thany

To my knowledge (which isn't saying much, to be fair) there's only one other OS that seems to be reasonably well known with a reasonably good community behind it, and thats TrueNAS. Except that one has a serious data loss problem, so to me it's poop. That leaves unRAID (for me, again) for its concise and well put together GUI making it easy for novice use, but still as good as any linux. Anyway, I'm not 100% sure it's possible to create shares on a ZFS pool (on the SHARES tab that is - of course anything's possible in the terminal). So that's maybe not a super great option to explore for a primary storage array, unless I'm mistaken, which could well be.

Okay thanks. Two questions though: 1. Will rsync continue doing its thing when I close the terminal? I don't want to have a client powered on just to maintain a connection to a terminal. 2. Can you point me to an example command? I remember rsync command can be verbose and hard to grasp (for me at least).

So I'm now about to migrate my eldery NAS, to unRAID. The NAS in question happens to be a Synology box, and I can mount it over NFS no problem. What I'm still looking for, is a way to migrate the files over, and make it go server-to-server directly, so without a client in between managing everything. This way files don't have to be pulled over the network twice (server->client->server vs server->server). I'm also looking to maintain all attributes - creation dates, modification dates, and file flags like "readonly" and such. I don't need to keep permissions (iow, the copy process doesn't need to attempt to do anything about permissions). I guess I could do this from either end. I just don't know how. My thoughts: * Go into the Synology GUI and just copy. I haven't checked yet if this keeps dates & attributes. Actions like these keep going when closing the GUI, so that's a plus. * Go into the unRAID GUI and use some kind of plugin to copy. It would have to continue copying when I close the GUI. * Go into the unRAID terminal and use some kind of command. It would have to continue copying when I close the terminal, but I don't think a linux terminal works that way. Are there any other options? Or what you recommend?

Thanks for explaining. Cache SSD makes more sense now. Still feels a little bit like a workaround for a problem that we created, but then again, isn't everything It does then also make sense to me to install two cache SSDs and have them be redundant. I'm sure that's possible. But it's not really cache, is it, if files can be at some point *only* be on the cache. It's more like a prepositional storage location.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. How can I improve performance with the (apparently) best performing method (high water), being ground to a near halt when reading and writing at the same time? Cache would help, to a point, but so would levelling writes. Or using 40TB of SSD I guess, but unfortunately my budget is not adequate enough for that

Isn't that something that needs addressing? I mean at that point, you're basically re-inventing striping, innit Except at file-level instead of sector-level.

How is most-free worst for performance? To me, high water is already terrible for performance. While a file is being written to the array, reading another grinds it down to maybe 8MB/s if I'm lucky. At normal speed it can do 110MB/s and that's even without having it connected to my 10Gb switch yet. I would think most-free is best for performance, because given evenly filled disks, it will use all disks more-or-less simultaneously when writing many smallish files. That's great for performance! A single large file will be written to a single disk, apparently, which should perform identically in every method. It also appears to mean that reading and writing any file to/from any share, will never outperform the capabilities of any one disk. In other words, with 5 disks that can do 200MB/s, I will *never* see files being read/written faster than 200MB/s, no matter how fast my network is. Correct?

Sure, I get that. It's not RAID, but that wasn't the problem at hand. The problem is that it's only using one disk, while a sensible default method would be to use all disks. I just don't understand the exact purpose of this "high water" method. Actually I don't understand why anyone would have to select any option, but I guess that's a pet peeve that comes with the whole idea of not having an actual RAID. And on a sidenote: I can't create shares on a pool array, can I? I haven't found how to "point" a share to anywhere but the main array...

Also, reading the docs, this seems to contradict itself: And: I'm not sure what a "step" is. Never heard of this term in the context of storage servers... So which is it? Will it fill the disks one by one, or does it wear them evenly? It seems to suggest both, but that's impossible. It feels like it's doing an arbitrary balance between the other two methods, but it's still rather vague. And I wonder what the purpose is to have this (confusing, it turns out) option as the default method.

Then what do I do to make it at least use the disks evenly? How do I make sure it takes advantage of the presence of multiple disks from a performance standpoint? As for which setting to use: "high water" is the default, and I'm always hopeful for sensible defaults. Surely, there is just one setting that is best for everyone, right? In a real RAID5 config, I also cannot (and should not!) be telling it how to do its job. Not in a way that significantly changes its behaviour anyway. It feels to me that, with this configuration, (2+1)x10TB (=20TB usable) provides exactly the same performance as (5+1)x4TB (=20TB usable), because only one disk is ever being used to store any file big enough to measure performance in a meaningful way. Or, am I overlooking something?

Well maybe it doesn't (and if it should, maybe it's a bug), because it was still showing me the same message, to stop those services.

I've an array of 5x 8TB which includes 1 parity. I've got a docker writing a big downloaded file to the array. And I've got a client (me) to download it to a pc. It seems to only ever use 1 of the 5 disks for any read or write. How come? There are 3 big disadvantages to this: * Write performance could be better when using all 4. * Read performance could be better especially while writing another file. * Wear levelling is, well, unlevelled. How can I make sure it uses all writable 4 disks? To make sure I've got my bases covered: * The shares it is using, include all disks, and exclude none. * The shares are in "high-water" mode. I'm slightly mystified by this - there's no regular striping mode... Only modes that I shouldn't have to care about. * The writable disks are formatted as xfs, which is default (meaning good, hopefully). * I also have a cache SSD which is not being used, and I don't understand why. Surely files being read are also saved there, in case they are requested for reading a 2nd time? Is that not how it works? If this worked, this would help keep up performance of subsequent read, at the very least. * Written files could royally even fit into system memory, which I'm not sure is being used for cache either. If it was, the disk wouldn't be grinding so much, I reckon. * unRAID OS is up-to-date at 6.11.1.

I found something that works without destroying my VM settings. 1. Shutdown all VMs 2. Stop all dockers 3. Stop the array 4. Reboot 5. Change network settings at will. I'm guessing the reboot causes the OS to start with the docker and VM services stopped when the array is not yet started. Hopefully soon we'll get a feature to actually do what the network settings is asking to do

I need to make some changes to my network settings, but every field is greyed out. At the bottom of the form it says: But it doesn't say, you know, what then? Wiki also doesn't have any information on this. Just a (very!) brief explanation of the network settings... That's okay as long as the software is self-explanatory. But here's the thing. I cannot see a services/daemons applet in Settings. And sure I can totally disable Docker/VMs in their settings applets, but at least in the case of VMs, that on a previous occasion, same unRAID version 6.11.1, destroyed the VM that I had configured. So I really don't wanna do that again. Docker kept its applications after re-enabling, so that one would be fine. I've stopped the array, which consequently keeps Docker and VM from functioning, but I still can't change the network settings. If I may, I would suggest a deeplink to where the user actually needs to be, to disable those two services. Or better yet, do it right then&there. Or even better: when network settings are about to be saved, ask the user if it's okay to reboot the Docker and VM services as part of the network settings change. Basically I don't know what I should do (safely ;)) to proceed to changing network settings.

I guess then maybe I've found a bug. Too bad I cannot see where it's actually looking for isos in that dropdown... Maybe that would give the author a hint towards a fix, assuming it's a bug and not my mistake somehow. Manual command works a charm. Brilliant. Thanks for the reply

So I had ejected the virtio iso image from a VM because it wasn't needed. But now that I do need it for something, how do I reattach it without shutting down the VM? When I click on the bullseye icon next to "No CD image inserted into drive" I get a popup where I can presumably select an iso image. This does not list the previously attached iso. See attachment. Where is it looking for isos? Clearly not where I set it to look for isos, which in my case happens to be `/mnt/ssd/vm/iso/` and the terminal reveals that the virtio iso is definitely in there, and with `-rwxrwxrwx` permissions at that. So it must be looking elsewhere for isos, but where? And why not in the isos directory?

I can't get something to work. Not sure what exactly doesn't work. NordVPN container config: - Location: (empty) - DNS: 1.1.1.1,1.0.0.1 - Technology: NordLynx - Username - Password - TOKEN: (filled in my token) All other fields left default. Run the container, log says it's successfully connected. Unfortunately, I found no documentation on how to actually, you know, use this. How do I do anything with it?? I had to dig into this topic to find some screenshots of how it's supposed to be configured. Turns out I need to fill in "Extra parameters" which is only visible in advanced mode (top-right). Okay. But then what? Because it don't work, mates... I'm trying transmission to use nordvpn, so I've set "Network" to "None", and added "--net=container:nordvpn". The transmission container starts fine, but its web interface has now become unreachable. No clue what I should do about this. Documentation, should there be any, should proooobably have a few words on how to configure a client-docker, so to speak. Transmission works fine when "Network" is set to "Bridge" and extra parameters cleared again. So I'm on a bit of a loss. What is actually blocking what, and where did I go wrong?...

Thanks, will do. Please consider this a feature request then?

Can I just ask the one stupid question? I don't have any pools yet, so how do I actually create one?..

Ah okay, so it also involves zeroing the data if I understand correctly?

Sounds good! Thanks! I'll try the ZFS plugin. And also, I really hope there will be a solid migration path from the plugin towards builtin support, if needed.

Bit of an odd title, but here's the situation. Brand new server, brand new installation of the latest stable unRAID. I've created a pool of 4 500GB SSD's. They are not identical, but very comparable. After creating this pool, I was really confused by 2 things: 1. I was not presented any settings by which to construct this pool. Sane defaults, I would hope, and the ability to change them later. 2. The pool's total capacity is 1TB, but I expected roughly 1.5TB. Turns out both are answered when going into the settings of any disk that is part of the pool. It's Btrfs, and by virtue of being unfamiliar with it, I guess it's fine. But it also says it's in RAID1 mode. I was hoping for something more like RAID5, which it says is experimental. I went for it anyway, seeing how this is a new server with empty disks anyway, and hoped for the best. The UI went totally nuts for a little while, but stabilised and not the pool is in RAID5 mode. Alright. Question time. 1. How experimental is this RAID5 mode actually? I can't find any concrete information on this. Will this be "stable" in like the next release or something? Then I might be okay with it. 2. As the title suggests, I was hoping for a ZFS pool, because RAID-Z seems to be fully matured, and more flexible. Is there any way I can do this?

I've just set up a brand new server with a brand new installation of unRAID, latest stable version. I've set up the main array - 5 8TB disks, totalling 32TB with one parity disk. Immediately after creating the array the parity disk goes into "invalid" state. While maybe technically correct, it is not a great first impression for novice users of unRAID, but I understand where this is coming from. Parity has not been scrubbed yet, so it becomes healthy once that's done. But here's the thing, right: why scrub a NEW array at all? Surely scrubbing can be skipped for empty drives, and be put into a healthy state. Kind of like the different between quick format and full format in any desktop OS. The problem with this is that it will take a super long time before a newly created array is in a state where it's considered safe by unRAID, and then scrubbing isn't affecting performance anymore as well. Concretely my question is: can I make it skip scrubbing for parity and throw it into a healthy state right away? Again, the drives are empty. There should be nothing to scrub, iyam.

Alright, sounds good! I know the term "pools" a little bit from evaluating TrueNAS with its ZFS filesystem. I'm guessing it works similar on btrfs? Also, what would keep me from not having an array at all, and just create two pools: one with the SSD's and another one with the HDD's? Is this advisable, or even possible?

Considering Unraid for a new server. It's got 4 SSD's and 5 HDD's. The SSD's are meant for VM's and Docker stuff. Things that really need to be fast. The HDD's are going to be part of the actual fileserver bit of the server. How can I achieve this? I remember that creating multiple arrays wasn't a thing, but it was coming? Maybe? With or without multiple arrays, how should I set it up in such a way that it behaves the way I described?