Is FlexRAID a new UNRAID competitor?

[GreggP]

The creator of another RAID software solution announced the availability of his free program on AVS Forum's Home Theater Computer section. I was just wondering if anyone here saw this and had an opinion on FlexRAID. I'm just in the process of assembling the components for my first UNRAID server, so this is interesting timing for me. I will still stay with my plans for UNRAID because it is a much more mature solution and there are much better sources of support because of the people on this forum.

 

Here's the url - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1016375

[tillkrueger]

reading through the description, it certainly seems like an ambitious project...the points that stick out as an advantage over the current release of unRAID, are spanned parity (using a number of smaller drives to build one larger parity drive) and it is being "supported on all OS platforms" (whatever that means)...there are a number of potential advantages related to what storage-devices are supported, and a few other things that are easier to read on the author's website than for me to repeat here, but the one glaring omission from his current release is this:

 

"Currently, if you edit or delete a file, you would need to recompute parity on the whole set (re-create the RAID) as portion of the parity data would be invalid."

 

he explains this as a temporary omission, due to his dislike of how editing/deletion is currently handled by other such systems, and promises a better solution when he has a weekend or two of time, but this statement alone proves to me that the programmer is at the "labor of love" stage, and has a steep hill to climb until his efforts can be trusted with potentially 10's of terrabytes of data...admittedly, he suggests only using this system for ripped data (such as movies, music, images), but we all know how long it takes us to rip our movie and CD collections...i sure wouldn't wanna loose even a single 1TB drive to an immature RAID function.

 

don't get me wrong: i applaud this guy's effort and think it looks amazing what he's done, and he's on a track to create something very usable...but Tom's effort's of years of testing, support and - as you said yourself - the value of the user-community on this board is simply priceless.

 

thanks for sharing, though...always good to know what the colleagues are doing.

[hypyke]

The forthcoming "Live" version will be closer to what unraid is currently.  It has a long way to go but could prove itself to be a free alternative to unraid.  If so Tom and the "team" will need to work hard to add value to keep unraid viable.

[SSD]

don't get me wrong: i applaud this guy's effort and think it looks amazing what he's done, and he's on a track to create something very usable...but Tom's effort's of years of testing, support and - as you said yourself - the value of the user-community on this board is simply priceless.

I agree with this sentiment.  This looks like an interesting project, but will take a huge amount of effort to get it to the level of unRAID.  The amount of testing that Tom does with each release is incredibly important to me.  I would not want to be first in line with a new product like this.  Another concern is that without any notice, the author could just lose interest and move on to something else.  Tom has shown his dedication to the project, and the profit that he makes is added incentive for him to continue to enhance the product, and provide the kind of support that we all rave about!

[Jon]

Looks interesting, but I'm still buying my copies of Pro next month.

[Joe L.]

From what I read, FlexRAID is written in Java, and creates a parity file based on a snapshot of the data.  It cannot handle changes to the data, or deletes, or additions without making a new snapshot parity calculation.  You cannot read or write to a disabled disk, but instead, must replace it, and then recover the file from the stored parity snapshot.

 

To me, that is is not much different than making "par" files, other than it might create one "parity" file for many data files.   

 

It might work for some, but it is not RAID at all, and not competition to unRaid unless your data never changes, and you have no need to get to your data when a failure occurs.

 

Joe L.

[NLS]

JAVA!?

 

no thanks

 

 

[WeeboTech]

JAVA!?

no thanks

I'll second that! 

[josetann]

My first reaction was "crap, I just paid for two pro keys, spent all this time to make it work on a regular hard drive install, and NOW this comes out?"  Would have been my luck, but alas it's not so.  I don't want to have to redo parity every time I save a file on one of my drives.  Plus what happens if I did save a file (thus making parity invalid) then a drive crashed?  My guess is that you would need to first write all zeros to each drive.  Then format them.  Write your files then create parity.  If you then write some more files and a drive goes out, you'd need to erase the files you just wrote, PLUS you'd need to zero them out.  That MIGHT work.  Do note that I'm assuming all this without reading up on exactly how FlexRAID works, so maybe it handles it a bit different.

 

Until an open-source version of RAID comes out that does everything I need unRAID to do, I'll stick with unRAID.

[Joe L.]

There are many "free" RAID systems.  They all can be made to handle media files.  Most can be expanded, some online, others only by destroying the array and re-building it.  unRaid is far better for me than any other solution. 

 

When I made my purchase I did not worry about a "free" version coming out the next week...  the cost of the "software" was fair and worth more to me than the time it would take me to put together other solutions.  I even purchased the entire assembled server from Tom, with two of the biggest drives then available. (500 Gig)  Those drives were expensive back then, even more than the 1TB drives available today.  I priced the hardware and knew I was paying a premium for the assembly of the server... I expected that.  My time was worth more to me than the cost of the unRaid license, or any markup Tom was putting on the hardware. (although I doubt if he was making much per hour assembling them)

 

You have to consider what "free" costs in your time away from your family and other interests.  Personally, I want to watch movies, and enjoy spending evenings with my wife... not worrying because somebody on my LAN edited a file and made my entire parity backup invalid.

 

• Linux/Slackware ... free
  
• unRAID OS & MD1200 Server ... $1299.00 (cost several years ago) equipped with a pair of 500 Gig drives @ $339 each ...  $1977.00
  
• My wife asking me if I could run a LAN connection to our bedroom, so she could watch movies on a network media player connected to the bedroom TV ... Priceless.
  

 

Joe L.

[WeeboTech]

• My wife asking me if I could run a LAN connection to our bedroom, so she could watch movies on a network media player connected to the bedroom TV ... Priceless.
  

 

Joe L.

LOL!!!  That was good Joe! Thanks for the laugh!

[josetann]

I was just talking about me in general.  I love to tinker with stuff, and it often takes a while to get things running just the way I want (and then I try to leave it alone for as long as possible).  Had this FlexRAID had the same functionality as unRAID but in a harder to use form (i.e. you had to do everything via cli), then that would have been great for me.  As it was, I spent days getting asterisk working just right on a stock install of unRAID (i.e. booting from the usb stick), then once I had it working I decided I wanted to run VMware too.  Got unRAID running off of a virtual hard drive in VMware, then took what I learned and applied it to my working system, only to have the hard drive crash the next day or so.  No worries, the second time I just used my own how-to and had it back up within six or so hours (I was juggling a baby too, it didn't really take that long).

 

But, this FlexRAID doesn't have really any of the features unRAID has.  I don't think it'd appeal to many users at all.  Not for users like me who want to run a full linux install, or for others who want something they just plug in and go (which is the audience unRAID currently caters to).  For now, unRAID has no real competition.

[hdkhang]

Hi guys,

 

New to unRAID (well new as in just paid for the pro registration keys last night!).

 

Came into work and sure enough, like a few people here, I saw that FlexRAID post on AVS... AVS was the place where I heard about unRAID in the first place (back when it was just being introduced as a hardware only solution).

 

Immediately I skimmed the contents of the thread in order to learn if FlexRAID showed any promise not so much for the aspect of wondering if I had just blown some money on a product I could have gotten for free... but more so because it was interesting.

 

I like many aspects of FlexRAID over unRAID, but overall unRAID gives me the more important things I need... the other stuff I can work around or hope to be able to work around soon enough... time permitting.

 

I have been extremely impressed with unRAID so far with the basic version over the last few days and hope to have an even better experience with the pro registration... especially user level security and playing around with the cache drive.

 

I do sometimes wish unRAID was a more fully featured OS, but then one of the appealing aspects would be gone: the simplicity of setup and the fact that unRAID is treated like a storage device rather than another computer on my network.

 

My only gripe is that my highpoint RAID card doesn't work. I've had to substitute it with 2 x SIL3132 cards (which I haven't yet tried as the free version supporting 3 drives meant I haven't had to go there yet). I'm not even sure if I need to re-flash the cards to remove the raid functionality in order for unRAID to work with them or if they will just work... that I hope to find out tonight when I get home from work and pop that pro1.key file onto the USB key. I bought 2 lexar fireflies from the stationary store the other day specifically to order 2 keys, but somehow have misplaced one of them... good thing Tom and Co. were smart enough to provide a means to get a second key at a later time. Don't know what I'd do with 2 keys, but I know I'd regret not stretching that $30 to get a spare

[vdtruong]

Looks like 1.0 is released.  The ONE thing I wish unRAID copied from FlexRAID is their slick GUI. 

[ilovejedd]

FlexRAID is too new for me to use as a production storage server. Not to mention the developer went AWOL for a while there, while the product was still in its beta stages. It shows promise, but I think I'd rather stick to unRAID for now.

[heffe2001]

Looks like 1.0 is released.  The ONE thing I wish unRAID copied from FlexRAID is their slick GUI. 

 

From watching their WebGUI video, I like the way UnRaid is now.  Quick and easy..

 

[smino]

It will be hard to beat this user community as well!

 

With a few addons, it is hard to see flexraid compete, although the fact that it can run on windows will probably pickup a few people.

 

I think if slax ever goes 64bit, unraid with vmware server, openSSH,  unmenu, sabnzb, ps3media, hamachi/vpn, and other addons, it will be hard to beat.

We just need to make it easier for the addons so end users (windows only type people) can click on a weblink in unmenu "Install VMware Server", Install "ps3Media" ... and poof, it would download a package and do the install...It might be easier than we think. Especially if we get support from all these open source folks. Add to unraid a cheap ram cache or one day fusion IO(4K$ today) card for cache and wow. I am just impatient when it comes to file transfers.

 

So far I love my experience with unRaid, and I still consider myself a newbie, as I have only being doing this since December last year.

[keland44]

i'm also new to UnRaid also just got my keys a week ago but man that webgui looks lovely if we could get something like that working that would be HOT

anybody know what was used to make the gui like that is that java?

plus the user community is to good here it would be nice to see the creator of flexraid link up with unraid to do some programming stuff together

[WeeboTech]

We just need to make it easier for the addons so end users (windows only type people) can click on a weblink in unmenu "Install VMware Server", Install "ps3Media" ... and poof, it would download a package and do the install...It might be easier than we think. Especially if we get support from all these open

source folks.

 

My Netgear ReadyNAS did that very nicely.

Download a package with your browser, then upload the addon from the gui. it was sweet.

 

Add to unraid a cheap ram cache or one day fusion IO(4K$ today) card for cache and wow. I am just impatient when it comes to file transfers.

 

I don't know if a fusionIO will ever reach the price level of a disk.

What may provide a good boost in performance is if unRAID were to support some of the caching raid controllers like a 3Ware/AMCC or ARECA

This on the parity drive with RAID0 ought to really provide a big boost.

[huyazo]

The one interesting thing I see with flexraid is the possibility to recover files I unintentionally deleted. 2-3 times I have been a bit careless in explorer and deleted files by mistake. I searched for tools to recover them, but found that the file system used by unRaid does not cater for old-fashioned recovery of deleted files.  This to me is a big concern, I consider the risk of accidentally delete files higher than the risk of losing a disk...  Maybe any of you experts have a good suggestion??

 

Also, I am looking for a way to utilize the big server for things like torrent downloads, codec conversions etc. But the posts I read about virtualization discouraged me, it seemed to be far too complex and problematic for a newbie.

[RobJ]

The one interesting thing I see with flexraid is the possibility to recover files I unintentionally deleted. 2-3 times I have been a bit careless in explorer and deleted files by mistake. I searched for tools to recover them, but found that the file system used by unRaid does not cater for old-fashioned recovery of deleted files.  This to me is a big concern, I consider the risk of accidentally delete files higher than the risk of losing a disk...

 

The ReiserFS does have a mechanism to recover files, but it is rather drastic, should be reserved for critical situations only.  See the FAQ entry, "How can I undelete files from an unRAID disk?", and the question just above it.

 

For me, that is just enough of a safety net, for the most dire of situations.  I personally believe strongly in good backup systems.  With enough copies with temporal (grandfathering and versioning) and geographic (multiple locations) diversity, you should be sufficiently protected, including from yourself.

 

One of the features coming (but not known when) for unRAID in the future, is support for other file systems.  Then, a user with strong concerns about this would select another file system with good undeletion tools.  There would be a table available, with the pros and cons of each file system, when a new drive was being added to their unRAID array.