Hello all,

 

I am preparing my gaming system and brand new hard drives for the UnRAID setup. (My HDDs are currently undergoing a badblocks test)

In the mean time I have been reading and thinking about UnRAID, and I obviously have some questions.

 

Besides HDD's (3xWD Red 4tb, once 6.2 is stable I want to add more drives, including a extra Parity drive) I have SSD's. (1x 120gb 830 evo, 2x 128gb 840 pro and 1x 500gb 850 evo)

Now, at first I wanted to use the 2x 840 pro's as cache pool. And the 1x 850 as my Windows VM drive. And then the 830 as a Linux/Hackintosh VM. But reading into Cache and drives outside the UnRAID array got me confused.

 

What should I do to achieve what I want. And, is it even a good idea?

 

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Arndroid

Hello all,

 

I am preparing my gaming system and brand new hard drives for the UnRAID setup. (My HDDs are currently undergoing a badblocks test)

In the mean time I have been reading and thinking about UnRAID, and I obviously have some questions.

 

Besides HDD's (3xWD Red 4tb, once 6.2 is stable I want to add more drives, including a extra Parity drive) I have SSD's. (1x 120gb 830 evo, 2x 128gb 840 pro and 1x 500gb 850 evo)

Now, at first I wanted to use the 2x 840 pro's as cache pool. And the 1x 850 as my Windows VM drive. And then the 830 as a Linux/Hackintosh VM. But reading into Cache and drives outside the UnRAID array got me confused.

 

What should I do to achieve what I want. And, is it even a good idea?

 

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Arndroid

You can put all of those ssd's into a cache pool and put everything on them

 

Btrfs cache pool is very simple it will make sure that every bit of info is stored on two separate drives at any time. It is essentially a very flexible mirroring system

I though about that, but, a 500gb SSD is still larger than 3x 120gb SSD's. So mirror functionality isn't really gonna apply, right?

Besides, if UnRAID or other VM's/Apps are reading/writing to those SSD's (instead of just those 2 pro's), wont there be a performance impact?

 

Cheers,

Arndroid

I though about that, but, a 500gb SSD is still larger than 3x 120gb SSD's. So mirror functionality isn't really gonna apply, right?

Besides, if UnRAID or other VM's/Apps are reading/writing to those SSD's (instead of just those 2 pro's), wont there be a performance impact?

 

Cheers,

Arndroid

Right, I guess about 140GB might go unused on the 500GB drive.

 

In terms of performance hit, it's not calculating parity or anything, but writing to two separate drives at the same time. As long as there are no port/bus related bottlenecks the speed should be limited to the slower drive's speed

There's nothing wrong with your initial strategy, but what are you going to do with the cache pool?

 

Things can get confusing as you start moving things off the cache pool, so it's worth remembering that the cache pool is a good place for Dockers and VMs.

Well, my main concern is that when multiple VM's or Apps or even Shares are writing or reading to the SSD, it will become slower at that time.

I therefore want to isolate an SSD for just my Windows. For other VM's or Docker apps It's fine if they share they do it in a shared fasion.

 

But I'll think about it, if my presented concern is supposed to be negligible.

 

---

 

I wish to use my Cache Pool for such, VM's, Docker. Perchance even for some performance gain in writing towards the array over the network.

SSDs have gobs of bandwidth.  That said, if it were me I'd put Windows on the 850 and everything else on the pooled 840s, holding off on using the 830 for now (assuming that makes sense from a disk utilization perspective).  There's no wrong answer, though.

SSDs have gobs of bandwidth.  That said, if it were me I'd put Windows on the 850 and everything else on the pooled 840s, holding off on using the 830 for now (assuming that makes sense from a disk utilization perspective).  There's no wrong answer, though.

Yea that sounds about right. And the 830 is indeed just an extra wheel to this wagon.

 

I just purchased UnRAID Pro (12 storage devices), the Parity is syncing at the moment. (Just the HDD's, no SSD cache pool yet, will add the 840 pro's to that soon though.)

 

So, what should I do to make possible what you just said, putting Windows on the 850, exclusively. I imagine that the 850 SSD needs to be added to the array, unlike the 840's which need to be added to the pool. And than set everything up in some sort of way that makes the Windows VM the only thing being able to reside on it, basically.

 

Thanks for yall help by the way.

For the 850, take a look at the Unassigned Devices plugin.  It will make it easier to place the VM disk image on a device outside of the array.

I imagine that the 850 SSD needs to be added to the array,

For the moment, SSD's are not officially supported as array devices. They work, but there are some unknowns about internal garbage collection that need to be definitively answered before limetech can make a commitment to supporting them in the array. Since unraid uses every byte of every other drive, even an empty drive, to reconstruct another failed disk, it's fatal to the parity protection if a drive fiddles around with content without unraid knowing about it, even on empty spots of the drive. Trim in the array is a definite no-no, so performance may suffer over time regardless.

 

The cache pool is designed with SSD's and trim in mind, so that's where any SSD's need to go for now. Unassigned devices is a third party add on, not supported by limetech. So, if you are comfortable troubleshooting things yourself with the help of other forum users, go right ahead with UD, but if you want limetech direct support, you are better served keeping everything in the array or the cache pool. The community here is great, so if you are at all technical, we can help you solve most issues without involving limetech support directly.

Thanks for the Unassinged Devices plugin suggestion, I finally have been able to get around to it and try it.

 

Works great so far!

(Besides the UnRAID issue's of not being able to pass trough my Das Keyboard 4 Professional, it doesn't get listed under VM USB Devices, and editing the infos from System Devices into the VM XML doesn't help) (Reinstalling Windows 10 fixed my Bluetooth USB issue, edit: SCP Server installed their Bluetooth driver, which only allows PS controllers, oops)

 

Cheers and thanks again,

Arndroid

 

Edit:

I have a solution for the Das Keyboard issue, and including every other USB device without a vendor name!

 

I found this thread after a long Google:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234649

 

The UnRAID solution with this information:

Go to your Web UI > Tools > System Devices > USB Devices.

In there, find your USB device (by plugging it in and out see which nameless device changes).

Take note of the ID, example: ID 24f0:0140.

 

Now I SSH'd into Unraid, but do as you like.

Our "usb.ids" file is located in "/usr/share/" (Actually a link to hwdata/usb.ids)

We need to edit this file, I prefer to use nano, vi is wierd:

"sudo nano /usr/share/usb.ids"

 

In this file hold on to the template by adding your device so it's spacing is like the other devices in there:

24f0  Das Keyboard (Our Device)
        0140 Das Keyboard (Our Device)
2632  TwinMOS (Existing Device)
        3209  7-in-1 Card Reader (Existing Device)

 

Now, I didn't even need to restart UnRAID or my VM, using the Libvirt Hotplug USB plugin already saw it, and after Attaching it, it worked!

 

Cheers,

Arndroid