Thinkng about UNRaid

[WallaceTech]

Hi guys.

 

Just joined. I really hope you can help me out here.

 

I have been looking at FreeNAS , OpenFiler, and Drobo and now i have been told about you guys.

 

What i am looking to do is have a NAS that i can use for VMWare, Videos, Pictures, software and anything else that i can throw at it. FreeNAS and OpenFiler look great but suffer from the usual RAID issues for example if i want to expand the RAID then i need to backup the data expand the RAID and copy the data back. Thats a pain in the arse when i am looking to expand my system slowly as i need it. Now DROBO will let me expand on the fly which is fantastic but i really fancy having a computer case just full of disks and not be tied to Drobo 5 disk limit.

 

So a few questions for you guys.

 

Will the UNRaid system allow me to expand on the fly as and when i need it?

 

I think i read that you can use disks of different sizes. - is this right?

 

Been looking at the IcyBox IB-555SSK 5-Bay SATA/SAS Hard Drive Backplane , will UNRaid work with this?

 

Will ask more questions as i have them.

 

Thanks in advance

[lionelhutz]

All 3 questions - Yes.

 

Peter

[WallaceTech]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Another question.

 

Will i be able to present to VMWare so that i can store my virtual guests on the UNRaid system?

[Rajahal]

VMWare will work on unRAID (see this thread).  However, the latest and greatest is ESXi.  Check out Johnm's excellent Atlas build based on ESXi.

[WallaceTech]

Thanks for the replies today guys.

 

Nice to be able to ask questions without being flammed as a noobie. I think based on what i have been told , been reading and answers to my questions that UnRaid is the way forward.

 

Just need to sort the case out.

[kizer]

We are all Newbies one way or another.

[Johnm]

I believe the op wanted to use unraid as an iscsi target for his exiting vm's per another thread. If that is the case. Then no. I don't beluve there is a plugin to present unraid as an iscsi target. And if there was, performance would be to slow.

 

For that openfiler would be a good option. Possibly freenas?

 

[lionelhutz]

Your post says "Will i be able to present to VMWare so that i can store my virtual guests on the UNRaid system?".

 

I think the question here is what methods cn VMWare use to access the virtual guests over a network? If it can access via SMB or NFS or FTP then it could be possible.

 

Peter

 

 

[WallaceTech]

Thanks for the replies.

 

VMware can use NFS as its datastore so unRaid should be fine with. I did read that iSCSi was not an option with unRaid but no matter which way i look at it unRaid seems to win each time with the way that i can add and expand on the fly. Its the one thing that stops me looking at openfiler and freenas

 

Craig

[Johnm]

i apologize. I was in the car when responding. my NFS share is stashed on an iSCSI target through an windows server.

 

Again. You could crate a NFS share, But i am not sure that you will be able to use it with an VMware datastore.

I have not created a test NFS share, but It would still be to slow to host guests on.

you could possibly use it for datastore or ISO backups only.

I have a feeling that running a few VM's at once would cripple both your VMware server and your unraid server at the same time due to the way unraid calculates parity.

Then again, I could be wrong as I have not tested this.

 

You could try the performance with the free version of unraid.

 

You are comparing unraid to high-performance operating systems (and hardware raids in another thread).

I am not sure if you are clear on what exactly unraid is.

unRAID is meant to be a low impact, low energy use storage server OS that can run on almost any consumer hardware with mismatched drives.

It uses a single drive parity system for real time data protection.

Because of this, it tends to be a bit slower then some cutting edge setup. (but reliable)

 

You might also be able to run an NFS share on a single drive outside of the protected array.

that wold be a lot faster, but not as fast as if the datastore was on the VM box itself, on a ZFS or a hardware raid.

 

also, 7200RPM drives will make a difference. in this situation.

[boof]

As above, running a vmware guest backed onto a parity protected unraid export via NFS would be a painful experience if the guest does any amount of disk i/o.

 

I'd strongly echo the above warnings and also the recommendation to test this with the free version before committing any further.

 

It would work but your performance would be less than adequate.

[WallaceTech]

Thanks for the reply guys.

 

I should point out that this is for my home setup so yes i would like it to be blazing fast but i can put up with a slight performance hit.

 

I will defo take the points on board and see how the performace goes.

[boof]

If what you see you're able to describe away as a 'slight performance hit' then you'll be doing very well

 

I suspect what you'll be seeing instead is performance dropping off a very high sheer cliff

 

For writes anyway...