I purchased a Pro license before the price increase a couple months ago.  I have no experience with Unraid.  I eventually plan to run Unraid virtually under Proxmox, but I don't have time at the moment to set that up, messing with passthru's and such.  My question is simply, can I set up Unraid now, on a bare metal box, and virtualize that array under Proxmox later, without too much fuss?  Or is it difficult to virtualize an array once it has been set up on bare metal?

Thank you.

 

1 hour ago, kydar said:

My question is simply, can I set up Unraid now, on a bare metal box, and virtualize that array under Proxmox later, without too much fuss? 

Your array should be able to survive the move from bare metal to VM intact, provided your hypervisor allows for HDD and/or HBA passthrough (I believe all of them do). "Without too much fuss" - now that's a relative notion... depends on your pov. You will need to pass the full devices thru (and not have them virtualized!), take great care to maintain the original order, etc. It's doable, I've done it (as did quite a few others), it just needs to be done carefully.

 

Bottom line:

1. It's doable.

2. Amount of fuss - "it depends".

3. Not Supported. Unraid does not officially support virtualized configurations. Many people - myself included - have been running this way for many years and it's been rock solid, but you do need to be aware of that - e.g. if you open a support case, Limetech will expect to be able to replicate the problem on bare metal.

30 minutes ago, doron said:

"Without too much fuss" - now that's a relative notion...

Let me rephrase...without too much extra fuss 😂.  I have a vague idea about the passthru's of the drives including serial numbers, as well as the USB boot drive, and whatnot.  I'd like to remove that layer of complexity for the time being in the interest of getting an array up and running as soon as possible.  Then I'll worry about virtualizing it later, now that I know it can be done.

 

30 minutes ago, doron said:

3. Not Supported. Unraid does not officially support virtualized configurations. 

I did not realize this.  I did know that Unraid can operate as a type 1 or type 2 hypervisor but I did not know that only type 1 was officially supported.  Thank you for that information ☺️.

Yes, as mentioned, you can setup on bare metal and virtualize later. I followed this process, Unraid is quite resilient in that regard in terms of being hardware agnostic.

 

Though, I am also only now discovering that virtualized Unraid is not Supported so your mileage may vary! I am currently troubleshooting some stability issues... I think you are correct to have as few layers of complexity as possible.

It might actually be helpful for troubleshooting to install on bare metal and then migrate.  If it runs fine on bare metal but hiccups under Proxmox, well then the answer is pretty obvious.

 

I bought a 256GB Samsung BAR Plus stick to install Unraid on.  And since I bought it on Amazon (aka the new ebay) I ran Samsung's authenticity checker on it and it came back as a genuine Samsung product.  So I think I'm ready to install Unraid on it and take it for a spin.  Any pointers to good installation tutorials?

 

There are quite a few out there, this is the one I used: How to Install and Setup Unraid

I watched the video you recommended and installed Unraid.  It was pretty easy and straightforward I have to say.  My next concern is tweaking the settings, particularly the security settings.  Time to look for some more videos. 🤪

By the way, is it normal for a parity drive to take a long time to prepare on a new array?  I attached 5 10TB drives, 4 for data and 1 for parity.  The 4 data drives formatted in less than a minute, but the parity drive is estimated to take 13 hours to sync.  Again this is a brand new array with no data on it.

@kydar congrats! and welcome, the journey has just begun.

Just now, kydar said:

By the way, is it normal for a parity drive to take a long time to prepare on a new array?  I attached 5 10TB drives, 4 for data and 1 for parity.  The 4 data drives formatted in less than a minute, but the parity drive is estimated to take 13 hours to sync.  Again this is a brand new array with no data on it.

Yes, this is normal.  Though I should note that as a new user, you shouldn't add parity until all array drives are added and your data has been moved. Once you do that, then you can add your parity drives and let it do it's thing.

 

Understanding the operation of Parity in Unraid, including the functionality of a parity sync/check, is crucial. The parity drive retains the requisite value to achieve an EVEN bit result across all your drives. For instance, if the initial bit of four array drives is set to 1, 1, 1, and 1, marking it EVEN, then the first bit on the Parity drive is set to 0. If the succeeding bit is 1, 0, 1, and 1, marking it UNEVEN, then the second bit on the Parity drive is set to 1, making it EVEN. While this explanation is pertinent to a single Parity drive, the operation of two parity drives, though not entirely clear to me, presumably follows a similar bit-by-bit computation.

 

Bear in mind, the speed of a parity sync/check, which necessitates accessing all your drives, can be influenced by various factors:

• Any read/write operation on any array drives can decelerate the parity check.
• Faster drives will be stalled by slower ones, thus it's not advisable to mix drives with different RPMs.
• Transfer speeds of the controller will be distributed among the connected drives. Thus, an IT-Mode RAID controller with a 2GBit/s transfer rate won't be able to operate every drive at maximum speed; it will be restricted to the controller's transfer capabilities.
• Age or deterioration of drives can also affect the speed.

It's generally advisable to use the "Pre-Clear" plugin first and run all your drives through it, particularly if the drives have been utilized previously. This process serves two purposes:

 

1. It zeroes the drive, ensuring it doesn't affect parity - a significant factor if you have an existing parity. Unraid also performs this operation when a new drive is added to your array.
2. Importantly, it verifies your drive by reading the current state, zeroing everything, then re-reading to confirm correctness.

By adhering to this protocol, you can detect faulty hardware before integrating it into your server or array. Additionally, you can determine how many runs you want to check, permitting you to stress test the drive multiple times to identify potential issues.

Ahh, unfortunately none of this was mentioned in the installation tutorial.  Ok, so I have paused the parity sync.  Would you recommend that I:

 

1. Resume it (17.9% complete, estimated 12 hours to go.)  Doesn't seem prudent.

2. Cancel it and then:

  A) remove the parity drive from the array and reattach it after adding data to the data drives.

  B) remove all drives from the array and run preclear* on all of them now, then add the data drives back to the array, add data to them, and then reattach the parity drive. 

 

If it matters (it probably does) the drives were not new and were previously used in a Drobo (I know, I was young and stupid) so they do/did have data on them previously and were not wiped before being added to the Unraid array.

 

* there are two versions of preclear in the app repository.  One is called binhex-preclear and is in Binhex's repository, and the other is called Unassigned Devices Preclear and is in dlandon's repository.  From their descriptions they appear to have similar functionality but I was wondering if one was recommended over the other.  Oh and I just noticed that the first one is a Docker container and the second is a plugin, and I honestly don't know the difference between the two.

 

I hope I'm not asking too many questions, I appreciate your help.

 

1 hour ago, kydar said:

A) remove the parity drive from the array and reattach it after adding data to the data drives.

This

2 hours ago, kydar said:

Ahh, unfortunately none of this was mentioned in the installation tutorial.  Ok, so I have paused the parity sync.  Would you recommend that I:

 

1. Resume it (17.9% complete, estimated 12 hours to go.)  Doesn't seem prudent.

2. Cancel it and then:

  A) remove the parity drive from the array and reattach it after adding data to the data drives.

  B) remove all drives from the array and run preclear* on all of them now, then add the data drives back to the array, add data to them, and then reattach the parity drive. 

 

If it matters (it probably does) the drives were not new and were previously used in a Drobo (I know, I was young and stupid) so they do/did have data on them previously and were not wiped before being added to the Unraid array.

 

* there are two versions of preclear in the app repository.  One is called binhex-preclear and is in Binhex's repository, and the other is called Unassigned Devices Preclear and is in dlandon's repository.  From their descriptions they appear to have similar functionality but I was wondering if one was recommended over the other.  Oh and I just noticed that the first one is a Docker container and the second is a plugin, and I honestly don't know the difference between the two.

 

I hope I'm not asking too many questions, I appreciate your help.

 

One massive advantage of binhex-preclear is you can preclear on a non-unraid system.

Plugin integrates better with the UI, but core functionality is on par.

Both are based on evolved versions of the original preclear script from many years ago.

 

I personally use the plugin, and really only for stress testing as most of my drives go into pools (patiently waiting for multi array!).