FoeHammerTime Posted May 3 Share Posted May 3 (edited) Howdy all. I am working to get my first NAS set up. I have a machine working, but I am new to all of the software end of setting up your own server. All of it. I built a PC with the following specs: Asus H97M-E motherboard 256GB M.2 drive Intel i5-4690K 8GB RAM 2x 16TB HDDs I intend to use the PC as a headless NAS, mainly to run a family Plex server, and then have some personal cloud storage, as well as a backup PC in case the family one I just built takes a dump at some point. I already installed Ubuntu on it, but am now wondering if I shouldn't have done that. Should I wipe that from the drive and start with just Unraid? Then put in another OS on a VM? Should I just leave Ubuntu on there and boot from the Unraid USB? I should mention I only have experience with Windows, and all these other OS'es are completely new territory to me. What all do I need to know? To do? To avoid? Talk to me like I'm an idiot, because I am. The more reading I do on these things, the more terms I see that I have no context for. Edited May 3 by FoeHammer Forgot needed information Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Have you looked at Spaceinvader One's youtube channel? He has a comprensive list of Unraid videos. Quote Link to comment
bmartino1 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 (edited) Well I'm Board… so why not! On 5/2/2024 at 7:04 PM, FoeHammer said: Howdy all. I am working to get my first NAS set up. I have a machine working, but I am new to all of the software end of setting up your own server. All of it. I built a PC with the following specs: Asus H97M-E motherboard 256GB M.2 drive Intel i5-4690K 8GB RAM 2x 16TB HDDs I intend to use the PC as a headless NAS, mainly to run a family Plex server, and then have some personal cloud storage, as well as a backup PC in case the family one I just built takes a dump at some point. I already installed Ubuntu on it, but am now wondering if I shouldn't have done that. Should I wipe that from the drive and start with just Unraid? Then put in another OS on a VM? Should I just leave Ubuntu on there and boot from the Unraid USB? I should mention I only have experience with Windows, and all these other OS'es are completely new territory to me. What all do I need to know? To do? To avoid? Talk to me like I'm an idiot, because I am. The more reading I do on these things, the more terms I see that I have no context for. I have to assume quite a bit... I don't know what you know and can't inform you on things to avoid and a bunch of a info dump... INCOMING! And there more where that came from. Feel free to PM if you are stuck or ask publicly on the form here. Many members will gladly help you with their experiences. Welcome to unraid. I would also highly recommend Space invader YouTube videos! Most things are plugins and/or dockers. Google is your friend! I would first direct you to the Doc / manual: https://docs.unraid.net/category/manual/ Overview: Unraid is a Computer Operating System that loads/run off a USB drive and exists in the PC memory for operations. The flash drive is located at /boot when the system is up and running. It is best practice to plug in the unraid USB and use a USB 2.0 port. Usually manufacture color code different USB hardware revisions. This would be a Black Port per the standard if followed... Each manufacture is different and ports color may not reflect port generation and with the evolution in technology some boards may no longer have a 2.0 port. That's ok, USB3.0 and up generations still works, but there have been reports of instability / corrupted flash drives due to the generation speed/Linux kernel Drivers. Not to worry as this is a rare occurrence. Please Confirm all devices are plugged in and fully inserted. A reboot fixes most things. When in doubt, reboot all the things! Unraid default boots via CSM/Clasic Bios. UEFI bios are supported. When the pc receives power, it goes through a POST and BIOS test. Power on Self Test(POST) to confirm electrical circuits with the processor making special logic gate connection dependent on manufacture and the chipset and processor type. Then a Basic input/output system (BIOS) loads. Due to the evolution of technology, while BIOS still loads you may have a manufacture board specific firmware running a version of Linux called UEFI. You may need to press a special button (F1 / F2 / f10 / f12 / esc / del) to enter bios to configure settings such as default boot device. To use unraid you should set BIOS to boot to the USB only. At power on At boot, you will see an Unraid Linux screen called a Grub menu. This is a specific Linux system used to boot and load other Linux operating systems by telling hardware what you have and how to use it. In this case, the Flash drive form Bios has loaded, and basic code is processed to launch the OS. Grub also sets the "syslinux" kernel options. Future project such as VM, IOMMU, VM GPU pass though may have you edit this menu. 90% of the time, the setting changed in Unraid will edit this for you, it is a rare occurrence that one would need to press a key to edit the boot menu or change to boot into recovery in the event of an error. The Default Grub boots unraid is headless mode, so no Desktop GUI. just a Pure Linux Terminal via a TTY Line... At This time The USB drive loads/unzips the "BZR firmware" that is unraid into ram and then loads a Linux OS. unfortunate as Unraid is a mutable OS... There is no package manager. You get what they pre-packaged. There is quite a bit pre-packaged. There are way to add other packages via Plugins and dockers. More on that latter! Once the BZR firmware loads, you then see the Linux OS syslog/dmesg of the system loading your hardware and making an OS. You eventually get to a login screen. If connected to a network, Unraid will display the Web UI IP to connect to it over the network. Unriad comes pre-packaged with a web UI to manipulate and set server settings. Unriad is a NAS (network attached storage) applicable first. It is capable of running a great deal of things such as Dockers and VM that are dependent on specific PC hardware. Unraid can be fairly straight forward sometimes. It is at this time that one would use another system to access the Web UI. Any Web browser will do. In my case my Unraid received the ip address of 192.168.1.x in the terminal, so I was able to go to http://192.168.1.x in my pc web browser to access Unraids Web UI to set settings. The first thing will be to login and set a root password. Then I recommend going to the community app store and installing some plugins. This plugin adds an informational message to almost all setting in the web ui so if you have a question on a specific setting this should point you in the right direction of what it does. The next step I recommend you doing is going to the settings tab and network settings to statically set the ipv4 address on the machine. This way you know where the unraid web ui ip address will be at all time. This will be the same ip address to access the nas hardware shares latter. Then, depending on the # of hard drives installed, we then visit the Main tab and setup unraid's disk layout. unraid needs at least 1 disk set for option Disk 1 The ideal setup is 1 HD/SSD/NVME disk drive set to Disk 1 the same or bigger disk drive set to parity and 1 Disk drive set to Cached disk. This will Linux Format the disk drive in the Array to File system type XFS. And by default is specified cache disk to btrfs file system. Once you have picked a disk layout. https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/what-is-unraid/ https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/ https://docs.unraid.net/category/zfs/ We must start the array and potential format the disk to the desired file system for use on Unriad. This setups a software raid with multiple disk... We then direct you to the shares tab. Unraid uses samba for windows smb file sharing. By default, Unraid created some default shares. You will notice a few folders: appdata > default path for docker stored data system > default pat for unraid img files for docker and kvm/qemu umg file Domains > default path for Virtual Machine data Vdisk to live. iso > default place to put VM iso install disks. Please not the storage column of the table. This is where the data and that folder physical live on disk. Please note the smb/nfs column This is the share settings on what server and how. under share setting you can specify where you want file to live: under smb security setting is how it is sahred: with tips and tricks you will get a ? icon over the black text of a setting to assist you with your desired options: There are many applications and plugins in the community app store! My recommendations are: CA Auto Update Applications > used to update dockers and plugin on schedule Docker Compose > add docker compose to unraids docker system Dynamix File manager > A FCP tool for latter if needed- web UI file access and management Dynamix System information > Linux system info dump to get hardware details Enhanced log viewer > adds color and helps filter log Fix Common Problems > Squid Common scan and general fixes Tips and Tweaks > General Setting information User Scripts > pearl/cron scripting when necessary for manually overrides and run sh scripts on schedule. we are now on unraid 6.12 Edited May 6 by bmartino1 Quote Link to comment
bmartino1 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 (edited) For your setup, I would recommend a traditional unraid array with parity. wiping the disk and using them all for unraid. 2x 16 TB drive as disk 1 and parity with the nvme as the single cached drive. I would have vms if you have them on the cache drive and domains folder changed to the cached drive so dockers and vms live on the nvme drive. You can then use plugins / user script terminal tools to copy the data to the array for backup. I would then point you towards dockers. and run a plex docker. If you want your ubuntu os back, you can reinstall a vm and run Ubuntu on top of unraid. I would recommend the linux.io docker build for plex: Plenty of support for that on the form: Also i'm not sure where you plex media is currently. Its best to restart and remake a plex server when moving platforms. Plex doesn't have a good way to transfer the datbase and some file for its media library. you can add 1 disk to disk 1 and nvme to cache disk then use unsigned devices to copy the data over and later assigned and format the other disk drive. Edited May 6 by bmartino1 Quote Link to comment
bmartino1 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 (edited) In the end, it comes down to what you have and how you want to interact with it. I would also recommend using a mac vlan docker setup. why macvlan? so i can set a mac address and hostname to my dockers. and how the docekr network talks to my network. for plex advance toggle in template later and add under extra options: --mac-address 02:42:C0:A8:01:2A --hostname PLEX-DOCKER Learn more about docker networks here: To use macvlan you must disable bridging. Bridging is on by default and is more useful when you have more then 1 network interface on the machine and wish to have both of these interfaces talk to each other. by default ipvlan is used with bridging on. even if docker custom network type is set differently. So let's edit our network settings Turn off bridging, turn on bonding. bonding is also more usefull with 2 nic interfaces but we enable it to fix some advance Linux issues with promisc mode. Then to turn on Docker: To use docker, you must enable it first. (same with VM) Both VM and docker must be off to edit your netwrok settings! webui > settings > docker top right advance toggle switch My recommend settings: we are now ready to install the Plex docker For easy of docker access and data manipulation. I would have you go to the share tab and make a folder. I called mine DLNA inside DLNAs I made sub folders for my content. TV in one Movies in another etc etc… Then with the Linux io template I just need to add /mnt/user/dlna and later tell Plex to go to xyz to load content for tv / movies / etc. So back to apps search plex and install, you will then be greeted by the template I recommend using a static lan ip. so set network type to Custom bond0 and pick a ip where you want your plex server to be at. Then specify the file path to your data. In the docker, the media will be at /tv/xyz sub folder if you hit edit: as you can see my path is /data, so data is symlinked... my unbraid data in the dlna folder becomes the data folder in the docker. Confirmed later via console to access the terminal windows of the docker cd /data ls later added to plex: Edited May 6 by bmartino1 Quote Link to comment
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