Hi Guys,

 

This is basically a two-part question on updating unRAID version and updating the server hardware.

 

Part One

I have an unRAID server where we store, all our movies and music, TV shows, family photos, and wife's home business document files. On it I run SAB, Sickbeard, and Couch Potato. The computer itself has a lowly Celeron CPU. So far my system does what it needs to do, serving our files and media. I am now intrigued about running Plex on it and have it be a little more powerful. My hardware has the parity drive, 6 storage drives, and a cache drive for a total of 10TB of storage. I do have copies of my docs and personal photos as these are irreplaceable. But I only have movies and TV Shows stored in the server.

 

If I were to get a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM, how would I go about updating the hardware in a smooth fashion so I do not mess up my existing storage? Are individual drives mapped to the SATA ports on the motherboard? What about drivers for network adapter and all other motherboard controllers... would unRAID recognize these by simply booting from the same ole unRAID thumbdrive?

 

Part Two

Ignoring hardware updating above; currently my unRAID version is 4.7 Server pro. I recall months back creating a new thumb drive and putting some 5 beta version on it, booting that, and basically not running at all. I think I gave it a whole of 10 minutes effort, before I ran flailing my arms back to 4.7.

 

Can someone recommend away to test upgrading without having to "tamper" with my existing server configuration? The obvious thing would be to replicate my thumbdrive in another Linux using the "dd" command. Once armed with a duplicate of my unRAID, I would update the version to the latest 5 beta version and experiment. My questions:

 

1) Can someone point me to a way for a seamless update path from 4.7 to 5.0. Keeping all my packages, plugins, etc. fully functional.

 

2) Would I need to buy another license of the server to just test how upgrading unRAID would work?

 

Any other tips and advice would be greatly appreciated. It has taken a great deal of effort over time getting unRAID working the way it is. I could not replicate all the steps it took me to get to where I am and I could not fathom having to start from scratch. unRAID server is the "nerve center" of our home and I could not imagine living without it.

 

Many thanks guys.

 

H.

 

 

 

 

 

For Part Two, you need to post a complete list of your current hardware...

 

Second point.  You do realize that you actually have to use the thumb drive that you have registered for the array to actually run.  Installing one of the version 5 betas on a new thumb drive will never result in a working server since you have seven drives in the array.  I believe that you should be able to boot the system up and see if everything (your hardware) will work with ver 5.  But a working array is not what you want to try to achieve with the software on a new thumb drive as you CAN easily lose the data on the disks you add to the  new array.

Thank you Frank I will post my hardware when I get home.

 

But for part 2, wouldn't hardware supported in 4.7 be supported in 5.X?

 

I do realize that I need a registered thumb drive... This is why I asked the question if I needed to buy a new license to test... or is there a temporary demo version... or booting the un-registered show me only 2 drives, and then show all drives once registered.

Or could I clone my 4.7 thumbdrive in Ubuntu or Mac OS to an image file using "dd", upgrade, and then restore that image to same thumb if I need to revert to 4.7. Would this work?

 

Thank you Frank I will post my hardware when I get home.

 

But for part 2, wouldn't hardware supported in 4.7 be supported in 5.X?

 

I do realize that I need a registered thumb drive... This is why I asked the question if I needed to buy a new license to test... or is there a temporary demo version... or booting the un-registered show me only 2 drives, and then show all drives once registered.

 

I would make a full backup of everything on your thumb drive.  (Shut the server down and do this on another machine.)  This will provide you with complete protection if something really terrible goes wrong and you need to go back.

 

Now read these update instructions: 

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Server_Version_5.0-beta_Release_Notes

 

The reason you need to provide your hardware list is that certain SATA cards are not compatible with certain versions of the beta.  There are also some NIC issues that should be checked out. 

Thanks Frank,

 

Sounds like a plan....but a very scary plan... Every bone in my body is telling me "don't fix what ain't broke".

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should only need to upgrade the CPU to a dual-core.

You should only need to upgrade the CPU to a dual-core.

 

Only if you are serious about running Plex.  otherwise what you have is fine, and "should" work with v5.

 

But why do you want to upgrade to v5 if its all running fine on 4.7?

 

If you want to play with v5 and Plex - I would "upgrade" the hardware into a new box (i.e. buy a second machine), play around with setting up v5 with Plex.  Once you are happy with how it works, move your hard drives over to the new machine (or upgrade the old 4.7's case with the new v5 parts).

 

Only if you are serious about running Plex.  otherwise what you have is fine, and "should" work with v5.

 

But why do you want to upgrade to v5 if its all running fine on 4.7?

 

If you want to play with v5 and Plex - I would "upgrade" the hardware into a new box (i.e. buy a second machine), play around with setting up v5 with Plex.  Once you are happy with how it works, move your hard drives over to the new machine (or upgrade the old 4.7's case with the new v5 parts).

 

My only interest in Plex would be to be able to play movies on my Xboxes. But last night I tried setting up Plex server on my Core 2 Quad Windows 7 machine, and  playback on Xbox was incredibly choppy. I assume that Win7 takes up a lot or resources, but i was just plain un-viewable... I may just stick to my XBMC Live little Intel Atom Ion mini PCs connected to each TV.

 

Is going to v.5 a big plus? This is the decision I am struggling with.