Gegga Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 (edited) Hello, Been testing Unraid for around 30 days and quite happy with the product. I have set it up with 5 disk array + 1 ssd as cache. Then I have another 2 disks with sata controller passthrough to Truenas for backup purposes, and another sata controller with 1 HDD pass through to a windows VM together with the gpu. Works fine. In total I have 9 disks installed in the server. My plan was to purchase only the basic license since I am using a 5 disk array in unraid. It has worked in the trial, but will it work with the Basic license? Edited November 22, 2021 by Gegga Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 If the other disks are passedthrough basic key should be enough, you can confirm by going to Tools -> Registration, it will list the total number of attached devices that count for the license. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 1 hour ago, Gegga said: My plan was to purchase only the basic license since I am using a 5 disk array in unraid. It has worked in the trial, but will it work with the Basic license? I think that is ALL attached devices, regardless of whether they are used by Unraid or passed through that count towards the licence limits. The trial version does not apply any attached devices limit so that is why it would have worked fine. That would mean that you need a Plus licence in your scenario. If the additional devices are removable drives and you are prepared to remove them any time you need to start the array then it might just be possible to get away with the Basic licence as it is the number of attached drives at the point you start the array that counts, and removable drives plugged in later are OK. I think, personally, that would be very inconvenient to manage so would go for the Plus licence. Quote Link to comment
Gegga Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 Thank you both, I will have a look when I come home. It's probably smarter to upgrade to newer larger (and fewer) drives than to keep 9 old ones going and have to purchase Plus. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 If the controllers are bound to vfio-pci Unraid will not load the drivers and count the devices, I guess it depends on how you are passing them through. 1 Quote Link to comment
Gegga Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 indeed, the controllers are vfio-pci bound and the only way to use or view the attached disks is to go through the vm. Quote Link to comment
DanielCoffey Posted November 23, 2021 Share Posted November 23, 2021 Remember that your Parity drive must always match (or exceed) the capacity of the largest data drive and as you increase the size of the largest drive in the array, the time to perform a Parity Check increases. To give a data point, 8Tb drives take around 16h for a Parity Check and it is fairly linear with drive size. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted November 23, 2021 Share Posted November 23, 2021 2 minutes ago, DanielCoffey said: Remember that your Parity drive must always match (or exceed) the capacity of the largest data drive and as you increase the size of the largest drive in the array, the time to perform a Parity Check increases. To give a data point, 8Tb drives take around 16h for a Parity Check and it is fairly linear with drive size. On the other hand, each additional disk requires additional hardware to connect, at some point additional license, and most importantly, each additional disk is an additional point of failure. So longer parity checks are traded for more capacity with fewer disks. Quote Link to comment
Gegga Posted November 25, 2021 Author Share Posted November 25, 2021 Purchased Basic license, yes, it's working! Just goes to show the flexibility of Unraid. 5x HDD, 1x NVME cache connected for 6 disk license. VFIO passthrough on 2 separate sata controller for Truenas and other VMs. nice! Quote Link to comment
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