Any online document that explains in detail the particularities of Unraid and the design choices behind it?

[paolinop]

I just tried Unraid 9 (booted from a USB thumb drive I created months ago). The computer is an old HP Z800 workstation I bought for very little money. Now it has a dual Xeon 5630 and 64GB registered ECC, but it will end up with a dual 5670 and 96GB RAM.

The three 5.25" bays offered the space to install a 4-drives 3.5" cage, so there is space for 8 internal 3.5" drives, but there is ample room available to fit a few SSD 2.5". I will also fit a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe on a cheap dumb adapter. It has an option ROM so I should be able to boot Windows 11, just in case I need a Windows machine for some special task (Unraid will serve only Mac OS machines plus a Chromebook, plus the laptop of some guests). The intended use would be to run Unraid 99% of the time, but with the option to boot a Win11 installation off a 512GB NVMe if need arises...

 

After the first boot I have been positively impressed by the features and the design of the WebGui, but I noticed a few things I didn't expect.

I tried to read the first part of the manual and also browsed the Internet in search of further details. Probably it's just my fault: I couldn't find the kind of general info that could have answered the questions I am going to ask.

 

 Here are 3 simple questions:

1) I read a bond interface is installed by default, though my USB Wireless adapter (correctly recognised, I believe) is disregarded and not presented as a network interface in the configuration. Seems a bit strange, could serve as a backup IF in case the Gigabit switch goes belly up. Any easy way to put the wireless USB thingy to good use? 

 

2) I found no approximate/generic information about the amount of data that is created on the parity drive, depending on the total data residing on the array. The general rule apparently says that the size of the parity drive has to be equal or bigger than the larger drive of the array. Is it always true? What about a single 6TB parity disk that serves a huge array of 12 4TB disks? 

 

3) is it still true that the best practice is to use XFS for the array and leave BTRFS for other uses (for example for a cache drive)? Most guides, especially those regarding the hardware, are quite dated. Not sure if most configuration suggestions still apply to the latest releases. I guess that browsing this forum would help a lot in his regard 🙂

 

Regarding my request for good "medium level" documents about the features/design choices of Unraid, feel free to suggest interesting URLs. They might be also useful to other new users. I found few interesting recent documents. On the other hand there are plenty of videos (on YouTube for example). Not as useful as text documents, IMHO.

 

Cheers

Paolo

Edited June 16, 2022 by paolinop
typos

[trurl]

1. Wifi isn't supported on Unraid
2. Parity only contains parity bits, all of parity is used to the very last bit. https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array
3. Various opinions on this; XFS seems more robust, BTRFS required for multidisk pools (cache) and/or snapshots.

By "manual" I assume you mean the wiki, the Overview section seems to cover what you are asking for.

[paolinop]

Thanks for the answers/links. 

Of course when I use the word "manual" I mean the Wiki. The GUI sends you there if you need to find out about a certain function. I have already read most of the basic content of the Wiki, and I also checked a few of the more complex configuration option. Next step will be reading the Docker FAQ... 

 

I am going through the interesting process of uogeading/adapting an old HP Z800 for Unraid use. I already found a couple of speed bumps but the problems seem to be finally solved. I will probably open another thread about this project if I find enough interesting info that could help others who want to do the same thing 

Cheers 

Paolo