whiskytangofoxconn

Thanks for the reply. No. I want to run unRAID on bare metal. I put it on a VM just to try and test it out and poke around the web GUI. Personally I think if you have to do device HW pass through to a VM, it should be run on bare metal. Unraid can host VMs? Is it Debian/Ubuntu's KVM? What is the hypervisor? I've used Xen, Citrix and have been using ESXi since before they added the "i" but I'm a little late to the party with Docker, containers, etc. (Docker as I understand it is same thing as BSD jails correct?)

I have a trial of unRAID running on an esxi 6.7u2 vm and I'm trying to get it setup properly. #1. What are preferred virtual OS settings? ESXi is yelling at me saying the configured guest OS does not match the guest (linux 5.10.28-unraid slackware 14.2+) What OS choice do people pick? #2. Does unRAID require device pass-through? I created a VM with 4 vCores, 16gb vRAM and one (default) 8gb vHDD. I then deleted the vHDD and created two 64gb vHDD on NVMe drives and two 128gb vHDD, each on spinny metal drives. I then "added existing vHDD" to the VM's setup in esxi and powered on the machine. The VM does not see any of the virtual drives attached to it. Is it possible to setup an unRAID machine as a demo and attach virtual drives to it? Or must they be direct pass through? #3. Is there a rule of thumb for recommended memory per TB of hard disk space? #4. Is there a rule of thumb for recommended SSD/NVMe cache per TB of hard disk space? #5. What filesystem or parity structure does unRAID use? Do you simply "throw hard drives at it" and let unRAID figure out the parity? #6. Is there a preference for ecc vs. non-ecc memory and/or xeon vs. core CPUs? #7. Could someone critique or provide suggestions on a potential build: ## Mobo/CPU: We/I don't know yet. Either possibly an i7-10700 (or maybe 10700k) or something like a Xeon E-2226G. ## Memory: If xeon ECC, if Core i7, non-ecc. Is 64gb enough? ## Cache: 2x (mirrored) 1tb NVMe M.2 pcie x4 drives. Do we need more than that? ## Disks: We have 4x 8tb WD Red drives and 2x 14tb WD Red drives. Ideally I would build mirrored vdev-1 with 2x 8tb drives, mirrored vdev-2 with 2x 8tb drives, mirrored vdev-3 with 2x 14tb drives, and then stripe a pool across the three vdevs. This would give the ability to expand in the pool future by adding additional mirrored vdevs with drives in pairs. ## Case: Fractal 804. We like the case, it will look decent and presentable to the house, friends, guests where we want to keep it --but starting to feel a bit boxed in with mATX mobo choices forced on us with the Fractal 804 case. ## PSU: We own a 450W Corsair Gold PSU. #8. More a comment than a question: We are looking for a CPU with on-chip graphics and most probably would not add-in a PCIe GPU. Thanks. Looking forward to better understanding unRAID so we can start buying parts!

Thanks trurl. I'm trying to get a better understanding of unRAID so that I can make an informed decision. I understand that the OS is a NAS OS and not a general Linux desktop OS (or something with a desktop GUI). I have two needs: One is our home and personal data and the second is data that I use for work. They have slightly (very) different performance needs so I am trying to learn enough about unRAID to understand what OS I would be trusting data with and understand how I can get it back (recover it) if something breaks. I have previously used most major brands of consumer and rack/enterprise storage solutions. Everything from D-Link, Synology, Drobo, Qnap to the usual open-source suspects: the BSD-based flavors, OpenFiler and also some more specific infiniband solutions with vSAN and other DAS setups. The vast majority of my storage experience (including some with slackware and squashfs) was a long time ago, in the days of ddr2 and PCIx64 cards. I'm just looking for a nas and quite honestly I'm a little confused about unRAID (is that how it is written "unRAID"?) with regards to the whole docker-kvm-nas OS combo thing. I just need a storage solution. I have an ESXi environment for VMs and I am trying to downsize to 2-3 hosts therefore something like vSAN would not be appropriate. I bought two Fractal Node 804 cases and that's as far as I've gotten. I can't pick a motherboard until I pick an OS because sata connectivity, hba's, onboard controllers, memory requirements, cpu, etc. I want something that is somewhat "set and forget" that will do typical home NAS stuff: Apple phone/laptop backups, typical file sharing, etc. The "home NAS" side of things is very typical, has low performance requirements and high safety/redundancy requirements. Everything I have is 3-2-1 data (3 copies, 2 local, 1 offsite). The data I use for work is why I think I will need/want two storage solutions. That has a lot of high-availability, fast-access demands (gpu work, cuda, compression and decompression, high-bandwidth streaming UDP data). At this point I'm just trying to understand the operating systems and how they interact with data, cache and disks so I can make an educated decision. The USB boot thing was giving me trouble so I installed it on a bare metal machine. I'll poke around and check it out. Any chance unRAID supports eMMC storage, satadom or pxe boot? I'll try later tonight but I guess I'll ask first: Can I create multiple cache pools? Can I create one SSD cache pool for certain data and one cache pool from ramdisk for other data? Thanks.

Hello, I am putting together a storage server and someone suggested that I consider Unraid. So that's it... I downloaded Unraid and I'm considering Unraid. I'm trying to build Unraid on an ESXi VM so I can poke around and look under the hood a bit. Installing Unraid as a test VM will allow me to better understand Unraid so I can come back asking more specific pre-purchase questions. Question #1: What version and flavor of *nix is Unraid? 64-bit Debian? Kernel? Question #2: Do users have full terminal/shell access to the OS? Thanks.