Project Plex Expansion part two

[Custom90gt]

So I've had my Plex/home server up and running for a while now and I've been pretty happy with it. Outside of being reliant on wireless (can't figure out a way to run ethernet to my TVs without a ton of work), I really haven't had any issues with it. Having said that, I'm not a huge subscriber to the if it ain't broke don't fix it thought, I love to tinker. Initially I started out with the smallest case I could go with and still having enough storage. My next case was a Fractal Define R5 which held 8 3.5" drives and thanks to a 2x5.25 to 2.5 bay it also held 8 2.5" drives. So out with the old:

 

Well I'm finally hitting the point where I'm going to start needing more hard drives so I figured it would be fun to upgrade to something with some future proofing. Enter the Supermicro 846 4U 24 bay case.

I wanted to do the test fit first. My next phase was sleeving the power distribution cables and figuring out the fan wall. The fan wall was pretty easy to make with some 90* wood trim that I had and my jigsaw. Not the best looking thing, but it works. I also forgot how much I dislike sleeving stuff, my molex tool broke 1/4 of the way through and using a sim tool was a pain. I also had to add a Corsair Commander Pro to control the fan speeds. I was fortunate that my scythe mugen 5 fits in this 4U case! Great cooler for a good price. This thing was super loud at full blast:

 

Specs:
Case: Supermicro 846
Backplane: BPN-SAS2-846EL1
Mobo: MSI z690 pro ddr4
CPU: Intel i7-12700k
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64GB (16x4) 3600mhz
GPU: EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3
Power Supplies: 2x Supermicro PWS-920P-SQ 920W Platinum (much quieter than the stock power supplies)
Fans: stock 80mm San Ace fans in the rear, 3x Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM that I need to create a better mount for
Drives: 1TB SX8200 NVMe for OS, 12x10TB Hitachi SAS drives, 6x8TB Hitachi SAS drives, 2x400GB SLC drives for cache/journal drives, a couple 256-512GB SSDs for caching/temp drives.
SAS controller: LSI 9400-16i

I'm still running storage spaces in Windows 10 on it, one parity setup for the main storage and another parity as a backup (I also have a handful of 12TB external drives as backups of the backups). I would love to do a ZFS setup, but I like running windows natively as I also use it as a Steam Stream machine. 

 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

Man, that is a ton of drive/storage space.

[Custom90gt]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Man, that is a ton of drive/storage space.

Hah and it's really been fun to setup.  Coupled with my 10GB network to my desktop it's nice to keep ALL of my Steam games on the server and then it's a quick copy over to the desktop if I decide to play it.  My next house I plan on running fiber to every room since wireless is lame (even with professional wireless stuff). 

[Mr. Fox]

Yes, I agree. I really do not like wireless networking and never use it if I can avoid it. But, wiring a house after it is built also isn't something fun to do. I can understand why you are using WiFi for that reason.

[Custom90gt]

20 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Yes, I agree. I really do not like wireless networking and never use it if I can avoid it. But, wiring a house after it is built also isn't something fun to do. I can understand why you are using WiFi for that reason.

Totally true, I would love nothing more than to have at least CAT7 in every room of the house, but the wife is not going to buy into that when it involves lots of dry wall, lol.

Here's the current network setup:

 

[Rage Set]

I really like your setup bro. I spent the past 3 months wiring my house for 10G (one of the reasons why I wasn't as active on NBR). Will you ever go TrueNas?

[Custom90gt]

Just now, Rage Set said:

I really like your setup bro. I spent the past 3 months wiring my house for 10G (one of the reasons why I wasn't as active on NBR). Will you ever go TrueNas?

I really like the ZFS idea and I think the plex container will work with hardware acceleration now, but having said that I do steam stream to my TV and have steam/origin/others automatically update all of my game library (like 7TB worth), and I don't know of a way to do that with TrueNas.  I am envious of your 10G wiring, lol. 

[serpro69]

That is a nice setup @Custom90gt. Too bad we're a ~month past Christmas, else I'd start writing letters to Santa...

How noisy is it? I want something similar, but I don't have an "extra room for a loud server".

[Custom90gt]

2 hours ago, serpro69 said:

That is a nice setup @Custom90gt. Too bad we're a ~month past Christmas, else I'd start writing letters to Santa...

How noisy is it? I want something similar, but I don't have an "extra room for a loud server".

 

So the stock fans that come with the chassis are really loud.  I created a 120mm fan wall for it using wood scraps (looks ghetto but it works) and that made it much better.  Additionally the 1200w power supplies that came with the chassis were loud as well but the 920SQ ones are much better. The final thing to help with noise was to add the corsair fan controller to tune things to a reasonable level.  Overall I'm super happy with the sound/temp balance in it, even the drives stay cool. 

[ryan]

im actually wondering why someone would need 80tb/ what do you use it for honest question

[serpro69]

6 minutes ago, ryan said:

im actually wondering why someone would need 80tb/ what do you use it for honest question

video in 4k, audio in flac and other lossless formats, games nowadays take up a ton of space, backups, ...

[ryan]

yeah but you wouldn't have enough time in your life to watch 8 million movies of 80 billion songs lol.....exageration but I have 10tb of external storage and have more than I can ever watch listen to.

[ryan]

ok so i did the math... an average flac is 30mb and 100tb is 100 000 000mb so that divided by 30 is 3.33 million songs? see the problem here

[Custom90gt]

Yes but my average 4k video is 35GB, I also have 800GB in pictures, and I keep a backup of all my family members computers + friends if they want it. Having said that, I'm only using 40TB of space. 

*on edit* I just checked and my games folder is approaching 8TB on its own...

[Mr. Fox]

I think it would be OK if someone just wanted 80TB for no specific reason other than enjoyment of excess or a fetish for having gobs of storage. I would not question it as far as challenging the rationale for it, but I might ask out of curiosity if they have an unusual or interesting basis for needing such a massive amount of drive space. I always like having substantially more of something I like or enjoy than what I technically "need" to get the job done.

[Rage Set]

* whistles quietly in the corner, not mentioning how much storage is in one of my servers*

[ryan]

oic cool.....was just wondering not picking it apart I dont have one and in fact i have like 10tb of storage which is also excessive, games and 3d movies add up....I just can't see 10x that lol....now thats alot of media...also perhaps im a touch jealous I can't afford a server for that as having one hooked up to my tvs would be sweet, ill have to make due with my 2 5tb hdds

 

 

 

quick little edit they hold 300 games and 200 vr movies and 50 3d 1080p movies..which by most peoples standards is alot. however some people just have to have them all and thats cool, thats old school. I remember in school classmates would stock pile DIVX movies they had thousands of them

[Mr. Fox]

3 hours ago, Rage Set said:

* whistles quietly in the corner, not mentioning how much storage is in one of my servers*

OK. Now you have to tell us, LOL. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it made the Fox go nuts. 😆

[ryan]

was it bad too ask?

[Custom90gt]

24 minutes ago, ryan said:

was it bad too ask?

Bad to ask what?

[Rage Set]

58 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

OK. Now you have to tell us, LOL. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it made the Fox go nuts. 😆

Raw capacity for the server with spinners, is well over 80TB. 

What I'm proud of is the raw capacity on the server with enterprise SSDs. Nearly 60TB. 

WD loves and hates me. 

Full disclosure: I'm always testing certain products and I'm always under an NDA.

The storage IS being used for business purposes and some personal aspects. Lol

[ryan]

custom... i was  being honest. not trying to troll...i honestly did not know what you needed 80tb for

 

 

also on a happy note it looks like this forum took off, alot of replies views ect well done receiver

[Rage Set]

44 minutes ago, ryan said:

custom... i was  being honest. not trying to troll...i honestly did not know what you needed 80tb for

 

 

also on a happy note it looks like this forum took off, alot of replies views ect well done receiver

I don't think anyone thought you were trolling but there are many reasons why someone could have an array that is larger than 10TB, as in your case. In my case, I completely eliminated local spinners in all of my physical rigs (all eight of them) and I have a dedicated volume for each on one of my servers. This allows me to monitor all of the spinners in one location, helps with backups and more. I also spin up VM's for various projects. I even thought about hosting a forum when I learned NBR would be no more. 

I have one massive volume that holds all of my RAW footage (4K to 8K, damn you Canon!!!) from all of my cameras. You'd be surprised to learn how much storage RAW footage eats up. I am a storage hoarder.... 

The funny thing is I don't have a central location for my Steam games, go figure. 

[ryan]

yeah I get that, I personally dont need 20 tb for pictures or 40tb for video and 20tb for text but I see if you guys are storing multiple videos in raw format I can see it. I just didn't think you could ever fill up 100tb in a 100 year lifespan lol. my s21ultra does 8k I guess its like 1 gb per 10seconds so yeah I guess I can see it now

[ratchetnclank]

I've got about 12TB of storage for plex. Do you just never delete content you've watched or something?