no1ninja

Thank you big dog, I mean itimpi, That is a very important distinction you point out. ....that said, I think I still would fork out 3 Pro subscriptions, if it could take it to the next level and unRaid, all instances of itself. It would give incentive for people to buy more than one instance as well! I guess in the meantime, I will have to balance my servers and not load one with mechanical drives and another SDD, but a coherent mixture of both. It may even be practical as it still runs exactly as intended even if one of its subordinates fails. (but I still wish for the over-Lord feature for all instances, it just makes tactical sense especially in a system like unRaid, when I read what unRaid could do, I was convinced that they would have taken the same approach to the highest level / outer ring... but alas, I will have to dream of future releases...) Okay so let me now understand the building blocks we do have: QUESTION: The mounting of shares that you describe on other servers, does it allow ANY CIFS/SMB capable partition? Including ones from my QNAP NAS? Or is it only limited to unRaid CIFIS/SMB? (cause if it allows 3rd party partitions via CIFIS/SMB, it kind of still over-Lords in some ways and there is potential! I am feeling my toes tingling again!)

So what I mean is can unRaid span multiple servers, or do I need to run an individual UNRaid for each machine and run unRaid1, unRaid2, unRaid3 without any of them knowing of each other? (obviously i need to load the code to memory for each one, 3 usb sticks, but can they be setup to act like one environment?) Is it possible to have ONE central unRAID, that harnesses and pools the hardware of all 3 separate pieces of hardware and uses that most efficiently? Cause each device has a strength and weakness. The machine with all the 3.5 large volume drives has the most Terrabytes but slow access read /write, no HVEC hardware. The Machine with all the SDD drives has the fastest accessible Terabytes but not as many of them and still no HVEC hardware, and the Machine without any drives, has the most powerful processor, memory and HVEC hardware for transcoding. Putting them all together I get the best of all worlds. No need to have 3 P2000, unless its too much to handle for 1 machine and i need overflow, but if one can suffice for all 3 then why have all 3 have the redundant resource if its not necessary and funds can be used for other benefits in the near interim. Hence rather than having 3 separate servers that take the weaknesses and strengths of the current machine, I am not stuck with the fatty, the speedy, and cruncher. So if my data is found on the cruncher, great if needs transcoding cause the HVEC is here and bam, but if my data is found on the fatty suddenly no HVEC hardware, lower core count, and slower writes and reads, etc.... sorry for repeating the point. So in conclusion I end up having 3 machines all acting independently and suffering based on their faults and strengths, instead of prospering from them. SO can unRAID span multiple devices? Can it utilize them as ONE POOL? Or do I need to set up each server ideally as its own environment.

I really like the things I read about UNRAID, it seems to be a lot more flexible and someone told me that my hard drives will last longer using the UNRAID system if I configure it properly. So I have questions for you experts, and hopefully I can figure out how to deploy my system: Hardware: storage 1. DELL R730XD 12 bays SATA x 18TB 7200 256MB (16.7TB usable per drive) (Xeon E5-2620 x 2 - 16 Core/ 128GB ECC 2133) 2. DELL R730XD 24 bays 20 x 2.5 SDD 960GB Intel 4 x empty 2.5 (Xeon E5-2697 x 2 - 32 Core / 256GB ECC 2133) CPU HEAVY 3. DL325 HPE Pro 8 bays 2.5 x 1tb SDD 6 2.5 empty (24 cores / AMD Ryzen 7402p - 256GB ECC 2933) (one of the system I will install quadro p2000, thinking 3, but if its overkill than 2) Can mix and match the 3 devices if I buy the pro license so that it makes up one system? The slow drives would be on system 1, the faster SDD's on system 2, and server transcoding on 3? Or is 3 overkill? There are 6 4K tv's in the house and just as many laptop devices, its a cottage/summer home, meaning often we have guests with their devices can be as many as 12 adults, and as many as 6-8 streams going individually to each room. On average 2-3 4K streams going all the time. Is this a good work case for unraid? I currently have over 100TB of movies and shows, (saving for when we get locked in a bunker lol) Advice would be so appreciated as this will be my 1st try at implementing the system. Anything I should avoid or should I get less power hungry CPU's in the storage section? I can downgrade, if I need to. Cost of power is 2ndary to system response time. The above will handle, video - films/shows, PC data storage, and backup of devices, some security camera footage.