Hi All,

 

As with most things that just work for you, once you have set them up you tend to ignore them and walk away. Well that has been my involvement with my nas since i installed unpaid 2 years ago. Over the last month I had an issue which was resolved thanks to the community here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=36157.0

 

This kind of put my unread installation back on the radar. I started reading whats going on and some of the awesome features that are coming out in v6.0.

 

I am actually quite astounded. When I bought Unraid I was shocked at how good the product was and how little I had heard about it. Basically, I had spent years buying Netgear NAS drives and painfully working with RAID, controllers etc. I was toying with the idea of FreeNas at the time as I remember but procrastinated for months until I found Unraid.

 

Anyway, down to the real reason I am posting. I joined and installed when v5 was in RC (version .06 I think) and then upgraded to final and then final v .04. Installed some nice add-ons and since then I haven't touched the thing.

 

Now I feel I should think about v6.0. And despite people not liking how long its taking for final to come out - I for one am glad to see that the company is not being driven by deadlines (too much) and is really taking the time to make sure they deliver a solid product. I am even more happy that I get the upgrade for free. You guys have a wonderful model and process.

 

My setup is currently:

 

Celeron CPU, Gigabyte Motherboard, 4GB Memory, 3 x 3TB drives, 1 x 3TB cache drive. Big Antec case with room for about 15 drives.

 

Question is, should I upgrade thinking about v6.0. I was thinking I could just buy a new one and install v 6.0 and the current one could be my on site back-up (Rather than using the old Netgear NV+) which currently has limited space to backup the Unraid box in the future (due to lack of support for the old SPARC Netgear NAS.

 

My big driver for thinking about upgrading is the ability for my Unraid box to become the central point for most of my applications running on other box's / PC's.

 

Here is where I have a big shout about Docker!! Why am I not seeing everyone getting excited about it on the forums!!! almost native running of apps that I need without the overhead of an OS!!! Anyway, not sure it will take off so don't know if the apps I want will end up being available or whether it becomes viable alternative to virtualisation or not, but hey, sounds exciting!!

 

So .... before I read about docker I was thinking about Virtualising. Buying better hardware to centralise all my server based / web based apps on one box. I most certainly would have to upgrade if I am going to run another OS (someone can confirm that for  me - I doubt a celeron based system with 4GB memory would suffice to run another OS on it. I also don't like the idea of running Unraid in a VM and Sxi type deal etc etc - I like Unraid having direct access to HW etc. But then should I wait to see how Docker comes along???

 

So thats where I am - confused. Plenty in this post, but I thought it might start some interesting conversation! Basically don't want to install beta version of Unraid yet but am certainly thinking about v6.0 Thoughts anyone ...??

 

Daniel :-)

 

Maybe the initial excitement about docker has faded because so many are using it so easily now. It depends what apps you need, but there are dockers for most of the common web and server type apps already. If you really want to invest in new hardware go for it, but you could just try with the hardware you have and see how far docker can take you. It is doing everything I want, but my needs may be different from yours. I mostly just use my ultrabook and other mobile devices for my "interactive" computing needs these days.

 

What apps do you want?