a931048 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 Hello everyone. I have just recently learned about unraid and excited. I am thinking about building a budget minibox and start with the free license first. I have some questions and wondering if you guys can help me out. Currently I have a readynas duo and I do not use most of the features. But I do use some feutures and was wondering if those are available in unraid. 1. Scheduled power down and up. currently I have a schedule for everyday mostly at night when it powers down and powers up in the morning. Is there a feature similar to that in unraid? While in this topic, I do not use my nas most of the time, so if there is a better way (like the nas can sleep and come back on demand) to handle this, please suggest. 2. Bit torrent. I currently use the readynas torrent client using the web interface. I have seen a torrent add on for unraid. Is it any good? do you recommend it? 3. Email on alerts. This is a useful feature I would like to have. 4. Backup tasks. On my readynas duo, I have a NTFS formatted external usb disk connected and some backup tasks setup that are scheduled to backup some folders I care about to the external disk. Can I do something similar in unraid with NTFS formatted disk and scheduled backup tasks? I would like a small profile box for hosting unraid and interested about the 5 drive minibox. But I would like to keep the cost low. so my question is, do I really need a hot swap drive bay? If I use 3 disks inside the Rosewill case, is it going to be bad? BTW, is user share available on the free license? Thanks a lot. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 1) Scheduled power on is a feature of the motherboard, not unRAID. So as long as your motherboard can do it, it will work (and most can). As for scheduled power down, I'm not sure. 2) Personally, I've never gotten torrents to work correctly on my server. However, I know some are using them. I'm waiting for 5.0 to go stable. At that point, we should see a huge surge to quality add-ons, torrents included. Granted, this may be 6 months out, I don't know. 3) Yes, there is an add-on for this. You can install it through unMenu with just a few button clicks. I don't use it, but I hear it works well. 4) Look into rsync and/or CrashPlan. rsync can be configured to do scheduled backups, and CrashPlan runs constant backups. You don't need hot swap bays, but I highly recommend them. You can always start without them and upgrade later. If you will only have three disks, then it isn't as big of a deal. When you start having large numbers of disks is when hot swap bays really make a difference in the ease-of-use of your server. Yes, User Shares are available on the free license. Cache drives and User Level Security are not. Link to comment
wsume99 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 I can answer some of your questions ... 1. Scheduled power down and up. currently I have a schedule for everyday mostly at night when it powers down and powers up in the morning. Is there a feature similar to that in unraid? While in this topic, I do not use my nas most of the time, so if there is a better way (like the nas can sleep and come back on demand) to handle this, please suggest.Assuming your MB and NIC support S3 sleep and WOL then I would recommend that you use that method in leiu of scheduled power up/down. I use sleep on my server and it works great. My server draws about 4 watts while in s3 sleep mode. I never power it down I just let it go to sleep and then send WOL magic packet when I need it. Waking from sleep (~5 seconds) is much quicker than booting up (>40 seconds). 3. Email on alerts. This is a useful feature I would like to have.This is an easy add-on if you use unMenu (which is free BTW). I would like a small profile box for hosting unraid and interested about the 5 drive minibox. But I would like to keep the cost low. so my question is, do I really need a hot swap drive bay?No. Hot swap bays provide two main benefits - allows for max number of drives to be installed in a case (using 5-in-3) and they simplify installation and removal of drives. Keep in mind that unRAID does not support hot-swapping of drives so you'll still need to shutdown the server to change drives. The downside of hot-swap cages is that they are an added cost and usually your drives will run a little hotter in them because you have so many drives packed into a small space. If I use 3 disks inside the Rosewill case, is it going to be bad?That should be just fine, I don't see any reason why that would be a problem. You could install up to 6 HDDs in the case before you'd need to add any additional drive bays. Put the 3 disks in any of the 4 internal 3.5" bays so they are in front of the fresh air intake and they'll stay cool. I'd remove the plastic air duct on the side panel and tape over both of the side air ducts as well. That will make all the airflow come in through the front opening in the case and cool your drives better. BTW, is user share available on the free license?Yes. Link to comment
a931048 Posted November 8, 2010 Author Share Posted November 8, 2010 Thanks a lot Rajahal and wsume99. Does the recommended MB (BIOSTAR TA785G3HD) supports S3 sleep and WOL? Do you manually send specific command to let it sleep or is there an automated way (sleep after xx munutes of inactivity) to do this? I have a revo 1600 and use xbmc live on it. I am assuming I will be able to send WOL magic packet from it by modifying the rc.local file. From windows box, I guess I can always create a shortcut to send the packet before accessing the nas. I will look into rsync/Crashplan. But can I mount and write to NTFS partitioned disk from unraid for backup purpose? Or does it have to be ext3/4 partitioned? Can anyone who have experience in making torrent work with unraid please comment? Thanks. Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 Can anyone who have experience in making torrent work with unraid please comment? Thanks. I am working on a torrent package right now that I should have done and submitted for inclusion into the next release of unMenu. I have been busy trying to get it all put together but I should have it done tonight. Link to comment
wsume99 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 Does the recommended MB (BIOSTAR TA785G3HD) supports S3 sleep and WOL?Not sure, but I'd bet my paycheck that it does otherwise Raj probably would not have put it on there. Do you manually send specific command to let it sleep or is there an automated way (sleep after xx munutes of inactivity) to do this?Yes. Check out the How-To's Wiki. There is a section titled Setup Sleep (S3) and Wake on Lan (WOL) that will give you the details. I have a revo 1600 and use xbmc live on it. I am assuming I will be able to send WOL magic packet from it by modifying the rc.local file. From windows box, I guess I can always create a shortcut to send the packet before accessing the nas.I've never sent WOL from a Linux machine but from windows you'll find an executable file (see shortcuts above) that you can download that will send a magic packet to a specified MAC address (i.e insert your server's NIC here). I just have a shortcut to that file on my desktop like you mentioned. I also created a batch file that runs the .exe file then launches XBMC that I point to with my XBMC shortcut icon. Now when I (or really my wife ) clicks on the XBMC shortcut it wakes the server and then opens XBMC. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 Does the recommended MB (BIOSTAR TA785G3HD) supports S3 sleep and WOL?Not sure, but I'd bet my paycheck that it does otherwise Raj probably would not have put it on there. I'll take that bet WOL and S3 actually aren't considerations of mine when choosing hardware. While they are certainly nice, I see them as fringe benefits. So basically I don't know if that board supports them or not, you will have to go through Biostar to find out. I expect it does support at least S3 since most modern motherboards do. WOL, I simply don't know. Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 There are so many combinations to consider for S3 that it is a hard thing to pin down. Adding a PCI or PCI-e SATA card can cause S3 to no longer work on a board. Since S3 is not part of the unRAID main distribution I think Rajahal did not take it into consideration when picking out the motherboard. Link to comment
wsume99 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 WOL and S3 actually aren't considerations of mine when choosing hardware. What I meant to say was that you'd better check the manual and/or contact the mfg. for any MB you're considering. That's the best way to ensure that the board will have the features you desire. Rajahal just can't be trusted. I'd also recommend searching the forums for that board to see if other users have reported success WRT S3 and WOL. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted November 9, 2010 Share Posted November 9, 2010 Careful, you'll break an ankle backpedaling that fast... Link to comment
aiden Posted November 9, 2010 Share Posted November 9, 2010 Since powering up and down seem to be hot buttons for you, is it safe to assume low power consumption is one of your priorities? If that is the case, you should really research a motherboard's power consumption as well. I would like to add that having IPMI (KVM over ethernet) is a HUGE advantage when working with a headless system like unRAID. And, thanks to Prostuff and Boof, I just got Crashplan running on my unRAID server. Very slick offsite backup solution. Link to comment
a931048 Posted November 10, 2010 Author Share Posted November 10, 2010 Power consumption is a issue. Could not find the manual of the motherboard yet searching online. I would probably opt for a KVM switch as I already have a desktop setup. Link to comment
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