tdallen

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Everything posted by tdallen

  1. Hi - what is the configuration of the disks in your array?
  2. The system you propose should run unRAID quite well, but personally I'd go with a newer system as well.
  3. You're receiving lots of good advice regarding both wired and wireless options, and I don't want to be redundant. But I'll mention this - you may have a wifi signal throughout your house but it doesn't sound like you have a *good* wifi signal throughout your house. If you want to go further, wifi is more than capable of supporting 1080p video with better results than you are getting. Mind you, ethernet is always better. The results with Ethernet over powerline or MOCA are mixed - they can be lots better than wifi, but not always - it depends on the wiring infrastructure in your home. But it sounds like your current wifi results are poor, and they can probably be improved. If you want to build a good wifi network it can help to run a little bit of wire, though.
  4. I'm also running Unifi in a 3 story house. I'm running 3 APs and it's almost overkill, I could have arranged adequate coverage with 2. It's important to do a site survey and figure out where to put your APs, though. I have sufficient cable in the walls that my APs are hard-wired, which is nice.
  5. Do you have an option to run any Ethernet cable at all? Even a couple of runs could enable a much better Wifi solution. Oh, and get up to at least 4GB, that will help for now.
  6. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/worlds-largest-ssd-drive-samsung-30-terabyte-pm1643
  7. If Google is similar to cable, you keep the current box but have it placed into bridge mode. You then insert your own router downstream from that box, and go from there. BTW, I am happy with my recently acquired USG.
  8. I agree with @Frank1940 that you should look more closely at your router. Can you turn on firewall logging?
  9. I think the conversation about Limetech being unable to provide a new license file is largely academic. If Limetech ceases operations without securing the company's assets or placing them in the public domain (and I obviously hope that never happens) then I will move my server to another OS. I am not concerned with operating unRAID in perpetuity following the potential untimely demise of Limetech. That's because a) it's not very likely to happen, and b) what really worries me is operating an up to date, patched OS. If my flash drive fails in the short time between Limetech's demise and before I can move to a supported OS, then I'll take my XFS formatted drives and move along. Like many others I spend time participating on this forum to help make unRAID a successful product - I don't just wish Tom well, I volunteer my time to make his business successful. And I think his team is running a very successful small IT shop that is performing to professional standards, and fully worthy of you buying his product. But if tragedy should somehow strike my worry is going to be about an exit strategy, not read/write cycles on flash drives. I know that sounds harsh - but in today's threat environment you can't plan to operate an unpatched OS forever.
  10. Hello and welcome. unRAID is a pretty light OS compared to Freenas. In a minimal configuration you can run it on a Pentium and 4GB. Since you want to run some Dockers, I'd suggest a Pentium G4560 or G4620 with 8GB as a starting point. Three things you mentioned can add load to the system - transcoding, torrents, and OpenVPN. It can make sense to upgrade to a Core i3/5 and more RAM. At the high end you could go with a Core i5 or low end Xeon and 16GB of RAM. Nothing you've mentioned suggests that you'll need more than that. The ASRock WSI board has been used in a number of unRAID builds. You can go cheaper but then you'll need a SATA controller - you definitely want an LSI based controller, not Marvel. A lot of us in the US get LSI based cards on eBay. I think ECC RAM makes sense in an always-on server, but it isn't a requirement for unRAID. ECC requires specific motherboard support and a Pentium, Core i3 or Xeon. There's a huge DS380 thread here that you should read, and I'd recommend searching the forums for more information. It typically requires some easy cooling mods. Lastly - it sounds like you are in Europe. It's pretty hard for those of us in the US to make specific recommendations because prices and availability vary so much. You might want to post what you are finding there for good prices so we can comment. There are a number of European contributors on this forum, as well.
  11. I think it is your hardware array mindset. There is one storage array in unRAID. If you add two 1TB drives to the parity protected storage array you will increase its capacity by 2TB. There is no way to specify an independent redundancy scheme for these two drives (unless you use them as cache disks or hide them behind a hardware RAID controller). You can add them to the parity protected array or mount them independently via Unassigned Devices - up to you. If you add a bunch of data disks you still have two parity disks - you might want to do some reading: https://lime-technology.com/wiki/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array Is dual parity risky? Not really, though there are certainly more conservative schemes. Dual parity protects you from two simultaneous disk failures. If you experience a failure you need to act promptly to address it. Dual parity isn’t very risky, but running your array in a degraded state is. Dual parity isn’t risky, but populating your entire array with the same model of the same disk all purchased at the same time and then trying to run them for 7 years is. unRAID parity and dual parity protection is quite effective and a good cost/benefit compromise compared to more complex systems, but it does require some thought. Oh, and running without notifications turned on is risky - turn on notifications!
  12. In unRAID the settings for each user share determine where it is stored. The setting Use Cache: Only or Prefer will make sure the data in the share stays on the cache drive. Turn on Help in the UI for more information. Personally I would go Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake in that situation, probably Coffee Lake. But the reason I’m waiting on the sidelines is that I’d either like Coffee Lake with ECC or Skylake X with HEVC support... The good news is that AMD is making Intel push their product plans faster but the bad news is that Intel’s products now seem rushed...
  13. You can create a cache pool with redundancy if you want using BTRFS - RAID-1 is the default. Or, you can mount one individually via the Unassigned Devices plugin. You'll install Dockers via Community Applications , which also provides the ability to backup appdata on a regular basis.
  14. The internet tends to remember things forever. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. In this case it was definitely a "thing" years ago to run unRAID with cache drives for the purpose of caching writes to the parity protected array. At the time hard drives were performing at 50 MB/s and writes to the array were 10-20 MB/s. These days drives are performing at over 160 MB/s and with unRAID turbo write enabled, writes to the array can be well over 70 MB/s. But unRAID shall forever be known as an OS that needs write caching, sigh . As trurl mentions, the primary use of the cache drive today is as the defacto application drive for Dockers, VMs, etc.
  15. Hello and welcome. That build is more than likely to work fine for basic NAS and a few Dockers, it's using quality name brand components. You might want more RAM over time? It sounds like you have all these parts now, from your prior machines, so give it a try with an unRAID trial license. I'd definitely go with 8TB drives, by the way.
  16. I think your current server is a good starting point for unRAID. Rather than a big bang upgrade I'd look to be focused/targeted on future needs like 4K. The cache drive/pool in unRAID serves two main purposes. First, it is the defacto application drive for unRAID and therefore the place where Dockers are installed by default. Second, you can optionally do high speed caching of writes to the storage array (a process called mover later moves the files to the parity protected array). Virtually everyone running unRAID 6+ uses the cache drive for Dockers, while a smaller subset turn on write-caching. There are two components to Docker storage - where the Docker image is located and where Docker data goes. Placing them in a "user share" with "Use Cache" set to "Only" will keep them on the cache drive. The cache drive/pool needs to be sized for what you'll do with it. 120GB is small but adequate to start if you only plan to use it with Dockers. 250GB or 500GB gives you a lot more room to work with. If you only plan to install one cache drive you can use XFS as the file system, but if you want redundancy you should use BTRFS so you can configure a cache pool - BTRFS RAID-1 is the default. Cache pools get awkward with mixed size drives, though. Finally, be aware of the heavy I/O associated with downloader programs. SSDs have a maximum life expressed in TBW - terabytes written. Unpacking downloaded files churns through the TBW and while SSDs make excellent cache drives you may want to invest in a Pro model using MLC rather than the TLC flash memory in consumer models. If you buy new drives 8TB is definitely the sweet spot (people are shucking WD Easystores for very reasonable $$) - but keep in mind that your parity drives need to be as large as, or larger than any of your data drives. An unRAID server only has one array (unlike Freenas), so yes - one or two parity drives and the rest data drives. Dual parity starts to make sense as you increase the number of drives, it can protect you from two simultaneous drive failures. Lastly, remember that your Freenas drives can't be read or imported directly into unRAID. unRAID formats drives as they are added to the array. Therefore, make sure everything is backed up before you start and have a transition strategy.
  17. Hello - The hardware requirements for unRAID are considerably less than Freenas. Your E3-1275 with 32GB ECC RAM would actually be considered a fairly large unRAID server, suitable for basic NAS plus a number of Dockers. It should also be capable of transcoding several 1080p Plex streams if needed. It could easily run the applications you list above. You can certainly go to a 2011 board and dual E5's with 128GB of RAM - but honestly that's a monster of a server for unRAID. There's a use case for it and people are doing it, but they're generally into serious virtualization and I didn't see that in your requirements. For basic NAS and Dockers that's extreme overkill at the expense of an oversize motherboard, high power consumption, heat, noise, etc. 4K video is a different topic, though. While a pair of dual E5's can probably transcode a 4K stream or two, I think the future of 4K video isn't brute strength transcoding like 1080p was. Rather, 4K video is't going to be about having lots of hardware, it's going to be about having the *right* hardware. It is going to be about hardware assisted transcoding via the GPU or in the case of Kaby Lake and newer CPUs, their native support for H.265 HEVC. The software support for all this is a new and evolving space though - there's no clear answers yet. I'd give some thought to your transition strategy. I know you said you used a QNAP for storage but there's a lot of drives in the Freenas server. I'd go with dual parity if you are going to run them in unRAID, but I'm not clear on your approach to storage. You're also going to want some time to setup all those Dockers, etc. You can't reuse the case and drives, etc. without taking apart the old system - and it seems like you'd want more of a transition strategy?
  18. If you can get the existing array up and running on one machine and unRAID on another, then you should be all set. Just mount your unRAID shares from the Windows box and copy over the network via SMB. Make sure your critical data is backed up somewhere before you start taking down the old array. I’d recommend that you play with unRAID a bit before you start the data transfer, you may have questions that are better answered before moving all that data. There are other options but that’s probably the easiest.
  19. Hello and welcome. No, it's not necessary to start over. Pre-clearing does two basic things - it zeros out the drive and adds a special signature so it can quickly be added to the array, and it stress tests the drive to help address "infant mortality" - hard drives that fail shortly after setting them up. Since you have already added the drives to the array there's no time savings associated with going back and preclearing. And adding them to the array does a single pass clear so you already have a bit of a stress test on the new drives. Just keep an eye on things as you begin using your array and report if you see anything funny - bad SMART values, log entries, or signs of disk failure.
  20. Hello - What type of Raid0 array do you have, i.e. software or hardware, etc? Does it live in it's own server/NAS independent of where you plan to install unRAID? Copying over the data and adding parity as a final step is fine, though make sure your critical data is backed up somewhere before you start.
  21. Hi - How much memory do you have in your system, and what are you writing to?
  22. If you are trying to use the drive with Windows you’ll need NTFS...
  23. Hi Yep, Unassigned Devices or copy over the network. You should be able to copy appdata but stop Docker first. The preclear script should take care of your drives - run with the array stopped as a last step before disassembly. Good luck with your move!
  24. Nice. How’s the cooling for the i5-8400 in the U-NAS case?
  25. In your case, if you want to move the files off of disk 1 at some point and you are comfortable with the command line there's a nice set of scripts that can help, diskmv/consld8 .