ian.nas4 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I've been looking around as I'm about to build a nas, and unRAID looks good. Until I saw the license was tied to a usb key - so the whole system depends on the one bit of hardware that is the least reliable in the whole server! If the USB key goes on reboot, so does the array and you'd be pulling disks out one by one to get the data off them! That would be bad enough, but it seems that you don't allow the license key to be reissued to another (working) usb key either... I understand you have to do licensing, but tying it to the life of one crappy (they all are..) usb key is ridiculous. Which is sad, as the software looks good, but no way am I going to rely on a usb key working to access my data... Quote Link to comment
Harpz Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 If your key fails just email tom with the guid of the new stick and he will send you a new key. This is usually done very quickly. I've never seen any complaints saying otherwise Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
steini84 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I have had a crappy USB drive die on me and Tom have me a new key the same day Quote Link to comment
sacretagent Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 My key is 3 years old ============================================================= Lime Technology, LLC - Online Order ============================================================= Invoice No.: 3215 Order No.: 130051485 Date: 12/18/2010 filecheck didn't find any problem so far the key is only used at boot and shutdown cause i chose to save the logs all the rest is done in ram and on the cache drive and like my colleagues above said so far Tom has replaced all licenses where a key died on the owner so we can't complain.... Also for the future Tom has expressed the wish to move off the USb boots... nobody knows when but lets say it is on the road map somewhere Quote Link to comment
whiteatom Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 The system runs from a ram drive, so once your booted, it's not doing anything other the sitting there mounted as /boot. Never had an issue and it saves you from wasting a sata port. Far from ridiculous.... Quote Link to comment
doorunrun Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Another point worth mentioning is the ability to move your system to other hardware quickly...provided it's not the USB hardware (key) that fails. Oh yes, making system backups is pretty easy, too. It should be noted it's a wise idea to use a good quality USB flash drive to start out with. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Other points, you can purchase a second key backup key at a reduced amount. Many of us also use a card reader provided it has a unique GUID. Some do, some don't and currently it's hit or miss. If the license is tied to the GUID of a card reader and the card goes, you can replace the card and be up and running. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 If the USB key goes on reboot, so does the array and you'd be pulling disks out one by one to get the data off them! That is not the case at all. Worst case scenario in a usb key failure is either waiting a few hours to get a new key from Tom, or just use the free version to access a couple drives at a time in a non-protected temp array. Your drives are still accessible, and the machine is still usable. You are blowing the USB key limitation way out of proportion. Quote Link to comment
jumperalex Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Yup, I'll pile on. USB flash does not die THAT often from just sitting there. It isn't being hammered by writes (which cause wear), or frankly even reads (which don't cause wear). I think I'm on year three of a basic Jetflash with no trouble at all and I'm fairly active on my flash playing with plug-ins updating to the newest unraid version etc. And there ARE higher and lower quality flash. If you are desparatly worried, get your hands on an SLC based flash, use a well known MLC, and avoid like the plague TLC flash of any brand. And as also mentioned, if downtime is not acceptable while you wait for tom to send you a new key, then buy two to keep one as a bkacup. Just be sure you keep the backup up-to-date with your array's config. Quote Link to comment
JM2005 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I have had a couple USB sticks crap out on me and Tom was FAST to send me new keys on the same day they died. That's great service. Quote Link to comment
nacat78 Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Posted by: JM2005 « on: Today at 10:31:09 AM » I have had a couple USB sticks crap out on me and Tom was FAST to send me new keys on the same day they died. That's great service. +1 I have had a couple die on me and Tom has always come thru with in a day to have a new license to me with no issues... Quote Link to comment
ian.nas4 Posted February 7, 2014 Author Share Posted February 7, 2014 thanks for all the feedback! :-) I get what you are all saying, but my point is wider than if you can get a new key today, and that the USB key might not fail as it isn't written to often. Lets imagine that I set up a NAS with unRAID, by two license keys and put one in the emergency supplies. A couple of years go by, power goes out or some other problem, NAS reboots and the USB is corrupted - not an impossible assumption, particularly given it is know that USB drives deteriorate with age as well as with activity. Go to the cupboard for the spare key, assuming you can find it, and it to is dead. OK, you are now reliant on Lime Technology still being there, still answering emails, and still re issuing keys - all things you have no control over. In fact, if anything I have learned that generally you have to assume the opposite ie I have rebuilt quite a few servers, gone to install software that was running on them previously, and not been able to as the company owning the software has either disappeared or been bought by someone and the activation process no longer works - and even if you have a phone number (if they have been taken over) they say upgrade to a different product (for $x..). I've even seen business stuck doing that after a disaster and unable to read their backups that were in propitiatory format! (yes, I agree, poor management on their behalf). So as a general rule, you don't want to use anything that will result in getting to your data requiring a single external entity that may or may not be there... Which is why a few years ago I swapped from be expensive servers with custom parts to cheap ones with easily replaceable ones and more backups (you can never have too many backups..) Thus my issue with the very failable USB key - the uncertainty that at a future date that you can replace it if you need to (and the time it might take). Yes, today you can. In two years time in an emergency? No one can say. Quote Link to comment
doorunrun Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Gee....now where did that popcorn emoticon go to? Quote Link to comment
jbartlett Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 It's a legitimate concern. However, it is my understanding that if Tom falls off the Earth or gets abducted by Aliens or otherwise no longer available - ever - that UNRAID source would become public domain. I COULD LIKELY BE WRONG. But also note what has been stated in that Tom is looking to move away from the USB reliance. So it's possible that your long-term concern won't be here in the long term. Quote Link to comment
jumperalex Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 You're concerns about LimeTech not being around and leaving you high and dry have been addressed in the past. There is a path to dealing with it. I won't speak to it as the mods are in a better position. And of course your DATA, the most important part, is always available by mounting your drives in a working machine and reading them. And of course as to both your usbs going bad ... if you are that paranoid then you should be regularly refreshing/testing/rotating the usb, keeping a back up of all your data irrespective of LimeTech's untimely demise, and should be keeping up on the status of your critical infrastructure providers to know if they are going the way of the dodo. Frankly even if this wasn't on a USB you should be validating your ability to recover from a server failure via OS backups and audits. To be as paranoid as you are means you should be just as worried about an HDD failure taking out your OS, and a reinstall failing because the company will no longer activate a license. This is a recovery plan problem, not a usb or hdd issue. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 I've been here almost 6 years years. limetech isn't going away that quick. besides, you can always mount the reiserfs disks with another linux distro or unRAID basic if you need to. Quote Link to comment
ian.nas4 Posted February 7, 2014 Author Share Posted February 7, 2014 And of course as to both your usbs going bad ... if you are that paranoid then you should be regularly refreshing/testing/rotating the usb, keeping a back up of all your data irrespective of LimeTech's untimely demise, and should be keeping up on the status of your critical infrastructure providers to know if they are going the way of the dodo. I agree, to a degree, and try to. But often there are just too many things to do, and keep track of all suppliers is just too hard.. Frankly even if this wasn't on a USB you should be validating your ability to recover from a server failure via OS backups and audits. To be as paranoid as you are means you should be just as worried about an HDD failure taking out your OS, and a reinstall failing because the company will no longer activate a license. I agree again, and part of the reason I'm as paranoid as I am now is that I HAVE had major reinstall problems when I haven't been able to get a license activated... So I do assume disks, motherboards, power supplies, network connections etc etc can go dead at any time. However, you can get new disks, motherboards, graphics cards, memory modules etc in 15 minutes or so, assume none in the cupboard work. Internet connection I normally now do two independent ones to different suppliers, AND have a mobile solution that can directly plug into the network for at least some connectivity... To do all (or some) of that and rely on the least reliable bit of computer hardware made - a usb key - seems to be a bit silly to me.... This is a recovery plan problem, not a usb or hdd issue. I agree again. But recovery in place is always better (if possible) than recovery from backup. And in this case the whole box could be fine apart from the usb key! - which happens to be the dodgiest bit of hardware in it! Part of the problem is that I was thinking of getting a few of my clients onto simple NAS boxes instead of expanding their main servers, which is why I was looking at unRAID. After looking into it, the only thing that would stop me using unRAID (which looks far better than zfs solutions for quite a few reasons) is that unreliable usb key.. - and with my slightly bigger hat on, for some of my bigger clients, we have insisted (and got) from some software supplies key activation programs (and some times source code and/or file formats) placed in escrow with third parties.. Yep, that's how nervous some of us can be... Last point, I'd rate usb keys to be at least 1000 time more likely to fail as a hard disk... Ian ps thanks for all the feedback, I got a bigger response than expected! Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Go to the cupboard for the spare key, assuming you can find it, and it to is dead. If you worked for me, you'd be fired. If fault tolerance is so darn important to you, why didn't you regularly test your spare? I used to manage a division of IT for a multinational Fortune 500 company. We used lots of expensive ($100,000 type of expensive) software with USB keys and other dongles. We had spares in the IT safes at each location, and we audited each one every 6 months. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Last point, I'd rate usb keys to be at least 1000 time more likely to fail as a hard disk... You missed a prior point. Some of us card readers. The usb key likely to fail more then a hard drive isn't a good supporting point. If limetech had to replace that many keys, I'm sure they would have migrated to a different model of licensing. In 6 years of use I replaced one key.. Using a card reader, I replaced the sd card. I constantly wrote tons and tons to that 2GB sd card. Highly abnormal conditions. In normal cases, you would write a small 4K chunk to the flash every time you stopped the array. approx 40-64MB when the unRAID core files are upgraded. With a quality flash and enough spare cells it a USB key will last for many years. Quote Link to comment
meep Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Ian.nas4 I'd be interested in what you'd consider a viable alternative? Given that limetech might be looking at other licensing schemes, it might be useful to have a discussion around what that might be rather than simply knocking and defending the current system (I'm very much from the 'dont bring me problems, bring me solution's school of thought). I would presume you'd be reluctant to consider any hardware-specific licence solutions so how could limetech protect their product while making life as easy as possible for customers? Quote Link to comment
jbartlett Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 I've had dozens of hard drives fail on me but never a thumb drive. Just sayin' Quote Link to comment
jumperalex Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Hmm maybe Tom could tie the license to the parity drive ID ? Then the flash could be swapped at will? Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
NAS Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 The real world MTBF of a mechanical drive that does stuff is terrible compared to a quality USB thumb that basically does nothing. Quote Link to comment
ian.nas4 Posted February 7, 2014 Author Share Posted February 7, 2014 If you worked for me, you'd be fired. If fault tolerance is so darn important to you, why didn't you regularly test your spare? I agree, I should be fired if that was the case. However, I often set things up and then it's up to other people to maintain it, and one thing I've learn't is to make it as idiot proof as possible... I've had dozens of hard drives fail on me but never a thumb drive. The real world MTBF of a mechanical drive that does stuff is terrible compared to a quality USB thumb that basically does nothing. I've had dozens of hard disks fail on me too, but I would have had 90% of thumb drives fail at some point, which is worse.. I pretty much hate thumb drives, and would never put anything critical on them. By the sounds of it, at least some other people agree - I like the idea many people have said of using a card read as the ID - I agree that should be more robust (I've had far less of them fail than thumb drives..) I'd be interested in what you'd consider a viable alternative? Yep, that's hard thing, and why it's probably been done with a thumb drive... If you make it based on - - motherboard id - no good as if it goes (happened to me quite a few times) id will no longer match - any of the hard disk ids - no good as they are going to probably change over time - live internet activation - many of the boxes you'd want to use unRAID on might not be directly connected to the internet. Yet you have to protect the IP somehow... One of the things I've tried in the past is a crypto signed unique keyfile, with the customers name, address, email, phone number, and license number in plain text. While this won't stop a home user running a couple of copies, it tends to drastically reduce how many people they want to give it to, and does tend to stop most corporates from abusing IP. On top of that, you then tie that key to support... I agree that wouldn't be as good from a "IP' perspective as a usb key. Maybe you could also add (to the above) a rolling hardware requirement, ie do the key for the initial hardware (disks and MB) and let it keep on working if any of that hardware still existed - and update the key automatically if new hardware was added/change if some of the original was still there (ie adding some disks, taking out some of the old ones). After all, if the MB and all the hard disks all go at once, there ain't going to be anything to run anyway... Yes, that would be open to 'replicating' piecemeal, but who is really going to bother with the hassle given the price of the software... My final thought is feature based. ie make it able to run without the usb key - if previously one was present - with all the normal features (shares, number of disks, replace a dead disk etc etc) apart from that all the data is read only over the network . This would then make it easier to survive (and transfer to another solution) if it took a while (or wasn't possible) to get another key. Quote Link to comment
binhex Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 get yourself one of these guys and be happy :-), the guid is tied to the card reader and NOT the card IN the reader. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-MobileLite-USB-Multi-card-Reader/dp/B004ALKFX2/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1391775009&sr=1-3&keywords=kingston+card+reader+2 btw i read an interesting comment from tom, stating he will be looking at moving away from usb keys entirely, so looks like licencing will be dealy with in another way in any case. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31653.msg289042#msg289042 Quote Link to comment
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