So it’s been several days since my last post about C States and power management in the Ryzen stuffing up Unraid OS.
I’m happy to report that things have been rock solid and for the last 90 hours or so, I’ve been solidly downloading my backups from Google Drive (yes, many years worth of data) onto the server. At the same time it’s been actively running as an RTMP bridge for all the security cameras around my house, and as an internal home network portal – all without falling over.
Here’s hoping I didn’t just jinx it….
Update: 8th August 2022 — Unraid’s been running solidly for 10 days + now!
I recently chose to go the Unraid route with my media storage server; I was lucky enough to be given a license for Unraid Pro, and straight up, let me say:
- It’s easy to use
- It’s beautiful to look at
- It’s stupid simple to get working
BUT…
My server uses an old spare desktop I had lying around:
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (1st generation Ryzen)
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- B450 based motherboard
But therein lies the problem. It turns out that Ryzens crash and burn with Unraid by default. You need to go into your BIOS settings, and turn off the Global C States power management states settings. Insane.
Why am I writing about this?
Because it took me 2 weeks to reach this point, wrestling with Windows storage, wrestling with shoddy backplanes in my ancient server chassis (which I then ordered a replacement case which set me back a pretty penny); new SAS controller; new SAS cables…
This is an expensive hobby, homelabs.
Local media storage. Yeah.
That’s right, I’m running Windows 10 Pro for a home server 😂
It’s been good so far, the machine is pretty old, but it is there for running things like local media storage, maybe a few other things that aren’t GPU reliant. It has an ancient PCIe 1x GPU in it (a GT 610 haha) that can’t really do anything more than let me remote in and work on the PC.
Although I do definitely want to run:
- Core Keeper
- V Rising
On the PC for friends and family to check out 🙂
Storage is a bit interesting; I forked out for StableBit Drive Pool and StableBit Scanner (there’s a bundle you can get) and it’s a simple GUI to just click +add to expand my storage drive with whatever randomly sized hard drives I have.
Why’d I do this instead of the usual zfs or linux based solution?
Mostly to keep my options open; it’s nice seeing a GUI and if Windows can handle my needs for my local network, I’m not doing anything extremely complicated, and the “server” it’s on is going to act as a staging ground for anything pre-gdrive archive.
I could just as (probably more) easily achieve the same results doing this over something like Ubuntu Server; except for the game servers mentioned above. There are some games that just require a Windows host much better, so this is what this machine is for.
It finally arrived yesterday, after 2 months stuck in postal limbo dealing with customs issues and imports; I am so thrilled to finally have them here. They’re from a craftsman in the US – Dan at Computer Aided Crafting who put this together for me. He does other books as well; but I’m very, very satisfied with his work on this collection. This series has been a huge part of my life; I grew up reading from the end of high school and right through university, and into early adulthood. So alongside Terry Pratchett, this series by Robert Jordan, finished by Brandon Sanderson, holds a special place in my heart.
Very chuffed 🙂
And they smell great!
The JT-LAB rack is finally full; all the machines contained within are the servers I intend to have fully operational and working on the network! Although not all of them are turned on right now. There’s a few machines that need some hardware work done on them; but that’s a weekend project, I think 🙂
