Can we remove warnings “Array unprotected” when no parity drive?

[jrma]

As title says is there a way to remove the unprotected warnings when not using a parity drive? 
 

I am just a simple home user and don’t care about data loss but I want to use Unraid for storage and docker. Only thing is that when I don’t use a parity drive there are so many warnings I would like to disable as visually find them annoying. 
 

Is there a way to do this? Maybe a community plugin or script I am not aware of that can do this? 
 

Thanks! 

[Squid]

No.  That little Exclamation Mark is always going to be there (And most users actually see the same thing on on their systems with cache only shares) 

[jrma]

Thanks for the response. That’s a shame. Looks like I will have to think about a parity drive then. 

[Squid]

Is it really that annoying?  It's perfectly factual, doesn't send any notifications or popups.  If you're talking about Popup / Notifications, adjust the settings in Notification Settings

[jrma]

Visually yes it annoys me personally. This is totally ‘personal preference’ though. No I am not referring to notifications. 
 

I just don’t like seeing all the unprotected warnings on the shares and in the browser tab when I am the one that has configured it in that way. 
 

I don’t mind the warnings on the Array config page because I understand they should be there to warn users that the array is unprotected. But would be great to have a check box to acknowledge the risks that this is how I have configured it and I accept those risks. 
 

I am comparing Unraid here to TrueNas Scale a bit I guess as they warn you only on the storage pool config and I think on the data sets. But you don’t have warning triangles every where. 
 

While it’s great to be factual. Having the warnings everywhere to me as a user is giving me the appearance that my array is not in good health. When in reality it is, because I am using it how I intend and accepting any data loss that may occur. 
 

I have actually just purchased another drive now to add to the system to now use as a parity drive to overcome all those warnings and make my array show in good health. 
 

I just want to add though that I do love this software! I really like how Docker UI is laid out and the ease of configuration in the product. 
 

I am only in my trial stages right now but I definitely see myself making a purchase in the near future. 

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, jrma said:

I have actually just purchased another drive now to add to the system to now use as a parity drive to overcome all those warnings and make my array show in good health. 

Just to point out that performance of the array is measurably lower once you have a parity drive so if you are not really interested in the protection it provides you need to decide if the trade off in performance is worth it for your peace of mind on having no exclamation icons.

[jrma]

Oh really… I was not aware of that. All of my disks are SSD. So is the performance decrease using parity really going to be that bad? 
 

I have been testing Unraid today in a VM. I have noticed that even with a parity drive because I am using a single cache drive I still get those warning triangles on all the shares located on the cache drive.

 

I definitely won’t be adding another cache drive so guess I will have to live with it… 😞 Really hope in the future there will be some advanced option to disable those unprotected warnings. 

[itimpi]

3 minutes ago, jrma said:

All of my disks are SSD. So is the performance decrease using parity really going to be that bad? 

Probably not.   It is not something I have tried.

Are you aware that disks in the main array cannot be trimmed?    This might lead to a performance drop-off over time depending on the SSD models in use and whether they need periodic trims to maintain performance.

[jrma]

No. I was not aware of the trimming issue either for the array with SSD. 
 

I am only using this as a home NAS solution to watch movies etc. Nothing major with read/write. 
 

I see that in new version of Unraid you can ZFS instead of using XFS for the array. Would the array support Trim when using ZFS? 
 

I was hoping not to use ZFS as only got 8GB ram in this system and ZFS cache can consume far amount. 

[jrma]

Reading documentation looks like auto trim is supported if I use ZFS 

 

https://unraid.net/zfs-pools-rc3

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, jrma said:

Reading documentation looks like auto trim is supported if I use ZFS 

 

https://unraid.net/zfs-pools-rc3

That only applies to ZFS pools - The documentation explicitly excludes ZFS drives used in the main array.

 

You could use a dummy flash drive to satisfy the (current) restriction that there must be at least 1 drive in the main array and then run all the SSDs in a pool (using BTRFS or ZFS) as in principle pools can be trimmed.   However even doing this you need to check that any HBA you use supports trim.

[jrma]

Ah I see. Okay I am going to play around with this more I think in my VM to test I can get this working how I want. But maybe the best option for me is like you said, not to have the ‘main array’ but just use ZFS in a pool and use that as my main storage without moving any data to the ‘array’. 
 

Are there going to be any plans in the future to support SSD and trim in the main array? Or is it just expected to have HDD? 
 

As a home user I have to use SSD only as my NAS is located in the living room and too noisy otherwise with normal drives. 🙂 

[itimpi]

27 minutes ago, jrma said:

Are there going to be any plans in the future to support SSD and trim in the main array? Or is it just expected to have HDD

Do not really know.   In the 6.13 release the current Unraid array type will become just another pool type but whether that will add supporting trim I have no idea.

[jrma]

Thank you for all the info. You have been very helpful! 
 

Today I have been playing around with different configs.
 

For me to achieve what I want where things all look healthy and green (cause that’s how I like it in my mind) lol, I had to add two dummy flash drives which I used as the main array. One with parity and one in normal array. This is because without a parity device I still kept seeing warnings which was bugging me and triangles. 
 

I then created a ZFS pool using my main 1TB SSD drives for all my data. And then on the shares I configured everything to stay on the storage pool and nothing to go to the array. 
 

Hopefully this will be okay to use long term but seems to do the trick for now. 

[mrRo8o7]

On 10/1/2023 at 5:01 PM, jrma said:

I had to add two dummy flash drives which I used as the main array

How did you do that? I would also like to add a dummy parity drive just to get rid of the warning.

[itimpi]

10 minutes ago, mrRo8o7 said:

How did you do that? I would also like to add a dummy parity drive just to get rid of the warning.

Not sure I understand the question - you just plug in two dummy flash drives and configure one of them as parity (making sure it is the larger one if they are not the same size).

[mrRo8o7]

Oh, I misunderstood that. I thought there was some kind of virtual drive to simulate Unraid having a parity drive.