December 11, 201312 yr So I've been running a Windows Server 2012 R2 File Server for the past few months on the following hardware: Intel i3-4130 3.4Ghz CPU SuperMicro X10SLM-F-O MicroATX board 16GB Kingston ValueRAM ECC Memory IBM ServeRAID M1015 HBA 8x3TB WD Reds My storage sits on a RAID10 array which gives me 11TB of usable space. Unfortunately that's just not going to cut it for my media needs as the space is filling up faster than I expected and I want this server to last me a good 3+ years. I'm also not impressed with the performance I've been getting over CIFS but that's probably a configuration issue. My question to those of you who are using UnRAID is what were the factors that convinced you to go with it over something like SnapRAID or FlexRAID? Also, what kind of read and write performance are you guys getting over CIFS? I really appreciate any feedback you'd be willing to provide. Thanks.
December 11, 201312 yr In 2009 i bought a QNap with a net space of 4.5 TB. Short time after that I noticed unRAID and if I hadn't bought the NAS I would have build my unRAID in 2009 already. Some months ago I experienced a drive failure and I lost some data. Although no critical loss I had to react. I had many drives with all kind of data spread in different enclosures since the NAS had no capacity left. I figured that each of those drives could fail and then I would probably loose more valuable data. So I had to improve this situation and get at least a single drive redundancy. The key points that make unRAID so interesting to me are: - single drive fault tolerance like RAID5 - even with more than one drive fault you don't loose everything on the array - data is recoverable from each drive without the need of having the array working - no limitation in drive sizes like in a RAID5 (finally put those 250GB and 500GB drives to good use) - I had many different sized drives storing data at home - easily assembled server with older, cheap hardware - possibility to grow a real big data storage at relatively low costs (compared to a commercial solution) - working, stable, file server software (core) - enhance functionality with plugins of all kind - knowledgeable and friendly community cons (after using unRAID for about 4 months now): - apart from basic file server, most of the other features have to be added by the use of plugins - plugins on the other hand may interfere with the GUI causing instability - to bypass this it is recommended to run unRAID on a virtual machine and plugins on another - adding more complexity and hardware requirements Compared to FlexRAID and SnapRAID - don't have them working but see here. I'm only using samba shares. Performance is good. When writing to cache I can max out the GB LAN.
December 11, 201312 yr I ran FreeNAS before I switched to unRAID. The reason for my switch was the ability to be able to expand the size of the array without a lot of hassle. You can have the option of replacing drives with larger drives or simply adding more drives into the array. The process for doing either is quick and does not require one to jump through loops. The only real drawback is that (if you don't install a cache drive) is that the write speed is slower than FreeNAs was. (I get about half the speed of FreeNAS on both of my servers when assembling a BLU-Ray iso using ImgBurn.) I don't find this an issue as I use my NAS as a media server and do far more reads than writes.
December 11, 201312 yr Author In 2009 i bought a QNap with a net space of 4.5 TB. Short time after that I noticed unRAID and if I hadn't bought the NAS I would have build my unRAID in 2009 already. Some months ago I experienced a drive failure and I lost some data. Although no critical loss I had to react. I had many drives with all kind of data spread in different enclosures since the NAS had no capacity left. I figured that each of those drives could fail and then I would probably loose more valuable data. So I had to improve this situation and get at least a single drive redundancy. The key points that make unRAID so interesting to me are: - single drive fault tolerance like RAID5 - even with more than one drive fault you don't loose everything on the array - data is recoverable from each drive without the need of having the array working - no limitation in drive sizes like in a RAID5 (finally put those 250GB and 500GB drives to good use) - I had many different sized drives storing data at home - easily assembled server with older, cheap hardware - possibility to grow a real big data storage at relatively low costs (compared to a commercial solution) - working, stable, file server software (core) - enhance functionality with plugins of all kind - knowledgeable and friendly community cons (after using unRAID for about 4 months now): - apart from basic file server, most of the other features have to be added by the use of plugins - plugins on the other hand may interfere with the GUI causing instability - to bypass this it is recommended to run unRAID on a virtual machine and plugins on another - adding more complexity and hardware requirements Compared to FlexRAID and SnapRAID - don't have them working but see here. I'm only using samba shares. Performance is good. When writing to cache I can max out the GB LAN. Thank you for the feedback! So what is your setup exactly? I assume you have a cache drive (SSD?) that allows you to max out your Gb LAN during writes? I ran FreeNAS before I switched to unRAID. The reason for my switch was the ability to be able to expand the size of the array without a lot of hassle. You can have the option of replacing drives with larger drives or simply adding more drives into the array. The process for doing either is quick and does not require one to jump through loops. The only real drawback is that (if you don't install a cache drive) is that the write speed is slower than FreeNAs was. (I get about half the speed of FreeNAS on both of my servers when assembling a BLU-Ray iso using ImgBurn.) I don't find this an issue as I use my NAS as a media server and do far more reads than writes. What was your FreeNAS setup like that your write speeds dropped to almost half by going to UnRAID?
December 11, 201312 yr So what is your setup exactly? I assume you have a cache drive (SSD?) that allows you to max out your Gb LAN during writes? In fact it's not an SSD. A friend of mine replaced his old server drives of his business server. == WDC WD2502ABYS-01B7A0 WD-WCAT19878839 == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 0:45:59 (90 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 0:44:11 (94 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 1:44:32 (39 MB/s) Usually the drive is empty so writes are well above 100 MB/s. The preclear report is an average value. Considering 125 MB/s (minus overhead) is max. GB speed ... I was really astonished about the throughput of this drive. I have 500 GB Seagates or Maxtor (consumer drives) that perform like this: == ST3500641AS 3PM0CMG3 == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 3:15:47 (42 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 3:19:51 (41 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 5:54:07 (23 MB/s) If you go with a current server grade HDD as cache drive you can easily max out the NIC.
December 11, 201312 yr First off, I chose unRaid for all of the pros that Fireball3 lists above. It's a great NAS system and has performed better than I expected. As for his list of cons, I personally run multiple plugins (Plex, Plex Updater, SABnzbd, SickBeard, and CouchPotato) and I haven't had a single issue or any instability. I know some have, but I have not. My server is rock-solid stable. So what is your setup exactly? I assume you have a cache drive (SSD?) that allows you to max out your Gb LAN during writes? You don't need an SSD to max the GB LAN on writes, but you do need a cache drive. Most current gen spinners have transfer rates of 180MB/s or higher. GB Ethernet maxes out at 125MB/s. Writes to the protected array usually hover around 40MB/s (dependent on hardware) due to the overhead of parity calculation and writing, as unRaid uses a non-striped array. A cache drive OTOH is not part of the protected array and can be written to at full speed. Reads from the protected array are full speed. unRaid's use of a non-striped array limits write speed to the protected array, but it's also what makes a lot of the pros listed in Fireball3's list possible. Since it's meant as a media storage server first and foremost, protected array write speed is sacrificed for all the other benefits.
December 11, 201312 yr Author So what is your setup exactly? I assume you have a cache drive (SSD?) that allows you to max out your Gb LAN during writes? In fact it's not an SSD. A friend of mine replaced his old server drives of his business server. == WDC WD2502ABYS-01B7A0 WD-WCAT19878839 == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 0:45:59 (90 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 0:44:11 (94 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 1:44:32 (39 MB/s) Usually the drive is empty so writes are well above 100 MB/s. The preclear report is an average value. Considering 125 MB/s (minus overhead) is max. GB speed ... I was really astonished about the throughput of this drive. I have 500 GB Seagates or Maxtor (consumer drives) that perform like this: == ST3500641AS 3PM0CMG3 == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 3:15:47 (42 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 3:19:51 (41 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 5:54:07 (23 MB/s) If you go with a current server grade HDD as cache drive you can easily max out the NIC. First off, I chose unRaid for all of the pros that Fireball3 lists above. It's a great NAS system and has performed better than I expected. As for his list of cons, I personally run multiple plugins (Plex, Plex Updater, SABnzbd, SickBeard, and CouchPotato) and I haven't had a single issue or any instability. I know some have, but I have not. My server is rock-solid stable. So what is your setup exactly? I assume you have a cache drive (SSD?) that allows you to max out your Gb LAN during writes? You don't need an SSD to max the GB LAN on writes, but you do need a cache drive. Most current gen spinners have transfer rates of 180MB/s or higher. GB Ethernet maxes out at 125MB/s. Writes to the protected array usually hover around 40MB/s (dependent on hardware) due to the overhead of parity calculation and writing, as unRaid uses a non-striped array. A cache drive OTOH is not part of the protected array and can be written to at full speed. Reads from the protected array are full speed. unRaid's use of a non-striped array limits write speed to the protected array, but it's also what makes a lot of the pros listed in Fireball3's list possible. Since it's meant as a media storage server first and foremost, protected array write speed is sacrificed for all the other benefits. Does the size of the cache drive matter? I mean as long as I'm not copying more data than is free on the cache drive at once I should be good to go right? The reason I ask is that I have an extra 128GB SSD laying around. I could fit that in my server to use for cache but I have no room for another 3.5" drive. Also, does UnRAID support link aggregation? I very much appreciate those of you have responded in this thread. For those of you who did, can you tell me if there are any specific differences (other than the fact that FlexRAID runs on top of another OS) between UnRAID and FlexRAID that were deal breakers for you and led you to choose UnRAID?
December 11, 201312 yr Does the size of the cache drive matter? I mean as long as I'm not copying more data than is free on the cache drive at once I should be good to go right? The reason I ask is that I have an extra 128GB SSD laying around. I could fit that in my server to use for cache but I have no room for another 3.5" drive. Also, does UnRAID support link aggregation? I very much appreciate those of you have responded in this thread. For those of you who did, can you tell me if there are any specific differences (other than the fact that FlexRAID runs on top of another OS) between UnRAID and FlexRAID that were deal breakers for you and led you to choose UnRAID? The size of the cache drive doesn't matter. As long as it's big enough to hold the amount of data you expect to write daily (in addition to any plugin storage, if you choose to use plugins) you should be good. Yes, unRaid supports link aggregation if you have compatible hardware, though to the best of my knowledge it doesn't do load balancing. Each "stream" only uses a single interface. In other words, you would have to be doing multiple file transfers to see throughput above 1GB/s. It believe it can also work in an active/passive mode for failover. I never gave FlexRAID more than a cursory glance, so can't comment there.
December 11, 201312 yr The user Forums seemed to have more "RTFM" posts over on the FlexRaid forums so that turned me off. Also when I setup a FlexRaid RAID-F pool the user interface had problems for me. I had to click between the icons to select something. Never had that problem with unRAID. It was probably something I did wrong but I just installed FlexRaid and the UI worked the first time I used it but every time after that I had to click off of the icons to get the action to work. Normally I'm not turned off by that but between that and the way the snapshots were done turned me off. tRAID was more along the lines of what I wanted but it wasn't available when I first tried out FlexRaid. After being on unRAID for a while I checked FlexRaid out again and saw tRAID posts but it was always pending so I never really tried it out. Been happy with unRAID so "if it isn't broken don't fix it" has been my attitude.
December 11, 201312 yr My question to those of you who are using UnRAID is what were the factors that convinced you to go with it... I've been using linux software raid since the earliest days of the kernel. I'm familiar with the older and recent interface. It worked well for a long time. I switched to unRAID years ago because each hard disk is it's own protected filesystem. Like a protected JBOD with a layer to make all the JOBD disks appear as one contiguous tree. I lost half of my server in a flood and I was still able to recoup the disks that were above the water line. I like how the root filesystem is in RAM and the only disks you need concern yourself with are data disks. Simplicity of filesystem, disk and/or array expansion or replacement. Simplicity of slackware packages. Spin down of unused disks. The community here is one of the nicest and best to work with.
December 11, 201312 yr I ran FreeNAS before I switched to unRAID. The reason for my switch was the ability to be able to expand the size of the array without a lot of hassle. You can have the option of replacing drives with larger drives or simply adding more drives into the array. The process for doing either is quick and does not require one to jump through loops. The only real drawback is that (if you don't install a cache drive) is that the write speed is slower than FreeNAs was. (I get about half the speed of FreeNAS on both of my servers when assembling a BLU-Ray iso using ImgBurn.) I don't find this an issue as I use my NAS as a media server and do far more reads than writes. What was your FreeNAS setup like that your write speeds dropped to almost half by going to UnRAID? The FreeNAS setup was -6- 1TB Hitachi DeskStar HD in the array. (My main unRAID server used these drives until I slowly replaced them with Seagate 3TB drives as I needed to and the drive prices dropped. Three of them are now in my test bed server.) The ImgBurn speed for generating a BLU-0ray iso was in the 100MB/sec range. The speed with unRAID is about the 45MB-50MB range for iso's larger than 20GB. (Remember that both of my servers have 7200rpm drives that will improve drive read and write speeds over slower drives.) In case you are unaware of it, unRAID write speeds are always less than you can get from a striped RAID array like FreeNAS. If you do a bit of searching, you will find the technical explanation of why this is true. The read speeds are usually limited only by the network speed or by how fast the receiving system can process the incoming data.
December 11, 201312 yr In case you are unaware of it, unRAID write speeds are always less than you can get from a striped RAID array like FreeNAS. If you do a bit of searching, you will find the technical explanation of why this is true. The read speeds are usually limited only by the network speed or by how fast the receiving system can process the incoming data. For servers where the array width is not that large, the write speeds can show improvement utilizing a newly revealed option in the md driver. See this post with regard to '- unraid: permit "md_write_method" to be set via mdcmd' http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30452.msg273750#msg273750
December 11, 201312 yr In case you are unaware of it, unRAID write speeds are always less than you can get from a striped RAID array like FreeNAS. However... if you enable the new reconstruct-write mode discussed here, you can at least get back to single disk speed instead of being limited by the current parity overhead. Dang, ninja'd by Weebo
December 11, 201312 yr I went from almost nothing to unRAID over the summer. I liked the fact that I could build my own system that suited my needs with the ability to expand as fast as I wanted to. It does not take powerful hardware, so someone on a budget can build a system quite easily. The design of unRAID is to conserve power (small CPU's, less RAM and spin down unused hard drives). I have 6 hard drives right now (4 data, 1 parity, 1 cache) and after 1 hour of no activity, all of the hard drives spin down consuming very little power. This is very practical for a system that primarily is a multimedia server. I did go down the plugin road, but ran into some complications. I decided to build a separate system that housed several VM's and ran my Plex, SickBear, sabnzbd and Transmission there. It allows me much more flexibility with the applications, easier upgrades and uncomplicates the unRAID server configuration. Setup of unRAID is pretty straightforward, but you have to be willing to get your hands just a little bit dirty to get things setup. Knowledge of Linux helps, but is not a requirement. Once you have it built, it's a very reliable system requiring little to no maintenance other than making sure things are in a healthy state and verifying your data growth. If had not been for unRAID, I probably would have built a system based on OpenZFS. While the performance and management of that would have been more sophisticated, it also meant I'm spinning all of my hard drives 24x7x365.
December 11, 201312 yr - You start with a few drives and keep adding as long as you have plugs. - You simply can not beat the Forum Support - Low overhead OS - You have a problem, slap in a new drive and your back in business while its rebuilding
December 11, 201312 yr Author I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to reply in this thread, you've all been VERY helpful and I think I'm going to get an install up and running this weekend. At first I was a little concerned that my server hardware was too overkill for UnRAID but even if that is the case it's nice to know that I'm pretty set for a long time for future upgrades. Last question I have (and I know there is a Virtualization section to the forum but since I already have this thread I figure why not ask here) is about Virtualization. What are the pros and cons to installing UnRAID in a VM? Keep in mind that my storage will be used for just that alone, storage. All my services (Plex, Subsonic, Backups, etc.) are running in VM's on my VM server. I'm just wondering if there is any advantage or disadvantage to going one way over the other since I have the hardware to support it.
December 11, 201312 yr For the record, I don't currently vitualize, but I've been reading up on it quite a bit and am considering going in that direction soon. I personally don't see any drawbacks to virtualizing unRaid, and many advantages.
December 11, 201312 yr I'm just wondering if there is any advantage or disadvantage to going one way over the other since I have the hardware to support it. I believe you can set up a virtual 10GB switch which would allow faster communication from the VM's to the unRAID server which exist within the same machine. I did it anyway so I could have an XP instance running utorrent and an unRAID server as the data repository.
December 11, 201312 yr The only real disadvantages to virtualization that I see are: [*]Harder to setup initially because you have the virtualization OS to setup in addition to an VM OS's. This assumes you use a Type 1 hypervisor (which will allow the best in access speeds & capabilities). That's why I didn't do this until a good guide was posted on these forums. [*]If you need to do hardware maintenance you have multiple VMs to shutdown at the same time. That can be harder to do so you have to do a better job of scheduling your hardware maintenance. I just wait for this when the Windows VM is not recording something for me so late night and weekends are often open for maintenance. [*]The hardware is usually more costly because server grade hardware is either required or recommended. I tend to buy server grade hardware anyway I like the reliability better then desktop grade. The advantages (at least for me are more numerous): [*]If I need to work on a VM I don't have to shutdown other running VMs. As long as it isn't a hardware related change that requires the host to reboot. Most of my changes happen under this even some hardware changes (I.E disk changes to a passed through controller don't require a reboot of the HOST as long as I'm not replacing the drive - just reboot the VM). [*]I can sandbox applications to their own VMs so that if there are problems only that VM has those problems. If my tuner software fails it doesn't affect streaming videos from my unRAID VM for instance. Just the Windows VM that is doing the recording [*]I can sandbox myself in that I have isolated my internet browsing to a VM so that I CAN'T (as easily at least) infect the rest of my network with a virus and I don't have to have virus software on all my PCs just my laptop that I access the VMs from and my online VM. [*]And many more that I just haven't taken the time to think about or list.
December 11, 201312 yr Author Thanks again for all your replies. I don't think i'm going to virtualize because I really have no need to run any other VM's on this server. I want it to be dedicated to storage which is exactly why I just built a brand new VM box that still has plenty of room for future VMs. Gonna give the 30 day trial a go this weekend!
December 11, 201312 yr You wouldn't be able to virtualize this server with hardware passthrough anyway as the Core i3 doesn't support VT-d. Regadless, you have some pretty stout hardware and it should make a great server!
December 11, 201312 yr Author You wouldn't be able to virtualize this server with hardware passthrough anyway as the Core i3 doesn't support VT-d. Regadless, you have some pretty stout hardware and it should make a great server! True true. I'm assuming 16GB of ECC is overkill for this type of setup correct?
December 11, 201312 yr If you plan to run it solely as a file server (stock unRaid install with no plugins), yes. ECC isn't overkill, but 16GB certainly is. Vanilla unRaid will happily do it's job with 1GB RAM.
December 11, 201312 yr Author If you plan to run it solely as a file server (stock unRaid install with no plugins), yes. ECC isn't overkill, but 16GB certainly is. Vanilla unRaid will happily do it's job with 1GB RAM. But if I was to remove one of the 8GB sticks I have causing my RAM to run in single channel mode would the performance suffer in any noticeable way?
December 12, 201312 yr If you think that is the case get some 1 or 2 GB modules and sell your 8 GB ones on ebay.
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