Errr, what's up doc?


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Morning all,

 

I am back, and I have a slice of humble pie on my desk in front of me! I was wrong, Docker is the future. Would you believe it if I said I'm now a DevOps Engineer for a living after my post last year stating how I thought Docker wasn't so great? Times change.

 

Why am I back? Well, a few reasons. I've been experimenting with Ubuntu as my server OS (not my beloved Arch) and it's been going quite well to be honest except for one key area; drive pooling. Drive pooling has turned out to be a massive pain in the arse and I've utilised MHDDFS and AUFS, each with it's own idiosyncrasies and instabilities. Therefore, in search of a set it and forget it I'm coming back to my old friend unRAID. I'll buy a big SSD for my cache drive to offset the write performance differential and all will be fine!

 

Onto my thrust for this thread. After being 'out of the game' for a year or so around these parts, what's new? I've had a good look at some of the hero features but it'd be great to see what you guys actually think are the best parts of v6 so far. What are the best bits? What are the worst bits? Any gotchas?

 

I'll be building a brand new server from scratch by the end of the month using Docker for my plugins and no virtualisation (so you could perhaps leave KVM / Xen updates out if you liked).

 

Anyway, nice to be back. Cheers!

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Welcome back!

 

...Onto my thrust for this thread. After being 'out of the game' for a year or so around these parts, what's new? I've had a good look at some of the hero features but it'd be great to see what you guys actually think are the best parts of v6 so far. What are the best bits? What are the worst bits? Any gotchas?

 

I'll be building a brand new server from scratch by the end of the month using Docker for my plugins and no virtualisation (so you could perhaps leave KVM / Xen updates out if you liked).

 

Anyway, nice to be back. Cheers!

Just some brief comments about VMs. I'm not sure I will ever need them on my headless server with the explosion of dockers. Xen is going to be phased out. KVM has great management built in to the unRAID webGUI. Here is the latest VM overview from Limetech: unRAID 6 Virtualization Update

 

As I mentioned, dockers have really exploded. There must be about a dozen docker developers on the forum, and some of them probably have a dozen or more dockers. In addition to apps with web frontends, they have even developed a method to put a desktop app in your web browser using rdp/vnc. Take a look in the Docker subforum for threads by hurricanehernandez, sparklyballs, and aptalca.

 

Limetech has incorporated a lot of work from users on the forum in v6. In particular, bonienl, gfjardim, dmacias, dlandon have all got pieces of the webGUI incorporated.

 

Exciting times!

 

Mods:  This should really be in the v6 subforum area. I doubt ironicbadger is going to be interested in v5.

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Welcome back, ironicbadger.

 

The Docker explosion is overwhelming, it's difficult to keep track of what is available and from whom, so bonienl, I and Squid made a plugin to keep containers easier to find/deploy: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39106.0

 

There are some other nice plugins here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=24.0

 

Again, welcome back.

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One more thing about dockers. Be sure to install the Community Repositories Updater & Viewer plugin (additional credit to Squid).

 

Also, there are some other useful plugins out there that are probably not appropriate for the docker model. See:

 

NerdPack

Unassigned Devices

Dynamix - V6 Plugins

Powerdown

 

Just as I was about to post this gfjardim beat me to it. Anyway, those are the plugins I think are probably useful to most people.

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Thanks all. Specifically my devops role is modernising the release cycle for continuous integration at a financial services company in England. They say they want to change and its I who has the power to recommend tools to do it with, then try make it all work together!

 

As for unraid. Took me so long because, well, I'm stubborn? I wanted my Ubuntu switch to work and as I said it does, mostly. Looks like I'll be needing to spin up an unraid box before long to take all these new GUIs for a spin. Ironically, I'm more comfy with the command line than ever now but a good GUI has its place.

 

As v6 nears completion I'm looking forward to giving it a proper go. When I say a set it and forget it box, I really mean it. It must be able to docker and pool my storage, that's it. I'll then be able to free up a different machine as a home lab. Tres exciting.

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