Hello,

 

I've been lurking for a little while and been reading up on unRAID especially the threads on whether it is right for me. I like the premise and I think it would be a good fit for me on everything I've read. I've been eying one of Lime Tech's pre-built servers and still have a few questions that I've emailed Lime Tech about and awaiting their answer on other matters before making a final decision (mostly specific information on their servers).

 

While I'm waiting, I'd like to know if you had to start all over again today...would you go unRAID again?

 

Does anyone have their MD-1510/LL with Fan Controller unit and can tell me how noisy it is?

 

Thx!

 

 

While I'm waiting, I'd like to know if you had to start all over again today...would you go unRAID again?

 

 

Yes, I would. Although it took me much more effort to migrate than I initially expected (came from Windows Soft-Raid-5).

 

But there is no universal answer, because it depends on what you're after, what you want to do, what purpose - UnRaid (when using some community addons) meets MY requirements almost 100%, so I am fine with it (using 2 x Pro license "production" plus 1 x pro license test).

 

 

 

yep

 

i've put a few guys i work with onto it. i wouldn't be recommending a product to them if i wasnt satisfied with unraid.

I would.  After 3 years, I had my first drive die this weekend.  I just put in a new drive and had no issues with it rebuilding.  No data was lost.  For me, Unraid  (and XBMC) has been a perfect solution.  The ability to add different drives as I progressed is what sold me. 

Yes

 

Personally  the most important benefit offered by unRAID is that if the array fails, the individual drives are still accessible, unlike traditional RAID arrays.  The ability to pull out a disk and read it on any Linux box brings significant peace of mind.  In traditional RAID if two disks fails, your likely to lose everything in the array, while with unRAID you'll only lose the contents of the two disks, and will be lost.

 

The ease with which unRAID can be expanded by simply adding a disk is faster and safer than you will find in other systems.  I've gone from two disks to seven over a twelve month period with trivial effort. I'll be able to grow to ten disks before I need to replace any disks with larger ones.

 

Recovering from an unRAID multiple disk failure is also significantly faster as only data on the lost disks needs to be recovered, and the rest of the disks can still be used.

 

Yes. It's been rock solid and performs better than the old Raid-5 system I replaced. It's also easier and more flexible to expand storage wise.

Although I am new, I'm happy so far using unRaid as my expandable storage solution. I'm quiet impress how well Linux handles whatever I throw at it. Even better than similar windows counter parts.

Yes.

 

The only thing I'd change is buying a case that easily fits 15+ drives, and going with a bit lesser hardware specs (my 4GB of RAM and 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo don't get used much).

All things considered probably not. Would be a tough choice though.

 

Slightly hypocritical as I'll probably continue to run it for a while given I have too much storage invested in it now to move solution 'easily'.

 

If you find it too noisy you can replace the fans on the supermicro backplanes with low noise equivalnets whilst still slowing them using the fan controller.

 

This will give you an acceptable level of noise. Really though a 20 disk storage server will never be quiet and the above solution is about as good as you'll get. The vibrational noise (let alone motor or seek noises) of 20 disks going at once is significant if nothing else!

All things considered probably not. Would be a tough choice though.

 

Slightly hypocritical as I'll probably continue to run it for a while given I have too much storage invested in it now to move solution 'easily'.

 

If you find it too noisy you can replace the fans on the supermicro backplanes with low noise equivalnets whilst still slowing them using the fan controller.

 

This will give you an acceptable level of noise. Really though a 20 disk storage server will never be quiet and the above solution is about as good as you'll get. The vibrational noise (let alone motor or seek noises) of 20 disks going at once is significant if nothing else!

 

My 16 drive machine is basically silent. It has rubber damping in the drive cages though: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2031.msg34915#msg34915

All things considered probably not. Would be a tough choice though.

 

Slightly hypocritical as I'll probably continue to run it for a while given I have too much storage invested in it now to move solution 'easily'.

 

If you find it too noisy you can replace the fans on the supermicro backplanes with low noise equivalnets whilst still slowing them using the fan controller.

 

This will give you an acceptable level of noise. Really though a 20 disk storage server will never be quiet and the above solution is about as good as you'll get. The vibrational noise (let alone motor or seek noises) of 20 disks going at once is significant if nothing else!

 

Interesting.  Why would you switch, and what would you switch to?

All things considered probably not. Would be a tough choice though.

 

Slightly hypocritical as I'll probably continue to run it for a while given I have too much storage invested in it now to move solution 'easily'.

 

If you find it too noisy you can replace the fans on the supermicro backplanes with low noise equivalnets whilst still slowing them using the fan controller.

 

This will give you an acceptable level of noise. Really though a 20 disk storage server will never be quiet and the above solution is about as good as you'll get. The vibrational noise (let alone motor or seek noises) of 20 disks going at once is significant if nothing else!

 

My 16 drive machine is basically silent. It has rubber damping in the drive cages though: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2031.msg34915#msg34915

 

Difficult to do with the supermicro cages? Although I'd be interested if anyone has - I can audibly tell which disks in my array are spun up based on the case vibrational tone! Damping the drive cages within the supermicro case would definitely help.

 

As for if your machine is silent there is no point arguing or debating - silence and levels of quiet are entirely subjective. Unfortunately I fall towards the more critical end of the spectrum. My desktop machine whose loudest component is the noise of the air flow across vents is still too loud for me.

Interesting.  Why would you switch, and what would you switch to?

 

My reasons for switching can be found by searching my previous posts across the forum. Apologies for being deliberately obtuse but I don't think my stance is a popular one and I don't want to steer this topic towards that debate again for the OP's sake!

 

Happy to PM if you wish to discuss.

 

WHS is the obvious alternative candidate. It gives the you the power savings of spinning down idle drives, individual recoverable drives in the event of failure and better performance. However you lose the parity approach and have to mirror individual shares 1:1. I think I would accept the additional storage overhead for the little critical data I have on my array thats not already being backed up elsewhere.

 

I have a watchful eye on ZFS. It's unlikely to have disk spindown within the array or individually recoverable drives any time soon given it's basically RAID. But the checksumming and other management and data lifecycle features are attractive. Easy online expandability keeps it entirely off the list at the moment!

 

File level solutions like flexraid or disparity are also on the cusp of being usable. All have their own issues but could be worked around or used in conjunction with something like WHS for a better overall solution. If the flexraid author ever actually releases the promised flexraid live and flexraid NAS things will get very interesting overnight.

 

Having used it for 5 months or so I can say I'm reasonably happy with it.  (I don't have a limetech box, migrated from FreeNAS. Very little linux knowledge)

 

pros :-

easy to add capacity

good support via forums

just works

 

cons :-

Performance is pretty poor, but adequate for its primary use (Media server). 

Painful getting all of things I'd like it do out of the box working (UPS, email, SNMP, Any monitoring!)

Even more painful getting it do do what most NAS solutions do out of the box (Torrent, AFP, UPnP, iTunes)

Terrible UI

I am not trying to nitpick here but this below:

 

Terrible UI

 

I don't quite agree with.  The webUI as it is designed now, does exactly what is needed for the product as it is released.  Granted there are some things that could be polished up, but it does what it needs to and does it just fine.  He wants the novice to be able to use it and NOT screw something up by adding on different things.  His mindset seems to be "data integrity first, everything else second" which i happen to agree with since this is a NAS product.  Since the base od unRAID is a slackware linux it can be expanded upon if someone wants to, they can also, if they feel the need install it onto a full slasckware distribution.

I am not trying to nitpick here but this below:

 

Terrible UI

 

I don't quite agree with.  The webUI as it is designed now, does exactly what is needed for the product as it is released. 

 

I don't think it would do any harm to put a little one liner explanation next to each field saying what it represents, especially boxes where you enter a number. I don't have a problem with how it looks.

I looked at unRaid about 3 years ago as a solution and decided to go with a big windows box. It finally filled to the brim and I looked into into an expandable (and redundant) storage solution. The support I received in my build thread helped me a to make a decision. I'm so very glad I didn't go with a drobo. My only concern was the longevity of the company. I plan to keep my unRaid for many years (still have some room to grow) and hope the community support is there if I need it. Although, currently I feel 4.5b11 could run for years without an issue (I still have a few questions about some syslog lines). I only need to get 3 services working and the computer will be perfect.

 

Boof, I'm a little jaded with windows these days since I've been a windows programmer for 10+ years. Being new to linux, I like the predictability of it so far.

 

cdp181, I agree. unMenu should be installed by everyone. I go to it first mostly.

Would I do it again?

 

Yes, without hesitation. 

 

I used to have a Linux RAID 1 environment.

I've had a couple of the little NAS linux RAID5 boxes.

unRAID helped me slice off the number of spindles and get the most out of my drives for media and basic home file storage.

The segregated storage drives, yet consolidated view helps provide ease in view, finding and expansion.

The emergency ability to remove a drive and still access my data is something that always helps keep my mind at ease if a problem arises. This was one of the reasons I used linux software RAID1 so much. A critical situation still allowed me to mount the drive elsewhere and access the data.

 

I love the idea that the OS is really residing in ram saving a spindle.

 

Thanks to everyone. I'm still reading and learning and I still think it'll fit my needs. I saw comments about expandability, etc. that was high on my personal requirements.

 

I'm also of the opinion that noise is subjective. My personal PC is pretty much silent as it has a passive video card and is in an Antec Sonata case. The only time I hear anything is when the hard drive or DVD is being read. The unRAID's ability to spin down drives and only have the drive active on the items that is streaming is one of the main attractions for me. I'm hoping that I can sort my collection of data so that I can have a minimal amount of drives that aren't normally sleeping going.

 

 

 

My personal PC is pretty much silent as it has a passive video card and is in an Antec Sonata case. The only time I hear anything is when the hard drive or DVD is being read.

 

 

I was spending quite some efforts in the past to get my UnRaid boxes silent and powerefficient, quite successful imho, but:

There is an even more interesting feature (although NOT officially supported by limetech): "S3" - Currently I hear nothing from my boxes and powerconsumption is approx 2 watts, providing lots of terabytes of mediastorage just by pressing the remote on any HTPC (that wakes up the boxes via WOL in just some seconds).

I am very happy with that setup, although it was quite some trouble until it worked just this way.

 

 

 

My personal PC is pretty much silent as it has a passive video card and is in an Antec Sonata case. The only time I hear anything is when the hard drive or DVD is being read.

 

 

I was spending quite some efforts in the past to get my UnRaid boxes silent and powerefficient, quite successful imho, but:

There is an even more interesting feature (although NOT officially supported by limetech): "S3" - Currently I hear nothing from my boxes and powerconsumption is approx 2 watts, providing lots of terabytes of mediastorage just by pressing the remote on any HTPC (that wakes up the boxes via WOL in just some seconds).

I am very happy with that setup, although it was quite some trouble until it worked just this way.

 

 

 

OooOoo....I'll look up "S3". I know you mentioned NOT officially supported by Lime-Tech, but do you know if it will work on their MD-1510 servers or do I need to build my own (which is something I'm trying to avoid)?

 

...

 

While I'm waiting, I'd like to know if you had to start all over again today...would you go unRAID again?

 

...

 

 

This is a bit of a trick question are there are no other solutions out there that do what unRAID does and is commercially supported.

 

Would i use unRAID again, definitely.

 

Would I switch if a alternative became available that allowed multiple arrays, no drive limits, upgrade without a forced reboot. Probably

 

Would i switch if a Debian based competitor came out. Definitely.

 

Would i switch if a full HDD install competitor came out. Definitely.

 

These wont happen any time soon though, bixarly unRAID has had the whole market segment to itself for years now.

 

My personal PC is pretty much silent as it has a passive video card and is in an Antec Sonata case. The only time I hear anything is when the hard drive or DVD is being read.

 

 

I was spending quite some efforts in the past to get my UnRaid boxes silent and powerefficient, quite successful imho, but:

There is an even more interesting feature (although NOT officially supported by limetech): "S3" - Currently I hear nothing from my boxes and powerconsumption is approx 2 watts, providing lots of terabytes of mediastorage just by pressing the remote on any HTPC (that wakes up the boxes via WOL in just some seconds).

I am very happy with that setup, although it was quite some trouble until it worked just this way.

 

 

 

OooOoo....I'll look up "S3". I know you mentioned NOT officially supported by Lime-Tech, but do you know if it will work on their MD-1510 servers or do I need to build my own (which is something I'm trying to avoid)?

 

 

I have no idea, because I made my own build - maybe some other user can tell if or not they got S3-powerstate properly running (incl. wakeup!) on the Limetech-Servers.

I started with hardware I had already, that didn't work - and ended up buying new MoBo & components (to be honest: I tested several boards, NICs and combinations...).

BTW: Not supported by limetech means, there is no guarantee, that it's either working nor that it won't have negative sideeffects. I hope this to change, because it's imho for the segment UnRaid is adressing a more than important feature.

unRAID is, in my opinion, an unbeatable storage for archiving purposes.

I use it to archive my data stored on a "higher tier" NAS device (I use Nexenta - an opensolaris based system, so I take advantage of zfs features as well as performance of a striped array since I run my vSphere server off it).

I wish the mobo I use supported WOL, but at least I can spindown the drives so power consumption is relatively low between times I rsync my data.

Back to original question, yes, I would do it again. The idea and the product are truly amazing.

I would do it again as well, despite the lack of some Mac specific functionality. I agree that the gui is spartan, but for the standard features that Unraid has it does the job, you could even say that due to its lack of functionality that the user can more or less just forget about it unless the array needs to be taken off line or the server shutdown. There is room for improvement, as there is for every product or person, and hopefully Unraid 5.0 will lay the groundwork for more integrated functions then today's solution of add on packages started via the go script.

 

The usb stick is a pain, but I can understand it from a licensing perspective, though I think that the (unnecessarily) pared down nature of Unraid is due to a wish to bind the license to a piece of hardware that only has (had) a limited capacity. I keep mine on the inside of my chassis, since it doesn't take much to break one buy accident.