Rebuilding old truenas system with unraid

[Zefy]

I have an old freenas system that i built in 2013 that I would like to start using again. I never had any major problems with it but it was an overall unpleasant experience to do anything with. The community there was also very lackluster. This will be used pretty much exclusively as file storage.

 

Intel DBS1200KPR

Intel G860

16gb kingston ECC memory - KVR1333D3E9SK2/16gb

currently 3x 3tb WD reds. My case supports 6drives. 

I have one more 3tb WD red. Was going to get a pair of 8-10tb drive to use as a parity drive along with filling the server and I have an intel sata SSD (480gb, new) that I was going to use as a cache. 

 

Of note is that mobo only has 4 sata ports on it and i plan to use 7 with the cache. I have an LSI 9211-8i 8-port PCI-E card that is running "IT mode". Apparently this works with freenas but I never got around to using it and I'm unsure if it will work with unraid. I was also debating buying a used xeon cpu or something to spice it up a bit but maybe not needed for just file storage. The old system was able to max out the gigabit connection but I was never able to figure out how to enable link aggregation (it has 2x 1 gigE connections). It was also super slow when scrubbing through folders (ie, opening a folder with lots of files). I believe this was an issue with cifs... the iscsi share i had was much faster at this.

 

Either way, i would like to know if this hardware is suitable for a NAS? I will likely upgrade components later on but i really just want to get this thing going again.

[JorgeB]

14 minutes ago, Zefy said:

I have an LSI 9211-8i 8-port PCI-E card that is running "IT mode". Apparently this works with freenas but I never got around to using it and I'm unsure if it will work with unraid.

It does work, and is one of the recommend controllers.

 

15 minutes ago, Zefy said:

Either way, i would like to know if this hardware is suitable for a NAS?

It should be fine for a basic NAS/dockers Unraid server, it later you'd like to run some VMs you might want to do some upgrades.

[kizer]

Grab the Trial of unraid and give it a go. 

[Zefy]

yeah i was debating doing that. It's a choice between upgrading my current setup to run the latest truenas (which i don't think i have to format my drives for) or moving everything off the nas and rebuilding it with unraid. Most of it is already stored elsewhere but it's still a bit of an undertaking.

[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, Zefy said:

or moving everything off the nas and rebuilding it with unraid

Do you have a computer available in which you can put a couple of hard drives for an Unraid trial before formatting disks and mass migrating data?  Make sure it meets your needs and get comfortable with the platform and play around with some docker containers/plugins from the Apps tab.  

Edited September 9, 2022 by Hoopster

[Zefy]

6 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Do you have a computer available in which you can put a couple of hard drives for an Unraid trial before formatting disks and mass migrating data?  Make sure it meets your needs and get comfortable with the platform and play around with some docker containers/plugins from the Apps tab.  

Not really. I could pull the USB and the drives from the current nas to give it a try. Comparing the two, unraid and truenas, the main draw to unraid is the ability to easily expand without matching drive sizes. I would like to use what i have until they die and then upsize as i go. My main concern was just using the hardware i have and also seeing how the support is.

i'll probably start transferring stuff over and just giving the trial a go with the full system. I can always start fresh again with truenas if there is something wildly incompatible with my system or me. Probably a better idea than upgrading from my current truenas which i think is version 8. 😂

[kizer]

There you. Now you can try both OS's and get a feel for whatever fits your needs. That's exactly what I did long long long and I mean long time ago. I tried TrueNas before and unraid. I tried to give them both a week or two to do a fair comparison. Of course back then everything was super simple and basic. 

 

What really sold me was disconnecting a drive and watching the system emulate the dead drive on the fly. Either way we are here to help with questions. 

[Zefy]

So I loaded up unraid and gave it a kick. Getting the parity drive going was very time consuming but it seems that is normal.

 

My biggest issue so far is write speeds. At the start it was saturating the 1gbit ethernet (haven't figured out link aggregation yet) but after about 1min it dropped down to ~30mb/s. After some googling i learned about the "turbo write" mode and clicked it on and it went up to about 80mb/s. Research told me this was due to how unraid does the parity calculations and that is the cause of the slow write speeds. I would like to max out my connection if I can. 

 

I have a cache drive but it's not yet connected. I broke the sata power connector from mucking about in the node 304 case too much so I am getting a replacement today. Would cache drive increase the write performance or is there some other hardware issue?

 

For reference, my pool is 4x3tb wd reds, parity is a 6tb red, and my cache (not yet connected) is an 512gb intel 540 series SSD.

 

Otherwise my experience has been quite nice. The dashboard is far more functional/user friendly compared to my freenas setup. Seeing vitals is far easier. There was a lot of stuff on the freenas that i had no idea how to check so i just made the assumption that they were working. Loaded up tons of apps already and currently figuring out how to get torrents sorted out so i don't need to leave my main computer on. Thanks everyone for the help! 

[trurl]

Cache allows you to write to fast storage and later have that moved to the array. Default mover schedule is daily in the middle of the night. Mover is intended for idle time. The move to the array will still be at the slower speed of course. Best if you don't try to cache more than cache can hold. It is impossible to move from fast cache to slower array as fast as you can write to cache.

 

Cache (or some other fast pool) is also a good place to keep the docker/VM related shares, so these will perform better and not keep array drives spunup.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Shares#Default_Shares

 

Each user share has settings that control how it uses cache and other pools.

[kizer]

A lot of people will opt not to enable Parity until their large moves have been completed, however I've always been about protecting my data than speed so I just enable parity and let the slow right do its thing. 

 

Like @trurl pretty much said up above. Cache allows for fast storage and if your loading up apps Dockers/Plugins you will want them on the SSD/Cache because it insures speed and you don't have to wait for the Array to spin up for them to perform.