Why use unRaid or even have a NAS if all you use it for is media storage(Movies & TV Shows)?

[mwhitnell]

I have two Qnap NAS, one with Movies one with TV Shows.  They have reached the storage limit.  They have never given issues for the last 5 years.  I am considering a new unRaid server, have read a lot, looked at this forum with many problem issues discussed.  I do like the design to use various size drives.  I do like not being locked into mfgs priority hardware...Qnap, Synology, Asustor, etc.  I guess I am not in favor of striping across drives, so unRaid is appealing.  I wonder why someone would want to use a unRaid server for VMs perhaps you can help me know why?  I do have a i7 computer GTX1070 GPU & 4K monitors (3) side by side.  I do a lot of Autocad design, etc, and have a VM on my computer with Windows 7, etc...which I haven't used in a while. I do have a ethernet RJ45 in each room and a 24 1gig switch & 24 port POE for 12 cameras.  So I seldom use WiFI, most all devices are Static IPs, only moveable devices are DHCP (phones).

So perhaps you can enlighten why NAS rather than having a dedicated computer with 8 hard drives, 4 for useable media data, 4 for cloned backup in NTFS files and run Kodi on all my 4K TVs.   Buy the way I do use Kodi with my two Qnap NAS.  All my media is in MP4, MP3, JPG containers, so I dont transcode.

Really looking for thoughts.

Edited October 20, 2023 by mwhitnell

[MAM59]

My usage and setup sounds almost alike to yours. I also have a central storage on UNRAID, many clients with Kodi connecting via SMB (and no transcoding) and usually no need for a VM. I still run one as a backup server for DNS, and so on. Mainly for OpenRGP (the unraid box is reporting system states like usage, temps and so on by LEDs on the front side and, sounds funny but is vor real, UNRAID is not capable to talk to the MoBo' s AURA controller, but you can pass it on to a VM and it works there (I dont care, I am of the pragmatic type)).

Some dockers, but only a few. Thats it.

 

Works well and stressless. When it is about to be filled up again, I throw in another drive, still have 12 slots empty...)

 

But I would recoomend that you should consider upgrading your LAN to 10G, at least 2,5G (brrr, I hate that!). 1G is about to die out. This does not help Kodi now, but it gives the Server more room to fullfill requests of multiple Kodis without stuttering.

 

 

[Michael_P]

13 hours ago, mwhitnell said:

why someone would want to use a unRaid server for VMs perhaps you can help me know why?

 

For me, it was for consolidating hardware - instead of a machine running the security DVR, another for serving music and downloading etc, the NAS was always on so it made sense to move it all under one roof - not to mention Docker. 

 

13 hours ago, mwhitnell said:

So perhaps you can enlighten why NAS rather than having a dedicated computer with 8 hard drives, 4 for useable media data, 4 for cloned backup in NTFS files and run Kodi on all my 4K TVs

 

A 'NAS' is just Network Attached Storage, so you're comparing apples to apples. If you can access your dedicated computer's storage over the network, congratulations - it's a NAS. 

 

All the other features, VMs, Docker, web services, are all things most operating sytems are capable of - whether you need them or not is up to you. Now if you're asking why Unraid over Windows/*whatever other Linux flavor* if there's issues with Unraid - well, good news - there's issues with all operating systems, so pick the one you're comfortable with until it no longer serves your purpose or starts to give you too many problems trying to do what you want it to do.

[mwhitnell]

On 10/20/2023 at 3:54 AM, MAM59 said:

My usage and setup sounds almost alike to yours. I also have a central storage on UNRAID, many clients with Kodi connecting via SMB (and no transcoding) and usually no need for a VM. I still run one as a backup server for DNS, and so on. Mainly for OpenRGP (the unraid box is reporting system states like usage, temps and so on by LEDs on the front side and, sounds funny but is vor real, UNRAID is not capable to talk to the MoBo' s AURA controller, but you can pass it on to a VM and it works there (I dont care, I am of the pragmatic type)).

Some dockers, but only a few. Thats it.

 

Works well and stressless. When it is about to be filled up again, I throw in another drive, still have 12 slots empty...)

 

But I would recoomend that you should consider upgrading your LAN to 10G, at least 2,5G (brrr, I hate that!). 1G is about to die out. This does not help Kodi now, but it gives the Server more room to fullfill requests of multiple Kodis without stuttering.

 

 

Michael, thank you for the response.  I have a spare i7-8700 computer (6 SATA ports) case has 8 open drive spaces, not using...my thought is to put 4 ea 14tB hard drives in, format GPT NTFS, say "W" "X" "Y" "Z".  Have "Y" a clone of "W" and "Z" a clone of "X".  Use "W" with folders Movies & New Movies, use "X" with folders TV Shows and New TV Shows.  Kodi  via SMBs for all four folders: Movies, New Movies, TV Shows, New TV Shows.  Use "Y" & "Z" as backups.  When I load to "New..." folder I can view these on Kodi, then once a month copy "New..." files to all drives WXYZ.  I can do this from my normal using computer, since everything is on the LAN.  Now I just have to figure out how to turn off "Y" and "Z" so they only spin during a backup...any suggestions?  Or should I use unraid all 4 drives, plus one parity, and do what most do use Raid as a backup.  Does unraid only spin up the drives that you are reading from?

[Michael_P]

On 10/24/2023 at 5:39 PM, mwhitnell said:

and do what most do use Raid as a backup

 

First you need to consider your data needs - how much you have now, and how much additional space you'll need in the near future

 

Second you'll need to set your backup strategy to take the results of the first into account. Using single drives for storage and backup gets unwieldly very quickly, hence the need for pools/arrays of disks so you can write larger amounts of data without spanning individually separate file systems. Figure out what really needs to be backed up and plan accordingly 

 

In your case, right now, with only 4 drives - Unraid is probably going to be the better solution, use two pools, 1 mirroring the other or 1 backing up the other (better). Optionally you can host the backup drives in your daily machine and set your backup scripts/program to copy the data to the appropriate drives - which, see the second point, gets more difficult the more data you accumulate.

 

On 10/24/2023 at 5:39 PM, mwhitnell said:

Does unraid only spin up the drives that you are reading from?

 

In its default setting, yes

 

[siron1992]

I used to use crappy external SSDs for all my data, so I wanted to build a NAS (because you get more bang for your buck with specs) than buying a prebuilt, like QNAP etc.

 

The thing that swung me to UnRaid was the ability to have Dockers. TBH, I didn't know I needed any until I looked through the community apps. Now I have a Minecraft Server, FileZilla, Plex, AdGaurd Home and an Automated Speed Tester, to name a few.

 

I'd run independently on my desktop for most of the above, so having them on 24/7 on my build in a docker is just amazing.

 

I can't imagine my home setup without it now. You won't regret it!