Is it worth upgrading to the Beta 6 line?

[pantheis]

I'm currently happily running unRaid 4.7, with a bunch of custom plugins and configurations. I'm using some manual startup scripts in the go file to mount a drive and setup directory links to use it as a permanent storage space for things like Crashplan. This was left over from when I had the free version of unRaid and couldn't setup an actual cache drive. I also have VirtualBox installed (although I don't need that any longer). In addition I have apcd running in a network master mode, allowing both unRaid and another server also on the same UPS to receive power information and shutdown as needed.

 

Is it worth upgrading to the Beta 6 64 bit line? I've seen mention of XFS as a file system format as well. Is it worth going to the trouble of upgrading the drives I have to XFS? What benefit would doing any of this have over the existing setup?

 

This box is used as a home media / onsite backup server and does offsite backups of important data via Crashplan to another server, if that makes any difference. What I need to work with any update is my existing Crashplan configuration, the acpd UPS scripts, and NFS and SMB sharing.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[switchman]

If it is working the way you want it to, I would not upgrade.  If you skipped the entire 5.x series, why would you want to upgrade your production system to a release still in beta.  My system works just like I want it to at this time.  I am not going to upgrade until at least RC 2 or 3 at the earliest.  But that is me with this system. In this case the WAF makes it desirable to stay where I am.

 

 

[garycase]

Agree with switchman => if you're happy with the performance, and it's doing everything you need, then I certainly wouldn't upgrade ... at least not until it's well past the release stage.

 

You MAY want to upgrade to v5.0.6 (the latest stable release) ... but even that isn't necessary if you're not having any performance issues and don't need/want to use drives larger than 2TB.

 

[pantheis]

When I originally built the system I built it around 2TB drives, but now that 4 and 6 are available, I am thinking my next drive purchase should be one of those, which means moving to 5.0.6 at a minimum.

 

One thing I'm very curious about, and haven't been able to find much information about, is moving to XFS as the file system. Is there any benefit to doing this once unRaid 6 is out?

 

How hard is it to move from 4.7 to 5.0.6? Does 5.0.6 still offer the equivalent of the "go" file?

[BRiT]

 

One thing I'm very curious about, and haven't been able to find much information about, is moving to XFS as the file system. Is there any benefit to doing this once unRaid 6 is out?

 

How hard is it to move from 4.7 to 5.0.6? Does 5.0.6 still offer the equivalent of the "go" file?

 

The go file exists in all versions. The 5.x series is still 32bit so your same plugins sho I ld work. For 6.x you can use dockers or vms or upgrade to the 64bit version of the plugins.

 

As for benefits of XFS, for some they had no choice but to switch all their drives to it to due to RFS and SHFS intercations causing CPU Stall issues. That issue would completely crash their system or cause filesystem issues. Just look over the forums to see a new issue or two each week being reported by new or different users.

[pantheis]

Since I'm still back on 4.7, I don't really have any official plugins. I've got a customized 'go' file manually mounting a separate drive as /mnt/cache2 (this was setup prior to purchasing unRaid), and setting up links using ln to /usr/local/crashplan and others, so that crashplan and other things are installed on an actual hard disk. It works great, and was all that was available back when I set all of this up.

 

I see that there are actual plugins now for things like Crashplan, but I have no idea how to migrate from what I've got setup to a plugin system. I'm going to have to tackle the move to 5 at some point so I can support larger drives. My next drive purchase will be a 4 or 6TB, replacing the current 2TB parity drive to set the stage for future larger drive purchases.

 

 

[garycase]

I'm currently happily running unRaid 4.7, with a bunch of custom plugins and configurations. ...

 

The easiest migration in this case would be to move to v5.0.6, which will let you retain virtually all of your current configuration.    Since the only new feature you really want is support for > 2TB drives, that's all you need to do.

 

 

...  I've seen mention of XFS as a file system format as well. Is it worth going to the trouble of upgrading the drives I have to XFS? What benefit would doing any of this have over the existing setup?

 

XFS is a nice feature that's now supported in v6, but it's not, in my opinion, a compelling reason to move to that version.  Reiser is VERY reliable and works just fine in v4 and v5 ... there are indeed some issues in v6, but even those are only write-related, so there's no reason to change to XFS for full disks of media that you migrate forward.  The key benefit of XFS is it's a supported file system; whereas development of Reiser was significantly impacted when the creator went to prison for murdering his wife a few years ago.    Nevertheless, RFS works very well in v5 ... I would NOT move to v6 just for the file system differences.