On 2/12/2024 at 8:02 AM, Nirvash said:

 

I was watching this Jeff Geerling video, searched if unraid could run on that thing and found this thread... 

 

Looks like that ARM NAS hardware is finally starting to appear, but it's still very far to be consumer hardware. 

 

 

 

32 core 128 PCIe lanes CPU 40W at full load, what's not to like? Put it on this ASRock Rack mATX motherboard ... these are what Geerling is using.

https://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-altrad8u-1l2t-is-a-matx-motherboard-for-up-to-128-cores-ampere-altra-arm/

5 hours ago, JoeSpeed said:

what's not to like

The boot process most of the times, buggy hardware support for most PCIe devices, you probably can't use many Docker container because of missing aarch64 support and many more things...

 

...but don't get me wrong, I'm not against ARM but you should also read the two posts before yours. I really like the ARM approach but it will take some more time that it will finally will be usable hassle free for consumers. With that said, if Risc-V will be adopted widely it could overtake ARM and become it's successor <- of course only if AI doesn't wipe out humanity...

I'd pay extra one-time fee for the ARM build. 

 

For the armchair experts saying RISC-V will overtake ARM, you're dreaming. It'll take a good decade for it to get anywhere close to current ARM performance / watt. Besides, give us something that runs awesomely on an ARM chip not a panacea. 

Edited November 21, 20241 yr by daze

On 1/22/2023 at 5:23 AM, Lolight said:

Well, the reality is Lime Technology is a very small company.

Do you really think they can spare any manpower/resources on an enormous task of porting x86 Unraid to ARM?

 

At the moment Apple's M-series controls just 13% of the PC market by sales (Q3 2022).

Yes, they have grandiose plans to increase that share to 30% in a couple of years.

My assumption is If that projection becomes reality then Lime Tech might "consider" looking at that market niche.

 

Would be interesting to read from someone "in the know" what are their thoughts on the topic.

Given the skyrocketing cost of licenses and how they work, it is a fair question to ask; you don't really get much extra value for the money spent. ARM-based hardware is very cost-effective, and not everyone needs to run dozens of containers or VMs—many users are primarily interested in storage. Who is actually better informed? The person who thinks unRAID is only for running overpowered machines, or the one who realizes it can adapt to much more modest hardware to be both economical and eco-friendly? In short: a little humility is in order!

On 8/27/2026 at 12:03 AM, NY152 said:

Given the skyrocketing cost of licenses and how they work, it is a fair question to ask

My 2023 comment was about resource reality, not about whether ARM would be useful.

Lime Technology has grown a lot since then, but only few are software developers.

Porting Unraid to ARM isn't just a compiler switch -- it's plugins, the ecosystem, hardware compatibility, docker images, the entire community knowledge base.

That's a multi-year engineering commitment for a team who are currently managing a distro switch to Fedora.

The market argument is more interesting now than in 2023. But wanting it and Lime Technology having capacity to deliver it are different questions.

On 1/19/2023 at 4:00 PM, FlyingTexan said:

Is ARM support being worked on? I’d really like to change everything with my setup and switch to the Mac Minis to run everything.

I'm gonna chime in here and say that we really want to support ARM, and one of the reasons we're moving distros is to make that easier.

Our software all runs on ARM if we compile it that way, it's just a matter of getting the builds moved over
Modern automated build systems make flipping the switch for this much less painful, but obviously there will be plugin incompatibility issues at first.

Would love to be able to run unRAID on my RaspberryPi's - mainly for the Docker management plus familiarity with using and managing unRAID.

On 8/13/2023 at 1:12 AM, FlyingTexan said:

Unraid.net front page. Find the word NAS.... I'll wait.

"Unraid is a powerful, easy-to-use operating system for self-hosted servers and network-attached storage."

That's the first sentence under the first heading ("What will you build?") on the actual unraid.net front page at https://unraid.net. (forumassist.unraid.net is not the "Unraid.net front page" any more than artsandculture.google.com is the Google front page).

That is exactly the acronym NAS stands for.

On 8/28/2026 at 6:41 AM, Lolight said:

That's a multi-year engineering commitment for a team who are currently managing a distro switch to Fedora.

After Unraid 8's release, I can do it in two days with one AI assistant helping me. But it'll cost you 1 MILLION DOLLARS. 👌

Edited September 17Sep 17 by Espressomatic