Go with unRAID or with OpenMediaVault + SnapRaid?

[adoucette]

Can someone please weigh in here on their experience and help me choose? (I'm posting on forum for both)

I'm on the fence, having a hard time choosing, have read forums, blogs, specs, etc for days now.

I need a solution that is:

1) set and forget,

2) reliable and stable (need it to just work for wife and kids when I travel),

3) works for mix of many small and large files.

I have a home file server that backs up and syncs the MyDocuments folders from/to my family's various computers, and also serves up a 3TB and growing media collection. It uses an older AMD m-350 dual core 1.6ghz processor with 8GB RAM, and an Intel NIC. 100GB SSD, 3x 4TB HDD.

My concerns:

unRAID:

4) boots from a USB (changes lost at boot)

5) non-standard distro

OpenMediaVault + SnapRaid:

6) I read that SnapRaid is for large media files that change infrequently, and I have about 60GB of My Documents folders etc with thousands of smaller files

 

Additional questions:

7) Is there a performance benefit to one or the other? (I think unRAID 6 has benefit of using SSD as cache drive)

Which will require less time in setup / fiddling with / maintenance?

 

Thank you for any help. Whichever one I use gets my financial support... I'll either buy unRAID, or give donation to OMV (if happy with it)

[sadkisson]

unRAID takes much less involvement and with notifications is very much so set and forget. SnapRAID requires much more RAM for larger filesystems. You will have a much larger support system with unRAID. I have done both and have liked both solutions.  I prefer unRAID where my configuration is very much the normal setup as everyone else. With SnapRAID you are going to see many different ways people have setup their systems. Going the SnapRAID route I believe you will have more customization options where as unRAID is more tailored to how you should use unRAID. With the changes that have been made with unRAID 6 I prefer unRAID 6 for its Docker and VM options. That is not to say you cannot have the same with the other setup, it just may require more involvement than you prefer.

[Ashe]

Based on personal experience as I left unraid and tried OMV, then tried ubuntu + snap and then came back to unraid, unraid was the easiest/ most intuitive for me.

 

4) changes aren't lost at boot, configuration is stored on the USB and reloaded on each boot.

 

5) with docker, this should make less of an issue. If you need certain drivers for less known hardware, LT are usually flexible in including if possible from what I have seen requested on the forums

6) for this use case, unraid is the best choice with the parity drive. But with snapraid you can specify the frequency of snapshots, it could be 4x a day or 1x a week.

7) cache will give the impression of speed, but files copied to the cache need to be moved to the array before they are protected. You can specify the frequency of the mover settings or directly copy to the array (this will be slower). It depends on the volume of files being copied.

 

Both will take time in setup and fiddling and both should have minimal maintenance, but personally I found unraid easier and the level of support in these forums is amazing.

 

I am sure there will be better / more detailed answers than mine from other forum members, but having tried them this is what I found. Hope it helps

[c3]

1) set and forget,

unRAID is almost too forgetable. Hence some people are still running code from several years back (4.x even).

 

2) reliable and stable (need it to just work for wife and kids when I travel),

The Stable release are very stable (years) and reliable as they are tested for years. [How long has 6.0 been rc level?]

 

3) works for mix of many small and large files.

unRAID has no issue around file sizes.

 

I have a home file server that backs up and syncs the MyDocuments folders from/to my family's various computers, and also serves up a 3TB and growing media collection. It uses an older AMD m-350 dual core 1.6ghz processor with 8GB RAM, and an Intel NIC. 100GB SSD, 3x 4TB HDD.

Probably need to specify which protocols you use/need. I could assume you need SMB and unRAID does that samba well.

My concerns:

unRAID:

4) boots from a USB (changes lost at boot)

changes are not lost on boot, the USB is writable.

 

5) non-standard distro

It's slackware, a distro with very long history.

 

OpenMediaVault + SnapRaid:

6) I read that SnapRaid is for large media files that change infrequently, and I have about 60GB of My Documents folders etc with thousands of smaller files

Seem not good to me.

 

Additional questions:

7) Is there a performance benefit to one or the other? (I think unRAID 6 has benefit of using SSD as cache drive)

unRAID 5.x and 6.x can use cache drive, which does not have to be SSD.

 

Which will require less time in setup / fiddling with / maintenance?

 

Thank you for any help. Whichever one I use gets my financial support... I'll either buy unRAID, or give donation to OMV (if happy with it)

 

 

I think you forgot the most important factor, especially for someone who travels way from the kid/users. What happen when the disk with the kids content dies?

unRAID - red ball on the drive, and the data is still available until you get home to do repair work.

SnapRAID - data is unavailable until you get home to do repair. Section 4.4 http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/manual.html

[SSD]

I moved to the lounge as this is less of a support issue and more a general NAS interest topic.

 

On the topic, I have been an unRAID user for about 8 years, and have never gone looking for something else. A computer professional by trade, I enjoyed the level of customization that the platform offered, and felt that it was a good platform for backups and media files as you describe. At the time I bought I explored a number of options (most notably MS Server), but in the end unRAID turned out to be right for me and I can say with no reservations that the product has recently taken a quantum leap forward in terms of functionality and utility. As a little disclaimer, I do not work for LimeTech (none of the moderators do), nor have any financial interest in the company. I am just user that likes the product and agreed to help moderate the forum.

 

The most important thing you need to know with unRAID (and maybe other NAS platforms as well), is that "set it and forget it" is all about good planning and being prepared. Components that might seem to be optional, like removable drive cages, good drives, and good cooling, pay off in the long run. And doing your homework so you understand how unRAID works and common solutions for typical problems is important! I'll give an example of a new user scenario that has played out a number of times. A user sets up their server with direct mounted drives, sata cables, power splitters, etc. in a computer case. With some tinkering the server comes up. They create the array, load most or all of their data, and then, a few weeks/months later, one of the drives is "red-balled" (meaning kicked from the array and simulated with the unRAID redundancy). The user assumes the red-ball means that the disk has failed. (Most commonly a red-ball is a loose cable, created by the owner tinkering inside the case, or a never-secured connection that jiggles loose and intermittently causes an error. The least common cause of a red-ball is a drive failure.) They then replace the drive, and with no drive cages, have to do surgery inside the case, often doing the irresistible cable routing optimization, and accidentally disturb other cables on other drives. They then try to rebuild using the other disks and half way through another drive red-balls. The user then panics and starts looking at using data recovery programs. Before you know it 2 or 3 missteps have created a mess requiring heroics from the community to help salvage data, which is usually at least partially successful, but nonetheless traumatic. This is so easily avoided. Plan your server. Buy drive cages if you expect to expand beyond a few drives. Read the BackBlaze reports and avoid the drives with high failure rates. Spend some time following the forum and reviewing the wki so you know what to do when a red-ball happens.

 

The only Achilles heal I'd mention is the lack of (so called) dual parity. Dual parity would help in situations where two drives fail simultaneously (a very rare circumstance) or where a drive fails and while rebuilding, another drive throws an unexpected error. There is continuing debate for the timing of implementing this feature, which many of us are lobbying sooner than later. But in my 8 years here helping hundreds of users with all manner of failures, I've seen only a small handful of situations where this would have been needed in the hands of a knowledgeable user, but quite a few more, similar to the story above, where the dual parity might have helped a newbie that had shot themselves in the foot, recover more easily or completely.

 

Without speaking negatively of SNAPraid, with which I have no experience, I can wholeheartedly recommend unRAID as a NAS platform. The most important features to me at the real-time protection provided, the fact that each drive contains an autonomous file system and is individually recoverable or moved from one server to another, the ability to easily replace failing or older drives with newer larger ones, and the user shares feature that enable multiple drives to appear as a single "share" to a media player or client machine. The recent Docker integration has allowed me to run some applications on my unRAID server that were previously running elsewhere. My plan for the future is to virtualize my Windows workstation further leveraging my unRAID server and meaning fewer machines being on 24x7.

 

Good luck with your decision. I am sure others will share their insights.

 

[adoucette]

If nothing else, the robust response in the support forum is a big vote for unRAID. Thanks for the responses. I'm glad to hear that unRAID will be OK with many thousands of smaller files, in addition to thousands of large files.

The set-and-forget aspect is very attractive.

I appreciate the perspectives from those who have experienced both products - thanks.

[jonp]

Just wanted to drop in here and say thanks to our community for replying to adoucette here.

 

We are a big family here and love to welcome new members. If you need any help, never be afraid to ask. Everyone here is really helpful and just wants to see you succeed. Worse comes to worse and your not getting the help you need?  Drop a PM to me and I'll do what I can. Hope to hear more feedback from you once you are up and running.

[CHBMB]

Just wanted to drop in here and say thanks to our community for replying to adoucette here.

 

We are a big family here and love to welcome new members. If you need any help, never be afraid to ask. Everyone here is really helpful and just wants to see you succeed. Worse comes to worse and your not getting the help you need?  Drop a PM to me and I'll do what I can. Hope to hear more feedback from you once you are up and running.

 

Now THAT's customer service, but jonp really knows that this community always helps...

 

As for the OP, I'm doing exactly what you describe with my Unraid server, and a lot more as well, but that will come to you with time. 

 

Unraid is so stable I've gone 100s of days in the past without a reboot, only needing to finally reboot to add an extra drive. 

 

I've looked at most storage solutions over the years and tried a few now, although admittedly not OMV and SNAPraid, I truly don't believe there is a better package than that of UnRAID.

[Josh7890]

I have this same question. I've ordered all the components for my first NAS build, and now I'm trying to decide for sure what OS is the best for me. My priorities are ease of use, protection of my data from drive failures, and the ability to run my suite of media-related software, and ideally Time Machine backups from my Macs. I like the free price of OMV of course but I'm willing to pay for a product that's better for me. The community here at unRAID does seem to be a big part of its success.

 

So, OP: What did you end up deciding and how do you like it? If you're still using unRAID, is there anything you'd wish you could do (or do more easily) with unRAID that OMV could have done better?

 

Edit: I'm open to hearing from others too!

[CHBMB]

A look at the OPs post history suggests he/she is still using Unraid.

[adoucette]

So, OP: What did you end up deciding and how do you like it? If you're still using unRAID, is there anything you'd wish you could do (or do more easily) with unRAID that OMV could have done better?

Yes, I chose unRAID and have been fairly happy with it. I can't speak to OMV as I did not try it. unRAID has been fairly easy to set up and use. There were a couple hardware specific items during initial setup that were a bit fiddly, but the community here helped me through them (huge plus in favor of unRAID) and, again, they were specific to my hardware and not to the unRAID software platform.

Now it's fairly set and forget. However, there have been times when I have been away from home for a few weeks and come back to find the unRAID server inaccessible over the network and requiring a reboot. Additionally, I probably check it once a month or so to apply recommended updates to the platform or the plugins. Not a big time burden. (To be fair, this has happened on every computer I've used, Windows, Linux, Android, or Mac from time to time.) So its not 100% set and forget, but close, and similar to other platforms I have experience with.

The platform is fairly basic, though one can add on to it with plugins. So, at its base level, it is fairly simple to use. This is a plus. For me, this means that while I can't do as much with it out of the box as I could my previous file server (Windows Home Server with FlexRaid), I also don't end up doing as much with it and so I spend (waste?) less of my time on it.

Speed is fairly good (not as good as the WHS setup). Network transfers are good, but there is a problem with multiple Windows clients accessing same shares at same time (I probably have no more than 5 Windows clients and 2 Android clients accessing it at any given time). I do also note it uses more electricity than my WHS setup did - which was a surprise to me.

In all, it's been good. Platform is stable, it does what it's supposed to do (have had one drive failure and recovered just fine), network transfer speeds are fine, doesn't require excessive fiddling.

Again, the community support here is a HUGE plus.

Hope this helps.

Ari

[Josh7890]

Thank you. It does seem like unRAID is the better product for me. Reading through the forums too, the unRAID community seems much more helpful.

[CHBMB]

the unRAID community seems much more helpful.

 

This is an often overlooked part of a product.  It's a friendly bunch here, and lots of people will help, just remember to search, read the stickies and post whatever information people ask of you and most things get sorted out fairly rapidly. 

[ashman70]

UnRaid definitely is a much more straightforward product to setup and configure IMO, I wish I had of started using it years ago. I am so impressed with it after having my pro license for a little over two months I just purchased another one to setup a second server. Community support is great also. Looking forward to the 6.2 release and dual parity.

 

Happy New Year !!

[hernandito]

unRAID? What is that...? Ohhh, it's coming back to me...wait... yeah its the thing that holds all my files.. I had forgotten about it.

 

I have setup 2 additional servers for others. They are not the tech nerds that I can be... I never get any calls for help.