Back in the day, I owned several Drobo units that supported their own proprietary BeyondRaid technology .. which I loved!  It was a solid product, just sad to see them go.   

 

I am curious .. I heard that Unraid supported something similar to the BeyondRaid, in that you can mix-and-match various size drives in a data-protection RAID configuration (like RAID 5/6) that will support one or more drive loss and be able to build it back if you are able to replace the broken drives with like or higher capacity quickly.

 

Is that true?

Note:  I just purchased a ZimaCube, and I am looking for that sweet NAS OS that I can install on it that will help me utilize it fully, as the ZimaOS is still quite young and immature .. it is improving .. but I want to use the ZimaCube now.

https://unraid.net/product

I skimmed the FAQ, and do not see any mention of my question.   Obviously, I would have no idea what Unraid would call this, if it does exist.

Answer Yes

Think JBOD + 1 or 2 parity drives.  Each parity drive can support one drive failing.  Parity drive(s) need to be same or larger size than other drives in the array.  

 

With pools on the side, you can pretty much do anything you can think of.

@Veah -- Using pools, it sounds like the following is true from this explanation:   https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/storage-technologies/beyondraid-data-organization/

 

Thin provisioning. Targeted at maximum efficiency, BeyondRAID applies thin provisioning, using the whole storage pool for writing data. This allows allocating exactly the right amount of disk space for storing data at any given moment of time and eliminating wasted disk space.

 

Smart Volumes. A Drobo based on BeyondRAID gives a total of 64 TB (or 16 TB with older firmware) of virtual disk space. However, LUNs can be of different sizes irrespective of the amount of the physical drives’ capacities available in the storage. Creating a new logical unit does not require specially allocated physical space. A new LUN would rather take the exact amount of storage space from the common pool it needs at any given moment of time. Moreover, if the disk space is cleaned, the volume gives it back to the common pool for writing new data.

Edited July 31, 20241 yr by jewettg

Ok cool.  Are you asking about Unraid or trying to teach me about BeyondRaid?  

 

I started my Unraid learning here:

https://m.youtube.com/@SpaceinvaderOne

Look through his stuff.  The videos are titled well so you can narrow down what you are searching for.

Best of luck.

 

Edited July 31, 20241 yr by Veah

Nope.. this started as trying to figure out how and if Unraid can do things like BeyondRaid (Drobo), so I can mimic that behavior.  I appreciate it!  I will review the YouTube link you sent.