Some questions before I start..

[Dave-M]

Good Morning!

 

I have built a home NAS and all that's left to do it choose the software, I've tried OMV, but could not get much help with it and the subsequent reading materials brought me here.  This is my first NAS build and it is just going to be a simple (I think) set up with Blu Ray rips, a large music collection and a lifetime of photos.  There will be no transcoding and I doubt that I will use Plex, just straight forward streaming from NAS to Nvidia Shield TV and a music streamer.  Files added and removed regularly, but a lot of permanent files will be stored.  For the hardware, I have:

 

• 1Gbe network
• ASRock Rack E3C246D2I (this has 7 Sata ports, 3 physical on the board and 4 via oculink cable)
• Dell Perc H200/9211-8i (bought this before I had found the above motherboard, so no benefit to using it, right?)
• i5 8400T
• 16GB Corsair Value Select 2400Mhz Non ECC
• 3x Ironwolf 4TB for the data
• 1x 2.5" 5tb Barracuda (parity or backup, I have another that I can use if it will be useful)
• 2x 512GB 970 Pro NVMe on a riser (already have this, but not sure if it will be useful in this build)
• 2TB Samsung 860 Pro Sata 3 SSD (already have this, but not sure if it will be useful in this build)
• Kingston Data Traveller 16GB (DTSE9H)

 

1.  Let's say I had 6x spinners and an NVMe SSD, but the SSD had only a windows install on it, would UnRAID still class that as an attached storage device, meaning I had to go up a tier, or can I tell Unraid to ignore it?

 

2. Similar to above with 6x spinners and no NVMe, if I hook up and external drive to transfer some media to the server, will UnRAID complain that it is a 7th drive if I have the basic license?

 

3. When UnRAID is installed and there is a power outage or the power is accidentally turned off and back on, once the server has started up, does it require me to log in on the server itself via a monitor/keyboard before it is then usable to other devices on the network?

 

4. I'm using 3x Ironwolf 4TB drives for the data and was wondering what to use for a parity drive.  I read that it needs to be the same size or slightly larger and faster than each of the data drives.  Can I use 2x 2.5" Baracudas in raid 0 (from the BIOS) as a single parity drive?  Get something faster?  If so, do you have any recommendations?  Or just get another iron wolf 4TB?  It can be 2.5" or 3.5", I can just about squeeze either in.

 

5. I have some SSDs from another build, 2x 970 Pro NVMe and a 2TB 860 Pro SATA 3 drive.  Could I make use of these, caching maybe? If I put the 2x NVMe drives in a riser card, would this count as one drive or two in Unraid, would this be better as a cache?

 

6. Is there a way to boot into windows (on the NVMe scenario in question 1) and be able to see the NAS drives from windows?  I won't use windows very often at all, but was wondering if this is possible.  If not, I will leave out the single NVMe drive.

 

7. I've read that Unraid's read and write speeds are quite slow, is this true?  If so, what would I be looking at roughly?

 

8. Can a SATADOM be used instead of a flash drive for Unraid?

 

9. Regarding file systems, is there a choice on Unraid?  As I'm not using ECC memory, is there a particular one I need to use?  Some of my files are large at 60gb.

 

10. Can Unraid completely put the server to sleep when not in use so the fans and drives are not spinning and then can be woken by any device on the network when needed?

 

Thanks 👍

Edited November 19, 2019 by Dave-M

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

1.  Let's say I had 6x spinners and an NVMe SSD, but the SSD had only a windows install on it, would UnRAID still class that as an attached storage device, meaning I had to go up a tier, or can I tell Unraid to ignore it?

I am afraid that Unraid counts all attached storage devices at the point the array starts so this would push you up a license level.

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

2. Similar to above with 6x spinners and no NVMe, if I hook up and external drive to transfer some media to the server, will UnRAID complain that it is a 7th drive if I have the basic license?

Unraid only checks for attached devices at the point the array starts.  If this drive is attached at that point it counts, but you can plug it in later without Unraid complaining.

 

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

3. When UnRAID is installed and there is a power outage or the power is accidentally turned off and back on, once the server has started up, does it require me to log in on the server itself via a monitor/keyboard before it is then usable to other devices on the network?

It is a configuration as to whether the array should be auto-started so no login is required if that is set.

 

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

4. I'm using 3x Ironwolf 4TB drives for the data and was wondering what to use for a parity drive.  I read that it needs to be the same size or slightly larger and faster than each of the data drives.  Can I use 2x 2.5" Baracudas in raid 0 (from the BIOS) as a single parity drive?  Get something faster?  If so, do you have any recommendations?  Or just get another iron wolf 4TB?  It can be 2.5" or 3.5", I can just about squeeze either in.

The only requirement is that the parity drive(s) must be at least as large as the largest data drive.  It is not required that the parity drive be faster than the data drives as any write action speed is determined by the slowest drive involved.  Having said that it never hurts to habe the parity drive as a faster drive.

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by itimpi

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

5. I have some SSDs from another build, 2x 970 Pro NVMe and a 2TB 860 Pro SATA 3 drive.  Could I make use of these, caching maybe? If I put the 2x NVMe drives in a riser card, would this count as one drive or two in Unraid, would this be better as a cache?

It depends how the riser card presents multiple attached drives.   I would guess they would probably be seen as separate drives so better used as a cache.

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

6. Is there a way to boot into windows (on the NVMe scenario in question 1) and be able to see the NAS drives from windows?  I won't use windows very often at all, but was wondering if this is possible.  If not, I will leave out the single NVMe drive.

If you boot into Windows bare metal then the NAS drives would not be usable by Windows as it does not understand the linux file system formats.

If you run Windows in a VM then they can be accessed as network shares with no problems.

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

7. I've read that Unraid's read and write speeds are quite slow, is this true?  If so, what would I be looking at roughly?

Read speeds run at the speed of the drive being accessed (Unraid does not span files across disks).  

 

Write speeds to array disks tend to run slower (at around 30-40 MBps) due to the overheads of updating parity in real time.   There a "Turbo" write mode that normally gives something like 60-70 MBps but at the expense of keeping all drives spinning.   Writes to the cache run at the speed of the cache drive for shares configured to use it and then files later get moved to the array (typically overnight) when speed is less critical.

Edited November 19, 2019 by itimpi

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

8. Can a SATADOM be used instead of a flash drive for Unraid?

No.  The Unraid licence m/del requires a flash drive.

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

9. Regarding file systems, is there a choice on Unraid?  As I'm not using ECC memory, is there a particular one I need to use?  Some of my files are large at 60gb

Unraid supports BTRFS and XFS as file systems (technically it also supports ReiserFS but this is deprecated).   XFS is deemed the more stable but BTRFS has some advanced features that some users find desirable.   If y/u have a cache pool (i.e. more than one cache drive)  then BTRFS is mandated as it can handle multiple drives.

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

10. Can Unraid completely put the server to sleep when not in use so the fans and drives are not spinning and then can be woken by any device on the network when needed?

This is not part of the core product but there is a frequently used plugin that can achieve this if all your hardware is compatible with sleep mode.

Edited November 19, 2019 by itimpi

[JonathanM]

3 hours ago, Dave-M said:

When UnRAID is installed and there is a power outage or the power is accidentally turned off and back on,

Unraid, like most servers, doesn't work well having the rug pulled out from under it. If you don't stop the array before the power is cut, the next start will trigger a parity check which will degrade performance for many hours while it completes, and you may even have data corruption depending on what was happening when the power went out.

 

Normally you would have a battery backup that can tell unraid when the power is out and unraid can shut itself down properly.

[trurl]

Looks like itimpi covered most of it, but I just want to comment on this bit:

2 hours ago, Dave-M said:

a lifetime of photos

Parity is not a substitute for backups. Many of us don't backup everything on our large capacity servers, but you must have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable.

[Dave-M]

Wow, thanks for all the replies, much appreciated 👍.  I forgot to say that the two 2.5" 4TB Seagate barracudas/external drives I mentioned are my current backup drives, I was going to either shift them into the case for convenience as a backup or use them as parity and use something else for backup.  I think I'll leave them as external and get a slightly faster drive for parity.

 

I've just had an email saying my motherboard isn't coming any time soon, so am going to have to find another alternative, I chose that one as it would have allowed me to use the i5 8400T and 16GB of memory I already had.  The alternatives seem to be the Supermicro X11SCL-IF and the Asus P11C-I.  Will have to change CPU with either of those, though.  There's a distinct lack of stock of anything in the UK with regards to mini-itx server boards.

[Dave-M]

Hello again, I was wondering if using an SSD cache, would it matter less if the parity drive was slightly slower than the data drives? For example, 3x Ironwolf 4TB as data drives, 1x Barracuda 2.5” 4TB as parity and a fast NVMe as a cache drive.  Does the fast cache drive mean the speed of the parity drive is much less important?

 

Also, I have been reading on here about people using RAID 0 for two parity drives.  Could I use the RAID 0 from my motherboard (C242 chipset) and use 2x Barracuda 4tb 2.5” drives as parity?  Or is this pointless if using a fast cache drive?

 

Thanks!

[itimpi]

Any operation involving writing to the array is going to involve at least a data drive and the parity drive and its speed will be affected by the slowest of the drives involved.    Having a slow parity drive is not a good idea as it means ALL writes to the array are slowed down.    If you must use a slow array drive it is better for it to be one of the data drives.    This will be true regardless of what you are using for the cache.

[Squid]

2 hours ago, Dave-M said:

 Does the fast cache drive mean the speed of the parity drive is much less important?

Somewhat.  In practice 5400 vs 7200 isn't a such a big deal as it used to be if you're transferring data via 1 GB/s pipe.  But, bear in mind that it's not just the speed of the parity drive in question.  It's any drive involved in the write, and the slowest will dictate the write speed.

 

2 hours ago, Dave-M said:

Could I use the RAID 0 from my motherboard (C242 chipset) and use 2x Barracuda 4tb 2.5” drives as parity?

If the motherboard has a hardware RAID controller, then the answer is yes.  Most motherboards though while they say they support RAID in actuality are a software RAID in which case unRaid won't recognize it.  But, even if it is a true hardware RAID, then I would argue that by doing a RAID 0 as a parity drive, then you are doubling the chances of the parity disk "set" failing, which IMHO isn't worth the increase in speed.

 

Back in the day when drive speeds were much slower, then the use of a cache drive for user shares was important.  Nowadays even with modest hardware on a 1GB network you get decent enough speeds that it's not so important, and many users (including myself) can't even be bothered to utilize the cache drive for anything other than as an "application" drive (ie: docker appdata) and simply write everything directly to the array.  If pure speed is an issue then yes cache all writes to the array and you will see a modest improvement on 1GB network.  10GB network you will see a substantial improvement.

[Dave-M]

Great info, thank you.  I'll grab another Ironwolf, then.  Is it possible to hook up an external USB 3 drive and drag files from that onto the array from within a browser, like you can on Synology DSM?  

[bastl]

1 hour ago, Dave-M said:

drag files from that onto the array from within a browser, like you can on Synology DSM

No. Either you do it via comand line or use a docker like Krusader for this. There is no filemanger build into the web ui.