Jump to content

Considering unRAID: Samba server to Windows client performance?


HoliestNoir

Recommended Posts

Posted

I am currently planning to build a NAS, and use it both for media streaming and as a Samba server so that I can easily access files from Windows and Mac desktop computers. In my past experiences with various Linux distros, the ease of setting up and connecting to Samba networks is variable to say the least. A bit of searching find complaints about SMB performance on most distros, including unRAID. Of course another solution would be to get an NFS add-on for Windows, but that entails its own risk of problems.

So I would like to hear from some people who have unRAID working nicely as both a media server and as a file server to Windows computers. How do you have it set up, and did you have to do anything special on either computer to optimize performance?

 

In addition to unRAID, I am also considering mdadm RAID5/6 with Amahi, OpenMediaVault, or just a regular Ubuntu Server .

Posted

If by performance you mean read/write speed, then unRAID will not compete with RAID5/6 and doesn't try to since it is designed to not use striping. There are many other advantages that unRAID gets from not striping, such as mixing drive sizes and complete independence of the data on each drive.

 

unRAID read speed is adequate for 1GB LAN though.

Posted

SMB is not the bottleneck in unRAID. The main limitation is due to the parity involved when writing to the array.

If you will not be using the parity option then it will not limit you.

Reading doesn't have this limitation - limited only by the drive speed and the network connection.

 

Posted

I probably should have titled my post "reliability" instead of performance.

90% of the time I will be reading, so I care much more about read performance. I am planning on having an SSD as a cache drive to speed things up a bit. Of course I don't want it to be horribly slow to copy new files to my NAS, but it's not the main issue.

Most important to me is that I be able to easily access my shares from all devices, with a minimum of the kinds of headaches I have had in the past with network file sharing.

Posted

Having used OpenMediaVault and plain vanilla Ubuntu Server. I can yell you that unRaid is a truly set it and forget it setup.  Docker is awesome.  OMV and Ubuntu give you the option of using SnapRAID for reduncy but isn't in real time.  You do a parity calculation at a set period; daily, hourly etc.

 

OMV interface is a bit archaic for my liking.  Ubuntu is relatively non-existent for a reliable frontend. 

 

Kryspy

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...