Few questions before i migrate

[gdarko]

I have WD RED 4 TB drive (WD40EFRX), Intel i5-7500, 32 GB Ram DDR4 non-ECC and 250GB Samsung EVO SSD and ran proxmox. All was fine until i started worrying about the data, because the data i have in the Red is priceless to me and apart from that i need to be careful with my actions, i also want another layer of security which unraid offers ( parity ) in case drive fails and can expand easily. I will also have regular backups with rsync to other drive only for the very important data.

Overall, I liked the docker containers over LXC ( i didn't liked the header image of unRAID looked unprofessional and was a bit weird but get used to it and planned everything)  much easier to build my own containers for the things i run. I will buy another 4TB RED for parity too.

So for now i have 4 questions.

 

1.) WD Red currently has 200GB of data and i will buy another one for parity. What about the 200 GB of data? Is there a way to keep them / merge into the array while i install/configure unRAID or any other way?

2.) I read about SSD cache which i want to have too. But i also want to run the Plex docker container and any other dockers and vms on SSD. Should i get another SSD or one is enough? Is it easy to use one SSD as cache and have dockers and vms too?

3.) I believe that 4 TB is enough for me, but in any case i want 8 TB or 12 TB what will be my way to go? I buy another 4 TB drive for 8 TB or 2 x 4 TB for 12 TB? Will that work?

4.)  I need separate local IPs for both vms and dockers. Is it easy to make use of my routers DHCP?

Thank you.

Edited July 25, 2018 by gdarko

[Hoopster]

On 7/25/2018 at 2:11 PM, gdarko said:

1.) WD Red currently has 200GB of data and i will buy another one for parity. What about the 200 GB of data? Is there a way to keep them / merge into the array while i install/configure unRAID or any other way?

 

You will need to copy the data on the 4TB WD Red drive to an external drive, another computer, etc.  Adding a drive to the array formats it with the unRAID file system and will delete all data currently on the drive.  Fortunately, you only have 200GB which is not a lot of data to copy back to the array once unRAID is up and running.

 

On 7/25/2018 at 2:11 PM, gdarko said:

2.) I read about SSD cache which i want to have too. But i also want to run the Plex docker container and any other dockers and vms on SSD. Should i get another SSD or one is enough? Is it easy to use one SSD as cache and have dockers and vms too?

 

I have two SSDs in my system; one for cache and appdata (docker installation share) and one (an unassigned device - not part of the unRAID array) for VMs.  If your VMs will be very heavily used and/or need a lot of installation and OS file space, you may want to consider a separate SSD for each VM.  My VMs are only used occasionally and, I could probably get away with running all my dockers and VMs on the cache drive (I used to do this), but, I liked the idea of keeping the dockers and VMs on separate SSDs.  Some unRAID users opt to run VMs and, sometimes, even dockers, on an unassigned device.  You can also create an SSD cache pool of two or more SSDs for cache/appdata/dockers, etc.

 

On 7/25/2018 at 2:11 PM, gdarko said:

3.) I believe that 4 TB is enough for me, but in any case i want 8 TB or 12 TB what will be my way to go? I buy another 4 TB drive for 8 TB or 2 x 4 TB for 12 TB? Will that work?

 

Your parity drive(s) must always be equal to or greater in size than your largest data disk.  Therefore, if you start out with one 4TB data drive and one 4TB parity drive, the easiest way to expand storage is to simply keep adding 4TB or smaller data disks.  However, you also have the option of swapping out the 4TB data drive for a larger drive such as an 8TB, 10TB, 12TB, etc. drive.  If you do this, your parity drive must also be upgraded to at least the same size or your storage space on larger data drives will be limited to the size of the parity drive.

 

On 7/25/2018 at 2:11 PM, gdarko said:

4.)  I need separate local IPs for both vms and dockers. Is it easy to make use of my routers DHCP?

 

You can create docker and VM VLANs and assign separate IP address to your dockers/VMs; however, they do not communicate with the router DHCP server.  When you set up the docker or VM VLANs, you can assign a range of DHCP addresses to the VLANs and unRAID will assign DHCP addresses from these DHCP pools to the dockers or VMs.  YOu can also assign static IP addresses to them.  This process is well-documented in these forums.

 

By the way, the unRAID GUI banner (header image) at the top can be replaced with your own graphic and there are four different color schemes/layouts that can be assigned to the webGUI.  There are other efforts from time to time to create additional weGUI skins as well.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Hoopster

[gdarko]

Thank you for the very detailed answer! I will definitely buy the license