First unRaid. Couple of questions...

[Apocrathia]

I'm starting to look into building a new NAS for my house, and unRaid has been on my list for a while. I've been using a Drobo for years and while it's served me *okay*, it's given me some grief and I'm not willing to use one again. The biggest lure to the Drobo was the ability to mix drives, scale, and parity. All of which unRaid offers. Cool. My other options right now are FreeNAS (ZFS is nowhere near as flexible), and OpenMediaVault (mdadm is pretty useless for data integrity). Here's some hangups that I have right now with unRaid, and hopefully you can help me here.

• Limited accessibility. You boot it up and get a very simple slackware shell, and not much else. I've gotten it running in a VM and gotten unMenu up, but even that just feels clunky. Some of the tabs were just broken links. I feel like most of my administration would end up in the command line, which is something I'm trying to avoid. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux admin by trade. I just don't want to come home from work to do more work). At least with something like FreeNAS, I boot it up and I have a good web interface out of the box.
  
• ReiserFS. Seriously, what does the development for that even look like anymore? After Reiser got put away, I would imagine that the development would have just ceased.
  
• Also, why is unRaid only available in i386?
  

I've been reading through guides and forums, and people that use unRaid seem to swear by it. However, I've got some hangups.

[vl1969]

It all depends on what you want from it.  I am not a linux guy at all but I had unraid server up and running in 30 min flat. After that it was just sitting in my basement for 2+ years housing my media collection,  whith no issues at all. A tru set it and forget it. Yes it does not have pretty gui or anythung but it works.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

[sureguy]

- Most functions can be done via the default web interface.  If you want more functionality look at simpleFeatures, although some people have had issues with this.  I very rarely NEED the CLI, that I choose to use it is because I can.  Once unRAID is properly configured you shouldn't need to do much management.

 

- I can't speak to reisderFS, but haven't had any problems with it on my setup, or the other two I manage.

 

- There is work being done to move to x64, but if you're not running a ton of plugins then 3GB of RAM is more than enough for a typical setup, and x64 isn't really necessary right now. 

 

 

[Apocrathia]

I finally got home and booted off of a USB stick as intended. Realized that there is a default web interface (I was using some ESXi build I found on the forums, and there was no web interface. It was throwing me off. I was thinking I'd have to start unMenu every time I wanted to access the damn thing). It looks like it's going to be exactly what I'm looking for at this point. I don't want to run a ton (if any) plugins, I just need something that will hold my data, and maintain integrity.

 

- Most functions can be done via the default web interface.  If you want more functionality look at simpleFeatures, although some people have had issues with this.

 

That's actually close to what I was expecting from the web interface. Some sort of dashboard functionality that would let me see charts and graphs. I'm a bit of a data monitoring geek. Although, I'll probably just use SNMP and do all of my monitoring with good old Cacti.

[Joe L.]

I was using some ESXi build I found on the forums, and there was no web interface. It was throwing me off.

Every release of unRAID from version 1.X 8 years ago has had a web-interface built in.

 

Your ESXi build was very badly built.  unMENU cannot be used to configure and start unRAID.  You must use the built-in-web-interface for that.  unMENU does add a lot of reporting capability, and a package manager.  Its functionality is slowly being replicated by installable plugins.  SimpleFeatures is one, but a lot of it broke in the 5.0 final release.  (I have no idea which parts of it are now working again, I do not use it at all)

 

Joe L.

[boof]

• Limited accessibility. You boot it up and get a very simple slackware shell, and not much else. I've gotten it running in a VM and gotten unMenu up, but even that just feels clunky. Some of the tabs were just broken links. I feel like most of my administration would end up in the command line, which is something I'm trying to avoid. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux admin by trade. I just don't want to come home from work to do more work). At least with something like FreeNAS, I boot it up and I have a good web interface out of the box.

 

As has been mentioned there is a webui out of the box. If you want to do much else (including layering on unmenu etc) then you'll be on the command line.

 

If literally all you want it to do is provide a samba or nfs export then it's not a problem.

 

• ReiserFS. Seriously, what does the development for that even look like anymore? After Reiser got put away, I would imagine that the development would have just ceased.

 

Being fair, whilst your point is entirely valid I'm not sure there's much wrong with reiserfs as it stands. And, in fact, there have been many success of people recovering data from reiserfs filesystems after upsets within unraid.

 

It's not very cool these days and it's certainly lacking features of the newer modern filesystems but at the end of the day it takes your data and stores it.

 

My biggest concern would be ongoing support for it in kernel land in terms of being able to remove drives from unraid and read them directly in other systems without much hassle. I we're a little way off that being much of a serious issue at the moment though.

 

• Also, why is unRaid only available in i386?

 

Being addressed apparently. Though, again, if you just want to use it to store data you don't really need a huge amount of memory. I'm not sure what other real benefits x64 would bring. Running a system chock-full of addons and plugins becomes a different matter - but if that's not on your radar..

 

I've been reading through guides and forums, and people that use unRaid seem to swear by it. However, I've got some hangups.

 

You'll find plenty of opinions going the other way if you nose around these forums long enough

 

The points you've raised and the hangups you have are entirely valid - so don't feel that you're 'missing something' by lots of other people apparently thinking things are rosey.

 

Unraid has it's issues but for the most part the positives outweigh the negatives (though depending on how much you want to pick, that can come down to a very fine margin!).

[Apocrathia]

As has been mentioned there is a webui out of the box. If you want to do much else (including layering on unmenu etc) then you'll be on the command line.

I'm pretty sure I had a bogus ESXi image. I got into the webui when I booted off of a flash drive. Works fine, and it does exactly what it needs to, which isn't anything but storage.

 

My biggest concern would be ongoing support for it in kernel land in terms of being able to remove drives from unraid and read them directly in other systems without much hassle. I we're a little way off that being much of a serious issue at the moment though.

 

I actually asked lime support about this, and Tom made it sound like they may move to btrfs (i hope!) or xfs in the future. The limited development on Reiser is a bit of a concern. However, at the very least, it's at least data-recoverable in the event of a failure. The idea of 'if it's not broken, don't fix it' is valid here. All you need is reliable storage, not a ton of bells and whistles. While I'm not excited about the way Reiser handles individual file systems, and doesn't really do any striping; a slight write-performance hit isn't going to hurt my feelings. The lack of bells and whistles is what I'm looking for, as all of those will be hosted in my virtual environment.

[vl1969]

I am just curious, how did you go about booting the ESXi image?

 

FYI: there are several threads here about how to run unRaid on ESXi.

 

unRaid does not meant to boot from hard drive so even in ESXi you need

properly configured USB with the same image version as VM

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure I had a bogus ESXi image. I got into the webui when I booted off of a flash drive. Works fine, and it does exactly what it needs to, which isn't anything but storage.

 

 

 

[Apocrathia]

I grabbed the 5.0final image from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26639.0. Build a vm with no drive, added a drive and pointed it to the vmdk, boot. It came up, just didn't work right. I actually like the idea of running unRaid in a hypervisor, but dedicated hardware for a little NAS doesn't bother me. I'm in the process of building a low-powered system just for unRaid. I'd have to do hardware passthrough, and that just gets messy.

[BobPhoenix]

I grabbed the 5.0final image from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26639.0. Build a vm with no drive, added a drive and pointed it to the vmdk, boot. It came up, just didn't work right. I actually like the idea of running unRaid in a hypervisor, but dedicated hardware for a little NAS doesn't bother me. I'm in the process of building a low-powered system just for unRaid. I'd have to do hardware passthrough, and that just gets messy.

That was your problem.  You didn't pass through a USB flash drive with the standard unRAID install on it.  The image is only so that you can boot from the Image which will then finish from the USB flash drive since ESXi will not boot a VM from a flash drive only CD or HDD.

[vl1969]

I grabbed the 5.0final image from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26639.0. Build a vm with no drive, added a drive and pointed it to the vmdk, boot. It came up, just didn't work right. I actually like the idea of running unRaid in a hypervisor, but dedicated hardware for a little NAS doesn't bother me. I'm in the process of building a low-powered system just for unRaid. I'd have to do hardware passthrough, and that just gets messy.

That was your problem.  You didn't pass through a USB flash drive with the standard unRAID install on it.  The image is only so that you can boot from the Image which will then finish from the USB flash drive since ESXi will not boot a VM from a flash drive only CD or HDD.

 

beat me to it :-)

 

although in ESXi you do not really need to pass thorough the usb stick in

just add usb controller to VM and assign the usb drive to it. it works.

 

but before you go into it, make sure that your ESXi hardware supports PCI pass-though anyway as you will have to pass in the hdd controller with all the disks.

you can do RDM but it does not work very nice for power saving as unraid will not be able to power down unused drives.

[boof]

Running unraid inside esxi is plenty do-able so if you like the idea of it, don't be put off. Lots of people on this forum running it in this way (including myself) so lots of support available.

 

As above you still need to pass-thru a USB stick (volume labelled correctly as normal) to the VM for config and licensing purposes.

[BobPhoenix]

although in ESXi you do not really need to pass thorough the usb stick in

just add usb controller to VM and assign the usb drive to it. it works.

Correct but it can't be the same controller as the ESXi USB stick is installed on.  Mine is and I like it that way since my MB (Tyan S5512GM2NR) has 2 internal USB ports so I didn't have to get a header adapter.  Then I can use the other controller with pass through for other VM's.  In my case Windows VMs for USB tuners.

[Apocrathia]

That was your problem.  You didn't pass through a USB flash drive with the standard unRAID install on it.  The image is only so that you can boot from the Image which will then finish from the USB flash drive since ESXi will not boot a VM from a flash drive only CD or HDD.

 

Well there we go. User error. Regardless, I got it running on a netboot, booting from usb, just to test with, and I was pretty happy with it. I may look into running unRaid virtually in the future, but for now, I should be good.

[vl1969]

although in ESXi you do not really need to pass thorough the usb stick in

just add usb controller to VM and assign the usb drive to it. it works.

Correct but it can't be the same controller as the ESXi USB stick is installed on.  Mine is and I like it that way since my MB (Tyan S5512GM2NR) has 2 internal USB ports so I didn't have to get a header adapter.  Then I can use the other controller with pass through for other VM's.  In my case Windows VMs for USB tuners.

 

sorry I was not 100% clear, you do not need to pass through any usb controller.

just plug int the drive and attach it to your VM. it work just fine when I tried.

I got side tracked because my hardware not really support PCI pass through on ESXi, so I could not pass my SAS card in  but other than that VM run and O could access the WebGUI on it.

[BobPhoenix]

although in ESXi you do not really need to pass thorough the usb stick in

just add usb controller to VM and assign the usb drive to it. it works.

Correct but it can't be the same controller as the ESXi USB stick is installed on.  Mine is and I like it that way since my MB (Tyan S5512GM2NR) has 2 internal USB ports so I didn't have to get a header adapter.  Then I can use the other controller with pass through for other VM's.  In my case Windows VMs for USB tuners.

 

sorry I was not 100% clear, you do not need to pass through any usb controller.

just plug int the drive and attach it to your VM. it work just fine when I tried.

I got side tracked because my hardware not really support PCI pass through on ESXi, so I could not pass my SAS card in  but other than that VM run and O could access the WebGUI on it.

Ok now I understand what you were saying and that is what I meant exactly.  You setup a virtual USB controller in ESXi and connect the USB flash drive to that virtual USB controller as a device attached to it to the VM.  I should have went to that detail on my original post - opps!

[Apocrathia]

That's actually a lot less complicated than I was thinking it would be. Now I'm debating on if I just want to run ESXi and virtualize unRaid...

[vl1969]

you can always try and see if it works.

it will take you probably about an hour to set all up.

 

I had setup ESXi on my system and tested in about 1.5 hour including all the updates and hunt for ESXi unraid image :-)

[Apocrathia]

So I guess that just leaves the "why only 32-bit?" question lingering...

[vl1969]

So I guess that just leaves the "why only 32-bit?" question lingering...

 

it is not lingering.

it was not truly needed to port unraid to 64bit as it was designed as simple NAS

and meant to be used with minimal resources for power saving etc.

why do you need 64 bit NAS? what are your reason for it?

 

 

as it grown in popularity and other related plug-ins where developed

more memory were needed but that was addressed by using PAE(I  think that how it spelled).

I think some one here on the forum have compiled unraid in 64 bit ,but I might be wrong.

it does what it was build for and it does it well in 32 bit code.

I think I have seen on this forum talks about unRaid going 64 bit in one of the future releases. will this happen? who knows.

[BobPhoenix]

So I guess that just leaves the "why only 32-bit?" question lingering...

Why do you need 64-bit if all you are doing is serving up files.  It works fine for me since I don't install very many plugins so I don't see a need for 64 bit unRAID installed in a VM on ESXi and is only serving up files. 

 

Now I would like to test Virtual setups on top of a Slackware/unRAID hybrid install using a 64 bit kernel.  I've seen posts from others that say it is possible with unRAID to do that even now.  I just haven't had time to pursue that option and am actually hoping it is easier (or correct kernel module already built in) when 64 bit unRAID becomes available.

[reggie14]

How much will unRAID write cache to memory?  With memory prices where they are today, 16GB of RAM looks like a pretty good alternative to a cache drive.  For most of us, I would expect ~25GB blu ray rips are the biggest things we move around on a regular basis.  You'd probably get pretty close to moving that at full speed with close to 16GB of RAM to use as a cache.

 

PAE would be fine for that use case, except my understanding is that unRAID is a little buggy on systems with more than 4GB of RAM.

[Apocrathia]

That's kind of what I'm thinking. Why put 4gb onto my system when it'd be more cost effective to put in 8 or 16? Then again, if it's cache speed we're talking about, you could just use an SSD. The only problem there is connectivity speeds. Not many of us have access to 10gb network connectivity. LACP can only go so far as well. I understand the argument of 'why do you need more memory allocation? It's just a NAS', but especially for these people run all sorts of plugins, the underutilization of hardware capabilities is a bother.

 

Speaking of 10gb, has anyone found a way to get a fat pipe to their in raid box for cheap? I know infiniband is getting cheaper, but it's also probably not a good long term solution, as I see the format dying.