New user, dedicated disk.

[Walkersway]

Hi,

 

Sorry im trawling forums to try to find answers but im having issues. It may help with me saying what i was going to do before i discovered unraid. 

 

I bought a new PC / Home server, the intention was Windows server with Hyper-V booting from a 240GB SSD.

1 x 2TB NVME configured as volume d for my Windows 11 video editing PC

1 x 2TB NVME configured as volume e (cheaper and slower) for other virtual machines. 

3 x disks in raid 5 for storage of movies. These will be added when funds allow. 

 

Yes im aware there is only redundancy on the raid 5, but all VM's would have been backed up to an old NAS. 

 

Im trying to replicate this in unraid, but having issues understanding this, as i can only appear to create a VM in a share, and this must reside on the array. Is there any other way?

 

To keep the performance for the Windows 11 VM, is it best to add the 240GB SSD as disk1 in the array and the slower 2TB NVME as disk 2. 

Create a share for Windows 11 that resides on disk 1 only for Windows 11. 

Create shares for the other VM's on disk 2 only, 

Add the fast 2TB NVME in a disk pool, and set the share for Windows 11 to use the cache in Only mode? That way i get all 2tb for the Windows 11 VM. 

 

Just all seems odd, as the 240GB SSD is sitting there doing nothing then. 

 

Thanks. 

[apandey]

2 hours ago, Walkersway said:

i can only appear to create a VM in a share, and this must reside on the array. Is there any other way?

Shares can reside only on pools (cache=only setting), so doesn't have to be array only

Also, you can pass through disks by-id to your VMs, so for your use case, you can just pass the disks directly rather than vdisks on shares

But unraid needs at least 1 drive in an array, so you have to think about that too. 

Edited April 12, 2023 by apandey

[Walkersway]

5 hours ago, apandey said:

Shares can reside only on pools (cache=only setting), so doesn't have to be array only

Also, you can pass through disks by-id to your VMs, so for your use case, you can just pass the disks directly rather than vdisks on shares

But unraid needs at least 1 drive in an array, so you have to think about that too. 

Thanks, that explains it. 

 

What would happen if I created an array using my other 2tb stick and then passed though the other one by I'd, would I then be able to reset the array later and create a new one? Thinking now of using 1 x 2tb for the windows 11. The. Create a new array using a couple slow 5400 disks and use the other 2tb as cache to this. 

 

Thanks.

[apandey]

42 minutes ago, Walkersway said:

What would happen if I created an array using my other 2tb stick and then passed though the other one by I'd, would I then be able to reset the array later and create a new one?

Yes. Specially if you don't care about data on the array. Just need to do new config for array with new drives

You can also create an array with just a usb drive, which is simplest way without locking up a disk if you don't want to use the array

[Walkersway]

3 hours ago, apandey said:

Yes. Specially if you don't care about data on the array. Just need to do new config for array with new drives

You can also create an array with just a usb drive, which is simplest way without locking up a disk if you don't want to use the array

Great thanks. 

Im ordering a couple of 8TB disks today anyway, which doubles my old nas storage. I may stick in an old 240GB disk and make an array with that for now as i need to relocate 200GB worth of data from my old server before its sold on friday, so may plonk this on the array for now. 

Does anyone know of any good guides that explain what happens we you add / remove disks to an array, as i will then want to move this data from the 24GB disk to the 8TB disk when it arrives. I know one option is to manually move the data, but just wondering if there is an easier way. 

 

 

[apandey]

5 hours ago, Walkersway said:

Does anyone know of any good guides that explain what happens we you add / remove disks to an array, as i will then want to move this data from the 24GB disk to the 8TB disk when it arrives. I know one option is to manually move the data, but just wondering if there is an easier way. 

If it was an array with parity protection, you can simply replace disks one by one and let unraid rebuild the data onto new ones using parity (needs biggest disk in array to be parity). But since it's a single disk, best bet is to mount old disk as unassigned and do new config with new disks, then copy over data

Unraid manual linked on top of unraid UI has instructions on all these procedures but feel free to ask here too

Edited April 12, 2023 by apandey