Server OS Opinions

[Sat32 0]

Thinking about changing my server config and wanted some opinions?

Current hardware:

Asus mobo am3 socket

AMD 960 black edition

LSI 9620-8 megaraid

16gb ram

6 X WD Red 2tb (raid 5)

2 x Samsung 1tb HD (mirrored)

Intel gb nic

 

Current software:

VMware EXSI 5.5

Windows Home Server V2

Windows 7

 

Whs is used mostly just for file sharing

 

Windows 7 has emby installed on it along with metabrowser, PlayOn, MCE Buddy

 

Most of this hardware will remain the same exccpt

I may change a few things for hardware I already have

Mobo ASUS WS-Revolution with i7 920

Nvidia 560ti

a SSD for new OS.

 

My main goals are better performance, client backups, centralized DVR(HDHomeRun Prime),

 

Right now I'm looking/trying out in VM's

FreeNAS, Amahi, OpenMediaVault

My thought is run one of these for Emby, backups and file sharing and virtualize windows 7 for metabrowser, PlayOn, MCE Buddy

 

Opinions

 

 

 

 

 

[Luke 42077]

The new docker-based freenas looks interesting, but it's still in beta I believe.

[Sat32 0]

Was playing with freeNas 9.3 and it out looks really good except for all the warnings about using non-ecc ram and data coruption.

Plus people don't recommend using a hardware raid card with it either and thats what I have.

 

So OpenmediaVault is the lead as of right now and I just finnished installing 3.X

 

Could try Nas4free that doesn't use the new ZFS file system but not sure if theres emby plug in for it

or if the freenas plugin will work?

 

I'm more of a windows guy so gui's and easy configs are what I'm looking for

 

If this ZFS file system is so great as they claim you'd think it would be a litttle more robust in terms of data integrity and hardware controllers

 

Thanks

[PenkethBoy 2068]

If you are a windows guy and have whs v2 - then look at StableBit Drivepool - will work with all modern flavours of windows os

 

yes it prefers that you have single disks rather than raid - virtually anything you look at will have a similar requirement 

 

So you could re flash the card to IT mode and it would then act as an HBA card and just pass through the disk to the os - or have raid0 on single disks so each gets pass through to the os as a single volume

 

Without IT mode you will likely lose all SMART data as the os will not be able to see that

 

Yes the FreeNas guys are less than helpful and the faith in ecc ram as the savior of your data gets a bit tiring after awhile - if its such an issue why are other os not mandating it 

[MSattler 390]

So, I've gone a completely different route than most.  I'm running two unRaid servers.  Unraid licenses costs $60-120 per server depending on the number of disks you run.

 

Reason I run it?

 

1)  You can mix different size disks.   I have 4 x 5TB Disks, 5 x 4TB Disks, 1 x 3TB Disk, and 1 5TB Disk for parity.  

2)  If I want to watch a movie, only the disk with the movie is spunup, the other disks stay down.

3)  If I lose a disk, the other disks still have their movies, no slowness for parity rebuild except the movies on the disk thats down.

4)  Unraid can use dual parity disks now too, so you'd have to lose 3 disks to lose data.

5)  If you lose parity disks, and a data disks, the other remaining disks still have their movies.

6)  NIC Bonding is available and I use it as well.  

 

 

Additionally you can run docker, or VM's on unRaid, including Emby.

 

My first unRaid server has 43TB of usable storage.  My second unRaid server has 12TB of usable storage.

 

I should mention I only use these for movies.  For important documents I have 2 synology NAS devices, where one does an rsync to the other.   And I do offline storage for the important files as well.  For me it makes no sense to setup multiple Raid 5 pools, where I lose a ton of storage potential due to parity costs.  I also can mix drive sizes, so if particular sizes are on sale, I can add them, which you cannot do in Raid 5.  And of course from a heat perspective, I can get more drives into a chassis, with less heat and power concerns. 

Edited December 27, 2016 by MSattler

[Sat32 0]

Thanks for the suggestions

 

I'm downloading unraid as I write this to give it a shot

I tried stablebit drive pool when I first switched from WHS V1 to V2, didn't think

the performance wasn't very good thats why I got the raid card.

 

I priced switching to ECC ram $160 for 3 x 24gb

If was building from sratch that wouldn't be a big deal. But I allready

have good ram for the system Mushkin Red Line.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Sat32

[ebr 16171]

The downside to realize with Unraid is the fact the file system is proprietary - which means the data cannot be read/recovered on its own.  That is one of the primary reasons I went from unraid to flexraid.

[MSattler 390]

The downside to realize with Unraid is the fact the file system is proprietary - which means the data cannot be read/recovered on its own.  That is one of the primary reasons I went from unraid to flexraid.

 

So here is some mis-information that needs to be cleared up.  I understand not everyone has the same knowledge when it comes to Server OS's.

 

If you need to read the unRaid disks on another system it IS possible.  

 

For one, you could boot off a thumbdrive with unRaid on, on any machine and copy data off as you need.

 

Secondly, ReiserFS and XFS are support on any linux system.  

 

The file system is not proprietary.... ReiserFS and XFS are standard File System choices in Linux.

[MSattler 390]

Thanks for the suggestions

 

I'm downloading unraid as I write this to give it a shot

I tried stablebit drive pool when I first switched from WHS V1 to V2, didn't think

the performance wasn't very good thats why I got the raid card.

 

I priced switching to ECC ram $160 for 3 x 24gb

If was building from sratch that wouldn't be a big deal. But I allready

have good ram for the system Mushkin Red Line.

 

If you are looking for optimal write speeds with unRaid, you can add a cache disk.  Writes to the array's are kept on the cache disk, until a mover service runs offhours to copy the data to the array.

 

This means that potential read performance from the array drives are not impacted by writing to the array during typical usage hours.

[Sat32 0]

Well after two days of playing with exsi finaly got unraid to boot.

The gui looked nice but don't think it's really what I'm looking for.

 

OpenMediavault seems to have everything I'm looking for but been using windows for years except installing Ubuntu on my old PS3.

and setting up Exsi. I haven't touched Linux so this will be a slow pain full process

 

I installed the emby server on OMV how do I add media shared on a windows PC?

 

Thanks