Multiple Arrays


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6 hours ago, deFrezzer said:

+1 for multiple arrays

 

By now i have 4 3TB drives (2 for Data 2 for parity)

After the migration from my old nas i have 2 1TB Disks that i could reuse.

 

But unraid didnt let me do this the way i would, as a second mirror 1TB Array.

 

ii´m still between between unraid and truenas.  

 

Why not simply add the 2 x 1TB drives to the array to get 2TB extra space?    UnRaid does not require all array drives to be the same size.   You wil then have 4 data drives protected by 2 parity drives

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On 10/2/2021 at 6:18 PM, drumstyx said:

Heck, I'd even pay for multiple licenses to make this possible -- I already own 2, but I don't want to run 2 whole machines and deal with network drive mapping for sharing media between them

feel you man! having 2 arrays with only 1 array beeing protected, brings a huge speed boost to the possibly unprotected second array for copying huge data files (EG. Chia Plots) 

 

Setup here at the Moment. 16tb parity - 16tb data - 2tb data - 8tb data 

Mixed with Personal & Business stuff (Needs Protection like Parity) and Chia Plots and Media Library (would prefer not to parity for speed resons) 

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51 minutes ago, flex420 said:

feel you man! having 2 arrays with only 1 array beeing protected, brings a huge speed boost to the possibly unprotected second array for copying huge data files (EG. Chia Plots) 

 

Setup here at the Moment. 16tb parity - 16tb data - 2tb data - 8tb data 

Mixed with Personal & Business stuff (Needs Protection like Parity) and Chia Plots and Media Library (would prefer not to parity for speed resons) 

If you do net need parity protection, why not set up as an additional pool (which is a feature already available)?

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1 hour ago, itimpi said:

If you do net need parity protection, why not set up as an additional pool (which is a feature already available)?

This works and I do this for chia currently, but there is a massive difference in time to expand and balance a pool (days) vs non-parity protected array (minutes).  I've also noticed sneaker nets becoming highly popular for chia plotting (and would apply for media ingestion also), and Unraid arrays facilitate these very nicely.

 

Another point is you don't want pools getting to big, borking themselves and nuking your time and effort, so you end up running a tonne of smaller pools... it's a PITA.

 

 

 

Edited by tjb_altf4
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8 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

This works and I do this for chia currently, but there is a massive difference in time to expand and balance a pool (days) vs non-parity protected array (minutes). 

 

They suggested you use Multiple Cache Pools, not Data Pools. So essentially every chia drive is its own cache pool.

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On 10/2/2021 at 9:18 AM, drumstyx said:

Heck, I'd even pay for multiple licenses to make this possible -- I already own 2, but I don't want to run 2 whole machines and deal with network drive mapping for sharing media between them

Have you tried running the second Unraid license as a VM? You'd still probably need a separate card and/or DAS for the array, but you wouldn't need the other physical server...

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On 10/23/2021 at 8:18 PM, greyday said:

Have you tried running the second Unraid license as a VM? You'd still probably need a separate card and/or DAS for the array, but you wouldn't need the other physical server...

I love and hate everything about this suggestion. unraid in an unraid... can you say unraid-ception!!! 

 

This may be a dumb thought on my part... but I wonder how well this would work. My bigger concern would be hardware allocation. Like how would it react to seeing a processor that it wont have full allocation ability for. I mean other VMs do it just fine. But would the Unraid OS space know how to handle it?

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5 hours ago, WETAFROMAN said:

I love and hate everything about this suggestion. unraid in an unraid... can you say unraid-ception!!! 

 

This may be a dumb thought on my part... but I wonder how well this would work. My bigger concern would be hardware allocation. Like how would it react to seeing a processor that it wont have full allocation ability for. I mean other VMs do it just fine. But would the Unraid OS space know how to handle it?

I haven’t tried so I couldn’t say for sure, but it would be a fun experiment (though zero doubt someone has already tried it). I may give it a go once I figure out my crashing issues.

 

My thought is this: if you assign cores to the vm I see no reason why the vm wouldn’t see that as the physical limit. If you didn’t assign cores then I’m not sure, you might have issues since they would be shared. Again, a fun thing to play around with once I have the time…

Edited by greyday
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On 10/26/2021 at 4:32 PM, WETAFROMAN said:

I love and hate everything about this suggestion. unraid in an unraid... can you say unraid-ception!!! 

 

This may be a dumb thought on my part... but I wonder how well this would work. My bigger concern would be hardware allocation. Like how would it react to seeing a processor that it wont have full allocation ability for. I mean other VMs do it just fine. But would the Unraid OS space know how to handle it?

Another option will be running a VM with Truenas and make multiple polls in there without protection to maximize performance like you said and back it up to Unraid array.

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OK This is MY ISSUE!!

 

ive got 2x (8TB) drives I wanna use for NAS, Plex, VMs, Dockers, etc

 

and a spare 2TB drive I want dedicated to my NVR for my Unifi Protect network. Id rather use cheap smaller drives for Security Cameras without killing my expensive 8TB drives lifespan.

And I live in an apartment so I'm not looking to have 2 PCs lying around here when I could theoretically just have this 1 box do it all.

 

Maybe in the future, Id even consider having SSDs to host my VMs + Dockers so that my 8TB drives arent constantly running 24/7

 

But its almost 2022 and this thread started in mid 2019, how come it isn't a thing yet?? This is just starting to feel like a dealbreaker.

Edited by darthgamer64
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  • 1 month later...

I would like to add my need for this feature as well. I would love to have multiple raid arrays, with multiple parity disks, so if a disk dies somewhere I don't need to wait days for my whole array to come back online.

 

Why would anyone need multiple cache pools? I have a 500gb m.2 for my cache drive, single pool, and I could have gone 1tb, so it's not a space or speed issue.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would like to see multiple arrays and cache pools.  I would like to keep my 5 3TB drives for media, 7 4TB for my main storage and my 3 8TB drives for backups and whatever temp storage. 

 

I currently have the 5 3TB drives in another machine running OpenSUSE but I just put together a system with a much larger case and would like to move it all to one and consolidate running Unraid. 

WhatsApp Image 2022-01-12 at 3.33.28 PM.jpeg

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33 minutes ago, dada051 said:

I'm ready to pay one licence by array if needed

If you have multiple array licences then you could get multiple arrays now by running additional instances of Unraid in VM's  and passing through the disk drives to these additional VMs.   This is the technique I use to run multiple test instances of Unraid hosted on one production machine but see no reason why it could not be multiple production instances.

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