Convert from JBOD and other Questions


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Hey Guys,

 

I just heard of unraid and read some documentation about it. I'm already running a JBOD with my EVGA Z87 FTW built in raid controller. It has 2x 4TB HDDs with a Windows 10 host with plex and is hosting a server for 7days to die and minecraft. Also it runs 3 Virutal box machines, one for bitwarden, one for RaspberryMatic and one for openHab. I want to add 2x 12TB drives which have just been ordered and should arrive soon.

So my questions are:

1. I read that I have to set my controller to AHCI instead of raid, but this would destroy the data from my current JBOD, is there a tutorial for this or is this not possible?

2. I'm planning on upgrading this PC in the future with a new Mainboard and CPU, can I just transfer the unraid usb stick to there?

3. what about my VMs? These are mandatory, I saw that bitwarden should be possible.

4. My game servers, they are important as well, I understand I can create a windows VM as well and route the CPU to that. But would the other VMs still run?

5. Do I assume correctly, that the windows would be able to run a VirtualBox as well? Didn't find a raspberrymatic solution for unraid, except I can use an ova with unraid.

 

That's it for the beginning, thank you already for your help and have a great day.

 

Edited by Autchirion
forgot a word in the title
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11 minutes ago, Autchirion said:

I read that I have to set my controller to AHCI instead of raid, but this would destroy the data from my current JBOD, is there a tutorial for this or is this not possible?

Probably you read that RAID controllers must be flashed to IT mode. Sort of a moot point though since Unraid must format any disk it uses in the array or pools. Windows filesystems aren't supported in the array or pools, though they can be accessed for read/write as Unassigned Devices.

 

13 minutes ago, Autchirion said:

I'm planning on upgrading this PC in the future with a new Mainboard and CPU, can I just transfer the unraid usb stick to there?

Yes, many of us have replaced mobo/CPU, etc and kept the same drives and the Unraid flash just booted up as if nothing had changed.

 

Many of the applications you mention are available as dockers in Unraid.

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Thank you for your fast answer!

15 hours ago, trurl said:

Probably you read that RAID controllers must be flashed to IT mode. Sort of a moot point though since Unraid must format any disk it uses in the array or pools. Windows filesystems aren't supported in the array or pools, though they can be accessed for read/write as Unassigned Devices.

I read this document here: "Your storage controller should support AHCI and SATA connections and be configured in standard HBA mode (not RAID mode)." So my mobo can select different operation modes for my storage controller (AHCI, IDE and Raid). So what I understood is I have to select AHCI in my Mainboard, but with your information I can just stay with the Raid mode and switch to the AHCI mode (if even necessary) afterwards.

 

Where can I read about parity, I'm confused why I can only set up 2 parity disks, I don't understand how this will work to make sure that if one of my HDD dies I still can recover the data. For example, I've got a 1TB parity drive and 2 12TB data drives, the Parity drive won't be able (at least to my knowledge) recover data from the dead drive. Is this correct? Where can I find documentation on requirements about the size of the parity drive and recovering from dead drives when I put in 12TB drives and 4TB drives? I don't want to run on a JBOD again, I'm to old for that kind of stress. ;-)

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The parity drive must be equal or greater in capacity than the largest drive in the array.

The drives in the array could be of different sizes, as long as my previous statement is true.

 

unRAID is not RAID, but you can think of like RAID such as:

  • no parity drive ~= JBOD
  • 1 parity drive ~= RAID5
  • 2 parity drives ~= RAID6

But you cannot connect any drive from a RAID array (not sure about JBOD since I've never used it) to another machine and access the data.

However in unRAID, if your array is formatted as XFS you can just disconnect any drive other than parity and connect to another machine and access your data. Which means even if more drives than your parity fails, you would only loose the data on the failed drives.

 

!!! Remember RAID or unRAID is not a backup solution. !!!

Edited by UNOPARATOR
clarification
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2 hours ago, Autchirion said:

Where can I read about parity, I'm confused why I can only set up 2 parity disks, I don't understand how this will work to make sure that if one of my HDD dies I still can recover the data.

Parity contains none of your data. Parity is a common concept in computers and communications. It is basically the same idea wherever it is used. Parity is just an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits. In the case of Unraid, the extra bits on parity allows the bits on a missing disk to be calculated from the bits on all the other disks. Parity by itself cannot recover anything.

 

Here is the wiki on parity:

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array

 

Understanding how parity works helps make sense of many things about how Unraid works, and how you work with Unraid. Many of us who give advice on this forum can do so because we understand parity.

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2 hours ago, UNOPARATOR said:

The parity drive must be equal or greater in capacity than the largest drive in the array.

with this information and the information from trurl I got how this will work.

 

23 minutes ago, trurl said:

I'm a bloody moron, I'm so sorry, that's actually embarrassing! I know parity, but I always saw the data as a stream and not creating the parity P(m)=B_a(m)+B_b(m)+B_c(m)....

 

58 minutes ago, trurl said:

Not at all what I said 

ok, dang, I think I got your point, it seems to me that unraid can't mount the existing jbod which is formated with NTFS and copy the data to the unraid array, without a risk. At least to my current state of research. But so be it, I'll use some of my old external drives to store the data, I should be able to get just enough storage to back up all data and then set up the array in uraid and then copy the data back from my external HDDs.

 

Thank you a lot for your help, I hope to be able to contribute to this community one day as well to pay back the help I received today!

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Don't fret its pretty easy once you get the jist of things. 

 

FYI you can use a Plugin called UnassignedDevices to read data off drives and then copy/move theme to your array. However if your using a JBOD it can't read that, but it can read NTFS. 

 

I like to think of the parity drives like such

DIsk1+Disk2=Parity

1+1=2

 

Loose a disk? Parity knows the answer so it can help rebuild the lost data

1+?=2 

 

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