in you   can see now I've got the raid card here the raid  card comes around and hooks up into the expander   and then from the expander I've got all these SAS  cables going in underneath and they go to the back   planes plugs now what you're also looking at is  an nvme over here 250 gig and then there's another   nvme just under here which is a terabyte something  to keep in mind is when you're using your enemies   on your motherboards depending you know every  motherboard is different but in my case by having   an nvme in this slot and one in this slot reports  I believe two and four or something like that   would be disabled okay which you were somewhere  over here on these ones that didn't matter I had   plenty of ports that I could use instead to run  for my ssds which you can see here so that wasn't   a worry but just something to keep in mind so  we have two nvmes in here which is fantastic I   wasn't even using that Port uh in my last build  there's our network card that you're looking   at over here as well and that's just got out two  Nicks in there to allow us to hook up to a network   so the Moment of Truth came where I had to put  all my drives in you know start it up and make   sure that everything worked now what I did just  as an actual precaution was take one drive and   it was my you know least useful drive it was just  a random desktop drive that I found laying around   and I put that into the machine started it up  and tested each backplane by you know putting   it in starting it up checking that I see activity  um that this that the BIOS picked it up fine shut   down put it in a different back plane in a  different column you know and do that over   and over and test it about five times in random  spots just told me that drives are being picked   up okay that the drive continuously is being  picked up in different ports you know it's not   being fried the power looks okay everything's fine  and most importantly is testing that the adaptek   expander card is picking up the drives as well  very very important otherwise it was all a waste   sure enough that all came back fine so the next  thing to do was get unraised up and running   now if you've seen me use this server before  it's been around for a while I've basically   just refreshed it and started again to have all  the things I need going now if you're starting   up here's the best thing I would suggest you  do for the first time this is not until I'm   at your very first install because in that case  nothing will be set up but if you had to reset   go here it'll tell you whether you know  you're missing discs or something doesn't   look right with your array if you know  everything's gone and you don't care   about your data like if you're gonna be  resetting really hard that's all good go to tools   and click on new config Now read this make sure  you understand what's happening here whether you   want to keep assignments for disks or anything  like that hit it and go and keep in mind the   array must be stopped for that to happen now this  is going to be cool that's going to allow you to   just start nice and fresh you come back here and  you pick where you want stuff to live now I've got   two paste pools here as you can see I don't really  need this second case pull I just thought well   these two discs are kind of sitting there they're  very small they might as well just be in a pool   doing something but I don't have other reason  to use it if I did maybe I would have kept it   this is the main pool as you can see two terabytes  it's absolutely massive and on decent uh SSD and   then nvme so I have two different types there  just to I guess load balance if you will   in terms of Docker getting getting uh everything  set up here's what my layout looks like I'll   quickly explain what's going on first and  foremost you don't need npm you don't need   tailscale and you don't need cloudflare if you  don't plan to reverse proxy anything you don't   need these things if you are make sure you follow  our videos on that there is ones on cloudflare and   nginx proxy manager and on tailscale tailscale  is going to be useful regardless if you want to   reverse proxy because it'll allow you to tap  into your network through a VPN AKA tailscale   and be able to get to everything as if you're at  home or you know wherever your server is living   it's a very very cool tool again we've covered a  video on that ages ago but you know it's still a   great product and I really really recommend  I've never had an issue with it never had to   pay for it anything like that it's it's gained my  confidence for sure then we have Plex obviously   one of the main reasons we're even setting this  up so we've got Plex running there on host and we   have some very important things that are always  good to know our transcode directory goes to our   Ram that allows us to use RAM for transcoding all  right which is absolutely huge we also have our   hard links slash Atomic moves Parts configured  for all of our media systems here and by that I   mean we follow the trash guide if you don't know  what I'm talking about go check trash's website   out type in trash guide you know Flex in Google  Radar sonar it'll it'll pop up and you'll find it   um very good resource of information you can  see how everything points eventually to that   same spot anything that's related to our media  points in that same spot okay so make sure you   check that out it's really important then we have  all of our automation apps and they all have very   useful things about them now I took backups of  all these before a wife my old server which is   pretty handy if you don't want to have to reset  these up which can take quite some time Prowler   provides all the indexes and whatnot to our other  automation apps Bazaar for the subtitles Notifier   to sync our trash guides check that video out  it'll explain that for for you where you can   just have trash guides actually synced for you  all the time overseer ports only for our stats   and pmm for our Plex metadata we're going to have  our downloaders over here which allow us to well   you know the rest so there's our Docker containers  in terms of plugins here's our plugins that we're   using so we're using turbo right mode the auto  update applications uh CA backup and restore   CA cleanup updater CA moving mover tuning  uh very important one there move it tuning   Community apps of course Docker folder and that  that's what allows us to have this icon here   and have everything underneath it if you like that  check that out we have a video on that as well and   then a whole bunch of other things just to give  us some information fix common problems is really   useful highly suggest that one uh GUI links is  useful gives you stuff like this down the bottom   Intel GPU top very important if you're running  an Intel CPU with you know the igpu built into it   uh tips and tweaks is useful as well unassigned  devices definitely unread connect is you know   your choice if that's something you'd like to do  I've got it on and I don't mind it I think their   new UI is actually quite intuitive and I do like  that but your mileage may vary so just look into   it and make your own mind up on that and that's  pretty much it we go to our shares we don't have   really much in here we've got an app data which  is standard backups where I'm letting backups be   stored and then I'm going to set up in the future  something like duplicacy or duplicacy whatever it   is that we've covered to sync it somewhere else to  so that it's off our server okay backup's no good   if it's on the server that's dying isos media and  system pretty simple guys it doesn't have to be   over complicated and while you're looking at here  you might be thinking mine doesn't look anything   like this that's fine go through our videos see  what you can pick up out of them it'll give you   a lot of the stuff we've done here like you know  the color theme that's all something you can do   yourself inside of unread is it provides you those  options and lets you customize it any way you like   you've got display settings here if you want this  coming up you know you'll find all that stuff here   in the display settings very very handy go through  the plugins that you installed don't just install   them but actually go through them and understand  what they're doing and how you can configure them   for you to work uh better you've got your disk  settings you know if you're first starting off   keep in mind what kind of default file system you  want to use we use xfs but look into what that   means it's a lot to explain in one video that's  already very long here uh set up another user if   you want to be able to get to your shares through  SMB which you can change of course and I actually   need to change a couple of these back to private  and check out your array make sure everything is   working you know test the Mover very important  you test the Mover at some point just to make sure   things look like they're working as they should  they're going to the array the way you want them   to and there you go so guys that's moving into  our unraid server it's beautiful looking server   I actually love it I think it's really really cool  it's sitting there in the rack and it just looks   look it just looks great I'm just looking at it  right now as we speak um I hope you guys enjoyed   that it was a little bit of a journey but you  know what I just thought I'd share it with you   maybe some of you might have learned something  out of it let us know what you thought Chuck in   a comment down below maybe you've had a build  similar to this and uh you want to share your   knowledge and wisdom for all those banging their  heads against the drum let us know in the comments   and we'd love to read them thank you for watching  guys I'll see you in the next ibra Corp video thank you

Channel: IBRACORP

Views: 32,673

Keywords: computer hardware, diy nas, home server, ibra corp, ibraco, ibracorp, nas server, nas server case, nas server install, nas server plex, nas server review, nas server with docker, network attached storage, plex media server, sas, server build, silverstone rm43-320-rs, silverstone technology rm43-320-rs 4u 20-bay, unraid, unraid docker, unraid guide, unraid plex, unraid plex tutorial, unraid setup, unraid tutorial, unraid vm, unraid vs proxmox, unraid vs truenas, unraid zfs

Id: lxGg-z9cYe0

Length: 31min 40sec (1900 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023