FrostyOne Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Hello, I have been on UnRaid trial for about 3 weeks, I am enjoying the product, simplicity, dockers, vm's, dual parity and cache is great. The problem is that is seems like the pricing tiers were made for a time when drives had lower capacity and it really seems unfortunate for a home user that is not in an enterprise environment. Here is my setup so far, parity 1.5Gb hdd parity 1.5Gb hdd disk1 640Gb hdd disk2 640Gb hdd disk3 256Gb ssd disk4 250Gb ssd disk5 250Gb hdd disk6 250Gb hdd disk10 1Tb hdd usb disk11 1Tb hdd usb disk12 1Tb hdd usb disk13 1Tb hdd usb disk14 500Gb hdd usb disk15 500Gb hdd usb disk16 500Gb hdd usb disk17 500Gb hdd usb disk18 500Gb hdd usb cache 240Gb ssd cache2 240Gb ssd cache3 240Gb ssd cache4 240Gb ssd Flash 32Gb usb As you can see I am well over the Basic or Plus plan and my only option is Pro with unlimited attached devices. However I am just a home user. Although I work in IT on many enterprise products. I feel this is an outdated pricing structure especially since I could just go out and get two 10Tb hdd and basic would work fine of coarse that's not what I want to do as the cost of these drives is the reason I have so many installed I had just laying around. This would cost me more money in long run and Limetech would lose money because I could choose basic plan. The problem I feel is that Limetech is losing money on the structure they have in place where enterprise users might be throwing in 6 attached devices at high capacity where home users on a budget that have many unused devices can't take advantage of them unless you go with pro plan even though the total array is at a lower capacity. I really feel the difference between home and enterprise products is the service offered to end users. I would suggest Limetech reconsider pricing structure to reflect this, and just have two plans both with unlimited storage devices, Home basic at $59 which has no support but the forums and a pro enterprise $199 (a drop in the bucket to any serious company) that comes with complete phone and remote support on a service plan for a year, which could be extended over time and priced accordingly which would gain Limetech more revenue in the long run. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Not really addressing your point, but your post makes me question if it is really a good idea to want to use so many "just laying around" small disks. Parity by itself can't rebuild any failed disk. ALL bits of parity PLUS ALL bits of all other disks must be reliably read to reliably reconstruct a disk. More disks means more opportunities for problems. "Just laying around" disks may be old and already have issues. Larger disks will typically perform better due to increased density. Just some things to think about. 1 Quote Link to comment
bnevets27 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Realistically most home users also don't have room for 24 drives. Most prefer using less dives of higher density. If you think of the cost involved in finding a case that can hold all of those drives vs how much data a home user generally needs most will opt for a less but slight more expensive drives. Not to mention the pure size, energy costs noise etc. Yes a lot of users here do have 24 bay servers but I would venture to guess most if not all have that many slots for the reason of having higher capacity not for the purpose of using a lot of small drives.I do like the whole concept of unraid allowing what you are doing. And there's nothing that wrong with it. Sure it may be less "safe" but it could be storing non critical data or its an additional back. It gives some use to old drives. Quote Link to comment
Jason442 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 ironic, because your hard drives are so outdated! 2 Quote Link to comment
whipdancer Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 I don't have a problem with the pricing. Given what I get out of the software, I'd buy my license again. It's worth it. 1 Quote Link to comment
jonp Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 A $70 increase to pro tier pricing would not cover the cost of staffing required to provide the phone support you suggest either. Not something we are considering at this time. Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment
1812 Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 How about a 5 dollar bump to cover my sassyness on the forum! 1 Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 3 minutes ago, 1812 said: How about a 5 dollar bump to cover my sassyness on the forum! Who are you going to pay? 1 Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 On 1/9/2019 at 8:24 AM, FrostyOne said: a pro enterprise $199 (a drop in the bucket to any serious company) that comes with complete phone and remote support on a service plan for a year Add another digit to that and maybe viable. Interesting idea... thanks! 2 Quote Link to comment
FrostyOne Posted January 10, 2019 Author Share Posted January 10, 2019 (edited) Yes I agree that was a low ball number pulled out of a hat, I'm not a sales person, haha.. But I do believe that Liimetech is selling itself short on an incredible product at the enterprise level. I am in field service and frequently service Pure Storage, Violin Memory and Hitachi Data Systems, obviously these are different products from what you're offering. Complete hardware and software solutions with enterprise support vs just the Unraid OS. I'm not trying to complain like I can't afford the pro price, I just think that there are two environments, home and enterprise and you should reflect this. For instance esxi free for consumers to a certain point and pay on Enterprise for all options. The free version gets their foot in the door for IT minded folks at home, so they're more apt to use it in their business environments. Edited January 10, 2019 by FrostyOne Quote Link to comment
FrostyOne Posted January 10, 2019 Author Share Posted January 10, 2019 (edited) On 1/9/2019 at 12:40 PM, trurl said: Not really addressing your point, but your post makes me question if it is really a good idea to want to use so many "just laying around" small disks. Parity by itself can't rebuild any failed disk. ALL bits of parity PLUS ALL bits of all other disks must be reliably read to reliably reconstruct a disk. More disks means more opportunities for problems. "Just laying around" disks may be old and already have issues. Larger disks will typically perform better due to increased density. Just some things to think about. I am new to Unraid and still learning, thank you for the suggestions, I did preclear all disks and they all showed good on report something which I feel Limetech needs to add instead of a plugin. I was unaware of the need to do this and at first setup I just added a parity and two disks and let Unraid clear and format, it was later discovered one of the disks failed smart report, so I put that drive in the recycle box and started over making sure to preclear every disk with the plugin before adding to array. The data on the array isn't very critical, the usb drives are in a pool to support a media share, ssd's are set for lightroom working share I have a separate backup system for lightroom storage, and hdd are set for document data, I do keep an external backup of the lightroom and document shares where they go to previously built freenas system that's housing a bunch of WD reds. The unraid system I set up with a new ryzen CPU so I can play with more VM and see if I could use these drives I had laying around. Edited January 10, 2019 by FrostyOne Quote Link to comment
FrostyOne Posted January 10, 2019 Author Share Posted January 10, 2019 On 1/9/2019 at 1:52 PM, Jason442 said: ironic, because your hard drives are so outdated! Hey, sometimes you need to work with what you got! Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 1 hour ago, FrostyOne said: I did preclear all disks and they all showed good on report something which I feel Limetech needs to add instead of a plugin. I was unaware of the need to do this and at first setup I just added a parity and two disks and let Unraid clear and format Strictly speaking preclear isn't necessary. It is just one way to test disks. The only scenario where Unraid requires a clear disk is when adding a disk to a new data slot in an array that already has valid parity. This is so parity will be maintained since a clear (all zero) disk has no impact on existing parity. When Unraid requires a clear disk (which is only that one scenario) it will clear it if it isn't already clear. In older versions of Unraid it would take the array offline while it cleared a disk (for only that scenario) so preclear was invented to allow a disk to be cleared before (pre) adding it to the array. But Unraid now clears disks when needed without taking the array offline, so preclear has hung around as a test. There are other testing methods including the diagnostic utilities provided by the disk manufacturers as a free download. An additional bit of info, parity is not a formatted disk so it would not be formatted or cleared. And it wouldn't have needed to clear any disks in the scenario you mentioned if you had added them all at once including the parity disk. Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 The price of Pro is so cheap I'm surprised anyone purchases less. 2 3 Quote Link to comment
PSYCHOPATHiO Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Honestly the price is low for a one time payment and & life time support, I have 2 licenses & thinking of a third as a support for this product < is this considered advertising or spam Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 I've had 2 Pro licenses for years but never had more than 11 attached devices on any system and my backup server is currently not used. Quote Link to comment
FrostyOne Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 Constructor, thanks for the info, as mentioned I'm still learning this environment and I appreciate the time you took to reply. Quote Link to comment
FrostyOne Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 Well I'm biting on pro licence today, though I still feel that the price structure could be improved, HDD count seems like a poor way to licence this product. Why not licence on host hardware core count instead, that is the way every company is going in the future with licencing, and really the need to have a vm host environment to begin with, for instance Microsoft and it's core licencing for server, what if you build a box and don't want to pay for all that licencing for all those cores on your new Zen server? ESXI and Unraid to the rescue to help utilize the complete hardware system. It would give Limetech two products, consumer and enterprise, then they could actually charge a decent price for enterprise and stop giving it away so cheap. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 11 minutes ago, FrostyOne said: Constructor, thanks for the info, as mentioned I'm still learning this environment and I appreciate the time you took to reply. You're welcome "Newbie". That is your name right? 1 Quote Link to comment
Hoopster Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 8 hours ago, trurl said: You're welcome "Newbie". That is your name right? Not too many people in the forums into Polish science fiction. The whole Trurl/Constructor thing is a mystery. Should have made your descriptor Klapaucius. Trurl would then be the easy one to type. Have you built any interesting robots lately? 😀 Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 On 1/11/2019 at 12:37 PM, PSYCHOPATHiO said: Honestly the price is low for a one time payment and & life time support, I have 2 licenses & thinking of a third as a support for this product < is this considered advertising or spam Technically the price doesn't include life time support. The forum support is by (excellent and knowledgeable) community members largely, although LT weigh in with "meaty" issues. However I agree the pricing is low and incredible value for money. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, Hoopster said: The whole Trurl/Constructor thing is a mystery. Yes, I know. I kind of like it that way. I have been using that nym on the internet since before the world wide web. It also has another meaning. My tru initials are rl. More than once I have tried to create an account somewhere only to find that trurl was already taken. github was one such. Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 2 minutes ago, trurl said: More than once I have tried to create an account somewhere only to find that trurl was already taken. github was one such. How dare they?! Do they not know who you are?!! Quote Link to comment
SpaceInvaderOne Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 On 1/9/2019 at 4:24 PM, FrostyOne said: Here is my setup so far, parity 1.5Gb hdd parity 1.5Gb hdd disk1 640Gb hdd disk2 640Gb hdd disk3 256Gb ssd disk4 250Gb ssd disk5 250Gb hdd disk6 250Gb hdd disk10 1Tb hdd usb disk11 1Tb hdd usb disk12 1Tb hdd usb disk13 1Tb hdd usb disk14 500Gb hdd usb disk15 500Gb hdd usb disk16 500Gb hdd usb disk17 500Gb hdd usb disk18 500Gb hdd usb cache 240Gb ssd cache2 240Gb ssd cache3 240Gb ssd cache4 240Gb ssd 29 Just thought I would point out your disk 3 and 4 being ssds. You should not use ssds in part of a parity protected array as the garbage collection can break parity. It's fine to use them as unassigned drives or in the cache (or in an array with no parity drive) Just thought i would mention in case you had them in the array Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 16 minutes ago, SpaceInvaderOne said: Just thought I would point out your disk 3 and 4 being ssds. And all those USB disks might also give problems depending... Technically USB disks in the array are supported, but some implementations might be unreliable, difficult to troubleshoot, or perform poorly. Quote Link to comment
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