May 3, 201412 yr In addition to sharing our status as of version 5a, I also want to share with you guys what we are working on now in Beta 6. This post will continue to be updated as we achieve further milestones in development, but we also want to hear your feedback on where we are taking the platform. 5/3/2014 Announcement: KERNEL UPGRADES!! Two major upgrades we have for unRAID 6 beta-6: Linux 3.14.2 and Xen 4.4.0 Kernel Upgrades!! We have JUST begun testing on these upgrades but we are hard at work on this to significantly improve our capabilities with respect to things like PCI (and specifically GPU) pass through. I cannot yet provide an ETA on this release, but just know that this is a daily effort for the team and after I finish writing this post, I'm going back into the lab to dive into 3.14.2 for the first time myself! Will continue to update this post as we achieve further milestones in our work on Beta 6... 5/24/2014 Announcement: beta 6 release update!! Hey everyone! Just thought I'd provide a quick update and let you know we are very close to the next beta release. Unfortunately due to a pretty critical bug, we are going to be releasing beta 6 with a 3.12 instead of 3.14 linux kernel, but it will include Xen 4.4. 5/26/2014 Announcement: more cores support and final testing Expect to see beta 6b available today or tomorrow. Tom will post the release notes with all the details, but in addition to the Linux/Xen kernel upgrades, we also have added support for more CPU cores. Previously the limit was set to only 8, but now we have 16 cores supported! Dual quad core processors with 4 cores each with hyperthreading turned on can take full advantage of this! 6/18/2014 Announcement: Beta 6 Released!! As this was released today, I am unpinning this topic and it will be replaced with a new Beta 7 status thread soon...
May 3, 201412 yr Can you please please add qemu-1.2 ? The Previous versions have a bug, that makes it imposible to convert vmdk's to raw.
May 3, 201412 yr Author Can you please please add qemu-1.2 ? The Previous versions have a bug, that makes it imposible to convert vmdk's to raw. How about 1.6!! It comes with Xen 4.4!! Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
May 3, 201412 yr That works for me. Ill have my script Ready to go when beta6 is out then. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
May 3, 201412 yr That's nice !! beside the improved passthrough, will that improve VM performance in general ?
May 3, 201412 yr Author That's nice !! beside the improved passthrough, will that improve VM performance in general ? Performance in beta5a seems pretty solid to me as is, but there are definitely things in the works to even go further. The term performance can be rather ambiguous though, so some increases may be more visible than others... Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
May 4, 201412 yr Is there going to any work done on a front end for xen in the web ui. So we don't have to mess around with text files or the command line. Just being able to point xen at an ubuntu server iso and have it boot off it from the web ui would be great, or any other live iso. Still holding back myself until I get/find time to look at how to do this. If I'm honest this should be well up on the list if you want new customers to come to unraid. Unraid is easy to get going, xen not so . Unless something changed of course. Been away and try not to live on forms. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
May 4, 201412 yr Author Is there going to any work done on a front end for xen in the web ui. So we don't have to mess around with text files or the command line. Just being able to point xen at an ubuntu server iso and have it boot off it from the web ui would be great, or any other live iso. Still holding back myself until I get/find time to look at how to do this. If I'm honest this should be well up on the list if you want new customers to come to unraid. Unraid is easy to get going, xen not so . Unless something changed of course. Been away and try not to live on forms. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk Getting more "ease of use" into the webGUI (front end) is definitely on our to do list for sooner than later. Before we can make that more of a priority, we are working our way through some core back-end enhancements. All of these back-end projects can impact and change what we would need to build as far as a front-end management system goes, so its best to solidify our core on the back-end before putting too much effort into coding the front-end. Rest assured, ease-of-use is a requirement for us to get to an RC/final version.
May 4, 201412 yr Is there going to any work done on a front end for xen in the web ui. So we don't have to mess around with text files or the command line. Just being able to point xen at an ubuntu server iso and have it boot off it from the web ui would be great, or any other live iso. Still holding back myself until I get/find time to look at how to do this. If I'm honest this should be well up on the list if you want new customers to come to unraid. Unraid is easy to get going, xen not so . Unless something changed of course. Been away and try not to live on forms. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk You know my script (BUUX) makes installations of VMs in xen quite easy (Built for a unraid spesific enviorment). You should check that out. (it works well with unraids own webUI. altthough install itself is done in CLI Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
May 4, 201412 yr Will have a look when get time. Really busy at moment and about to move soon. Only asked about a decent front end for xen as already have most of the distros I want to play with iso's downloaded. This took long enough on my horrid internet connection. Would like to advoid additional large downloads if possible. What do I need to put in my xen config to get it to boot off the iso so I can run the installer? Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
May 5, 201412 yr Silly question, what's the easiest way to upgrade from beta 3 to 5a and maintain configuration? I'm using as a production system Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
May 5, 201412 yr Just copy the 4 core files from the 5a distribution to the root of your flash drive: bzimage bzroot readme.txt xen
May 12, 201412 yr Great to have you around jonp. Nice to see the new direction Tom seems to be taking.
May 12, 201412 yr Great to have you around jonp. Nice to see the new direction Tom seems to be taking. +1 it's great having you here jonp. Keep up the good work!
May 16, 201412 yr Are there any speed improvements in unraid 6? Because of the 64-Bit support? Are there any tests? I didn't found something.
May 16, 201412 yr I haven't done any testing but I have noticed that my Plex server loads noticeably quicker. I haven't noticed any other improvements but I haven't be looking for them either.
May 16, 201412 yr Author First and foremost, thanks for the support guys! It means a lot. On a side note, I actually donated to IronicBadger back in December for his work on unRAID and Virtualization. This is what really got me interested in unRAID beyond my personal uses as a home NAS solution and ultimately led me to leaving my career at a national IT firm to join Tom and the rest of the team at Lime Tech. I guess that's my way of saying "thanks" to you, the unRAID community, for your continued support and contributions to the project. All that said, I am actually writing to you guys poolside in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic (I'm actually on vacation this week, but couldn't help myself from checking the forums). As far as speed improvements, let me help dispel some rumors and lay ground for some facts: 64 bit vs 32 bit...What does that mean to me? 64 bit architecture affects one thing above all else: memory usage. 32 bit architecture limits the processor to only being able to address up to 4GB of memory. Things like PAE (Physical Address Extension) help us overcome this limit at the OS level, but I don't want to get too deep on this right now Let's just say this: your processor won't "process" any faster in 64-bit, but it can address more memory per process without any trickery like PAE. unRAID 6 vs. 5 Performance There are a number of things in unRAID 6 that could increase overall system performance, but 64-bit is probably the least of those things. The truth is that the bigger performance gains come from changes in methodology over changes in architecture. So what "methodologies" are changing in unRAID 6? The first and biggest change is the inclusion of virtualization technology. Let me simplify this by explaining what the net impact will be. Today's plugins and unRAID functionality require them to adhere to a limited set of requirements: 32-bit operating system, Slackware Distro, adherence to unRAID plugin requirements, etc. In addition, these plugins require absolute trust of the plugin author from the user. There is no "options" as to how plugins can install today, only how they can be configure post install. These limitations have not been all that bad and we have a wealth of very powerful ones that work on unRAID 5 today, but that said, there is a need to improve this. Virtualization makes it so that we can put ANY operating system we want underneath (or on top of, depending on how you like to look at it) unRAID. Writing this makes me want to draw up a visual for you guys, but I can't do that right now. Let me give you guys a POWERFUL example that ultimately led me to joining Lime Tech: Plex Media Server. Plex is awesome. It not only acts as a media server, but it also is a universal player, supporting iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and pretty much any browser you can think of. It also supports things like running on the Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and many more of these types of devices. Quite simply, Plex is awesome. One of the best features Plex has to offer though is something called "transcoding". Say you have a 20GB MKV you want to watch, but your player doesn't support MKV files? Or what if the audio stream is using a codec like DTS or AC3 that your device doesn't support? OH NO!! WHATEVER WILL YOU DO? No worries! Plex has you covered. Plex has a feature called content transcoding that determines, based on a number of factors, how to render content to your device. Don't have AC3? No problem, plex will re-encode the media content ON THE FLY to just stereo or another format. This single feature makes Plex my favorite media server. In addition, Plex also allows me to sync my content from my NAS to my mobile devices. Before I left for vacation, I told Plex to sync a number of movies to my tablet. Plex will ask you what quality to sync it as and will transcode the entire movie into what you tell it (also making sure to support playback from your device). This made 20GB MKVs only a few GB each and kept the quality superb. Now for the mediaphiles out there that need it to be RAW BLU-RAY quality, ok, its not quite that, but its damn close!! So why did I take all this time explaining transcoding? Well two reasons: 1) transcoding is VERY CPU intensive. 2) transcoding requires substantially more memory than your average NAS application. So now I will bring this full circle. Running Plex Media Server using the current unRAID 5 plugin on my high end NAS and I had less than stellar results. I have also communicated with other unRAID users/customers that have said it even crashed their entire unRAID system (not just the app). However, running Plex inside an Ubuntu or Arch (thanks badger) VM, NO PROBLEMS! Why? As much as I appreciate the user that took it upon themselves to get Plex working on Slackware, its just not perfect. That said, no user will have to make Plex for Ubuntu because it is already officially supported to run on Ubuntu by the Plex team. So I need to cut this short and stop here (wife needs some lotion and the pool is calling my name!) but hopefully this explains where virtualization will lead to performance improvements in unRAID beyond just 64-bit architecture. Thanks guys! Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk
May 16, 201412 yr And let me pile on top of the Plex example ... directly from the mouths of the Plex developers, transcoding using 64-bit libraries is faster than with the 32-bit libraries for one very specific and understandable reason ... the 64-bit libraries have had more time, and will continue to have more time, for optimization and development than the 32-bit libraries. So for reasons that have nothing to do with being "64-bit" but have everything to do with developer support, Plex 64-bit will run faster transcoding than 32-bit.
May 16, 201412 yr Author And let me pile on top of the Plex example ... directly from the mouths of the Plex developers, transcoding using 64-bit libraries is faster than with the 32-bit libraries for one very specific and understandable reason ... the 64-bit libraries have had more time, and will continue to have more time, for optimization and development than the 32-bit libraries. So for reasons that have nothing to do with being "64-bit" but have everything to do with developer support, Plex 64-bit will run faster transcoding than 32-bit. Thank you for finishing that thought for me! This is 100% accurate and another benefit of both 64-bit support and virtualization. If we had 64-bit support, but no virtualization, we COULD see an improvement in Plex performance, but not in supportability (it would still have to be a user-created plugin / application to run Plex on Slackware). With both, we not only get support for the higher architecture, we also can run Plex on a Linux distro that is officially supported by the Plex development team! Score one for the good guys!! Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk
May 16, 201412 yr Jon I say this with all concern for your well being and happiness. SHUT UP!!! Go get a drink!!! Enjoy Punta Cana!!! I say that knowing full we'll I'll probably be trolling the forums on my tablet from a beach in Jamaica at the end of the month ;-)
May 16, 201412 yr Author Jon I say this with all concern for your well being and happiness. SHUT UP!!! Go get a drink!!! Enjoy Punta Cana!!! I say that knowing full we'll I'll probably be trolling the forums on my tablet from a beach in Jamaica at the end of the month ;-) :-) I thought I did pretty good this week abandoning my tech. Made it from Monday through today without doing much, but I finally caved after figuring out where the best spot was for WiFi access ;-) Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk
May 19, 201412 yr All valid, but you are neglecting the market out there. Who is unRAID competing against ? QNAP ? Synology ? If your focus is tech savvy users then yes, VMs are porbably the way to go. But if your market is the ever growing SOHO user then you need to compete in a field where one-click plugins and packages rule the roost. Maybe Docker is a halfway house that will cater for both, but my concern is that Tom is focusing on keeping his current techy user base content, those whose money he already has, rather than targetting the segment that will generate far more revenue. The more revenue for Tom, the more chance unRAID remains Tom's #1 priority.
May 19, 201412 yr All valid, but you are neglecting the market out there. Who is unRAID competing against ? QNAP ? Synology ? If your focus is tech savvy users then yes, VMs are porbably the way to go. But if your market is the ever growing SOHO user then you need to compete in a field where one-click plugins and packages rule the roost. Maybe Docker is a halfway house that will cater for both, but my concern is that Tom is focusing on keeping his current techy user base content, those whose money he already has, rather than targetting the segment that will generate far more revenue. The more revenue for Tom, the more chance unRAID remains Tom's #1 priority. How about VM's Beeing "1Click" installs ? like plugins and packages ?
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