Moved from TrueNAS Scale to Unraid

[chrisgtl]

I'm a big follower of Tom Lawrence on YT and built my knowledge upon watching many hours of his material.

 

After learning pfSense I moved on to VLANS and Cisco switches. Now came the time to ditch my old and slow Asustor NAS and replace with something more future-proof and flexible.

 

Tom spoke highly of TrueNAS Scale, so I built my own system and loaded it with Scale. It was a steep learning curve and managed to get it all working pretty much how I wanted - I still didn't really understand the permission/ACLs but I successfully had a couple VMs running along with some home media Kubernetes.

 

System is a i7-7700 with 64GB RAM on a ASUSTeK Prime B250M-A. I have since added a Asus 1660 Super GPU. Storage wise, I have a 256GB NVMe, 120GB SSD, 1TB SSD and 3 x 4TB Toshiba N300s.

 

TrueNAS Scale was installed to the NVMe, Klubernetes and Home Assistant OS VM on the 120GB SSD, and a Windows 10 VM on the 1TB SSD. Media and such on the 4TB drives.

 

Klubernetes seemed clunky to me, sometimes they would break, TrueNAS kept updating their platform which seemed to fix many issues but also create other problems. The final straw was when I could no longer edit my VMs without using some weird command line hack - a couple updates came along but still no sign of any fixes.

 

I started to explore other options and came to find Unraid. My first job was to find a YT'ber that I could connect with and understand. Open to suggestions as I didn't really settle on any one particular person.

 

After much reading any having a play with the demo I was ready to pull the trigger on a Plus license. Upon booting Unraid for the first time I was given the bad news that my oldest Toshiba 4TB drive was showing up as bad on the dashboard. I pulled the trigger on a 8TB Samsung SSD and decided I was going to have a non-mechanical NAS.

 

So far so good with Unraid. I'm still learning and reading, but so far I have;

 

8TB SSD; media storage with SMB shares

1TB SSD; Windows 10 VM running BlueIris with 1660 Super passthrough for my CCTV person AI detection

120GB SSD; Media apps running like Jellyfin etc...

256GB NVMe; Home Assistant OS VM 

 

Well done to all those involved with Unraid. I'm enjoying everything so far.

 

[TimTheSettler]

I originally tried TrueNAS too.  I found it confusing and I had lots of trouble with the permissions/ACL.  I felt that it was an advanced product requiring advanced knowledge.  I needed something simple but powerful and I think unRAID is it.  Don't get me wrong, unRAID is advanced too but it simplifies that complexity.  I wish TrueNAS the best because you need competitive products in the marketplace to keep things interesting.

 

You mentioned 3x4TB HDDs and then mention a single 8TB SSD.  One of those 4TB HDDs failed and so you decided to scrap the other two and use a single 8TB?  I assume you have a backup strategy in place in case that 8TB bites the dust?

[chrisgtl]

On 2/15/2024 at 1:16 AM, TimTheSettler said:

I originally tried TrueNAS too.  I found it confusing and I had lots of trouble with the permissions/ACL.  I felt that it was an advanced product requiring advanced knowledge.  I needed something simple but powerful and I think unRAID is it.  Don't get me wrong, unRAID is advanced too but it simplifies that complexity.  I wish TrueNAS the best because you need competitive products in the marketplace to keep things interesting.

 

You mentioned 3x4TB HDDs and then mention a single 8TB SSD.  One of those 4TB HDDs failed and so you decided to scrap the other two and use a single 8TB?  I assume you have a backup strategy in place in case that 8TB bites the dust?

 

Since writing that OP I have sold all my spinning discs.

 

Non of my data is mission critical, its HomeLab and for playing around. Any mission critical data is saved elsewhere. I am not running any parity or backup strategies.

 

I'm just waiting for the Samsung 8TB prices to come back down so I can buy another and add it to my unRAID.

 

I've spent quite a long time finding my way around unRAID - learning lots but still got a long way to go. Not sure if I've set it up correctly, but from what I have been reading there is no real right or wrong way.

 

I have my Nvme (250GB) as a single pool using btrfs and my other 3 SSDs (120GB, 1TB & 8TB) as single devices in the array using xfs.

 

I did try to add all my drives as pools but then I couldn't share anything due to an error saying shares not available without array.