Hi,

 

I'm currently looking to replace my Windows Home Server and I stumbled upon unRaid which looks like a pretty solution to me. Since I mostly use my Server as Data Storage for XBMC I have one specific requirement for my NAS and that is: Sleep, Standby, S3 - however you want to call it. I only need it to be active during the time I watch a movie. Currently I use a Software called Lights-Out which can monitor the network or processes run on the server. Once nothing is happening it will go into standby for most of the day, only to be waken up by WOL.

 

Now the SimpleFeaturesPlugin seems to have just that ability, but according to the Wiki it's not supported / developed anymore. So is there (for the standy part) a replacement already in or being developed?

 

Weirdly enough, that's a feature that is mostly not supported by other software solutions like FreeNAS.

 

And the last question: Is unRaid based on Linux and can I install custom software? I found the Wiki and the Plugins page, but no information about the general OS in the documentation. The one last feature I would love to have, is to use my NAS as Backup space for Windows and Macs. To enable Time Machine support it needs to have Linux with netatalk installed I think and for Windows Backups I currently use Windows Home Server but in reality a SMB share should be enough to store it.

 

Aside from Time Machine capabilities, the current plugins cover everything I need. AirVideoServer and Apcupsd are the most important ones for me

Please have a look at Dynamix. It is a fork of SimpleFeatures and is actively developed at the moment. It also has a S3Sleep plugin.

 

unRAID is based on Slackware 13.1 at the moment. While this is linux, it is not as easy to install custom software as with other distros. It is not impossible however and there are a lot of plugins available. Look around in the forum. There is also discussion to maybe switch to another base linux, which will improve installation through a real package manager.

 

On time Machine I can't comment, but I remember some threads about that popping up from time, to time, so you will propably find that info in the forum.

I setup my unraid to be a time machine backup location and it worked like a champ.  Search the forum archives and you will find how to do it.

I use unRAID for my Time Machine.  In other forum posts, I've described the combo of Mavericks and unRAID 5 as 'brilliant'. 

Thanks that's good to know! I will definetly give unRaid a try then. I can't get it to work in a VM since Parallels doesn't boot from USB so it will have to wait a couple of days.

 

I also had a look at Dynamix. While it says that there is a S3 Sleep Plugin I haven't found any documentation on their site nor on github on how to configure that plugin. I'm interested in the conditions I can set, but I think a simple ping should be enough for most of the time - bet I could even script something myself with a little bit of patience since it runs Slackware.

There are multiple forum threads about Sleep.

And there's a new, very active one devoted to Sleep with Dynamix.

Sleep appears to be very dependent upon the exact combination of your hardware.

If that's supercritical to you, read up on the posts.