New Unraid OS License Pricing, Timeline, and FAQs

[HOLISTICAGENT]

1 minute ago, enJOyIT said:

 

I'm sorry to hear that. But you shouldn't blame limetech for your unread E-Mails.

 

Maybe there is a possibility in your special case to make an excpetion. You should try to contact @SpencerJ. Maybe he can help you out.

Thanks

And I don't blame them, not everyone can know what goes on in everyones life,

 

In my world I had 30days to figure it out if the solution worked for me at the current price.

 

Thanks for answering, I just felt abit empty inside after i just spent so many hours collecting different drives and backing it up.

 

Also english is not my main language, if there is anything wrong with how I type. Sorry again. 

[xokia]

6 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

 

the question is what features? from all the blog posts and what was said in the interview, as well as the last few releases, their main focus seems to be ZFS.

Not sure I understand the ZFS direction either. But maybe the see demand from somewhere they think will bring in the dollars. 

[Lolight]

2 minutes ago, xokia said:

Not sure I understand the ZFS direction either. But maybe the see demand from somewhere they think will bring in the dollars. 

ZFS has become a must have option in this marketplace.
Not necessarily from every half-informed potential customer point of view.

But IMO LimeTech simply had no choice but to implement it.

Otherwise every devoted TrueNas proponent would continue bad mouth Unraid on every home NAS board with their constant FUD on the dangers of bitrot and how Unraid would "loose your family pictures".

[Niklas]

7 hours ago, Hoopster said:

All licenses provide all Unraid features.  The only difference is the number of storage devices that can be attached to the server when the array is started.

 

There is no difference between the Unleashed license and the Pro license other than the fact that Unleashed now has an annual update/maintenance fee.  The Lifetime license is just Unleashed with lifetime updates/maintenance.

 

If you read what you get, the licenses seem to be different. But sure, I also see "All features of Unraid OS" but the listed functions differ. 😉

Edited March 28 by Niklas

[Lolight]

14 minutes ago, Niklas said:

 

If you read what you get, the licenses seem to be different. But sure, I also see "All features of Unraid OS" but the listed functions differ. 😉

Yeah, the feature sets look slightly different due to editing inconsistency.
But in reality they're exactly the same across the tiers.

At least as far as I know...

[Spec7re]

3 hours ago, xokia said:

Not sure I understand the ZFS direction either. But maybe the see demand from somewhere they think will bring in the dollars. 

I think there was a vote on this forum from Lime Tech (a while a go) asking the community what major feature they wanted them work on next and I believe ZFS won, hence them implementing it.

 

Personally I think it's overkill for home users, but it does opens the door for Unraid to be used in other situations. Unraid's default array is easy to expand (good for home users), but it's not the fastest. ZFS has a ton of features, but I think for a lot of people, it's more about the increased performance than anything else. I've read quite a few posts over various forums/Reddit threads, etc... of individuals who love Unraid, but wanted to use it for something like video editing, but couldn't due to the limited performance of Unraid. ZFS now opens the door for this group of people and others with similar use cases to use Unraid.

 

Either way Lime Tech isn't removing the default Unraid array, it will still be available for those that want it, but ZFS gives users another option to choose from if it's something they need. Really it's about opening the doors for Unraid to be used is more situations, other than just your typically media server.

Ironically, ZFS has been working on giving ZFS users the ability to expand the pool/vdev one drive at a time (similar to Unraid) and is due to come out later this year from what I remember. So in a way, you can say that Unraid has (in a way) inspired home users who prefer ZFS to push and ask for this ability in ZFS as well...which is being done. So I guess the next big question is, once ZFS has that ability, does it make Unraid's default array obsolete in a way, especially when you consider the increased performance, etc...?? I don't know the answer to that, but I am sure this question will come up at some point.

[Spec7re]

11 minutes ago, Lolight said:

Yeah, the feature sets look slightly different due to editing inconsistency.
But in reality they're exactly the same across the tiers.

At least as far as I know...

I agree,

 

I think it may not be written very clearly, but Unraid has always been fully featured regardless which version you chose. The only limiting factor was the number of devices, aside from that it was always the same. I am fully confident that it's the same now, they never talk about it making the versions different other than the number of devices...something they have always been doing.

Edited March 28 by Spec7re

[isvein]

55 minutes ago, Niklas said:

 

If you read what you get, the licenses seem to be different. But sure, I also see "All features of Unraid OS" but the listed functions differ. 😉

Agree, its confusing how it is written now.

Also, its great to have options.
Its a good thing that we both have the unraid-array, btrfs, xfs and zfs options.
And without the array, unraid would not be unraid, just another TrueNAS "clone" that would sit between core and scale.

As I try to tell all the TrueNAS "sellers" out there, TrueNAS is great, but me and many does not like or want that we are locked to zfs.
And surprise surprise, the hard hitting TrueNAS "sellers" wont mention up front that its locked to zfs, basically need identical drives, cant (for now) expand an pool without putting in same amount as drives as existing vdev(s), cant use mixed size drives (unless you make multiply pools).

And if you try to point this out they most of the time just goes "Buuut muuuh freee!!"

(also TrueNAS is not truly free, they too have developers they need to pay just like Lime, but since TrueNAS is an (as far as I know) hard hitter in the enterprise market. they also sell their own hardware solutions, there is where they get the money from. If Unraid had been a hard hitter in enterprise marked, Lime had sold their own hardware solutions etc, Im pretty sure Unraid would have been free for private use too.)

Edited March 28 by isvein

[dandirk]

So I am somewhat confused...  Am a Legacy Pro owner, never received and email and do not seem to have any license upgrade option.  I assume since pro = unleashed it is more a waiting game for the new licenses?

 

Or is there a version upgrade required, I wouldn't think so as they suggest to use connect to upgrade?

[Hoopster]

6 minutes ago, dandirk said:

do not seem to have any license upgrade option

Do you need a license "upgrade"?  Pro gives you all features in perpetuity with unlimited storage devices and no annual upgrade/maintenance fee.

[ddube]

11 hours ago, Niklas said:

Is this correct? Going from Plus to Pro seem to give less functions compared to go from Plus to Unleached? Maybe I misundarstad but it looks like Unleashed gives access to more features compared to legacy Pro?

 

It's a scummy tactic to move you to the annual subscription. It is playing with cognitive behavior of individual people :

• Putting pro to the right :
  • We are all used to see the scaling in tier from left to right.
  • Suggest it doen't have all option when compared to right panel.
  • Pricing is higher, and no mention that is a legacy (loyalty) tier.
• Putting the subscription version to the right is :
  • We are all used to see the last option as the complete offering, thus enticing people to select this one without doing research.
  • Pricing is less, but suggest that it comes with more option.

If you ever want to upgrade, stick to pro. It is the same, but they are wording the panel differently.

[ddube]

3 hours ago, isvein said:

Also, its great to have options.
Its a good thing that we both have the unraid-array, btrfs, xfs and zfs options.
And without the array, unraid would not be unraid, just another TrueNAS "clone" that would sit between core and scale.

As I try to tell all the TrueNAS "sellers" out there, TrueNAS is great, but me and many does not like or want that we are locked to zfs.

Well I see people on youtube and the looks like they are paid by truenas or it is like a cult. It seems very popular but there is a lot of options for different use case.

 

If you want to stay in the open source, you can go mergerfs+snapraid, etc.

If you want to be on windows, you can use stablebit drivepool (all their app in bundle cost like 59$ and all future updates included) that will works similar to unraid but in windows in the way that it's basically a jbod. You can add duplication to protect against a drive failure. You can even setup snapraid if you want.

 

But then again, it's a little more work.

[SpencerJ]

13 hours ago, Niklas said:

Is this correct? Going from Plus to Pro seem to give less functions compared to go from Plus to Unleached? Maybe I misundarstad but it looks like Unleashed gives access to more features compared to legacy Pro?

 

 

Apologies @Niklas- somehow the "VM and Docker Management" field was disabled on that pricing entry. I have corrected it. The only difference between the two are the initial upgrade price and the OS Updates timing difference.

[xokia]

Kinda curious was the option to eliminate the lower tiers and just sell pro licenses at the prior pricing model considered? If I just think of OS costs. New pricing structure has unraid costing more then WIN11.

 

We are all kinda guessing here as we do not know the percentage of customers are at which version of unraid. But could the problem have been solved moving everyone up?

[SpencerJ]

4 hours ago, ddube said:

It's a scummy tactic to move you to the annual subscription. 

 

Relax please. It was a simple oversight that got missed during QA- nothing nefarious was intended. 

[dandirk]

2 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Do you need a license "upgrade"?  Pro gives you all features in perpetuity with unlimited storage devices and no annual upgrade/maintenance fee.

 

Oh completely missed that, just sort of assumed legacy would sort of convert to the new licenses, the upgrade option from Plus to Unleashed made me second guess.

 

Assumed Pro licenses would at some point convert the Unleashed.

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, dandirk said:

Assumed Pro licenses would at some point convert the Unleashed.

From a functional point of view current Pro licences are equivalent to the new Lifetime licence.

[isvein]

5 hours ago, SpencerJ said:

 

Apologies @Niklas- somehow the "VM and Docker Management" field was disabled on that pricing entry. I have corrected it. The only difference between the two are the initial upgrade price and the OS Updates timing difference.

Now its not confusing 😁 thanks! 

[MrCrispy]

10 hours ago, Spec7re said:

I think there was a vote on this forum from Lime Tech (a while a go) asking the community what major feature they wanted them work on next and I believe ZFS won, hence them implementing it.

 

Personally I think it's overkill for home users, but it does opens the door for Unraid to be used in other situations. Unraid's default array is easy to expand (good for home users), but it's not the fastest. ZFS has a ton of features, but I think for a lot of people, it's more about the increased performance than anything else. I've read quite a few posts over various forums/Reddit threads, etc... of individuals who love Unraid, but wanted to use it for something like video editing, but couldn't due to the limited performance of Unraid. ZFS now opens the door for this group of people and others with similar use cases to use Unraid.

 

Either way Lime Tech isn't removing the default Unraid array, it will still be available for those that want it, but ZFS gives users another option to choose from if it's something they need. Really it's about opening the doors for Unraid to be used is more situations, other than just your typically media server.

Ironically, ZFS has been working on giving ZFS users the ability to expand the pool/vdev one drive at a time (similar to Unraid) and is due to come out later this year from what I remember. So in a way, you can say that Unraid has (in a way) inspired home users who prefer ZFS to push and ask for this ability in ZFS as well...which is being done. So I guess the next big question is, once ZFS has that ability, does it make Unraid's default array obsolete in a way, especially when you consider the increased performance, etc...?? I don't know the answer to that, but I am sure this question will come up at some point.

 

btrfs does everything ZFS does, mostly, in a much more friendly and less resource intensive way, with added features, and more modern. I see no reason to adopt ZFS except being a bigger name and more enterprisy.

 

about your last point - it doesn't matter if ZFS can expand. btrfs does this already. Both of them stripe data. With unraid i know that I can simply take any drive and it will have all its files in native format, readable outside the array.

[Spec7re]

2 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

 

btrfs does everything ZFS does, mostly, in a much more friendly and less resource intensive way, with added features, and more modern. I see no reason to adopt ZFS except being a bigger name and more enterprisy.

 

about your last point - it doesn't matter if ZFS can expand. btrfs does this already. Both of them stripe data. With unraid i know that I can simply take any drive and it will have all its files in native format, readable outside the array.

It is indeed true, but from my understanding (I think they addressed it in the Unraid podcast as well) is that while btrfs is great it's still limited in some aspects compared to ZFS. It cannot go beyond mirrors reliably which has been a sore spot for btrfs.  From what I recall (unless it has changed recently) btrfs has issues doing things like raid 5, raid 6, etc... something that certain individuals may want and something ZFS does exceptionally well.

 

As I've said I do think ZFS is overkill for the vast majority of home users, but there are indeed use cases for it and certain individuals will see the benefit from it (ie: a freelance Videographer, doing edits off the server). I still stand by my question, as I suspect that it will come up...not because I necessarily agree with it, but it will come up for discussion at some point. Regardless which array type, file system, etc... you use (ie: ZFS, btrfs, Unraid), one should still have proper backups of their important data. Sure you can read the drives outside of the array, but if the drive that died had all your family photos, but the one that survived had you Linux iso's 😉, I'm sure you'd be very upset. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against the Unraid type pool, I'm just saying that people shouldn't get caught up in the nitty gritty of each solution and instead focus on always having a proper backup strategy.

 

All in all, it's just about choice. Lime Tech isn't taking away the ability to keep using the "Unraid" array, it's just offering another solution to those that want it. It also opens the door for Unraid to be used in certain situations outside of the home (ie: a small business type situation)...at least that's how I see it.

[MrCrispy]

1 hour ago, Spec7re said:

It is indeed true, but from my understanding (I think they addressed it in the Unraid podcast as well) is that while btrfs is great it's still limited in some aspects compared to ZFS. It cannot go beyond mirrors reliably which has been a sore spot for btrfs.  From what I recall (unless it has changed recently) btrfs has issues doing things like raid 5, raid 6, etc... something that certain individuals may want and something ZFS does exceptionally well.

 

As I've said I do think ZFS is overkill for the vast majority of home users, but there are indeed use cases for it and certain individuals will see the benefit from it (ie: a freelance Videographer, doing edits off the server). I still stand by my question, as I suspect that it will come up...not because I necessarily agree with it, but it will come up for discussion at some point. Regardless which array type, file system, etc... you use (ie: ZFS, btrfs, Unraid), one should still have proper backups of their important data. Sure you can read the drives outside of the array, but if the drive that died had all your family photos, but the one that survived had you Linux iso's 😉, I'm sure you'd be very upset. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against the Unraid type pool, I'm just saying that people shouldn't get caught up in the nitty gritty of each solution and instead focus on always having a proper backup strategy.

 

All in all, it's just about choice. Lime Tech isn't taking away the ability to keep using the "Unraid" array, it's just offering another solution to those that want it. It also opens the door for Unraid to be used in certain situations outside of the home (ie: a small business type situation)...at least that's how I see it.

 

I agree there's a use case for ZFS. That use caae is e.g like you said, high speed storage for video editing. And its no coincidence that this is exactly the use case for the big youtube channels who have terabytes of new video, massive builds, and promote Unraid. I believe when LTT did their first Unraid video it was a huge boost in sales. 

 

This use case is diametrically opposite to what home users need. And ironically, a real enterprise would also never use Unraid because its inherently insecure, they have no use for things like community apps, and they have a hundred other options to run ZFS or even better file systems like ceph etc.

 

So Unraid's biggest promoters on social media, with a very niche set of demands that are irrelevant to the majority of the userbase, end up driving the feature set, because they directly influence sales, much more than you or me. 

 

And the other undeniable fact is LT is a smalll company with very limited resources. Its fine to say that 'it isn't taking away the ability' but it IS taking away developer time and resources which is far more important. There are a ton of features that can and should be improved before ZFS.

[MrCrispy]

1 hour ago, Spec7re said:

Regardless which array type, file system, etc... you use (ie: ZFS, btrfs, Unraid), one should still have proper backups of their important data. Sure you can read the drives outside of the array, but if the drive that died had all your family photos, but the one that survived had you Linux iso's 😉, I'm sure you'd be very upset. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against the Unraid type pool, I'm just saying that people shouldn't get caught up in the nitty gritty of each solution and instead focus on always having a proper backup strategy.

 

of course backups are important, but we can't backup all data, hence why RAID/parity exists. 

 

the problem is this - with both ZFS/Unraid, if a data disk dies, you can try and restore it. This involved an array rebuild.

 

With a striped storage like RAID/ZFS, if there are ANY problems during the rebuild, guess what, your ENTIRE array/zpool is gone. This is a well known problem. 

 

With Unraid, even if there's an issue, you will ONLY lose that disk. And even in that case, using disk recovery software, its very likely you can recover some files.

 

At the end of the day, I do not think any striped data set is safe for home use.

Edited March 29 by MrCrispy

[Spec7re]

13 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

 

I agree there's a use case for ZFS. That use caae is e.g like you said, high speed storage for video editing. And its no coincidence that this is exactly the use case for the big youtube channels who have terabytes of new video, massive builds, and promote Unraid. I believe when LTT did their first Unraid video it was a huge boost in sales. 

 

This use case is diametrically opposite to what home users need. And ironically, a real enterprise would also never use Unraid because its inherently insecure, they have no use for things like community apps, and they have a hundred other options to run ZFS or even better file systems like ceph etc.

 

So Unraid's biggest promoters on social media, with a very niche set of demands that are irrelevant to the majority of the userbase, end up driving the feature set, because they directly influence sales, much more than you or me. 

 

And the other undeniable fact is LT is a smalll company with very limited resources. Its fine to say that 'it isn't taking away the ability' but it IS taking away developer time and resources which is far more important. There are a ton of features that can and should be improved before ZFS.

I agree,

 

Even if Lime Tech makes a bunch of changes to make it more "enterprise worthy," in all honesty, most large businesses rarely if ever change solutions, unless it is absolutely necessary. Even if they didn't implement ZFS, I feel that Lime Tech one way, or another would have still come to the same conclusion as they did currently, which is they need to hire more developers...hence the changes in pricing. Either way, I hope they are able to hire more developers and can bring on even more features for all of us..especially us home users.

 

13 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

 

of course backups are important, but we can't backup all data, hence why RAID/parity exists. 

 

the problem is this - with both ZFS/Unraid, if a data disk dies, you can try and restore it. this involved an array rebuild. With a striped storage like RAID/ZFS, if there are ANY problems during the rebuild, guess what, your ENTIRE array/zpool is gone. This is a well known problem.

 

With Unraid, even if there's an issue, you will ONLY lose that disk. And even in that case, using disk recovery software, its very likely you can recover some files.

 

At the end of the day, I do not think any striped data set is safe for home use.

 

This is true, but to be fair you do not have to back up all your data, just the stuff that is irreplaceable (ie: family photos, important documents, etc...). Stuff like your acquired Linux iso collection in most cases can be replaced just by ripping them again, so all you loose is time...which is still annoying, but not life altering in anyway.

 

It is true that you could loose everything during the rebuild process with ZFS, but that's what the backups are for...Regardless, as long as you know what you are getting into and understand the potential pit falls, it can be a good solution when used in the right situation.

 

Edited March 29 by Spec7re

[HOLISTICAGENT]

20 hours ago, Lolight said:

I'm not quite sure but I think I've heard somewhere that LimeTech would allow you to purchase the legacy license in this situation.

@SpencerJ is that correct?

Did you know if this is possible? 

@SpencerJ

[Danny N]

21 hours ago, Spec7re said:

I think there was a vote on this forum from Lime Tech (a while a go) asking the community what major feature they wanted them work on next and I believe ZFS won, hence them implementing it.

 

Personally I think it's overkill for home users, but it does opens the door for Unraid to be used in other situations. Unraid's default array is easy to expand (good for home users), but it's not the fastest. ZFS has a ton of features, but I think for a lot of people, it's more about the increased performance than anything else. I've read quite a few posts over various forums/Reddit threads, etc... of individuals who love Unraid, but wanted to use it for something like video editing, but couldn't due to the limited performance of Unraid. ZFS now opens the door for this group of people and others with similar use cases to use Unraid.

 

Either way Lime Tech isn't removing the default Unraid array, it will still be available for those that want it, but ZFS gives users another option to choose from if it's something they need. Really it's about opening the doors for Unraid to be used is more situations, other than just your typically media server.

Ironically, ZFS has been working on giving ZFS users the ability to expand the pool/vdev one drive at a time (similar to Unraid) and is due to come out later this year from what I remember. So in a way, you can say that Unraid has (in a way) inspired home users who prefer ZFS to push and ask for this ability in ZFS as well...which is being done. So I guess the next big question is, once ZFS has that ability, does it make Unraid's default array obsolete in a way, especially when you consider the increased performance, etc...?? I don't know the answer to that, but I am sure this question will come up at some point.

So as far as my understanding goes there’s many key differences between unraids array expansion method and zfs’s

1. Storage efficacy. Let’s say we have 4 identical drives in a raidz1 or in unraid 1 parity, 3 drives are data and 1 parity so 75% of your space is usable, adding one more data drive you would think increases this to 80% (4 data and 1 parity) but on zfs your locked into the 3 bits of data for every 1 bit of parity thing so it remains at 75% efficient unless you compleatly rebuild 

2. Drive failure. On zfs if you lose more drives than you have redundancy for you lose all the data on unraid you only lose the data on the failed drives as each drive is it’s own file system.

One last thing I would like to mention is that zfs’s bitrot protection only works in a raidz or mirrored array and not on a single disk which while I get why this is the case is really dumb as there’s gonna be a lot of people using zfs for a protection they don’t achally have, sadly zfs is a enterprise first fs so home uses is much lower priority 

Edited March 29 by Danny N
Spell check autocorrected zfs to ads in one spot