Few Questions before committing

[syrys]

Hey There,

 

Im interested in using unraid, but I have few questions before committing to the time/money investment. Hopefully someone here might be able to help me make the decision easier

 

1. Does unraid support multiple parity disks? (multi disk failure without loosing data).

 

2. I tested unraid couple of months back, but at the time, i didnt see any multi parity option (maybe i was mistaken), but one of the latest Linus videos, i saw some options on his screen indicating multi parity. Im assuming he was using a beta version. So assuming the current version of unRaid does not support multi parity, can i have a rough ETA on when this will be available?

 

3. I would like to upgrade most of my PCs to use unraid, not to use unraid functionality, but mainly because of consistency and the benefits of running the OS in a VM (backups, remote control etc). So, from a cost perspective, would i then need to buy individual keys for every box? or, is there some multi key package i can buy? As you can tell, the price is not cheap if you install it on all your machines, however, i do not argue the price vs value (if you use unraid for all its features, its very much worth the price, but in my scenario, i will hardly be using its features).

 

4. How many different unraid disk arrays can you have at one point? Im assuming its only 1, but is there any plans on the future of adding multi array support? If so, do you have an ETA?

 

5. Can you use a drive that is not in the unraid array? Lets say i want to install VM into a completely seperate drive (not one that is on the array), some super special SSD maybe. Or, what if, i want to have one of my VMs have access to a drive that is plugged into the computer but not part of the unraid array (some drive pass through option?)? Is any of these possible?

 

That is all for now, i may have few more later

 

TY in advance.

[itimpi]

1. Does unraid support multiple parity disks? (multi disk failure without loosing data).

 

2. I tested unraid couple of months back, but at the time, i didnt see any multi parity option (maybe i was mistaken), but one of the latest Linus videos, i saw some options on his screen indicating multi parity. Im assuming he was using a beta version. So assuming the current version of unRaid does not support multi parity, can i have a rough ETA on when this will be available?

Not in the current release.  dual parity is going to be a feature of the next release (6.2).  We do not have an ETA other than 'soon'.  We know that it is internal testing within Limetech (and possibly in a private beta) but so far there has been no public beta.

 

3. I would like to upgrade most of my PCs to use unraid, not to use unraid functionality, but mainly because of consistency and the benefits of running the OS in a VM (backups, remote control etc). So, from a cost perspective, would i then need to buy individual keys for every box? or, is there some multi key package i can buy? As you can tell, the price is not cheap if you install it on all your machines, however, i do not argue the price vs value (if you use unraid for all its features, its very much worth the price, but in my scenario, i will hardly be using its features).

There is no standard multi-pack license.  You always have the option to approach Limetech to see if they would quote you a price.

 

There is also the option of using the 'free' license as long as you are prepared to renew it every 30 days and live within the 3 attached devices limit.

 

4. How many different unraid disk arrays can you have at one point? Im assuming its only 1, but is there any plans on the future of adding multi array support? If so, do you have an ETA?

Only a single array is supported and I have seen no suggestion that support for multiple arrays will ever be added although there have been discussions about it.  What has not been raised is a very good Use Case for it to justify making it a feature worth investing development effort into.

 

5. Can you use a drive that is not in the unraid array? Lets say i want to install VM into a completely seperate drive (not one that is on the array), some super special SSD maybe. Or, what if, i want to have one of my VMs have access to a drive that is plugged into the computer but not part of the unraid array (some drive pass through option?)? Is any of these possible?

You can use drives that are not part of the array, but they still count against the attached devices limit for everything except the Pro license.

 

[syrys]

Hey There,

 

Thanks for the response, and sorry for my late response.

 

First of all, i should clarify, are you actually associated with limetech or just a community member aiding support to me? Just checking

 

Not in the current release.  dual parity is going to be a feature of the next release (6.2).  We do not have an ETA other than 'soon'.  We know that it is internal testing within Limetech (and possibly in a private beta) but so far there has been no public beta.

Fair enough. In related to this.

1a. is there any way i can get in on this beta?

1b. I i install 6.1.x now, would i seemlessly (without too much effort and no risk of loosing any data on the drives etc) be able to upgrade to 6.2 later when it comes out?

1c. If 1b is yes, then can i effortlessly add 1 more drive to my existing 1 parity disk array as a 2nd parity (since 6.1.x does not have 2 parity and 6.2.x will) without too much effort and not risk loosing data from the array? 1d. is theer any other information that we have in regurds to release time (for 6.2)? Reason im asking is, i dont want to regrest moving to an alternative (and investing too much in it, already have amd prefer not going too far down the path), and at the same time dont want to regret waiting around for ages in hopes for the 6.2 launch and potentially risking my data in the meantime.

 

There is no standard multi-pack license.  You always have the option to approach Limetech to see if they would quote you a price.

 

There is also the option of using the 'free' license as long as you are prepared to renew it every 30 days and live within the 3 attached devices limit.

2a. Great, i might do that. Im guessing you are not part of limetech, and i probably should be approaching you with this question?

2b. for couple of my machines, the 3 attached device limit should be alright, but atleast 1 of them would need quite a bit more (small home file/media server).

2c. Do you know what the process of "renewing" the license is? If it expires, what does that do? Disable the entire system?

 

Only a single array is supported and I have seen no suggestion that support for multiple arrays will ever be added although there have been discussions about it.  What has not been raised is a very good Use Case for it to justify making it a feature worth investing development effort into.

 

You can use drives that are not part of the array, but they still count against the attached devices limit for everything except the Pro license.

3a. So, good use case 1: if your machine has multiple SSDs (lets say performance ssd like samsung 850 pro and cheap ssds like samsung 850 evo), and you want certain folders/virtual-drives attached to certain SSD (ie. OS installs on the performance SSD). Use case 2: You might want 1 array for performance (SSD + 1 or 2 performance HDDs like WD Blacks) for game/app installations, and another array for long term storage with 1 or 2 parities. Heck, im my case, i prefer to have a 1 parity array and a 2 parity array if possible (and use them for different reasons like media storage vs backups).

3b. hmm, that second part is annoying. I really wish that the limitation only applies to the drives in the array and not the drives passed through to the VM. I mean, i can understand that is limetech's business model, but some of us (me) wants to use unRaid for consistency between all my machines (use unraid on all rather than just 1) and not use most of its features, but having to pay extra for simply passing my drives through to the VM kind of annoys me a bit. I really wish limetech would reconsider this.

 

Cheers.

[CHBMB]

I'm on my mobile so will keep this brief..

 

1a - No, it's not public yet.

1b - Yes

1c - Yes

 

2a - Email LT but for only two or three licenses I wouldn't expect much or any discount.

2b - There are three licensing tiers, have a look on the website.

2c - Licenses traditionally haven't expired.  I've been using the same one since V4.7, not to say this won't change in the future though.

 

3a - It may be useful to you, but that doesn't mean it'll be widely adopted.  You can have a parity protected array of spinners and a cache pool of SSD with redundancy.  Take a look at the website that may be suitable for you.

 

3b - Problem with your idea is then people can just pay minimum price for using Unraid as a hypervisor.  You want to use KVM, some storage, what about docker? LT team got to eat....  I maintain it's a very reasonably priced product for the features on offer.  I'm not aware of any better solution other than rolling your own with all the complexity that involves.  Coupled with the current licensing model I think you'll struggle to convince anyone that if you can afford to setup multiple Unraid machines that you can't afford Unraid itself.

 

[syrys]

hey CHBMB,

 

TY for the response.

 

2a: yup, ill try find a way to contact them and explain my situation

2b: yup, im aware. I would definitely need one of the 2 bigger tiers for the media server, but all other machines could do with 3-4 drives at max (they are just common every day gaming/work pcs, so free or bottom tire will do).

2c: ah, i think we are talking about 2 different things. When i was asking about license expiring, i meant about the "free" license. as itimpi claimed, free license needs to be renewed every 30 days?. Im just not sure if this is true, and if so, what this involves.

 

3a: i see, yeah i will look more into that. I was just looking for a bit of flexibility here, off the top of my head i cant come up with reasons to need it, but having such feature obviously means that its more future proof if your requirements change right? because settling with a file storage system is a big deal, and for home users, its a great deal of money/investment. Just to give you an idea, due to unRaid not having multi parity, few months back, i have chosen to go with flexraid. I have always loved the idea of unRaid, but it just didn't meet my requirements (still dont, but 6.2 sounds like it will). But just to give you an idea, to swap from flexraid to unRaid (without any data loss), i would like to spend another $500-1000 or so of hardware (new drive to migrate to, probably even a new pc, + licenses), and thats not a small cost for a home user, so i need to be really sure i want to do this, thus the huge wall of questions haha

 

3b: Yeah understand. im in no way saying unRaid is not worth the money. I just mean the payment structure is targeted for more advanced users rather than the average joe home user (probably for good reason, as they arnt the target users). Saying that though, in my scenario, if i were to use unRaid on all my machines, my media server will use a dual parity array of 5+ drives + windows VM, and all other machines will simply use an array with 1 or 2 ssd + HDD and a Windows VM (nothing else). As you can tell, the extra computers arnt really using unRaid, its just so the 2-3 drives can be combined as well as the benefits of running the OS in a VM (maybe im being silly for installing unRaid on those computers huh?). But saying that though, i can see the concern with pricing. But i still feel that passing a drive to the VM (windows) shouldnt be counted towards the unRaid license (but by all means, count the ones used for the array), as it does not make use of any unraid features (as opposed to installing windows directly instead of through unRaid), as well as create extra trouble for home users as they need to keep a track of the drive counts and license details when buying/adding drives to the pc.

 

All the above comments are from my perspective anyway. Im by no means trying to devalue unRaid nor offend anyone (sorry if i do). Its just another perspective (from a potential client base) for maybe LT staff to read and consider

[CHBMB]

No offence taken whatsoever...

 

My tuppence worth...

 

The free trial is exactly what it says a 30 day trial of Unraid with limitations... See here..

 

It may at LT's discretion be extended for a longer period if you contact them, but it doesn't and wasn't really designed as a way to use Unraid functionality for free, it's designed as a way for you to test it out and see if you like it.

 

No offence but if you can find the money to spend $500 - $1000 on hardware then you can afford to factor in the price of software, especially when you own as many machines as you state.

 

You clearly need some NAS functionality and in my opinion Unraid fits the bill, and you will need a license for that and if you need to upgrade at a later stage then upgrade prices are available.

 

I would suggest keeping things simple at the moment.  Use the trial, if you like it, then buy a single license for that and get used to it.  Then when you are better placed to make an informed decision, that would be a good time to decide if you want to install it on all your Windows desktops.  Not something I would personally do, but that's just my opinion.  If it were me I'd centralise all the storage and keep my desktops on bare metal and running a minimum number of drives.

 

I think you're missing the point when you say that passing a drive through to a VM shouldn't count as a drive within Unraid as it's Unraid that gives you the ability to passthrough the drive in the first place.

 

There's no reason you can't use a free Linux distro and get all this accomplished without purchasing anything, but you'd be getting down and dirty with some pretty complicated stuff and my view is that you pay for the convenience and ease of use that Unraid provides with it's KVM and docker management.

 

As for Flexraid, I'm not proud, but I tried it, I left Unraid after running V5 for a long while to try Flexraid, I lasted less than 9 months before I migrated all my storage back to Unraid and I won't be trying it again.  Overly complicated and in my experience, flakey, with a large array and a reinstall of Windows and Flexraid and all my applications on top was a days work, and it was something I had to endure on several occasions.  I can backup my Unraid flash and be back and running again within a couple of hours max...

Flexraid also requires a new license if you buy new hardware, Unraid does not, plus as you run the OS from a flash, it's one more drive that can be connected for storage.. 

 

I think one reason I am quite defensive about the value of Unraid is that I remember V4.7 and V5.0 and I can clearly see how much of an improvement V6 has been and how much work has gone into it and I think it is very much worth the money.

 

[itimpi]

2c: ah, i think we are talking about 2 different things. When i was asking about license expiring, i meant about the "free" license. as itimpi claimed, free license needs to be renewed every 30 days?. Im just not sure if this is true, and if so, what this involves.

I have not tried it myself, but am going from what has been said in the forum!  I got into unRAID some time ago when Limetech were doing a very good deal to add licenses after the first one so have Pro licenses for all my machines plus a spare for testing.

 

As I understand it if the 'free' license expires it will no longer allow you to start the array.  At that point you can use the same process as was used for the original 'free' license to get another 30 day one.  One point is that I do not believe that Limetech have guaranteed that they will always allow renewing of the 'free' license so you should take that into account when planning what to do.

[John_M]

Regarding the lack of support for multiple unRAID arrays in one box, there's a possible work round that might suit your requirements. When you create a user share you can specify which array disks are included (default is "all") and which are excluded (default is "none"), so you could set up multiple shares that use different combinations of physical disks, all protected by the same parity disk(s).

 

[syrys]

Hey guys,

 

hope you dont mind me digging this up again 3 months later.

 

I have couple of new questions. Is anyone able to give me some answers to these? Limetech staff? admins/mods?

 

1. i see that the 6.2.x version is now available to be downloaded on the main download page under beta. Does anyone have an ETA on when 6.2.x will be classified under "stable"?

 

2. is there any known bug list for 6.2.x? If i install 6.2.x beta version, i want to know what im getting my self into Obviously not good if there is any risk of losing all my data haha.

 

3. Is there any way to Label (give custom name) to the drives you add to unraid array? The reason i ask this is, i tested an older version of unraid about 6 months back, and on the drive array page it was listing the drives with some serial number of sorts. So, if some drive fails (and if i have a lot of drives), there is no easy way for me to tell which drive that actually failed is (i will have to unplug things one at a time to see which is which). Same goes for when you are upgrading/replacing a drive for example. With my current software raid solution, i can give each drive on the raid a custom name (say HDD_A, HDD_B, HDD_C), and i can write down the custom name on a label on the physical drive, so when i open the box, its easy to replace any given hdd. If such feature is not included, could i please request it?

 

Thanks guys.

[JonathanM]

1. i see that the 6.2.x version is now available to be downloaded on the main download page under beta. Does anyone have an ETA on when 6.2.x will be classified under "stable"?

When it's done. Not trying to be a smartaleck, but long years of experience with limetech has taught me not to try to pin down ETA's or dates. It will be labeled stable when they are ready, and no amount of whining, cajoling or pleading will produce accurate future release dates. Not because limetech doesn't want to tell you, it's that they don't know themselves until it happens.

2. is there any known bug list for 6.2.x? If i install 6.2.x beta version, i want to know what im getting my self into Obviously not good if there is any risk of losing all my data haha.

Read the beta release threads. That's where most of the issues are disclosed and discussed.

3. Is there any way to Label (give custom name) to the drives you add to unraid array? The reason i ask this is, i tested an older version of unraid about 6 months back, and on the drive array page it was listing the drives with some serial number of sorts. So, if some drive fails (and if i have a lot of drives), there is no easy way for me to tell which drive that actually failed is (i will have to unplug things one at a time to see which is which). Same goes for when you are upgrading/replacing a drive for example. With my current software raid solution, i can give each drive on the raid a custom name (say HDD_A, HDD_B, HDD_C), and i can write down the custom name on a label on the physical drive, so when i open the box, its easy to replace any given hdd. If such feature is not included, could i please request it?

The drive manufacturer helpfully has pre labeled all your drives with a custom number that unraid displays for you. That "some serial number of sorts" IS the drive's serial number that is already on the drive label.

[tdallen]

Since the manufacturer's serial numbers are usually long, rather small, and in an inconvenient location I get a label maker and place a label on each disk in a prominent location with the last 4 digits of the serial number (or more if you need in order to be unique).  Put the label someplace you'll be able to see it when the drive is mounted in the chassis.  Don't bother with sda, sdb, etc - those device IDs can change.

[trurl]

3. Is there any way to Label (give custom name) to the drives you add to unraid array?

Others have already given good responses to this, but you might also check out the Server Layout plugin which will let you make a visual representation of which drives are physically located where in your drive bays.

[syrys]

Thanks heaps guys.

 

sorry, i didnt mean to imply rushing to get 6.2.x into stable or anything (i like what limetech are doing, better to be sure than to rush). I use a different software raid (FlexRaid), and im keen to upgrade/switch to unraid. However, the features i require (dual parity) are only available in 6.2.x (i think). The reason i was asking for sort of a stable ETA or stability of the 6.2.x is because im not sure if its a wise idea for me to move to a non stable (beta) version of unraid, and im unaware about what risks i would be taking by doing so. Thus why im trying to get some information before making the decision. I will have a read of the beta release threads.

 

Pretty much the question im trying to decide for my self is: Should i switch to unraid 6.2.x even though its in beta, or put up with the current software raid i have and wait till 6.2.x is out of beta and into stable, or upgrade to unraid 6.1.x (deal with the single parity) and wait for the 6.2.x update?

 

One final set of questions for those of you who are familiar with unRaid. Say i install unraid 6.1.x (latest stable version), when 6.2.x becomes stable, would there be a straight forward easy upgrade from one stable to the other stable (is this automated)? And, if i have a 6.1.x raid with a single parity and somehow upgrade to the upcoming 6.2.x (stable), could then easily add a 2nd parity disk to the raid without having too much trouble (and without risking any data loss in the process)?

[trurl]

...One final set of questions for those of you who are familiar with unRaid. Say i install unraid 6.1.x (latest stable version), when 6.2.x becomes stable, would there be a straight forward easy upgrade from one stable to the other stable (is this automated)? And, if i have a 6.1.x raid with a single parity and somehow upgrade to the upcoming 6.2.x (stable), could then easily add a 2nd parity disk to the raid without having too much trouble (and without risking any data loss in the process)?

Yes and yes.

[syrys]

awesome, thanks so much for everyone that helped, i will work on my upgrade hardware

[CyberSkulls]

As to your question about drive labeling, I have suggested this very thing as a new feature but nobody was interested in the idea.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[John_M]

FWIW the NAS features of unRAID 6.2.0-beta21 seem to be pretty solid, as does Docker support. Most of the recent posts on the release thread are from people trying to do some fairly extreme virtualisation. Since virtualisation isn't really my interest but I really wanted dual parity I decided to adopt the beta version and it has proved to be every bit as solid in my experience as 6.1.19. I know it's beta and I do have backups so for my purposes it was well worth the risk.

[syrys]

FWIW the NAS features of unRAID 6.2.0-beta21 seem to be pretty solid, as does Docker support. Most of the recent posts on the release thread are from people trying to do some fairly extreme virtualisation. Since virtualisation isn't really my interest but I really wanted dual parity I decided to adopt the beta version and it has proved to be every bit as solid in my experience as 6.1.19. I know it's beta and I do have backups so for my purposes it was well worth the risk.

Things im storing are media, for which i have no other backups. They arnt all that important and definatly replaceable, but extra level of protection is very nice to have. Saying that though, i will be using windows VM within unRaid, so i will stick to stable for now and hopefully upgrading the array from 1 parity to 2 when 6.2.x becomes stable doesnt make me want to pull out my hair.

 

As to your question about drive labeling, I have suggested this very thing as a new feature but nobody was interested in the idea.

I cannot understand why people would be un-interested in this. blows my mind. and to be fair, it would be fairly simple to implement (though they would need to search for every instance of the serial number usage and likely plugins will need to be updated to use the feature), just having a list of serial numbers against a label and instead of showing the serial number, to show the label. In my mind, this is a feature that you would simply expect not request. Ah well, i have no right to complain, im not a paid user yet.

[testdasi]

I think the issue is with prioritisation. Between something that is a (probably minor) inconvenient "quality of life" kinda item and major features (e.g. 2nd parity / nvme support etc.), I think majority of users would prefer the latter (so the devs also pick the latter even though the former would be quite easy to implement).

 

I personally would like to have the labelling feature but still would use it otherwise. I won't use unRAID without nvme support.