Musings on returning to UnRAID

[CHBMB]

So, I've pretty much finished migrating my storage back to UnRAID. I was using V5.0 up until about a year ago and suffered a MB failure.  One of the things I have used my server for is a PVR backend and this isn't easily achieved with the DVB-T2 tuner card I have (TBS6285)  it require a media build and drivers installing, neither of which I could do myself and I was very dependent on the good actions of piotrasd.

 

Given that I decided to head towards more familiar terrritory and run a Windows Home Server 2011 build.  I thought it would solve all my problems as I am, or maybe, was a Windows guy.

 

Got it installed, along with the programs that I used to use on UnRAID, PVR up and running, but started to hit limitations.  Trying to run XBMC just to keep my centralised library updated was a chore, as it won't run as a service, reverse proxy configuration is a confusing minefield, User shares with access permissions, all for my wife and I, I could go on.

 

I pooled my drives with Transparent FlexRAID, and dual parity, even recovered from a disk failure, but one thing I missed, the simplicity and ease of use of the base NAS appliance.  Flexraid has a myriad of options, even registering it was somewhat difficult, then I had to get my head around parameters such as SWO, TCQ, OS Caching.  It's an impressive product for sure and I'm sure it's technically very very clever, but I don't want to analyse a load of figures I want to plug in and go.

 

Having said that once it was up and running all was well, upgrading was a bit of a hassle.  Stop the service, uninstall everything, wait 30 seconds, reboot, reinstall.... I'd always have to refer to the wiki.

 

Over the last year I have had the OS fail on me necessitating reinstalling everything twice.  To get everything up and running again would take the best part of a month of effort each night after work well into the early hours.  Not denying that it may have been me that caused the OS to fail as I was forced to repartition drives and move user shares to accomodate my setup.

 

The last time it was my fault.  I was trying to mount my OS disk in my Win7 machine to get some files off whilst I was working changing some of the hardware.  Somehow Win7 changed the partition (I think because I used a SATA to USB3 adapter)  This time no more, I popped over to the UnRAID forums to see what was going on....

 

Wow!  Now a lot of progress has been made in the last year or so since I've been away.  We're now on a new wave of betas, slow progress as always, but progress none the less.  What has impressed me...

 

Well several things:

 

1.  Dynamix Web Gui - Far more professional looking, no longer looks like an amateur project, aesthetics maybe, but impressions count.

 

2.  Dockers - This has made a massive difference to how we can use our machines, plugins still form an important role, I see them as things that are central to the workings of the machine, like SNAP, APC UPS & Powerdown.  But webapps like NZBGet are just made to be used in a Docker format as far as I can tell.  For sure there are some teething problems but gradually people are getting used to them, we're learning and adapting the way we do things.  It's certainly made my life a lot easier getting everything up and running in a way that I understand.

 

3.  Virtualisation - I spent a long time poring over the forums to make a decision between Xen & KVM.  In the end I decided to use KVM, purely because it seemed that it was the forum that had the biggest buzz about it and the most activity.  I am so impressed with the ability we have now to create a multitude of virtual machines to achieve whatever we want, I'm still working at getting a VM to run a PVR service, not sure if it's possible but it's fun trying, I've got several Linux VMs to try out different distros.  I've installed WHS2011 to get my web pages back up until I figure out Apache or Nginx. I'm going to try running pfsense

 

4.  Community - But one thing I had forgotten, arguably the most important benefit UnRAID has, is the community here, it's vibrant, bustling and always a hive of activity, I read threads not necessarily because I know how to answer a question or because I need to achieve the same thing as the poster wants, but because it's interesting to see the different ways people are using the tools we have.  The vibe is friendly, with very few arguments or disagreements, there are the old hands helping out those with simple questions, or forging ahead with new plugins, dockers or VMs. 

 

 

So when I came to installing UnRAID I dusted off my trusty USB stick and I can get it booted within a couple of minutes.  With dockers and my KVM XML and img files saved I can be up and running again very quickly, it's just so much more "modular" than Windows, where I had to download, install, run things as a service, change the firewall, the import my config files as that was the only thing I could save between reinstall.

 

It's simplicity is what makes it much easier to use.  Almost paradoxically it is also what makes it so powerful now, things are fairly independently run, I don't need the pages of notes and saved web pages telling me how to install things and configure them like I did with Windows.

 

Exciting times ahead and I for one am glad to be back.  Sometimes you need to find out for yourself that the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side.

 

 

[dmacias]

I was a big fan of the original windows home server and even tried 2011 for a while till I found unRAID.  I think what pushed me was an OS fail also but didn't loose any data.  Haven't looked back.  I also loved windows media center and mediabrowser but found myself using xbmc more and more. Finally just using WMC as a front end for xbmc. But once I found mythtv had an xbmc plugin and would work with a network cable card tuner I left wmc. The one thing I didn't like too was you couldn't natively use another windows machine as an extender. I had a stand alone myth box for a bit. So now with unRAID 6 and KVM I have everything in one machine.  UnRAID, pvr and all my other apps.  And openelec boxes on every tv. I really don't use windows much at all anymore.

 

Not a hater but last night I booted my laptop into windows to check a 64GB flash drive and figured while there I would just download some shows to it through wifi. So I left it and went to bed. Dang windows update rebooted at some point.

[CHBMB]

I don't hate windows, well wasn't a fan of the direction the Win8 series took, but with Classic Shell installed it's good.  It's just maintaining a Windows Server was fairly labour intensive, whereas, when I ran UnRAID previously I think I went over 6 months without a reboot.

 

I can't quite see myself ever leaving the Microsoft ecosystem entirely, probably as I'm so familiar with it so can do a lot without really thinking whereas Linux requires a bit more thinking on my part, so for that reason my desktop is still primarily windows although I do have a second SSD in there with Linux Mint.

 

However for the job I want it to do, UnRAID ticks the boxes.  I'm not too bothered what the base install is in terms of Slackware or Arch although I do see some good arguments on the issue, In fact off the top of my head the only thing I'd like to see in UnRAID and am a little disappointed hasn't yet surfaced is dual parity, or multi array setups.  But I can wait.

 

Going back to what I was saying about the community, I always felt a bit alone using WHS, whereas coming back here is a lot more active and more is developing.  WHS2011 is going to be end of life next year I think, and I'm not prepared to spend a significant chunk of cash on the Windows Server range. I liked the internet access to my Server from anywhere in the world with the homeserver.com domain and the automatic dynamic DNS, but I'm a bit wiser now and think I can accomplish similar things under my own steam. Although I do understand that UnRAID has never been designed to be open to the web.

 

I like the feeling of control I have with UnRAID, I feel like I "know" what happens and no security updates are going to come flying over the internet and cause a reboot when I'm not expecting it. 

[dmacias]

I almost feel like windows update and adobe are like virus popups. I don't hate windows either but I do hate my wife's windows 8 touchscreen laptop. It may end up out the window one day. I forgot about the homserver.com thing. That was cool but there are so many things like owncloud now that are similar. Mint is windows .  That's what I run on my laptop along with windows 7.

 

I agree too. I never got the same feeling of community as there is here.

[HellDiverUK]

I've just moved back too.  I messed about with various Windows installs, but was never really happy. 

 

unRAID 6b12 with the Dockers is pretty cool.  It Just Works^tm.

 

My only slight regret is my choice of cache drive, and now that my Dockers are all set up on it, I'm not sure if I can change it.  I should have used a bigger drive...

[jevans04]

My only slight regret is my choice of cache drive, and now that my Dockers are all set up on it, I'm not sure if I can change it.  I should have used a bigger drive...

 

It is super easy to replace your cache drive.

Stop Docker.

Copy the contents of your cache drive to somewhere temporary on your array.

Remove the old cache drive, install the new cache drive.

Copy you cache data contents back to the new cache drive.

Restart Docker.

 

[HellDiverUK]

I ended up removing my cache drive from the array, setting up a new cache drive, and mounting the old cache using SNAP.  Proper job.

 

Now running Docker etc off a SSD (Intel Pro SSD 1500 180GB), and cache is a laptop HDD (WD Black 320GB).