Hi there,

 

I am very interested in Unraid. Over the years I’ve been using FreeNAS, Windows Server with Storage Spaces (some totally impressive things one can do with classifications claims and DAC!) and OMV. I don’t swap my NAS OS very often, so I’m interested in the Lifetime License.

 

After reading a bit, I am very worried about  how licenses and license replacement seems to be handled. To me it seems like it hasn’t been thought through to the end.

 

Everything in my thoughts is about resiliency and easily keeping access to my data. Short outages are OK. „Easy“ means *not* building up another computer system to get access again. And no, this post is not about proper backups etc., it focuses on how licenses are handled by Unraid.

 

What I understand: you get one (1) hardware bound license - usually on a plain stock USB device. You need a proper functioning license, hence the before mentioned USB device, to access your (my!) data on the Unraid computer system. If there is an error with your USB device you take another USB device off the stock and can contact Unraid to replace your defunct license. For the time in between your (again my!) data is not accessible for you (hint: for me!).

 

The problem I see:

If for any reason Unraid will be unable to replace the license in an acceptable timeframe, your data access might be gone for a long time. Or you have to take serious and labour intensive steps to install another computer system. And even with another system you just get access to the raw data. All other Unraid things, docker containers, shares, etc will not be easily available.

Example: my USB device fails and Unraid has been hacked (hacked companies or institutions are very common these days, although not published any time) and is unable to issue a replacement for a prolonged time.

 

Looking forward to comments, perhaps even with solutions. I would really appreciate solutions, because, as said at the beginning: Unraid seems very interesting, but not with a self-introduced risk and without a safety net, like how license issuing is currently handled.

 

kind regards

 

1 hour ago, nasodertrocken said:

What I understand

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/changing-the-flash-device/

Thanks for answering. Sorry, couldn't respond earlier due to the 1-message limit.

 

The page you mentioned talks about "automatic replacement" but as far as I see in every process described on the page - regardless of having a backup or not or using Flash Creator Tool or do it manual - there is this step "In Tools > Registration, select Replace Key..." which would make a mandatory online connection to Unraid. And precisely this connection is what worries me. If you can't connect to Unraid's server, because *they* are offline...then what?

 

Or have I perhaps simply misunderstood?

This would only happen if Unraid went out of business I would think and there is no reason to think that is likely.  I also seem to remember that there was talk at one point about an escrow arrangement in place just in case this ever happened.

 

Regardless it is worth mentioning that the drives in Unraid use standard Linux file file systems so in the very worst case you could boot a Linux 'live' system and access your data that way.