Can I/Should I run unraid

[zucram]

Hi!

I been meaning to remake my home server for a while now and i'm thinking of using unRaid.

here is my current setup.

Hardware:

NUC6i5SYH with 16 gb ram

128gb nvm ssd (for OS)

Internal 2TB HDD (2,5'')

External 4TB WD HDD (usb 3)

Currently i run windows with plex and tautulli installed natively and then run an ubuntu VM under hyper-v that runs all my other systems (sabnzbd, sonarr, radarr, organizr etc etc) through docker-compose.

I was thinking of running unraid without parity. A friend of mine however said that unraid doesn't really work well with external storage. Is this true? Am i just better of installing ubuntu and running everything on that?

Please advice!

Edited May 6, 2019 by zucram

[JonathanM]

2 hours ago, zucram said:

A friend of mine however said that unraid doesn't really work well with external storage. Is this true?

Depends on the connection method. Plenty of people run external drives with eSATA or SAS connections, that works fine.

 

USB, however, is unreliable and not recommended for several reasons. Those reasons are not specific to unraid, rather just general issues with USB connected storage. SMART reports are sometimes difficult to obtain, so drive health is hard to monitor. USB error recovery is not as robust as SATA, and many USB enclosures are really not meant for continuous use, with poor drive cooling and power.

 

Relying on USB connected storage for any server is not a good idea. They are designed for temporary connections and intermittent scheduled backup operations, not continuous use.

[zucram]

Thanks for your reply @jonathanm. As you say however, this is something that's not unraid specific? Meaning i will have the same performance and issues while running ubuntu as i will running unraid, right?

[JonathanM]

Ubuntu, windows, any OS. USB hard disk drives just aren't designed for server duty. If you can't use a case with enough physical space in the main container for some reason, there are options other than USB for external drives, options that are designed for server duty with cooling fans and robust connections.

[zucram]

9 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Ubuntu, windows, any OS. USB hard disk drives just aren't designed for server duty. If you can't use a case with enough physical space in the main container for some reason, there are options other than USB for external drives, options that are designed for server duty with cooling fans and robust connections.

What other options than USB? Would be really interested in a good solution.... 

 

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, zucram said:

What other options than USB? Would be really interested in a good solution.... 

 

 

2 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Plenty of people run external drives with eSATA or SAS connections, that works fine.

 

[trurl]

I agree with what's already been said, but there are a couple of other things in your post that I want to comment on.

 

5 hours ago, zucram said:

128gb nvm ssd (for OS)

The Unraid OS itself boots from a USB flash drive, and unpacks into RAM from the archives on that flash drive. It runs completely in RAM. That is the only way it can be done. Maybe you had some VM OS in mind for that nvm.

 

5 hours ago, zucram said:

running unraid without parity

Of course without parity there is no way to rebuild anything. You would have to restore all the data from your backups and the data wouldn't be available to your Unraid server until you had restored it. With parity, the data continues to be available by emulation (from the parity calculation) while you rebuild (from the parity calculation).

 

So, if you aren't concerned with any of that, it makes me wonder what would be the consequences of having an external USB drive in the array. If it is unreliable, it doesn't really have any impact on the rest of the array since there is no parity to rebuild from anyway.

 

I have never run without parity, and haven't really considered what Unraid does when a write fails without parity. Does it disable the disk even though it can't be rebuilt or emulated? Does it take the entire array offline when this happens? Is the only way forward from that state a New Config? I don't actually know and wonder if anyone else can shed some light on this.

 

 

[zucram]

1 minute ago, trurl said:

 

The Unraid OS itself boots from a USB flash drive, and unpacks into RAM from the archives on that flash drive. It runs completely in RAM. That is the only way it can be done. Maybe you had some VM OS in mind for that nvm.

 

 

I would use the nvme drive as a cache drive. 

[witalit]

Avoid USB storage if you can I have used it before and wish I never bothered it asks for problems. Always use robust connections SATA; SAS etc.

[zucram]

Just now, witalit said:

Avoid USB storage if you can I have used it before and wish I never bothered it asks for problems. Always use robust connections SATA; SAS etc.

I would if i could but my nuc only has the nvme drive and then external storage via USB so not sure how to solve that problem. 

[witalit]

Just now, zucram said:

I would if i could but my nuc only has the nvme drive and then external storage via USB so not sure how to solve that problem. 

Your NUC is really not best suited to run unRAID if you ask me you would need another case + hardware to run unRAID as its designed to be run IMO. 

 

Pretty limited with that hardware setup. 

[trurl]

4 minutes ago, zucram said:

I would if i could but my nuc only has the nvme drive and then external storage via USB so not sure how to solve that problem. 

Don't use a NUC for a server build. We occasionally get people asking about building a server using some old laptop they have.

 

I hate to say it, but I don't know what Unraid provides if you don't intend to have any significant amount of redundant storage. I know everyone sees the videos about VMs etc. but there are other ways to do VMs.

[zucram]

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Don't use a NUC for a server build. 

Yeah this is what i'm trying to figure out. Might just run ubuntu straight on the hardware or might go throu esxi if it turns out that UnRaid isn't the way forward. Evaluating all options now

[witalit]

Throw linux on there and run everything as dockers, it seems to me this is not a HTPC so if its just for hosting Plex and your dockers linux would be fine. No need to run VM's on top of windows then.

Edited May 6, 2019 by witalit

[zucram]

18 minutes ago, witalit said:

Throw linux on there and run everything as dockers, it seems to me this is not a HTPC so if its just for hosting Plex and your dockers linux would be fine. No need to run VM's on top of windows then.

Not sure what you mean by "this is not a htpc" but yeah, i think linux will be the winning solution here. Then i can continue with my usb storage without problems. It's not been an issue so far.

 

[witalit]

19 hours ago, zucram said:

Not sure what you mean by "this is not a htpc" but yeah, i think linux will be the winning solution here. Then i can continue with my usb storage without problems. It's not been an issue so far.

 

 

HTPC = Home Theatre PC 

[trurl]

20 hours ago, zucram said:

Then i can continue with my usb storage without problems. It's not been an issue so far.

USB storage isn't an issue for Unraid depending on how you use it and what your expectations are.

 

Unraid is unlike RAID in that each disk in the parity array is an independent filesystem, so can be read independently on any computer that supports Linux filesystems.

 

Unraid is like RAID in that each disk in the parity array must be reliably read in order to reliably rebuild a disk, so any issues like temporary connectivity problems will compromise the redundancy of the array.

 

Other RAID systems don't allow you to connect USB disks, or even allow you to use different sized disks in the array. Unraid will let you use different sized disks in the array, and even allow you to use USB disks in the array, but we usually don't recommend it due to the issues already mentioned, and also due to performance decrease during some array operations.