Hi everyone,

A friend of mine has a photography business. Currently, it's smaller and he primarily does events for people who want pictures of their kids playing sports and stuff like that. He's going to be expanding and recently started doing weddings.

 

Storage is going to become an issue. He's looking for a few TB to start, but with the option to expand as needed. I've been reading about unRAID and it seems like a good system. He downloads the photos (raw files and jpeg files depending on the shoot) to his workstation, edits them, and then would like to migrate them to the unRAID. I understand a lot of what I've read, however I do have a few questions.

 

1) How reliable is unRAID really? It seems the reliability comes down to the drives and the hardware used from what I read.

 

2) Is it better to use unRAID for something like this? Or would something like FreeNAS be better?

 

3) I saw the post on the main site about the company using unRAID for their photography business with 100TB server, however they were extremely vague and didn't really give any useful information. Does anyone have any actual experience for this?

 

4) I would like to use CrashPlan to backup the unRAID to the cloud as an offsite backup in case something ever happened to the unRAID server. All of the tutorials I've read focus on backing up a home PC to unRAID using CrashPlan. That is not what I want to do. How would I go about backing up unRAID to the cloud? Or am I better off just installing it on a PC and having it back up the network drive?

 

If there are any insights you can add that I might be missing, I'd much appreciate it.

1) How reliable is unRAID really? It seems the reliability comes down to the drives and the hardware used from what I read.

 

It's quite reliable and resilient in comparison to a traditional raid array.

Half my server was underwater, and I was still able to save data from the other half of the array after it was rebuilt.

The downside at this time is, you have to monitor the server closely for drive failures.

I.E. There isn't much in automated health checks unless you install third party plugins.

 

 

2) Is it better to use unRAID for something like this? Or would something like FreeNAS be better?

 

personally I think unRAID is easy.

USB stick and boot and you are ready to clear, format and install a drive into the raid array.

 

 

4) I would like to use CrashPlan to backup the unRAID to the cloud as an offsite backup in case something ever happened to the unRAID server. All of the tutorials I've read focus on backing up a home PC to unRAID using CrashPlan. That is not what I want to do. How would I go about backing up unRAID to the cloud? Or am I better off just installing it on a PC and having it back up the network drive?

 

 

Personally I would have a second unraid server in a remote location and rsync from disk1 to disk1 remotely.

While you can back it up to a cloud, using bandwidth and a remote location to an unRAID server with rsync is easier and possibly cheaper in the long run when you start to utilize allot of space.

Nice easy and clean.  it all depends on how big your server will be and how long you want to archive your data for.

I've got over 500GB off my unraid uploaded to CrashPlan Central.  It works VERY well.

Personally I would have a second unraid server in a remote location and rsync from disk1 to disk1 remotely.

While you can back it up to a cloud, using bandwidth and a remote location to an unRAID server with rsync is easier and possibly cheaper in the long run when you start to utilize allot of space.

Nice easy and clean.  it all depends on how big your server will be and how long you want to archive your data for.

Unlimited storage with Crashplan is cheap. Server components and additional hard drives are not. I mean, it's definitely an option and it may be something we end up doing on top of CrashPlan, but initially it's just not.

 

I've got over 500GB off my unraid uploaded to CrashPlan Central.  It works VERY well.

How do I upload my data to CrashPlan on the $60/year unlimited plan?

 

 

We built a couple 24 drive servers for a photographer in Canada.  He seems to love them, though I have not heard from him in quite a while (a good thing in this case usually).

 

 

My personal unRAID server is nearing 5 months of uptime if I remember correctly.

We built a couple 24 drive servers for a photographer in Canada.  He seems to love them, though I have not heard from him in quite a while (a good thing in this case usually).

 

 

My personal unRAID server is nearing 5 months of uptime if I remember correctly.

 

Could you provide any build details/specs? I'm just worried about losing data, which is why I want the entire thing to backup to CrashPlan's cloud too.

Well if you are looking for recommendations, and depending on your cost constraints, you certainly can't go wrong with using what Limetech themselves use and recommend: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33166.0  It has the awesome benefit of having a lot of SATA ports before you ever need to consider an add-on card.

 

If you don't go with this MB I'd still recommend one that can accept ECC ram (most Asus boards).  CPU is not so important and you can probably get away with the lowest power your MB supports which will also let you keep the cooling simple and have less risk of overheating.

 

Then purchase "NAS" drives.  Right now the WD Reds are the darlings of the interwebs but I'd be sure to not buy all of them (or any other drive) from any one vendor at any one time to avoid the risk of getting all your drives from a single "bad" batch.  Some people even claim the need to spread their purchases by manufacturer to distribute risk but that is probably overkill.

 

And whatever you do end up buying HDD wise be sure to buy at least one spare drive equal to or larger than your parity drive so that you don't run "at risk" for any longer than you need to swap in the spare and rebuilt parity.  If this is for his job and it is a true production system there is no good reason not to have a spare driving sitting there, pre-cleared and ready to go.

 

Power supply: There is no shortage of recommendations in the hardware section, but you'll want something with a SINGLE 12v rail.  Most people really love the Corsair units but you should avoid the CX line since it is considered fairly budget minded.  Sizing will depend on how many drives you think you are going to use now, and in the near future.  But I'm gonna bet 450w or 650w will be your sweet spot unless your jumping right in with a 24-drive monster

 

Editorial on NAS Drives for Unraid:

 

Though I am still debating how much they really matter for us.  The logic makes sense (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/western-digital-red-review-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium/2

) concerning how they deal with long error recovery reporting BUT the biggest benefit to that is to prevent a RAID array from going off line and requiring lengthy and risky rebuilds.  Unraid isn't quite so sensitive to rebuilds and I don't recall there being rashes of people having trouble back before the "savior" of NAS drives arrived.  Also claims about being designed for 24/7 operation aren't as important for Unraid since we tend to like to spindown the array when not in use AND we don't have to spin everything up just to read/write either. Vibration tolerance ... look for soft mounts [shrug] but again we haven't heard about major issues with this in the past.

 

We built a couple 24 drive servers for a photographer in Canada.  He seems to love them, though I have not heard from him in quite a while (a good thing in this case usually).

 

 

My personal unRAID server is nearing 5 months of uptime if I remember correctly.

 

Could you provide any build details/specs? I'm just worried about losing data, which is why I want the entire thing to backup to CrashPlan's cloud too.

 

I honestly do not know the specs off the top of my head but I think the only thing that was upgraded was the RAM.  Both boxes are probably running X9SCM-F-O boards, 8GB of RAM, and an intel Celeron/Pentium processor running at around 2.8GHz. It probably had 2 M1015/SASLP cards in it and the cables to get everything hooked up.  I know the customer ordered one, then about 3 weeks later sent us an email wanting another one.  I think he is using one as the main server and using the other as a mirror using rsync.

The blog post on the Limetech web site referenced our studio setup. We have 4 - 24 bay rack servers. 1 is the main box and the second one replicates it every night via rsync.  The other 2 are off site duplicates. But now with crash plan working I can eliminate at least 1 off site server.

 

My problem is that we can create 100gb per day of new data and the up stream pipes to crash plan are not fat enough. This drives the need for the extra servers.

 

I am waiting for unRaid to deploy iSimple technology.  I really can't see photographers understanding how to use Joe L. excellent preclear script and some of the other geeky things with unRaid. If you need the 50+ tb capacity, want drives that can be read on a standard Linux box in case of disaster, and can manage some geeky things, then unRaid is fine.

 

 

The blog post on the Limetech web site referenced our studio setup. We have 4 - 24 bay rack servers. 1 is the main box and the second one replicates it every night via rsync.  The other 2 are off site duplicates. But now with crash plan working I can eliminate at least 1 off site server.

 

My problem is that we can create 100gb per day of new data and the up stream pipes to crash plan are not fat enough. This drives the need for the extra servers.

 

I am waiting for unRaid to deploy iSimple technology.  I really can't see photographers understanding how to use Joe L. excellent preclear script and some of the other geeky things with unRaid. If you need the 50+ tb capacity, want drives that can be read on a standard Linux box in case of disaster, and can manage some geeky things, then unRaid is fine.

That's something I'd have to take care of. My friend wouldn't know where to begin. I think if I did get him going with unRAID, I'd want him to get like 10+ TB so it would take him a while to fill. Do you think it might be better to use something like a Synology or QNAP NAS since he wouldn't know how to use unRAID? He's fluent with using a computer, but this is a step above what he can do.

 

Do you have any build logs/details of exactly how you have everything set up? I'd like to know the details. I'm also curious how much a 100 TB 24 bay system would cost... seems like just 1 would cost a fortune, let alone building 4 of them.

 

Being that he has a full time career at the same place I do, I don't think he'll be taking 100 GB/day worth of photos lol. It'll be some weddings and events on some random nights/weekends. Eventually growing more and more. What he does take can probably be uploaded in a day or 2, so it's not horrible with CrashPlan.

 

Do you think it might be better to use something like a Synology or QNAP NAS since he wouldn't know how to use unRAID?

 

Do you have any build logs/details of exactly how you have everything set up? I'd like to know the details. I'm also curious how much a 100 TB 24 bay system would cost... seems like just 1 would cost a fortune, let alone building 4 of them.

 

Once you have an unRaid server running, your photographer friend will be able to use it as easily as even a drobo.

 

The one nice thing about unRaid is that you can start for free. All you need is an old computer that you had forgotten to throw out. Create a 3 drive system and test it out. It was only after I had a small junky build working that I invested in a larger rig. Then my junky build was recycled and used for a backup server. So most of my cost was drives.

 

If I hadn't found the rack mount tams servers on sale on eBay for 200 each I would never have 24 bay units for the other 3 servers.

 

Total investment $1200 for the one main server and then 200 ea for the other 3. After that you just buy drives. Synology Qnap and all cannot compete cost wise with unRaid. And unRaid will scale much larger as needs increase.

 

I used a Norco 4224 with a supermicro  x9scm motherboard for my main build but wish I had gutted a tams server and used only the case instead.  The quality is better and the cost is lower. 

 

While you can use a tams server as is, the technology is older, the power use is higher, and the noise level is abhorrent.  None of these things matter to me for backup server that only runs a few hours per week.

 

Good luck with your project.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk