I'm currently running a messily configured Freenas server and thinking about switching to Unraid for hard drive pool flexibility and more user friendly interface. I was wondering if there is an easy way to move my drives into an unraid pool with 1 parity disk. I have data on a 8tb, 6tb, and 3tb drive in Freenas all shared as single drives, and an empty 8tb drive to use as the parity disk. I also wanted to double check that my older hardware will work. I just want to run basic file sharing, Plex for direct play, Sonarr, Radarr, and maybe home assistant in docker (its performing these tasks, minus home assistant, fine with an older Freenas build). 

 

CPU:AMD A6-3500 APU
Motherboard: ASRock A75m-itx server motherboard
RAM: 8GB DDR3
Case: Lian Li PC-Q25

 

Thanks for your help. 

Basically, Unraid is not that particular about hardware.  Your CPU is an older AMD one with three cores and respectable Passmark rating.   It should  work fine for what you propose.  I would suggest you avoid transcoding with Plex as it would be marginal.  You have enough RAM for basic Docker applications.  One thing you might want seriously consider is the use of an SSD (250-500GB) cache drive.  This cache drive works well for storing of the Docker image file and their databases that are used by Docker apps as well as providing for faster data transfer to the array.  (Unraid's read speeds are twice that of its write speeds.)  

 

It has been 7-8 years since I looked at Freenas so I am not really sure how you have your data stored.  (I had a Freenas server back then with 5 X 1TB HD's in a RAID5 setup which I think was the only one permitted at that time.)  Have you figured out the logistics for moving the data from the existing server to the new Unraid one? 

Edited September 13, 20196 yr by Frank1940

I'm still trying to figure out how to move my data over. Thats my main issue, was seeing if anyone had any advice on the move from freenas. I'm out a sata ports, so I wouldn't be able to add a ssd easily. Will a flash drive  do a reasonably good job at holder docker files? 

1 hour ago, johnestan said:

Will a flash drive  do a reasonably good job at holder docker files? 

Not really.  Slow access, and with the writes would probably wear it out quickly.

16 hours ago, johnestan said:

I have data on a 8tb, 6tb, and 3tb drive in Freenas all shared as single drives

What do you mean by this.  Do you have any parity on the Freenas server?

That MB has only four SATA ports on it.  You should be looking at a SATA card for it.  You want to avoid any card with a Marvell chip set.  You also want a card that it truly designed for server type work.  (A lot of the two ports cards are NOT!  A server SATA card will run hot.)  Most folks are using LSI cards today.  They are available at reasonable prices from many sources on E-bay as there are a lot of them which have been removed from 'retired' servers.  See here for a list of part numbers that you should be looking at:

 

   https://forums.unraid.net/topic/69018-sata-controller-replacement-question-and-advice/?tab=comments#comment-630097

 

 

You want to make sure that the vendor  is supplying a card with firmware/software in the IT-Mode or be prepared to flash it yourself to that mode. As with any  E-bay purchase, carefully vet the vendor.  There are folks out there making (and selling) counterfeit cards.

46 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

What do you mean by this.  Do you have any parity on the Freenas server?

No parity. They are all set up as separate drives. This is the main reason I wanted to switch to unraid. 

11 minutes ago, johnestan said:

No parity. They are all set up as separate drives. This is the main reason I wanted to switch to unraid. 

Are they in a standard Linux format that is readable at the individual drive level outside FreeNAS?    If so then transfer will be relatively easy!

20 minutes ago, itimpi said:

If so then transfer will be relatively easy!

True, but only if there is not 17TB of data on those three drives.  You always need a bit of wiggle room.  Plus, he is obviously planning to use the current 8TB drive as the parity drive in his new Unraid server. 

1 minute ago, Frank1940 said:

True, but only if there is not 17TB of data on those three drives.  You always need a bit of wiggle room.  Plus, he is obviously planning to use the current 8TB drive as the parity drive in his new Unraid server. 

I was thinking that the as there is a new 8TB drive then if starting without parity this could be used for the ‘wriggle room’.   As long as the FreeNAS drives can be individually mounted in Unraid using Unassigned Devices then data can be transferred one drive at a time and once a drive’s contents are in Unraid that can then be added to the Unraid array.

1 hour ago, itimpi said:

Are they in a standard Linux format that is readable at the individual drive level outside FreeNAS?    If so then transfer will be relatively easy!

They are using ZFS, so I don't think it will just be plug and play. I see that there is a ZFS plugin for Unraid. I might post in that thread and ask. I have 5tb of free free on the 17tb worth of drives.  

Edited September 14, 20196 yr by johnestan

As I recall, you can use the Unassigned Devices Plugin  to mount another server (or servershare).  You could then use mc,  Krusader Docker, or the command line to copy the files over. 

UD can't mount ZFS devices, but the ZFS plugin can.