I just ordered 3 unRaid licenses and the hardware for the servers - should be in the mail today. So I want to get building this weekend. I'm wondering if I should stick with unRaid 5 or go with 6 Beta. I know the biggest change is the Virtualization - I don't need Xen. I have two Supermicro Atom Boards which should just serve as NAS for XBMC for Photos and Home Movies (so additional plugins planned) and another Core i3 Sandy Bridge which currently runs Windows Home Server. That one should also export to XBMC but maybe with library updates and some other fancy stuff. Also it needs to host Windows and Mac Time Machine Backups (important that this works).

 

Any suggestions?

I'd start with 6 since you can utilize memory above 4GB.

32 bit unRAID 5 can also use more than 4GB since unRAID implements PAE. There have been some who had problems with that on certain hardware, but it always worked OK for me.

 

So are you building 3 unRAID servers then? Unless you want to play with VMs I don't think unRAID 6 at this early beta stage gets you anything. What plugins do you have in mind? I really like having my media applications running in VMs, but it is not entirely set it and forget it at this point.

 

You should probably just start with 5 and then you can decide later if you want to experiment with VMs on one or more of the servers.

The Atom Boards only have 2GB of RAM (max of 4 GB supported anyway) and the i3 should have 4GB afaik.

 

Like I said, the Atoms don't need any plugins at all. One will run 24x7 just to provide data via SMB or NFS to XBMC and the other I want to use to Backup the first unRaid server. I will do this via a script and rsync (wake up server in night, do sync and shut it down again).

The i3 might need some plugins, S3 sleep, xbmc library update, itunes integration, air video, plex, apc ups, stuff like that.

 

What about the webinterface? Did that change in unRaid 6? I think that a new one is being worked on.

What about the webinterface? Did that change in unRaid 6? I think that a new one is being worked on.

The "official" web interface "upgrade" is still WIP. There is a user-developed one that is complete and adds some additional functionality. There are versions for unRAID 5 and 6. Search for Dynamix.

My impression of v.6 is that it works fine, but is still officially a work in process.

So, something could happen that might cause data loss.  Something will happen that will force a late night 'fixit' session to get my media back online.

 

So my decision process was:

1. Am I comfortable enough with v.6 development progress that I'm 99% sure there will be no data loss?

2. Are ALL the plugins, webGUIS, etc., that I want to use available for v.6 AND are they 'debugged?'

3. Is there anything I want to do with XEN, etc, that pushes me to v.6?

4. Do I want to play with XEN, and v.6 because I both have the technical skills, and the interest in helping out?

 

In my case, I'm still on 5.0.5.    Although I'm watching progress closely. There's some cool stuff in 6.

I'd install v5 on the Atoms -- and just leave them that way.

 

Give v6 a try on the Core i3 ... if you decide to stay with it, you can always add some additional memory to get more benefit from 64-bit architecture.