Server setup in signature, what should I throw money at?

[btrcp2000]

Have had this server setup going back at least to win7, maybe further. There are enough goofy things happening that I have decided it's at least time for a fresh clean install of win10 (upgraded since win7, never clean install). While I'm at it, wondering whether I should upgrade any of the other guts:

SSD for C drive?
More RAM?
Whole new MOBO/CPU/RAM?

This was all triggered by a reinstall of my r5000 which doesn't like anything for some reason, and has now pulled the Colossus down with it. Prior to that it was doing okay as a server, just slow reboots. Hoping the SSD would help with that.

[bigo93bronco]

A more modern CPU/MOBO/RAM might give you a better result with the latest version of Windows. I recently did this due to similar problems. Prices are pretty low right now, and an i5 will smoke that old Core2 Quad, use less energy, and generate alot less heat.

A put a mid sized all-in-one watercooler on my latest server ans setup a pretty aggressive fan curve. My CPU tops at 40c even under heavy load. Cool servers are happy servers

[SWKerr]

This is really a how much you want to spend question. Ryzen has really driven down the cost of a fast new system so not a bad time to do a full upgrade.

Upgrade options.
Windows 10 64bit !!! (possibly unRAID)
120+GB SSD.
4GB more RAM

Window 10 64bit would just be much more stable than 32bit. Not sure if the R5000 has 6bit support but unless you have a critical need for an old piece of hardware that only support 32bit I would go with 64bit.

An SSD compared to a physical hard drive can make a huge difference in responsiveness. But...it will probably not make a difference to you end clients or ability to record stuff. I would still invest in an SSD since it can carry over to a new system if you decide to go that direction.

Less than 8GB of RAM on Windows and especially 64bit does impact performance. But...you are investing in something that will not be movable to a new build if you go that direction.

unRAID could be a good use for an old server but the Colossus would not be supported in a Linux\Docker. So you would have to setup a Windows VM on the unRaid server and I am pretty sure you current server would not support the VM and required harware pass-thru. (and you would definitely need to add the 4GB of RAM.) I have recently moved to unRAID with a Windows VM using a Colossus. It works but is not uncomplicated to setup.

New build:
$220 - Ryzen 5 1600
$100 - B350 Motherboard
$70 - 8GB RAM
$60 - 120GB SSD
So...$450 for major upgrade

Can probably reuse your case and power supply and physical hard drives.
If you are in Intel only the i5 at that price level but you are going to give up a lot of encoding performance.
Also: I would recommend more RAM and a 240GB SSD but you can get away with the 8/120 without giving up a lot.

[btrcp2000]

Thanks for the input. Will be over my skis right now with u raid knowing I need will does vm but I have decided to build new. I found the except for the ep45 from 2008, it's been running virtually no stop. I think it's fine but if I'm investing time and money refreshing it makes more sense to go from scratch after almost a decade. Will probably use the old server to experiment with unraid.

Microcenter recommending this:

Asus strix z270h gaming $159
16gb ballistic ddr4 $120
Samsung 850 Evo SSD 250gb $109
I5 7500 3.4ghz $189
Total 575 incl tax

Thoughts? Don't want to break the bank but gone are the days where I want to spend 2 weeks looking for absolute best deal.

Never heard of ryzen, off to google

[Tiki]

"Ryzen" is the new AMD platform meant to compete with Intel's "Core" chips. It launched earlier this year and AMD has been quickly rolling out new products in this family.

One thing to keep in mind is that the current Ryzen chips do not include a GPU, so you need a separate graphics card. Most of the Intel Core chips (Core i3 Core i5, Core i7) include an embedded GPU.

The embedded Intel GPU's are roughly equivalent to a low end / budget graphics card. They are good enough for general office applications, web browsing, most home theater applications, and some light-gaming. For more serious gaming, you will want a discrete graphics card anyway.

But, if you can get away with just the embedded GPU, it is probably more power efficient than a discrete GPU.

[Fuzzy]

Can't give much guidance without knowing what else you are using the server for. With 6 miniclients (the extenders + android boxes), I would recommend at least considering unRAID. The ability to bump up that java heap will make the system perform significantly better with that many extenders up and running, especially if you decide to go with a more graphicaly involved UI (Gemstone or Phoenix), as they can really chew up some Heap space.

Even if you end up running a VM to host the colossus and serve it up to the main SageTV server running in Docker, the overall system will perform it's tasks much better.

Plus, once you HAVE an unRAID server in your home, you will continually find more and more things to do with it. ;-)

[btrcp2000]

I went ahead with the microcenter purchase. It also gets used for plex and playon recording, and just plain sometimes a different computer to do something on when the others are in user. Suppose i could do a windows VM and have that last item though. Like I said I will decommission the old one and work to understand unraid, maybe that will be a winter project.

I could live without the r5000, just sunk almost $1000 into those boxes 9 years ago thinking i would be bulletproof for years to come. Assumgin i could even get them to work, i have also noticed that my colossus captures over hdmi as if DRM wasn't ever a thing. And that's across two providers now, so it does sem like r5000 is pretty much worthless. I will still try to get them to work on the new server because i'm stubborn, and I'm curious what the difference will be to record a show on both colossus and r5000 and compare them.

I've also become very fond of chrome remote desktop for managing from afar. can you do that with unraid and see all the dockers?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

I went ahead with the microcenter purchase. It also gets used for plex and playon recording, and just plain sometimes a different computer to do something on when the others are in user. Suppose i could do a windows VM and have that last item though. Like I said I will decommission the old one and work to understand unraid, maybe that will be a winter project.

I could live without the r5000, just sunk almost $1000 into those boxes 9 years ago thinking i would be bulletproof for years to come. Assumgin i could even get them to work, i have also noticed that my colossus captures over hdmi as if DRM wasn't ever a thing. And that's across two providers now, so it does sem like r5000 is pretty much worthless. I will still try to get them to work on the new server because i'm stubborn, and I'm curious what the difference will be to record a show on both colossus and r5000 and compare them.

I've also become very fond of chrome remote desktop for managing from afar. can you do that with unraid and see all the dockers?

Someone around here recently created a new network encoder for the R5000. Likely more stable than the nextcommwireless one (though I got rid of my R5000's years ago, so couldn't say for sure).

[SWKerr]

unRAID boots from a Flash drive and starts a Http server. You essentially manage it from a Web Browser. If you exposed it thru your firewall I imagine you could manage it from anywhere. The unRAID could be headless after setup if you wanted. My server will boot and automatically start the select Dockers and the Windows VM used for SageTV. I use Remote Desktop but you could use any number of solutions to remote into the VM. It is complicated but you can setup the VM to pass-Thru a video card and USB controller and the VM will look and behave just like a normal Windows desktop once the VM starts. unRAID server boots and starts dockers and VMs. You then have a working Windows Desktop from just the one machine with the benefits of the unRAID array and Dockers.

The i5 would be workable for the unRAID and Windows VM. My current unRAID runs well on an older i5 but I would like more CPU to do Plex and Emby trans-coding and mp4 re-encoding. I actually bought a used Xeon E3-1230v2 to improve performance but I have yet to implement it.

The Colossus matched with a good HDMI splitter works with any STB and the quality is great. I use MCEbuddy to convert the ts files to mp4 without trans-coding them. It take just a few minutes and they play very well on any extender like device I own.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

unRAID boots from a Flash drive and starts a Http server. You essentially manage it from a Web Browser. If you exposed it thru your firewall I imagine you could manage it from anywhere.

Note that the unRAID folks do not recommend exposing the server to the Internet.

[btrcp2000]

So I got the above Microcenter purchase set up and running, but along the way figured out what the issue was with the old server, so sage is up and running again with the r5000

So now I have new equipt to play with and will go ahead and start playing with unraid/docker.

I am seeing a lot of posts about server grade hardware, so wondering if task #1 should be to return the new stuff and build from scratch with Xeon.

Things I might/would use this for include: Sage, Plex, Playon, Unifi, VMs, Steam, Minecraft server, etc. Also might use an old copy of WHS to backuop other computers in the hosue and get rid of the Acer storebought WHS server, one less box.

Gemstone would be an intended use as well, and probably more miboxes in my future..

Do I start over on equipment from the above

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

So I got the above Microcenter purchase set up and running, but along the way figured out what the issue was with the old server, so sage is up and running again with the r5000

So now I have new equipt to play with and will go ahead and start playing with unraid/docker.

I am seeing a lot of posts about server grade hardware, so wondering if task #1 should be to return the new stuff and build from scratch with Xeon.

Things I might/would use this for include: Sage, Plex, Playon, Unifi, VMs, Steam, Minecraft server, etc. Also might use an old copy of WHS to backuop other computers in the hosue and get rid of the Acer storebought WHS server, one less box.

Gemstone would be an intended use as well, and probably more miboxes in my future..

Do I start over on equipment from the above

What you purchased would be functional but I think you would be better served by an i7 or Ryzen with a higher core count and more threads. Even a 4 core with hyper-treading would be helpful with the VMs and trans-coding. The i7-6800K is a 6 core CPU from Intel with 6 Cores at $400 and it goes up from there. The Ryzen cpus are a much better value for a Windows PC but the platform is not mature on unRAID and there are potential issues. A lot of people on the unRAID forum do recommend buying used server hardware. New Xeon hardware would be pricey but that depends on you pain threshold. I did purchase a used Xeon cpu for my unRAID build after I decided I needed a little more cpu. I was able to find a used CPU that was pin compatible with my i5 board within the impulse buy threshold.

Steam seems to indicate you plan on doing some gaming on it. You would definitely want to add a Video card to the list. Nvidia 1060 and AMD 580 are the current sweet spot for 1080p gaming but the are in low supply due to bit coin like mining. You can pass-thru a video card to a Windows VM and game on it but it is more complicated than a basic unRAID setup.

I would keep away from WHS as it is a discontinued product at this point. YOu can probably do the same things with unRAID at this point. You could probably run WHS as a VM in unRAID but again Microsoft has dumped it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Also might use an old copy of WHS to backuop other computers in the hosue ...

I haven't been able to find anything else that is able to back up clients as easily as WHS. I have switched my Sage server to unRAID but I will likely keep my WHS machine around just to do these backups - it is also used as a backup Sage server but without tuners other than network tuners.

[btrcp2000]

Yes I saw the threads about used Xeons and have been lurking at natex. Probably will go that route since I will have time to make sure everything works. I barely know what steam is but the kids talk about it occasionally. If I'm putting the horsepower in anyway may as well future proof since I would need to upgrade from this i5 anyhow. As far as whs goes, I would be running it as a vm. The whole point of this is unraid + dockers. Agree with Wayner, my whs box has saved my bacon multiple times and really does run without any input from me 5 years now. No idea how it maintains itself.

Aside from the socket, and enough pci and SATA slots is there anything else I should look for in a mobo?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Yes I saw the threads about used Xeons and have been lurking at natex. Probably will go that route since I will have time to make sure everything works. I barely know what steam is but the kids talk about it occasionally. If I'm putting the horsepower in anyway may as well future proof since I would need to upgrade from this i5 anyhow. As far as whs goes, I would be running it as a vm. The whole point of this is unraid + dockers. Agree with Wayner, my whs box has saved my bacon multiple times and really does run without any input from me 5 years now. No idea how it maintains itself.

Aside from the socket, and enough pci and SATA slots is there anything else I should look for in a mobo?

I've been running sage plus many other take on "non server" hardware for a very long time. I really don't see the point in paying a premium for it. My current mud range i7 is far more than adequate for a lot of tasks.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I've been running sage plus many other take on "non server" hardware for a very long time. I really don't see the point in paying a premium for it. My current mud range i7 is far more than adequate for a lot of tasks.

I run Server class MBs for the IPMI on my headless servers in the basement. Wouldn't think of doing a headless server without IPMI. My living room server is an i7 Desktop MB connected to the TV - why I don't need or want Server class MB there. The Intel DeskTop MB and i7 have been every bit as stable as my Xeon Servers MBs in the basement. So I would agree unless you need something that is only available on a Server Class MB then a Desktop MB is fine. The one thing I don't do on my livingroom server is overclock it. I'm not confident that it would be stable enough for me.

[btrcp2000]

If I go Unraid, how easy is it to recover from an OS failure?

Years ago I briefly had a whs setup including sagetv. It ran all of about 2 months before I learned the hard way how poorly whs was set up to deal with its own C drive failure. This was back before it could back itself up. Huge hassle as it of course took everything in the house with it. I quickly went back to my current setup of separate sage and whs boxes, been running fine since.

I know unraid is more stable, but nothing is bulletproof. What if the usb flash drive craps out or the parity drive fails?

[Fuzzy]

The flash drive can be replaced, you just have to get a new drive, and get the license updated to the new drive serial. There's a backup utility for unread that will back up the flash drive's config files to make recovery quicker if you need it.

[Fuzzy]

The party drive is actually optimal, and unread will operate just fine without it. If you have one, and it falls, you can replace it, and it can rebuild it. Takes a while to but the system is up and running the whole time.

[btrcp2000]

Having already overthought this to the Nth degree, i think i am ready to pull the trigger (for the 2nd time...) on hardware.

Looks like I could pick up a couple used e5-2660 v2 Xeons with VT-D for maybe $200-$250 if I'm lucky. This would give me 20 cores and plenty of overhead, and would not seem to be TOO much more than an i7 setup, although I;m sure mobo/RAM will surprise. I don;t mind investing, but i don't really want to start over a 3rd time, so would rather put the horsepower in now.

What am I not thinking of? Confirmed that they are VT-D capable here, but I don' t know what to look for to ensure pci passthrough?

Is this a ridiculous overrreach? Probably way overpowered, but it seems as though if it idles properly it won't use too much energy. Seems like all Xeons have gone up since the refurb craze started a few years ago, and this seems to be the best balance of horsepower and price. Willing to be wrong though, TIA.