To much of a good thing


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I started with unraid because of it's simplicity the other nas software out their was just to complicated to many features I wanted something I could use as a file server and was straight forward I love it the way it is so I ask the devs of unraid if your gonna add features do it through plugins or dockers and keep unraid the great nas software it is now a simple network attached storage server....Thanks

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Interesting feedback for LimeTech.

 

I am interested to know what was the driver behind the post? Has a recent feature (or promise of a feature) given you cause for concern?

 

I have always felt (like you it seems) that unRAID should maintain its position as a storage centric product first and all the other things it is (can can be) second. So much so, that I was concerned myself when they started integrating Docker and KVM. I remember feeling at the time that their efforts were best served concentrating on more "storage related" features such as Dual Parity.

 

On reflection, I feel that Limetech made a great move. If they had listened to me, it would have had them loosing ground (and custom) on other competing products. Dual Parity came eventually (and they did a great job ensuring that this was implemented correctly), but not before they made great strides to keep the product relevant and current in meeting with what many new customers want from a NAS appliance (e.g. application hosting).

 

It's worth noting, that we now refer to Docker as a means of ensuring that the core product remains as it is BUT in fact Docker itself was just a short time ago one of those such features that was integrated into unRAID which really had nothing to do with its original product.

 

jm2c.

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It would be interesting to see what % of the unRAID market need/want the additional features.  While stability and security of my data is #1, if I couldnt add capabilities like I can now through docker (previously plugins), I probably would have moved to a new platform by now.

 

VM's on the other hand, I have no need for at all.

 

If LT had that info of what % of their clientbase want what, it would be interesting to map that against LT's combined development effort  in those areas to see if it matches.,  No point putting 25% of Dev effort into VM integration of only 5-10% of the userbase use/want it.

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From what I have seen in the forums the majority of unRAID users using v6 seem to have running it as a media server as their prime use case.    For such users dockers as a way of adding media related capabilities seems to now be very widely used.   I would guess that the majority of users who are on v6 now make use of dockers in some form.  The use of docker is a key component in allowing for a wide mix of applications to be run while minimising the risk of destabilising the core system so as such it seems a significant component in supporting the extended NAS role.

 

As for VMs that is a more interesting case.    It is essential if one wants to promote a 'single machine' approach where unRAID carries out the roles of both a NAS and a desktop machine.  With modern hardware getting so powerful and capable of doing this well this can make a lot of sense.   It does seem from forum messages that there is a significant proportion of new users who have come to unRAID because this is what they want to do.   However what proportion of total users that is I have no idea but it could be a lot of the more advanced users.   However even if a user does not use VMs the fact that the capability exists may be very important from a marketing perspective as it is differentiator from many other products.  

 

it does seem that the use of hardware pass-thru with VMs sometimes causes a level of system instability which to some extent can detract from the NAS role where stability is paramount.    However I see this as something that will only get better as KVM continues to mature so maybe it is not that serious a concern?   Also, it is very easy for users who do not want the VM capability to ignore its presence.

Edited by itimpi
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3 hours ago, itimpi said:

I would guess that the majority of users who are on v6 now make use of dockers in some form.

I hope this is true, but the PhAzE plugin thread certainly hasn't died.

 

3 hours ago, itimpi said:

As for VMs that is a more interesting case.    It is essential if one wants to promote a 'single machine' approach where unRAID carries out the roles of both a NAS and a desktop machine.  With modern hardware getting so powerful and capable of doing this well this can make a lot of sense.   It does seem from forum messages that there is a significant proportion of new users who have come to unRAID because this is what they want to do.

Some users have seen a youtube video and think this is the way to get VMs even though they aren't particularly interested in having a NAS.

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I use unraid because it's a one stop shop for all things. Storage, VMs, Dockers. I think the consolidation is really handy as it allows me to run PFsense as a VM and pass the required interfaces through to PFsense, I have a VM for downloading which has a continual connection to my VPN provider, then of course Plex, Sonarr and the others. 

 

The only thing which i'd like to see is a form of encryption because I would hate to have someone steal my unraid box and gain access to all my cat pictures. 

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1 hour ago, bennymundz said:

I use unraid because it's a one stop shop for all things. Storage, VMs, Dockers. I think the consolidation is really handy as it allows me to run PFsense as a VM and pass the required interfaces through to PFsense, I have a VM for downloading which has a continual connection to my VPN provider, then of course Plex, Sonarr and the others. 

 

The only thing which i'd like to see is a form of encryption because I would hate to have someone steal my unraid box and gain access to all my cat pictures. 

 

This is pretty much the only thing missing. In this day and age, and being a victim of a home invasion, we really need something even if it is just encfs. For now, I back up important data to the cloud/friend's server using rclone. But still doesn't solve the issue of an outright server being stolen. Though, the 'puter is so heavy... I hope nobody would bother picking it up, and rather go for Tablets, and Laptops. And ofcourse, they love taking Gift cards. Moral: Don't keep physical gift cards. Apparently, they're not that interested in stealing credit cards either. Though YMMV. Sorry, didn't mean to be 'preachy.'

Edited by daze
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On 07/04/2017 at 1:28 PM, daze said:

 

 

This is pretty much the only thing missing. In this day and age, and being a victim of a home invasion, we really need something even if it is just encfs. For now, I back up important data to the cloud/friend's server using rclone. But still doesn't solve the issue of an outright server being stolen. Though, the 'puter is so heavy... I hope nobody would bother picking it up, and rather go for Tablets, and Laptops. And ofcourse, they love taking Gift cards. Moral: Don't keep physical gift cards. Apparently, they're not that interested in stealing credit cards either. Though YMMV. Sorry, didn't mean to be 'preachy.'

 

I think if we were to talk features. My unRAID life would be complete if we had:

 

- ability to run a VM independantly of Array status (to facilitate pfSense use and or primary desktop)

- formal support for virtualising unRAID as a guest

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Anyone ever try free nas or one of the other nas programs out their? I looked at 2 or 3 of them before I found unraid their were so complex with so many features you don't understand and don't need so steep of a learning curve to them I just gave up I found my self wanting a drobo atleast it was easy to use then unraid came along WOW!! Just like a drobo only better! I just could not beleave it Exactly what I was looking for with hardware I already had and at a very small price.A lot of features does not mean better as someone once said KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID THANKS UNRAID!! BTW I found unraid watching YouTube SYSTEM was the show.

Edited by megna22
Left something out
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1 hour ago, megna22 said:

Anyone ever try free nas or one of the other nas programs out their? I looked at 2 or 3 of them before I found unraid their were so complex with so many features you don't understand and don't need so steep of a learning curve to them I just gave up I found my self wanting a drobo atleast it was easy to use then unraid came along WOW!! Just like a drobo only better! I just could not beleave it Exactly what I was looking for with hardware I already had and at a very small price.A lot of features does not mean better as someone once said KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID THANKS UNRAID!! BTW I found unraid watching YouTube SYSTEM was the show.

 

I use FreeNAS on my legacy systems, which is to be frank, turned off. I didn't find it too complicated, but I did feel the limit of traditional RAID systems forcing you to keep your HDs the same size. And it was BSD based, which something I'm less familiar with.

 

I love the simplicity of unRAID as well. It's super flexible. Well worth the slight cost.

 

I need encryption in the product, then my life would be complete.  

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8 hours ago, megna22 said:

Anyone ever try free nas or one of the other nas programs out their? I looked at 2 or 3 of them before I found unraid their were so complex with so many features you don't understand and don't need so steep of a learning curve to them I just gave up I found my self wanting a drobo atleast it was easy to use then unraid came along WOW!! Just like a drobo only better! I just could not beleave it Exactly what I was looking for with hardware I already had and at a very small price.A lot of features does not mean better as someone once said KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID THANKS UNRAID!! BTW I found unraid watching YouTube SYSTEM was the show.

I looked at some but never tried any. I settled on unRAID simply from reading the forum. The others didn't seem to have a lot of support.

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I've used Unraid and WHS2011.  At the time I switched to WHS2011, Unraid was on v5 and plugins were needed and I got a little frustrated with not being able to do things I wanted to do easily.  Went to WHS2011 with Flexraid, mega unstable, mega hacky to do a lot of the things I wanted to do (DVR, run XBMC headless)  with Unraid V6 early betas I cam back, less than a year of WHS2011 and haven't looked back since.

 

Ended up loving Linux so much I switched all my desktops to Linux.  Antergos is what I'm using currently.


FreeNAS etc just have too much requirements for me to need on a home server.

Edited by CHBMB
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The day I tested unRAID back in V4. I put in a few discs and purposely pulled a power cable to force a failure while watching a movie. The very disc we was currently reading off of, it glitched and the wife looked at me. I hit the Pause button and it resumed. Later I turned off the system, popped in another disc and watched another movie while it rebuilt. I decided that day I was ordering a completely new machine. The sense of redundancy sold me. 

 

Now I use it for the same very reason, PLEX is used a lot with all of our various devices. Backup my Photos and home videos with some cloud syncing. 

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I tried FreeNAS Corral, the new version.  I struggled for a week or so with it, but there were some retardo missing features (like you can't replace a failed disk!?!), Docker blew up twice on it, and a few other major bloopers.  They released it as STABLE, but it's little better than an ALPHA really.

 

unRAID just works, most of the time, and when it doesn't it's usually very easy to fix. :)

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While I don't use Docker or VM's I do understand why most do.

I also came from WHS2011 and honestly came to unRAID as a simple storage OS. While I only wanted a storage OS with a nice GUI, my options were very limited to say the least as there really isn't a true NAS OS left on the market. Pretty much everyone does VM's and Docker these days. While I wish unRAID was still just a storage OS so all development went into that aspect, I know it's not realistic and I know I'm the minority.

I find that unRAID also just works for me and since I don't use VM's or Docker, I never really have any issues that aren't self inflicted. But I'd be lying if I said I don't hope that someone comes along with a pure storage OS without all the other crap bundled in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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IMO Docker/VMs were added to unRaid because things like downloading/torrents/Plex are what most people want to run on their NAS, it isn't just meant to be a storage appliance. You can see this in commercial NAS boxes like Qnap/Synology too, they all had their own version of these things to run as plugins, and they've all moved to Docker as well since its easier and far less effort to maintain. VMs are a more nice case, I bet only advanced users use them.

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Interesting request imho. I have yet to have any issues with the NAS specific areas of my unRAID servers, and have thought that area to have always been pretty bullet proof. What made me ultimately jump onto unRAID was all the other features though. I don't have a lot of room to have multiple boxes in the house, so being able to have my data storage relatively protected, my htpc, and my desktop gaming VMs all in one box was an absolute must for me. Had it not been for all those features, I would have found a different (albeit not as elegant or integrated) solution for my needs.

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I got unraid just because of the features mentioned above. I've had a complete failure where I lost more than one disk at a time. Dual parity wasn't a thing yet and I lost hardly any data. All I had to do was restore from my backups and was back up and running very quickly.

 

At that same time I had a Windows 2012 server that was independent of unraid doing all my downloading, DVR, plex, etc. It worked great, but dockers are so much better. That same server is now on a VM due to there not being a linux driver for my Hauppauge Colossus cards I use with my DVR software.

 

I wouldn't dream of moving to something else. Have you looked at the FreeNAS forums? Not exactly the most friendly place. Well, not if you compare it to this community. Great communities like this keep me with products I already love and make me love them even more. Great products with crappy support are great, but annoying. Great products with great support are the ones that set the standard for everyone else. unRAID is one of those products.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Because my server is technically an old Lenovo workstation, I don't have the luxury of having a DRAC or RAC access to manage the server.  Opening Telnet and or SSH to the WAN seems suicidal, so I prefer to run a Windows VM on top of unraid that I can then remote access and manage my server when on the road.  I typically have most of my client machines powered down when I am on the road, so being able to run a VM saves power and provides me with the remote access I desire.

Edited by Tiger770
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On 2017-4-9 at 11:38 AM, danioj said:

 

I think if we were to talk features. My unRAID life would be complete if we had:

 

- ability to run a VM independantly of Array status (to facilitate pfSense use and or primary desktop)

- formal support for virtualising unRAID as a guest

 

Agree with first point that's for sure. 

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I've been advocating for a while keeping the cache mounted similar to the flash (in other words all of the time). Maybe have a special button to unmount it that would bring down everything. It would add some complexity around the VMs and Dockers needing to be aware that the array may or may not be up. Maybe have a config whether they come down when array comes down.

 

But certainly the idea of having a server replace your desktop is incomplete if when the server goes down, the only computing asset you have to do troubleshooting is your iPhone!

 

 

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