Hi everyone,

First post here, I purchased the unraid license back during the BF deal and now am planning to put it into effect but still trying to plan this out before I start. I have a question that several hours of googling couldn't help me find that I hope is something that someone here can help me understand.

When I create a storage pool, is there any way to use the same storage share between a VM and dockers at the same time?

For a bit of reference and background, currently I run Windows baremetal with 2x 10TB HDDs and a 1TB NVME as the boot/OS drive. The computer is used as a seedbox for long term seeding, and also runs as a Plex server just for myself and family. The torrent downloads are saved into a media folder and stay there, and then Plex picks them up from the folder and it works pretty smoothly without having to move things around. I'd like to do something similar with Unraid at least as an initial setup as it will be more future-proof I feel.

 

I've been reading about dockers and have seen there is both a qBt and Plex docker for unraid for example and they may be more beneficial than running the programs in a VM. However currently when I'm just using the computer myself and want to watch a video for example, I prefer to just scroll through the folders and open the file directly and play back with Media Player Classic than open up Plex and watch it that way.

So basically what I'd like to do is have the docker programs accessing the same storage pool as the VM at the same time, and just wondering if that would be possible or not. If not I guess the option would be to allocate most/all of the storage to the Windows VM and run qBt/Plex in the VM similarly to how I do now, but it seems there is some benefit to having the programs running as dockers. If this is indeed the case where I cannot use the same storage pool concurrently, are there any downsides to allocating most or all of the storage to a single VM, as if it were just a baremetal install? As I see it at least I would still have better remote server access support than running baremetal and the benefit of other dockers as well.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

When you set up unRAID your hard drives become one massive pool of disk space.  You then split up this pool by going into the OS and creating directories or I prefer to create a user share.  A user share is a directory but it can be exposed as a shared directory and you can limit access to that directory.  In Windows you would create a folder and then share it and give access to the users of that server.  In unRAID you create the user share which becomes a folder but is also shared.  You then create users in unRAID and give them access to this share.  Once the share is there you can easily use Windows to manage the share by creating more folders and adding files.

 

A docker or VM is similar to a program you install in Windows but it has one huge difference.  The docker/VM is an isolated container so whatever is running inside only has access to what you give to it.  When you set up the docker you tell it what directory it has access to.

 

In the following diagram I have my unRAID server with two user shares that are also folders on the array.  I have a user called "Tim" using a Windows computer who can access both the Shared and Media shares on the unRAID server (SMB shares).  I also have a media computer/device with Kodi or VLC which has access to only the Media share.  Lastly, I have a Roku device which has the Plex app and can see the Plex docker (via the port that Plex uses) on the unRAID server.

 

Thank you for the reply and sorry for my late reply! I've been spending a lot of the day reading up on user shares and watching SpaceInvader One's videos and have a much better understanding of how this all works right now. Now suddenly it's not as confusing as intimidating as I saw it just yesterday so thank you!

Thank you very much for showing me your logical diagram as well, that really helped me to understand how things can work and connect.

So from what I can gather so far, if I have for instance a torrent docker which has access to the share "TV Shows" and can read/write to that and is running, I can also open that same "TV Shows" share on a Windows VM as a mapped drive or just from a network find at the same time and access the same files? If so, I can tell this is going to work out really well!

1 hour ago, Falc0n said:

So from what I can gather so far, if I have for instance a torrent docker which has access to the share "TV Shows" and can read/write to that and is running, I can also open that same "TV Shows" share on a Windows VM as a mapped drive or just from a network find at the same time and access the same files? If so, I can tell this is going to work out really well!

 

Yes, I use dockers to add media to those shares/folders and then Plex (or other things) can access those same files.  One place to store all the data.

 

As for the Windows VM, that's how I would expect it to work although I don't have any Windows VMs.  I haven't really found a good use for them yet.  I needed a media machine (like the one in my diagram) and I found it much easier to buy a mini-PC like the one below and just connect it to my TV using the HDMI.  Mine is the AWOW AK-34.  These things use very little power and yet pack a good punch.  I play music using Winamp, watch movies using VLC, and browse the web (Youtube, check email, etc.).  Those mini-PCs can handle all that.

 

https://awowtech.com/collections/mini-pc

Edited January 3, 20233 yr by TimTheSettler

On 1/1/2023 at 5:52 PM, Falc0n said:

When I create a storage pool, is there any way to use the same storage share between a VM and dockers at the same time?

 

I suspect there is, but I wouldn't recommend it.

How do you backup data that's important?... Think about that?

 

To each their own...

 

MrGrey.