Moin Leute,
nachdem ich mich nun einige Tage in das Thema eingelsen habe, möchte ich gerne meine kleine 2x3TB ZyXel325v2 gegen einen Homeserver ersetzen.
Maximaler Preis sollten 1000€ sein, gerne darf es aber auch weniger kosten.
Meine Überlegung:
- Primär dient der Server als Datengrab
- Sekundär spiele ich aber gerne mit Technik und möchte per unRaid und Xen folgende Virtualisierungen realisieren: 1. Kodi auf Windows oder Linux basierend (direktter Passthrough an die Videokarte und damit zum Fernseher) 2. Linux Distribution für Sabnzb etc. pp.
Wenn ich nun alles Richtig verstanden habe fungiert unRaid als Hauptsystem und virtualsiert für mich dann Windows und Linux. Einstellungen erlauben Hardware an bestimmte Virtualisierungen zu binden.
Hardware habe ich bislang folgende:
- Gehäuse: Fractal Define R5
- Festplatten: 1xSSD 128GB + 5x3TB 5400RPM WD RED
- Ram: 16GB Crucial DDR3-1600 CL9
- Mainboard: MSI Z87 MPOWER Intel Z87 So.1150 Dual (8 Sata / 2- 1GB eth.)
- Prozessor: i5 4570
- GPU: Radeon ----HD???? (Passthrough evtl. mittlerweile möglich über die Intel HD des Prozessors?)
Preislich habe ich noch ca. 200€ Luft zu Änderungen
Inspiriert hatte mich folgender Beitrag auf Reddit:
Was haltet Ihr davon? Ich möchte HTPC und Server gerne vereinen, auch wenn das sehr umstritten ist, das ist mir bewusst. Interessieren würden mich auch die ungefähren Stromkosten von so einem Gerät, da ich nicht genau weiß ob ich die Kodi Virtualisierung bei nichtbenutzung in Sleep oder Stdby setzen kann. Hat da jemand Erfahrung. Auf meinem jetzigen HTPC rödelt Kodi auch bei nichtbenutzung einiges an CPU Leistung ab, darum wäre eine Lösung in Richtung Stromsparmodus nicht schlecht.
Wäre super wenn Ihr eine Idee zu Verbesserung oder Umstrukturierung des Projekts zum besten geben könntet.
nachdem ich mich nun einige Tage in das Thema eingelsen habe, möchte ich gerne meine kleine 2x3TB ZyXel325v2 gegen einen Homeserver ersetzen.
Maximaler Preis sollten 1000€ sein, gerne darf es aber auch weniger kosten.
Meine Überlegung:
- Primär dient der Server als Datengrab
- Sekundär spiele ich aber gerne mit Technik und möchte per unRaid und Xen folgende Virtualisierungen realisieren: 1. Kodi auf Windows oder Linux basierend (direktter Passthrough an die Videokarte und damit zum Fernseher) 2. Linux Distribution für Sabnzb etc. pp.
Wenn ich nun alles Richtig verstanden habe fungiert unRaid als Hauptsystem und virtualsiert für mich dann Windows und Linux. Einstellungen erlauben Hardware an bestimmte Virtualisierungen zu binden.
Hardware habe ich bislang folgende:
- Gehäuse: Fractal Define R5
- Festplatten: 1xSSD 128GB + 5x3TB 5400RPM WD RED
- Ram: 16GB Crucial DDR3-1600 CL9
- Mainboard: MSI Z87 MPOWER Intel Z87 So.1150 Dual (8 Sata / 2- 1GB eth.)
- Prozessor: i5 4570
- GPU: Radeon ----HD???? (Passthrough evtl. mittlerweile möglich über die Intel HD des Prozessors?)
Preislich habe ich noch ca. 200€ Luft zu Änderungen
Inspiriert hatte mich folgender Beitrag auf Reddit:
In the past month or so I spent a great deal of time researching and building a home theater (HTPC) that also houses its own storage all in the same box. This was a step up from my Raspberry Pi XBMC setup, which was becoming too limited for my needs. My goal was to be able to use the same hardware instead of having separate dedicated boxes for NAS + HTPC to (1) save power and (2) save space. Plus, I can always use the box for other things too especially since it'll be running 24/7.
I'll be talking about my setup here, to hopefully provide information to other users with things like hardware compatibility, passthrough, etc.
HARDWARE
ASRock Z87M Pro4 Motherboard - chosen for reported passthrough compat. Looking back, I maybe should've gone with a full Z87 for more PCI ports, but I couldn't find any confirmation of passthrough compatibility from users, so I didn't want to gamble. The Z87M provides everything I need and nothing more.
Inter Core i5-4570S - chosen for reported low power + virtualization support. There are more low-power options that have all these features, but it costs something like $250.
8 GB DDR3 1600 RAM - got a discount when buying this + processor. Nothing fancy here, decent and affordable.
Seasonic S12II 620 Power Supply - affordable, good reviews, and able to handle a decent amount of hardware. I've touched mine in action, and it is just barely warm after running all this crap for hours at a time.
Kingston 120GB SSD - for host OS and VM config/storage, decently priced. I wouldn't invest in anything smaller. I thought 120GB is too big, but it turns out it's just enough.
LG Bluray/DVD combo drive - because if I'm going to build a HTPC, it should be able to play Bluray!
6 x 3TB Seagate external - converted to internal (after checkup!). Only after this did I come across the internal version of the drive. They are literally the same thing and price, I could've saved myself a lot of trouble prying those externals open. Learn from my mistakes!Anyways, you're wondering why not go with 4TB, and the answer is 3TB still offers the best cost per terrabyte.
Pretty and affordable LIAN LI PC-9F case - houses 6 drives and more, it has a very nice system that allows me to easily swap drives if needed.
Dedicated ATI Radeon HD 4350 - chosen for reported passthrough compat. and HDMI out. The mount is PCI Express. At 512 MB dedicated memory, it is more than enough. It is also fairly quiet.
IO Crest 4-port SATA III Expansion PCIe card - needed for SSD and Bluray/DVD. You can get away with a SATA II controller, but why bother when the price is almost the same?
2 x TP Link Gigabit Ethernet PCI card
MACHINES
XenServer 6.2 as domain0. Installation was very straight forward. Absolutely NO issues on my hardware. No need for additional drivers or any other bullshit. I did try ESXi and it was not behaving well on my hardware (did not install, I can't remember why it was crashing/misbehaving). XenServer worked out of the box.
unRAID OS - the NAS software handling my 6 x 3 TB drives (1 parity, 5 storage). I used this guide on how to install it and get the license key working. Even though my USB stick has the 6.0 beta 64 bit image, the latest VHD I found was the 5.0.4 so it is booting in 32 bit mode. However, it pulls and stores the system configuration off the USB drive.
Debian Linux - I used a netinstall image. Either burned on a CDROM or mounted from an ISO repository hosted on the unRAID machine worked just fine (I have tried both). This is a general purpose Linux box that also hosts software for downloading... things. I run sabnzbdplus, CouchPotato, and SickBeard all in unison without any problems (I had to ensure I got the sabnzbdplus from the testing repository, stable release was too old and my CouchPotato was acting up).
Win XP Service Pack 3 (XP-1) - Solely for streaming purposes. I use PlayOn to stream different channels (including netflix) to
Win XP Service Pack 3 (XP-2) - I run the windows build of XBMC on this. Originally I wanted a separate Linux VM to do this, but I had trouble getting the Radeon graphics drivers installed. Actually, that's a lie. I got graphics to work on Debian host after jumping through some hoops (had to mess with some X config), but XBMC wouldn't work, and I could not get it to compile from source. However, XP picked it up no problem. All I had to do was install the drivers from ATI/AMD. I can easily integrate XP-1 and XP-2 into one machine, this is something to look at in the future. The only reason why they are separate is because XP-2 was supposed to be Linux.
So there you have it, four virtual machines all working perfectly in unison for one purpose: my entertainment. Let's see what hardware is assigned to what.
HARDWARE ALLOCATION
There are four things that I am doing pciback.hide for: onboard (motherboard) SATA controller, USB 3.0 controller (the two "top" USB ports in the back of the motherboard - there is an array of four 2.0 ports and an array of two 3.0 ports), ATI video, and ATI audio.
unRAID. I passthrough the entire onboard SATA controller (there are 6 SATA III ports on the Z87M chipset). I also passthrough the USB 3.0 controller (the two isolated USB ports in the back of the board), and my VM picks up the unRAID USB stick no problem. I did the assignment using command line - there doesn't seem to be any user interface in XenCenter to do this. For networking, I assigned it exclusively (not actual passthrough, just bridge) one of the TPLink Ethernet card, as I know there will be a lot of traffic going to/from this machine.
debian. No actual passthrough here, but because it is my downloader (i.e. lots of traffic) it does exclusively get the other TPLink Ethernet card. The SAB instance is configured to dump completed downloads straight onto the mounted unRAID shares, so having 2 separate cards for each VM instead of them sharing the same card should speed things up. All other VMs and dom0 share the onboard (Intel something) ethernet controller using bridge networking.
XP-2. The holy grail - graphics passthrough. I assign both the ATI Video controller AND the ATI HDMI Audio controller (the graphics card's audio) PCI addresses in the same way I pass the unRAID SATA/USB controller (again described here) to this VM, then in XenCenter I pick the correct ATI GPU in the VM properties (didn't need to do it via command line). This automatically passes the audio controller for HDMI audio. ATI Catalyst software picked it up without any hassle, I get a full range of resolutions, etc. Playback is VERY smooth (even though files are read through the network from the unRAID repository).
Right now everything is running stable, no issues, but I did have a few roadblocks along the way. Here are some things I discovered during the process:
KNOWN ISSUES
Unable to passthrough the onboard Intel VGA controller. This is the main reason I bought a dedicated graphics card. It seems whenever I would add the Intel controller to the pciback.hide list, the XenServer would fail to boot. However, it would boot just fine when I didn't have the USB controller added. I didn't look too much into it, so it's hard to say what caused this. I just went and bought a cheap discrete card that was known to work, but I am curious if anyone else manages to passthrough the onboard Intel graphics on this particular motherboard.
Machine would reset every couple of days for no apparent reason. I did some research and my problem was the CPU C states setting in BIOS. It is imperative that you DISABLE that feature from the motherboard's BIOS.
Was haltet Ihr davon? Ich möchte HTPC und Server gerne vereinen, auch wenn das sehr umstritten ist, das ist mir bewusst. Interessieren würden mich auch die ungefähren Stromkosten von so einem Gerät, da ich nicht genau weiß ob ich die Kodi Virtualisierung bei nichtbenutzung in Sleep oder Stdby setzen kann. Hat da jemand Erfahrung. Auf meinem jetzigen HTPC rödelt Kodi auch bei nichtbenutzung einiges an CPU Leistung ab, darum wäre eine Lösung in Richtung Stromsparmodus nicht schlecht.
Wäre super wenn Ihr eine Idee zu Verbesserung oder Umstrukturierung des Projekts zum besten geben könntet.
