Thinking of using unRAID again, wondering about current status, performance etc

[WonderfulSlipperyThing]

Hi guys,

I used to run unRaid until a couple of years ago and actually really loved it, however I moved to FreeNAS for write performance speed reasons (at the time I couldn't fit a cache drive into my box as there was no space and I kinda stuck with it). I do like FreeNAS and it's very good for certain things, but I'm leaning towards going back to unRAID because:

 

• It's way of using parity without striping as I feel less nervous about my data - if 2 drives go, I can still access the rest
  
• It's much more flexible in terms of drive sizes etc.
  
• The community, from what I recall, is awesome (though just to be clear that's not a slight against FreeNAS as they have a pretty responsive and intelligent community too)
  
• As far as I can tell, unRAID would likely reduce my electricity bills slightly and may (*may*) result in longer lasting hard drives as they don't need to be spun up all the time. Then again, spinning up and spinning down may be more damaging than just leaving them permanently spun up so I'm not sure about that point
  

 

Anyway, I'm considering coming back to the unRaid camp but just had a few questions.

 

Firstly my hardware:

 

Motherboard - ASRock C2750D4I

Processor - SoC on the mobo - it's an 8 core Atom C2750

RAM - 32GB ECC RAM (needed ECC for FreeNAS) - 4x8GB sticks

Hard drives - 6x3TB WD Reds

Cache drive - I'll probably see if I can fit in a 500GB SSD - apparently it is possible to mount a 2.5" SSD on the outside of the HDD brackets in my case, even though technically the case says it'll only hold 6 drives. I'll likely use the cache drive to run all of my applications from (e.g. Plex)

Chassis (not that this is relevant but hey!) - Fractal Node 304

 

1) Does anyone have any recent performance benchmarks for unRaid? The user benchmarks page on the wiki has a lot of pretty old data and it would be great to see some updated info, esepcially with 3TB WD Reds. I'm talking write speeds once the cache has been filled - my old server used to write at about 15MB/s, it was incredibly slow. I'm just curious as to what kinds of speeds people get with writing data as chances are I'll have a few scenarios where I'm writing more data than the cache can hold.

 

2) How is Plex on unRaid these days? When I used to run it I think it ran just normally on the OS, however now I see that a lot of unRAID stuff is in Docker. Has this had any negative impact in terms of performance? I never used to be able to transcode but that's because I had an old N40L. Now on my FreeNAS setup with my current I can transcode pretty much anything just fine. Can I expect the same on unRAID? From what I can tell, I think FreeNAS maybe has more of a CPU/memory performance overhead than unRAID but just wanted to check. If anyone else has similar hardware with unRAID running Plex, I'd really love to hear your experiences.

 

3) Has much else changed in the past 2-3 years that I'm missing? I did a very simple setup of unRAID a year ago when I gave my Dad my old N40L and it seems like a lot has changed - all of it good, but I didn't have much time to delve too deep into it. The UI looks way better (and no more installing SimpleFeatures after the fact which is nice!) and it has docker but I could easily be missing loads of stuff.

 

4) Not a biggie but does unRAID make any use of ECC RAM? I have ECC so would just be nice to know that it's being used!

 

EDIT: Wow, completely forgot I had such a weird username on here. Guess I was listening to a lot of Guthrie Govan at the time but it just makes me sound like a fancy snake.

[JorgeB]

1) Does anyone have any recent performance benchmarks for unRaid? The user benchmarks page on the wiki has a lot of pretty old data and it would be great to see some updated info, esepcially with 3TB WD Reds. I'm talking write speeds once the cache has been filled - my old server used to write at about 15MB/s, it was incredibly slow. I'm just curious as to what kinds of speeds people get with writing data as chances are I'll have a few scenarios where I'm writing more data than the cache can hold.

 

With those disks I estimate 50/60MB/s with normal write, at or very close to gigabit speed with turbo write.

 

4) Not a biggie but does unRAID make any use of ECC RAM? I have ECC so would just be nice to know that it's being used!

 

Yes, ECC works on the hardware level.

[Herdo]

Docker containers have almost no overhead, unlike virtualization since Docker containers aren't virtualizing an entire OS.

 

I haven't used Plex specifically, but it should run just like having it natively installed.  It's funny, I just built my system less than 2 weeks ago and I was hesitant to buy a decent CPU for running Plex.  I already have an HTPC running Plex media server and I wanted to keep them separate,  so I just bought an Intel G4400 for my unRAID server.  Several people told me I'd eventually want to install and use Plex through unRAID, and here we are, less than 2 weeks later and I'm probably going to buy the Xeon E3-1240 v5 to move my Plex server over to unRAID haha.  I love Docker!

 

 

Also,  I built an HTPC using the Node 304 and yes, you can mount an SSD on the outside of the brackets.  Because SSDs have no moving parts, you could literally just tape them inside the case if you had to.  I'm actually using 3M velcro to mount my SSD cache inside my unRAID server. There's no harm in doing this.

[Frank1940]

Additional info for number (2).  While I don't run Plex that are a lot of people who do.  And most of them are doing it in a Docker.  (Just fewer problems that way...)  One word of caution, you need about 2000 units of Pass Mark CPU performance for each Plex stream that you are transcoding (If you require transcoding in your situation).  But I believe that is typical for most Plex setups so there should not be much change there. 

[WonderfulSlipperyThing]

Thanks for the info guys!

 

In terms of question 2), I know that my processor (despite being atoms!) can easily handle multiple 1080p streams as I've been using it in FreeNAS for a while, and I have seen reports online of people using it to transcode 3 simultaneous 1080p streams, it was more about whether running in Docker in unRAID would have a significant performance impact vs FreeNAS but it sounds like that won't be an issue at all. Similarly (although I didn't mention this) I was a little worried that if I didn't have a cache drive in, there might be a storage bottleneck for transcoding but it doesn't look like that would be the case (but I have just found a post on these here forums that it's possible to move transcoding storage to the RAM, which is definitely something have plenty of!)

 

Anyway all great stuff and that pretty much answers all my questions! If anyone has anything else to add, especially question 3, I'd really appreciate it as it looks to me like unRAID has actually come a fairly long way since I stopped using it.

[tdallen]

You're going to want that cache drive (SSD highly preferred).  The cache drive has become the quasi application drive under unRAID 6 and is the preferred location to install Docker.  I don't think you will notice any decrease in Plex performance running as a Docker but it won't run faster either - and as you know the Atom isn't an ideal transcoding CPU.  If it's working for you now, though, I'd expect it to keep working.

 

Grab the Community Applications plugin to install your Dockers.

[phbigred]

I will throw in, there's question in the community on if dual parity causes slowness in checks, with the atom and it's throughput, for now skip dual parity if it was an idea. You can always add later once it's hammered out. Plex in docker is the way to go, point it at your media folder and rock and roll.

[Aderalia]

Hey,

i can back up johnnie.black´s speeds, i use the 4 TB WD Reds together with some 3 TB once and a WD Red Pro parity, im getting about 57 MB/s for unchached writes.

Plex runs like a dream! You just have to map your data but thats literaly just 2 clicks. Im getting 6% load on my i3 for every running decode (1080p downwards) and about 21% when using uncompressed material.

 

Writespeed however wont increase much more since they are limited by drive RPM...

 

Im using ECC Memory and never had even a single switched bit on storage, so i gues it works

 

 

[WonderfulSlipperyThing]

Wow that's surprisingly fast uncached write speeds for unRAID! I guess my old hardware was generally really slow and maybe some optimisations have also been made in unRAID too. Either way, sounds very promising.

 

A couple more questions come to mind...

 

1) You mentioned using an SSD for the cache disk (as did I) but obviously I'm worried about degrading performance, especially for something that's mostly transitory and will get a lot of writes. Do we know if/when some form of TRIM will be implemented for cache disks?

2) Anyone else have the C2750D4I or a motherboard with Marvell SATA ports? I'm currently only using the Intel SATA ports on my mobo but if I add a 7th disk (SSD) I'll need to use one of the Marvell ports, which were apparently somewhat problematic on FreeNAS (hence why I avoided them).

[bonienl]

Wow that's surprisingly fast uncached write speeds for unRAID! I guess my old hardware was generally really slow and maybe some optimisations have also been made in unRAID too. Either way, sounds very promising.

 

A couple more questions come to mind...

 

1) You mentioned using an SSD for the cache disk (as did I) but obviously I'm worried about degrading performance, especially for something that's mostly transitory and will get a lot of writes. Do we know if/when some form of TRIM will be implemented for cache disks?

2) Anyone else have the C2750D4I or a motherboard with Marvell SATA ports? I'm currently only using the Intel SATA ports on my mobo but if I add a 7th disk (SSD) I'll need to use one of the Marvell ports, which were apparently somewhat problematic on FreeNAS (hence why I avoided them).

 

TRIM is supported but you need to execute manually or install a plugin to do scheduled trim operation on your cache device/pool.

 

Problem is with Marvell itself. There are reports about this here on the forum, you need to do a search.

 

[Frank1940]

Wow that's surprisingly fast uncached write speeds for unRAID! I guess my old hardware was generally really slow and maybe some optimisations have also been made in unRAID too. Either way, sounds very promising.

 

<<< snip >>>

2) Anyone else have the C2750D4I or a motherboard with Marvell SATA ports? I'm currently only using the Intel SATA ports on my mobo but if I add a 7th disk (SSD) I'll need to use one of the Marvell ports, which were apparently somewhat problematic on FreeNAS (hence why I avoided them).

 

Read here:

 

    http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40683

 

[Smitty2k1]

Hi guys,

I used to run unRaid until a couple of years ago and actually really loved it, however I moved to FreeNAS for write performance speed reasons (at the time I couldn't fit a cache drive into my box as there was no space and I kinda stuck with it). I do like FreeNAS and it's very good for certain things, but I'm leaning towards going back to unRAID because:

 

• It's way of using parity without striping as I feel less nervous about my data - if 2 drives go, I can still access the rest
  
• It's much more flexible in terms of drive sizes etc.
  
• The community, from what I recall, is awesome (though just to be clear that's not a slight against FreeNAS as they have a pretty responsive and intelligent community too)
  
• As far as I can tell, unRAID would likely reduce my electricity bills slightly and may (*may*) result in longer lasting hard drives as they don't need to be spun up all the time. Then again, spinning up and spinning down may be more damaging than just leaving them permanently spun up so I'm not sure about that point
  

 

Anyway, I'm considering coming back to the unRaid camp but just had a few questions.

 

Firstly my hardware:

 

Motherboard - ASRock C2750D4I

Processor - SoC on the mobo - it's an 8 core Atom C2750

RAM - 32GB ECC RAM (needed ECC for FreeNAS) - 4x8GB sticks

Hard drives - 6x3TB WD Reds

Cache drive - I'll probably see if I can fit in a 500GB SSD - apparently it is possible to mount a 2.5" SSD on the outside of the HDD brackets in my case, even though technically the case says it'll only hold 6 drives. I'll likely use the cache drive to run all of my applications from (e.g. Plex)

Chassis (not that this is relevant but hey!) - Fractal Node 304

 

1) Does anyone have any recent performance benchmarks for unRaid? The user benchmarks page on the wiki has a lot of pretty old data and it would be great to see some updated info, esepcially with 3TB WD Reds. I'm talking write speeds once the cache has been filled - my old server used to write at about 15MB/s, it was incredibly slow. I'm just curious as to what kinds of speeds people get with writing data as chances are I'll have a few scenarios where I'm writing more data than the cache can hold.

 

2) How is Plex on unRaid these days? When I used to run it I think it ran just normally on the OS, however now I see that a lot of unRAID stuff is in Docker. Has this had any negative impact in terms of performance? I never used to be able to transcode but that's because I had an old N40L. Now on my FreeNAS setup with my current I can transcode pretty much anything just fine. Can I expect the same on unRAID? From what I can tell, I think FreeNAS maybe has more of a CPU/memory performance overhead than unRAID but just wanted to check. If anyone else has similar hardware with unRAID running Plex, I'd really love to hear your experiences.

 

3) Has much else changed in the past 2-3 years that I'm missing? I did a very simple setup of unRAID a year ago when I gave my Dad my old N40L and it seems like a lot has changed - all of it good, but I didn't have much time to delve too deep into it. The UI looks way better (and no more installing SimpleFeatures after the fact which is nice!) and it has docker but I could easily be missing loads of stuff.

 

4) Not a biggie but does unRAID make any use of ECC RAM? I have ECC so would just be nice to know that it's being used!

 

EDIT: Wow, completely forgot I had such a weird username on here. Guess I was listening to a lot of Guthrie Govan at the time but it just makes me sound like a fancy snake.

 

Hey OP I'm using the same case as you. I'm also using an Atom motherboard, but it is a previous generation D525 processor. Very very slow. I can't get above ~24MB/s write speeds. Even though unRaid doesn't show my CPU as being maxed out during writes, I'm assuming that is why I have such slow speeds.

 

ANYWAYS - as far as the cache drive is concerned, you can always get a PCIe cache drive. I've used both mSATA and M.2 SSDs with a PCIe adapter. No problems what so ever. It is a little bit more elegant than the "taped to the side of a drive cage" method and reduces cable clutter. In my scenario, I had maxed out the SATA ports on my motherboard (and in 3.5" HDD cages in the case) so I had to go the PCIe route.

 

When I update to a Xeon D motherboard in the near future, I will be able to use my M.2 SSD directly into the motherboard without taking up the PCIe slot.

[Viaduct]

 

2) Anyone else have the C2750D4I or a motherboard with Marvell SATA ports? I'm currently only using the Intel SATA ports on my mobo but if I add a 7th disk (SSD) I'll need to use one of the Marvell ports, which were apparently somewhat problematic on FreeNAS (hence why I avoided them).

Problem is with Marvell itself. There are reports about this here on the forum, you need to do a search.

Hi.

Yes, I have the same mobo.

 

I had terrible trouble with reliability with the Marvell chipset. Disks dropping off into thin air and even smart errors. Maybe it was my particular setup, and asrock did release a firmware update for the Marvell controller which I failed to apply. (Probably my lack of technical knowledge). But I lost confidence in the controller and got an lsi hba card to use more ports instead. Not looked back since. Currently on 9 disks attached.

 

YMMV.

 

However, love the Unraid ecosystem and the forum support here.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[crazycam425]

I have a supermicro motherboard with dual nics teamed and a netgear gs108t managed switch. So I have 2Gb/s to unraid, 2Gb/s to my MacBook Pro, and 2Gb/s to my windows machine. I get read and write speeds no problem between 220 and 260 MB/s. When I am reading or writing from my MacBook Pro or PC with only one ethernet plugged in I get anywhere from 120MB/s to 180MB/s speeds. I'm running 6.1.9 so I don't have turbo write mode either.

[dmacias]

 

 

Wow that's surprisingly fast uncached write speeds for unRAID! I guess my old hardware was generally really slow and maybe some optimisations have also been made in unRAID too. Either way, sounds very promising.

 

A couple more questions come to mind...

 

1) You mentioned using an SSD for the cache disk (as did I) but obviously I'm worried about degrading performance, especially for something that's mostly transitory and will get a lot of writes. Do we know if/when some form of TRIM will be implemented for cache disks?

2) Anyone else have the C2750D4I or a motherboard with Marvell SATA ports? I'm currently only using the Intel SATA ports on my mobo but if I add a 7th disk (SSD) I'll need to use one of the Marvell ports, which were apparently somewhat problematic on FreeNAS (hence why I avoided them).

I'm using all the controllers on the board. I have 10 drives (5 array, 2 parity, 1 cache, 1 app/vm drive and live/recorded tv drive). You need to be on the latest bios and update the controller with the firmware from Asrock Rack. I didn't update the controller firmware till I started getting sata errors in one of the 6.2 betas.

 

 

 

 

[dmacias]

You're going to want that cache drive (SSD highly preferred).  The cache drive has become the quasi application drive under unRAID 6 and is the preferred location to install Docker.  I don't think you will notice any decrease in Plex performance running as a Docker but it won't run faster either - and as you know the Atom isn't an ideal transcoding CPU.  If it's working for you now, though, I'd expect it to keep working.

 

Grab the Community Applications plugin to install your Dockers.

The CPU isn't really like any atom processor. It's an 8 core Avoton. No hyperthreading, just 8 true cores. It's passmark is 3831. I don't use plex though just emby.

[WonderfulSlipperyThing]

Thanks for all the input guys. Just  a quick update here but I have now moved over to unRAID and I'm loving it - it's such a user friendly OS and really it's perfect as a home NAS solution. The thing I love about it is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be and the learning curve isn't particularly steep. When I used it before I always thought it was pretty good but it has improved so much in the past couple of years. Then yesterday I saw that 6.2 final is out and it looks fantastic (haven't updated yet though).

 

I love that there's now an officially supported turbo write option as for many people the ONLY disadvantage to unRAID is the (relatively) slow write speeds. Now that it can saturate gigabit, write speeds aren't going to be much of an issue for most home users.

 

Now I'm just debating whether to move some disks over to my Marvell controller so that I can spread the bandwidth a bit more equally. Currently my only disk on the Marvell controller is my SSD cache disk (that I'm not using as a cache disk, just using it for docker etc). I have looked around and I see that there's a thread about Marvell issues... it seems reports are somewhat conflicting as some people say that doing a firmware update doesn't fix the issue. But maybe that's just for other boards. dmacias said that all that's needed is to update the controller and mobo to latest so I guess I'll give that a go. Haven't spotted any issues on the SSD but that's not hit as much as the array disks.

 

Either way, incredibly happy with it all, and all of my dockers run really well. The community applications makes life so much easier and I like that they all actually update properly (and issue I had on FreeNAS was that many of the plugins, of which there weren't very many, had various issues with things like updates).