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 🙂
Every couple of months or so, some of my friends and I have taken to lining up early at about 10-10:30 in the morning at one of the more popular Yum Cha restaurants in the city.
Honestly, it’s always a pretty great feed. Excessive amounts of dim sum, good company, and general shit talking!
Tim managed to try out some chicken feet, loved it 👍
Note to self, I need to bring my diabetes kit with me a lot more consistently when going out with the bois.
So the new Minecraft version is out, and with it I’ve created a new Vanilla server for my friends to play on.
My sister and her partner have been on a weekend getaway and I’ve been at home working and looking after Panko.
During such a time I’ve been pretty busy and Panko has been stuck amusing himself and moping outside my home office.
The guilt has finally hit me and I’m going to clean up my office so that Panko can hang out with me and chill in my home office. This means I’ll need to clean up all the computer bits, cable manage everything and make sure the room is doggo safe for him to chill in with me. I won’t proof it tot the point that he has free entry but if I’m in the office (I usually am) he can come in and chill too so he doesn’t let his anxiety get the better of him.
The things I do for this dog.
Just a short little update to myself that I’ll keep. I’ve acquired:
- Dell R330 –
R330-1- 4 x 500GB SSD
- 2 x 350w PSU
- 1 x Rail Kit
- INSTALLED AND READY TO GO
- Dell R330 –
R330-2- 4 x 500GB SSD
- 1 x 350w PSU (need to order 1)
- 1 x Rail Kit (just ordered)
- Awaiting PSU, and Rail Kit
These are going to help me decommission my Dell R710 servers. Trusty as they are, they’ve reached their end of life, for sure. I’ll keep them as absolute backup machines; but will not be using them on active duty anymore.
R330-1
- Websites
R330-2
- Rust (Fortnightly)
- Project Zomboid (Fortnightly)
- Minecraft (Active Version)
It’s actually been pretty tricky keeping a decent track of everything; so I’ve recently signed on for some Free Plan tiered Atlassian services using Jira and Confluence. Something a little formal for my use.
I’m moving all the blog posts I can from my old custom written blog, to this site. So weird posts might start appearing going backwards in time haha 😛
It’ll be nice to have everything in the one site, though.
Update: After 5 hours, it’s finally all done D:
Chatswood has really changed a lot! There’s a whole new shopping centre along Victoria Ave now called Chatswood Place – which has heaps of great places to eat. A few days ago I got to enjoy an all-you-can-eat Japanese BBQ place called Kuro Sakura.
The pricing was pretty reasonable, and depending on the time of the week you were paying either $55 per person (Monday through Wednesday), or $59.90 per person (Thursday through Sunday, and public holidays).
There were additional bolt-on packages you could get with Seafood/Sashimi and Beef Tongue + Wagyu Karubi (Kalbi to the Korean fans), as well as an All you can Drink package for the soft stuff, and the alcoholic stuff. It should be noted though the packages didn’t include Coke Zero or anything diabetic friendly; so it wasn’t the most worth it for me.
The three of us ended up getting the basic $55 package.
The service was fast and prompt – it was actually really great. We were seated in a weird part near the back of the restaurant; and even then any dishes we ordered took only a couple minutes to be delivered to our table. The grill was nice, hot and powerful and I loved the interesting side-mounted exhaust that took in the smoke around the edges of the cooking area.
All in all, I felt this was a pretty great dinner. We ate copious amounts of food, the company made it way better than I think I’d have enjoyed it myself; and the really bizarre, yet funny mini domestic the front of house lady and husband duo had when I went to pay the bill capped the night off.
Also, the Black Sesame Ice Cream was the best after sitting in front of a grill eating meat for 90 minutes. 👍😋