[PLUGIN] SnapRAID on UNRAID

[Rysz]

SnapRAID on UNRAID

A plugin for advanced users installing SnapRAID onto UNRAID systems.

 

Possible Use-Cases:

• Parity protection and a degree of corruption detection/repair for custom-mounted (e.g. using UD), possibly mergerFS-fused/pooled, unassigned disks outside of the primary Unraid array - either due to not always being online (cold backups) or exceeding the maximum possible array size of 30 disks, as commonly seen with large mixed disk JBOD/DAS solutions not wanting or being able to go full ZFS (primary use-case).
• A degree of corruption detection/repair for rarely changing large file libraries (e.g. on media or backup servers) in conjunction with Unraid parity, sacrificing an Unraid array data disk for SnapRAID parity to leverage the advantages of both Unraid and SnapRAID (experimental use-case).
• You tell me - post here if you have another exciting use case that worked well for your specific storage needs.

General Usage Warning:

As with any software interacting with your data, only ever use it on backed up data and in combination with a solid backup strategy.

Read the manual and help-texts before acting and if you do not understand a 100% what you are doing, please just do not do it... 🙂 

 

This thread is not really for teaching how to use SnapRAID. It is primarily intended for reporting and solving problems around the plugin itself. If the detailed SnapRAID manual and amply provided hover/F1 help-texts are not enough to bring clarity on using the software, this plugin will most likely have no real benefit for you (no offense). It was made for advanced users with very specific storage needs, not to just play around with without purpose (if you value your data).

 

Installable via Community Applications

 

Edited May 5 by Rysz

[Phuriousgeorge]

Just wanted to say thank you @Rysz for putting this together, it's been on my wish list for awhile now as an alternative setup!  Time to put my concept to the test and though I'm horrible at it, hopefully I'll report back.

[oublie]

Will watch this with interest as i love the idea of being able to expand my array past the 30 unraid drives for non changing data.

[timc6896]

This is great!  I just set this up running 1 parity disk and 6 data disks.  On the SnapRaid settings page, I can see the parity disk with filesystem of XFS.  I can see the other 6 data disks but filesystem is tmpfs?  Is this supposed to say XFS as well since all the data disks are formatted as XFS.  Total Space for the data disks is also wrong, showing only 1.05MB instead of 12TB.  When I do a sync, diff, list, etc, it does show the correct number of files and size.  Other than that, everything is checking out correctly. 

[timc6896]

13 minutes ago, timc6896 said:

This is great!  I just set this up running 1 parity disk and 6 data disks.  On the SnapRaid settings page, I can see the parity disk with filesystem of XFS.  I can see the other 6 data disks but filesystem is tmpfs?  Is this supposed to say XFS as well since all the data disks are formatted as XFS.  Total Space for the data disks is also wrong, showing only 1.05MB instead of 12TB.  When I do a sync, diff, list, etc, it does show the correct number of files and size.  Other than that, everything is checking out correctly. 

Please ignore this.  This is supposed to be this way.  Everything seems to be running   

[Rysz]

4 hours ago, timc6896 said:

Please ignore this.  This is supposed to be this way.  Everything seems to be running   

 

No problem, thanks for using the plugin - your parity and data disks should all show as XFS (see below for my primary array). 🙂 

If your data disks do not show up, please make sure you used a trailing slash / at the end of the mount points ( e.g. /mnt/disk1/ ).

 

 

The TMPFS disk shown at the end is the plugin's RAM disk, this is where all operational output will be written to (logfiles, etc.). It is a safeguard, so that a large amount of logfiles and/or exceptionally large logfiles cannot use up all your RAM and destabilize your operating system. The amount of total disk space shown for that disk is 30% of your total available RAM and is just the maximum possible RAM usage for the plugin, but the space is not in fact blocked when not in use.

 

Edited July 9 by Rysz

[timc6896]

8 hours ago, Rysz said:

 

No problem, thanks for using the plugin - your parity and data disks should all show as XFS (see below for my primary array). 🙂 

If your data disks do not show up, please make sure you used a trailing slash / at the end of the mount points ( e.g. /mnt/disk1/ ).

 

 

The TMPFS disk shown at the end is the plugin's RAM disk, this is where all operational output will be written to (logfiles, etc.). It is a safeguard, so that a large amount of logfiles and/or exceptionally large logfiles cannot use up all your RAM and destabilize your operating system. The amount of total disk space shown for that disk is 30% of your total available RAM and is just the maximum possible RAM usage for the plugin, but the space is not in fact blocked when not in use.

 

 Wow!  Added the trailing slash "/" and not it shows correctly!  Stupid mistake on my part.  I ran the maintenance cronjob and it worked as expected.  No issues to report there.  Also ran a rebuild by pulling out a drive and replacing with a new drive, worked 100%.  This is an awesome plug-in that helps extend unRaid's limitation of a single array.

[Rysz]

20 hours ago, timc6896 said:

 Wow!  Added the trailing slash "/" and not it shows correctly!  Stupid mistake on my part.  I ran the maintenance cronjob and it worked as expected.  No issues to report there.  Also ran a rebuild by pulling out a drive and replacing with a new drive, worked 100%.  This is an awesome plug-in that helps extend unRaid's limitation of a single array.

 

Thanks for reporting back, I thought that might have been the case for you and I appreciate the feedback. To be fair, that previous limitation or rather requirement was not all that visible among the other information back then. I did address this in the latest update with some additional checks against malformed configurations, so it should be better visible in the future if something is misconfigured. That limitation itself has since also been resolved. I'm glad that everything works for you now, I've also used SnapRAID intensively on my backup server for these past few months this plugin has existed and although it does have a bit of a learning curve and some limitations, it has also worked exceptionally well for me throughout various recovery operations. 🙂 

 

Edited July 10 by Rysz