First Unraid! Comments?

[dundundundudun]

I just bought a new pc so this unraid system is essentially my old gaming system.

 

what ill be doing with unRAID:

Sonarr, NZBGet, Transmission, Plex Media Server, Couchpotato, Music Server. Ill also be using it to backup other documents/pictures which ill also backup to the cloud

 

Intel i5 3570k

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe (Dual NIC)

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB RAM x3 (24GB Total)

Corsair CX600M

Antec P100 Mid Tower Case

 

Samsung 840 SSD (128GB) Cache

2TB Seagate

2TB WD Green x2

4TB WD Green Parity

1TB WD Green

 

I originally had a mini ITX P8Z77-I Deluxe that i was going to use but it died suddenly i got this new motherboard on a good deal and the case wasn't too expensive plus its actually pretty nice and holds 7 Drives which is more  then enough for me,  ill eventually swap out the hard drives with 3TB WD Red's.

 

Thoughts? Also what exactly can i do with VM's? Not really sure how i can use them.

I also haven't purchased unRAID yet but ill be using my own USB when i do, how do i go about finding the GUID of the USB?

[SSD]

I just bought a new pc so this unraid system is essentially my old gaming system.

 

what ill be doing with unRAID:

Sonarr, NZBGet, Transmission, Plex Media Server, Couchpotato, Music Server. Ill also be using it to backup other documents/pictures which ill also backup to the cloud

 

Intel i5 3570k

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe (Dual NIC)

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB RAM x3 (24GB Total)

Corsair CX600M

Antec P100 Mid Tower Case

 

Samsung 840 SSD (128GB) Cache

2TB Seagate

2TB WD Green x2

4TB WD Green Parity

1TB WD Green

 

I originally had a mini ITX P8Z77-I Deluxe that i was going to use but it died suddenly i got this new motherboard on a good deal and the case wasn't too expensive plus its actually pretty nice and holds 7 Drives which is more  then enough for me,  ill eventually swap out the hard drives with 3TB WD Red's.

 

Thoughts? Also what exactly can i do with VM's? Not really sure how i can use them.

I also haven't purchased unRAID yet but ill be using my own USB when i do, how do i go about finding the GUID of the USB?

 

A few suggestions:

 

1. Focus on the NAS setup first.

 

  a. Look at each of the drives. Pull smart reports. Make sure they are not showing signs of dying, like reallocated or pending sections. The Seagate 2T drives, in my personal experience, were not reliable (others will report they have been using theirs for years with no problems, but the reliability statistics show these to be problematic drives). 2T WDs have also been problematic for me, and are a bit long in the tooth (I still use one, BTW, and it is running fine). Only include drives that are healthy in your array. They will be pushed harder than ever before, and if they are failing going in, you are asking for trouble. If in doubt, the forum is a good place to ask questions.

 

  b. If you have any new disks, make sure you preclear them before putting in the array. Preclearing disks gives them a workout, and helps determine if they are up to the riggers of being in an unRAID array. Not only new disks should be precleared, if you have disks that have been on the shelf for a while, or just never used that hard or filled to capacity - preclear them too.

 

c. Assemble your array. Build parity. And then run a parity check right afterwards. Check all of the smart reports again, and make sure you have no problems. If you are seeing very slow speeds, red-balls appear, etc., ask for help on the forums. The time to have such problems and fix them is BEFORE you put data on the array!

 

d. Once all if solid, format your array drives as XFS (default) or BTRFS. You can do some research and decide which. Most people use XFS on array disks with 6.0.

 

2. Add your cache drive SSD and create the docker.img file.

 

3. Set up your user shares. You'll have to make a basic decision whether to use the cache drive to cache writes to the array, or just for Docker / VM / app use. I recommend the latter. Using the cache drive for writes APPEARS to speed writes, but in actuality it is making them slower. Because a file is first copied to the cache drive (which appears faster), but later is copied to the protected array (at normal speed). While on the cache drive, the data is not protected (although a cache pool can add protection with a second cache drive). You have to ask if copying files at ~45-50 MB/sec vs 70-80 MB/sec makes that big of a difference. Personally, I do not use the cache drive to cache writes, nor do a lot of the old timers here. You can always change your mind, but I suggest initially not configuring user shares to cache writes and see if you are disappointed with the speed. (BTW, caching user shares when initially loading the array works poorly. The cache is small and fills up quickly if transferring a lot of data over, and the extra overheard of writing to cache and then to the array actually elongates the process considerably.)

 

4. Transfer your existing data to the array. If you are copying from disks that you later want to add to the array, copy them to the protected array, run an integrity check (like md5) to ensure all copied successfully (this also adds to your personal confidence in your array). Once all is copied over, you can preclear those disks and add them to the array.

 

5. Plan backups for your critical data that cannot not be resurrected if the array were to fail. Fault tolerance in unRAID is not a substitute for backups. Each user needs to determine what data is worth backing up and what data is not. Some users build a second server and backup everything. Others think that is excessive, and carve our pictures and personal documents only for backups and believe media files can be reconstructed in the unlikely circumstance of an array failure. But having all of your eggs in a single unRAID basket opens opportunities for a complete loss. Consider carefully what would happen if you lost it due to a power surge, flood, theft, or fire. If suicide or divorce come to mind, you need to rethink your backup strategy.

 

6. While the transfers are running is a good time to start planning your Docker / VMs. In between copies you can setup the first few Dockers and get them working.

 

Have fun!

[HellDiverUK]

 

I also haven't purchased unRAID yet but ill be using my own USB when i do, how do i go about finding the GUID of the USB?

 

With 6.0 you don't need to, set up the Trial version.  There's a "Purchase Now" button at the bottom of the main page, which takes you to a web site.  You can pay via Paypal or credit card, and everything is done automagically.  You just have to copy and paste a link from the email you're sent, and job is done.  I just got another copy of UnRAID last night, and it took less than 3 minutes to purchase and install the license.

[dundundundudun]

i had to wait to put together my system as i was waiting for the IO Shield for the motherboard to arrive from ebay, i've just booted up and im able to go to //tower.

all my current drives already have data on them, what would be a good way to go about adding them to the array without losing any data? the only drive in the system right now is the SSD.

[trurl]

i had to wait to put together my system as i was waiting for the IO Shield for the motherboard to arrive from ebay, i've just booted up and im able to go to //tower.

all my current drives already have data on them, what would be a good way to go about adding them to the array without losing any data? the only drive in the system right now is the SSD.

You must let unRAID format any disk it will use, so you can't add them to the array with data on them unless it is data that was put there by unRAID.

[dundundundudun]

i was thinking of using my 4TB drive and moving over the data from each drive onto that then adding to the array and finally moving the files back into each disk, would this work? only thing about this im unsure of is how i would move all the data back into each disk.

[trurl]

i was thinking of using my 4TB drive and moving over the data from each drive onto that then adding to the array and finally moving the files back into each disk, would this work? only thing about this im unsure of is how i would move all the data back into each disk.

Do you have backups?

[dundundundudun]

i was thinking of using my 4TB drive and moving over the data from each drive onto that then adding to the array and finally moving the files back into each disk, would this work? only thing about this im unsure of is how i would move all the data back into each disk.

Do you have backups?

 

of what? the stuff on each drive? no, its mostly all tv shows, movies; i really just want to avoid having to redownload everything over again.

[mr-hexen]

Will all the data from the various disks fit on a single 4TB?

[dundundundudun]

Will all the data from the various disks fit on a single 4TB?

 

no but what i want to do is this:

 

disk1 1TB data -> 4TB

pre-clear/format and added to array

4TB (data from the 1TB) -> back into the newly formatted disk1

 

and so on until i get all the drives pre-cleared, formatted and added to the array, last drive to be added will be the 4TB as the parity.

[mr-hexen]

How old are the existing drives? If they are marginal this could end up in data loss (i.e. more than two drives fail at the same time or a second fails before you have rebuilt a earlier failure).

 

If you can, buy a second 4TB drive and just have a 2x 4TB array (1 data 1 par).

[dundundundudun]

How old are the existing drives? If they are marginal this could end up in data loss (i.e. more than two drives fail at the same time or a second fails before you have rebuilt a earlier failure).

 

If you can, buy a second 4TB drive and just have a 2x 4TB array (1 data 1 par).

 

ill be paying $200 (+ a bit more for shipping) for a 4tb drive from newegg as im dealing with Canadian prices and at the moment i cant really afford to buy anything for at least this month, the drives are around 4 years old.

also these drives will only be used temporarily im hoping i'll be able to buy new drives every paycheck so long as i can afford it due to bills and other payments starting august.

really only need to last me for the rest of this month possibly until mid august depending on money.

[mr-hexen]

I get the CDN dollar penalty (Toronto area here), at the least you should post smart logs for each of your current drives to weed out the bad ones a head of time.

[dundundundudun]

i've decided to just wait until i can buy the WD Reds before doing anything else.

 

question regarding point 2, if all im going to be using the ssd for is docker/vm's am i still assigning it as a cache drive? also does it need to have a specific format like xfs?

 

I just bought a new pc so this unraid system is essentially my old gaming system.

 

what ill be doing with unRAID:

Sonarr, NZBGet, Transmission, Plex Media Server, Couchpotato, Music Server. Ill also be using it to backup other documents/pictures which ill also backup to the cloud

 

Intel i5 3570k

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe (Dual NIC)

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB RAM x3 (24GB Total)

Corsair CX600M

Antec P100 Mid Tower Case

 

Samsung 840 SSD (128GB) Cache

2TB Seagate

2TB WD Green x2

4TB WD Green Parity

1TB WD Green

 

I originally had a mini ITX P8Z77-I Deluxe that i was going to use but it died suddenly i got this new motherboard on a good deal and the case wasn't too expensive plus its actually pretty nice and holds 7 Drives which is more  then enough for me,  ill eventually swap out the hard drives with 3TB WD Red's.

 

Thoughts? Also what exactly can i do with VM's? Not really sure how i can use them.

I also haven't purchased unRAID yet but ill be using my own USB when i do, how do i go about finding the GUID of the USB?

 

A few suggestions:

 

2. Add your cache drive SSD and create the docker.img file.

 

 

Have fun!

[mr-hexen]

Technically you dont HAVE to assign the SSD as a cache drive, but its the simplest way to get up and running.

 

Just because the SSD is assigned as a cache drive does not mean it has to get used by shares for caching the data. You can set the shares to not use it globally.

 

Also, it does not have to be formatted with a specific file system, however many have run into issues when formatting it as BTRFS. I personally use XFS on mine and have not run into a single problem. XFS is a nice mature FS where BTRFS is in its infancy.

[HellDiverUK]

XFS is a nice mature FS where BTRFS is in its infancy.

 

btrfs is younger, but it's being worked on a lot.  It's not what I'd call in infancy.  More like stroppy teenager.

[AndroidCat]

Splunk docker does not run under btrfs. I had to reformat mine to xfs and restore all the dockers. Just FYI if you're going to use splunk. But that's weird app problem not filesystem issue.