Dimtar Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 Sorry if this has been posted before but I wanted to put forward the idea of using unRaid without the array. unRaid has very strong docker and VM support now. I for one can see myself setting up a machine that has say one SSD installed and its just simply a docker/VM machine only. Storage could be added later if needed of course but the ability to start the server with only a cache drive would be cool in my opinion. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 You can simply set the array up with a single data drive and no parity drive to get that functionality. If you later decide to set up data drives then you can move the SSD to be a cache drive at that point. Quote Link to comment
Dimtar Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 Last I checked SSDs couldn't be array drives? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 1 hour ago, Dimtar said: Last I checked SSDs couldn't be array drives? UnRAID will not stop you from assigning SSDs as Array drives. They are not officially supported because of potential issues with the way they might interact with Trim potentially invalidating Parity (depending on how a particular model of SSD handles Trim operations). If you are running without a Parity disk this is not relevant. There have also been tests done by existing unRAID users with SSD based arrays and they seem to work fine for the SSD models they were testing at the time. Quote Link to comment
Dimtar Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 Good to know, thanks for the reply. Quote Link to comment
ajeffco Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 I hate to resurrect a somewhat old thread, but it's the only one I could find. I would *LOVE* to have the ability to create a cache drive only unRAID rig just to run docker/vm on a multi disk BTRFS cache pool, without having to create/waste data disks. I'm using a 30 drive array now, and using 4 SSD drives as cache only, with only the docker/vm images on the cache pool. I'd move the 4 SSD drives in a heartbeat to a new rig running a cache only setup. Quote Link to comment
bonienl Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 unRAID requires at least ONE array disk (parity disk is optional). It needs to start the array to make the cache pool available. It has been debated here, but removing the array dependency is a hard thing to do in the current design, not to mention the whole licensing concept based upon it. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 2 hours ago, ajeffco said: without having to create/waste data disks. You can use a spare flash drive as the single data disk. Quote Link to comment
ajeffco Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 6 hours ago, bonienl said: unRAID requires at least ONE array disk (parity disk is optional). It needs to start the array to make the cache pool available. It has been debated here, but removing the array dependency is a hard thing to do in the current design, not to mention the whole licensing concept based upon it. yea, I know all that. And after I wrote that I thought "Well, that's basically not unRAID anymore, it's more like Tom's Docker Manager" :) Thanks tho. Quote Link to comment
ajeffco Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 6 hours ago, johnnie.black said: You can use a spare flash drive as the single data disk. Yea, used an old laptop HDD. Thanks, Al Quote Link to comment
perrycox Posted April 15, 2020 Share Posted April 15, 2020 Will this still somehow be considered in the future ? I assume more ppl are using unraid for docker/vm only. So now the only option (when I want to use ssd with trim support and some kind of redundancy) is to use old usb drive assigned in the array and then running ssd cache pool in raid1 ? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted April 15, 2020 Share Posted April 15, 2020 4 hours ago, perrycox said: Will this still somehow be considered in the future ? I assume more ppl are using unraid for docker/vm only. So now the only option (when I want to use ssd with trim support and some kind of redundancy) is to use old usb drive assigned in the array and then running ssd cache pool in raid1 ? I very much doubt that this restriction will be lifted (but I could be wrong). Since you could just use a small flash drive to satisfy the requirement of having at least one array drive it is not much of a hardship. what we DO know is coming in the next Unraid release is multiple cache pools which will allow those running primarily docker/VMs to tune their use of caches to better suit their workload. 1 Quote Link to comment
chrisjenx Posted May 11, 2020 Share Posted May 11, 2020 Happy to create another topic if too unrelated - is there any (noticable) difference when running VM's on a single disk in the array vs running single disk in the cache (I'm basically trying to get the fastest io possible for the VM base drives) Quote Link to comment
Pascal51882 Posted September 3, 2022 Share Posted September 3, 2022 Is it save to run a single SSD Array without parity? Heard of problems with trim in the Array. Currently I am using a spare USB as Array and my SSD as Cache for all docker/vms. The USB seems like a big point of failure for me even it is 100% empty. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted September 3, 2022 Share Posted September 3, 2022 5 hours ago, Pascal51882 said: Is it save to run a single SSD Array without parity? Heard of problems with trim in the Array. Currently I am using a spare USB as Array and my SSD as Cache for all docker/vms. The USB seems like a big point of failure for me even it is 100% empty. If the USB drive is empty and is not getting any reads or writes then I do not see how it is a point of failure. In the worst case it would just be a case of replacing it with another empty USB. 1 Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted September 4, 2022 Share Posted September 4, 2022 18 hours ago, Pascal51882 said: Is it save to run a single SSD Array without parity? Heard of problems with trim in the Array. Perfectly safe, just won't be able to trim it. 1 Quote Link to comment
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