Test run
The UnRaid license was provided to us by Lime Technology, Inc. as part of this series of articles. I will write more about the different licenses and the payment model in the next part of the series, because this one will be all about the basic setup and some application examples of the UnRaid operating system.
For the test run, I had already carried out the installation and configuration and first tried out a few things and tested the system for stability. In the following picture you can see the user interface of the operating system, which is called up via the web browser. In the example, data is being transferred to the server, the transfer rate is 982.5 Mbit/s (the “Interface” tab at the bottom left).
In practice, here with many files, some of which are smaller, the transfer rate settles at just under 100 MB/s.
The HDDs would still be able to manage this without the cache drive, but the cache drive allows the mechanical disks to “sleep” practically around the clock, which ultimately saves a lot of energy.
Current status
As the system was running very cool and absolutely stable outside the network cabinet, I shut it down after a few days and installed it in the cabinet.
Despite the shallow installation depth, I had to use a 90° angled power cable to prevent the cable from kinking too much. Incidentally, the high humidity can be ignored, as the small digital thermometer had just been put into operation at the time the photo was taken and had not yet leveled off properly.
And finally, a picture of the entire cabinet. The cables in the background still need to be tied together and I’m not yet sure whether the arrangement will stay as it is. So far we haven’t had any high temperatures and currently (22°C outside temperature, 21°C room temperature and 56% humidity) the temperature in the closed cabinet is 23°C – with the cabinet ventilation deactivated. As the system is idle most of the time and currently only has to answer DNS queries, I don’t expect critical temperatures even if the outside temperature rises.
By the way… since many had cried out because of the unacceptably high power consumption of the old HP switch: The entire cabinet (FritzBox, switch, lighting and server in idle mode) currently draws around 55 watts from the socket. If I generously calculate with an average power consumption of 70W, in case a large amount of data is transferred, a disk needs to be restored or a VM or game server is running for a long time, I arrive at an annual consumption of approx. 600kWh with 24/7 operation, which corresponds to ~180€ per year or ~15€ per month with our current electricity tariff. That’s definitely not a small amount, but my hobby is definitely worth it to me and there is still plenty of potential to optimize the whole thing.
Outlook
So far, I’m pretty happy with the interim result. The server has been running absolutely stable in continuous operation for almost two months now, is available around the clock and is also sufficiently fast when accessing archived data, even if the disks have to be restarted first. In this respect, I would definitely classify the project as a success.
In the next article I will show you the installation and basic configuration of the UnRaid operating system, how to customize the interface and what great features systems of this type can offer. Here I will also tease “pihole” in particular, which you can use to prevent unwanted advertisements from websites, mobile games and even smart TVs in your entire network.
Finally, a big thank you to Yakkaroo Serversysteme, Seagate Germany and Lime Technology, Inc. for providing the hardware and software required to realize this project.
77 Antworten
Kommentar
Lade neue Kommentare
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Mitglied
Veteran
Moderator
Urgestein
Mitglied
Veteran
Urgestein
Veteran
Urgestein
Mitglied
Urgestein
Veteran
Veteran
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Alle Kommentare lesen unter igor´sLAB Community →