Migrating 64 TB's of material from Windows NTFS to Unraid

[RAP2]

Thanks itimpi. 

 

Isn't that path when you want a vDisk?  SpaceInvaderOne's directions was pretty clear on that.  He mentioned that an NVMe is not a drive but a PCIe device; and to leave that vDisk location filed set to "none".  Having said that, his instructions are not working! 🙂  I guess I just want to be clear on my particular circumstances before I do something that might destabilize the system.

 

I have a Windows 10 Pro installation on the primary partitions of a 3 partition NTFS NVMe drive, installed on the MB.  That drive boots into Windows 10 when the URAID USB is removed.  I'd like that to be the case - but still be able to run that Windows install as a VM within UNRAID.  SpaceInvaderOne's video was specific to that application.  Only problem is that he did that all in an older version - for example - the whole PCI binding thing is different now.

 

Happy to try it your way - but before I do, I'm wondering if its a NIC thing.  When UNRAID boots my primary MB NIC is sued by UNRAID.  Does this same NIC get virtualized and so the same IP address is used by Windows?  I bought a separate 2-port Intel Server PCIe NIC specifically for the 2 VM's I want to run (Windows 10 and Ubuntu).  Its just not clear how to assign a card to a VM.

 

Right now I have the following.

 

VM:

 

Running a VM - along with the UNRAID parity system - are the two main reasons I'm moving platforms.  But if I cannot run a VM, easily under UNRAID, I can try soemthing else.  It's one reasons I just wanted to get one Data drive migrated and tested before I make decisions.  

 

But I do want this to work!

 

[RAP2]

I just tried to restart the VM and it has taken UNRAID offline.  (i.e.: the Edge webGUI timed-out with: "Hmmm… can't reach this page")

 

Now what?  I've not had that problem in the past.  The VM would start - I just could never connect to it via RDP or VNC.  Thats the second time I've lost WebGUI connection to UNRAID - the last time for a couple of hours because I pressed "Compute" space in shares.

 

Is it possible, something in the VM config has gotten corrupt with all my various attempts?  This is my second version only created yesterday.  I removed the first attempt.

 

Ideas?

 

I've now tried to refresh the page 3-4 times over  10 minutes.  I walked over to my server room and just looked at the local modnitor; seems to be still alive:  the linux text and UNRAID login at the bottom with a  flashing cursor.

 

[RAP2]

OK - it might be running, but its not working.  All my user and disk shares are dead.

 

Is there a way from the local machine that I can enter into the command line to stop the array and restart the system safely?

[RAP2]

Linux Guide shell says nothing about restarting or shutting down a machine, so I did a hard reset.  System booted but notifications popped this up:
 

Parity Check Tuning: 23-10-2021 11:05

[MEDIAARK] Automatic unRaid Correcting Parity Check will be started
Unclean shutdown detected

 

Its now a 10+ hour process.  😞

 

Seems like trying to get a VM going on UNRAID can have some potential serious issues getting started.

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by RAP2
typo

[RAP2]

So my parity process completed - and everything is fine.

 

However, this process of creating a Windows VM has caused me to second guess using UNRAID.  I downloaded Virtual Box and created a Ubuntu and Windows VM pretty easily with that.  In the space of  just over a week I had the UNRAID system become "unavailable " twice; due to two separate and IMHO, normal operation:  start a VM and "Compute" share spaces.  The former required me to restart the machine - and then it needed to spend 10 hours rebuilding the parity.  This, with only a test migration representing 1 of 8 drives...

 

Some might argue "beginner problems" - that's fine -  but I thought UNRAID was built for home users; not data center engineers.  I don't *want* to be an UNRAID expert; I don't have the time.  Very little of my UNRAID experience - including getting the USB flash drive to work, was simple and straightforward.  And while searching for solutions on this forum, I was not alone.

 

Very early in this thread, I mentioned that I noticed some performance issues with user shares.  This was easily observed when Windows Media Player was rebuilding the database for my 800 GB music library; it was much slower then the original NTFS/Win10 implementation.  I redid my Windows 10 just the week before, so it was fresh in my mind.  I started doing research on that problem and found this:
 

Unraid User-Share vs. Disk-Share SMB Performance
 

During that research I also discovered SNAPRAID, which advertises similar features to UNRAID - example: parity drive(s) with heterogenous drive sizes/models. To be sure there are pros and cons - but I like the fact that it has integrity and silent error management.  Its not real-time but I can create scripts to schedule snap-shots and data scrubbing.  Best yet, I can use NTFS so there is no data migration required.  Performance is what I'm already used to. 

 

I want to thank all the folks that participated in my UNRAID education; in particular, Squid, itimpi, JonathanM and Frank1940.  Its folks like you that make the on-line tech support systems work.  I appreciate you.  🙂

 

Best...

Edited October 29, 2021 by RAP2
typo