unRaid the best solution for my me?


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Hi,

 

I am not sure if unRaid would be my best option for what I want to do, so I will give you a quick overview of my setup right now:

 

1x Raspberry Pi Zero

--> pihole for network wide adblocking

 

1x Raspberry Pi 4 (400GB microSD Card)

--> homebridge for smarthome devices

--> nextcloud for personal cloud usage of documents, rss feed, photos, files, calendar, contacts...

--> Plex Server with music library

 

1x Raspberry Pi 3

---> homebridge for smarthome devices (certain plugins do not work on the same system

 

1x Mac Pro (4x6GB HDD RAID5)

--> Plex Server with TV Series, Movies

--> Photos Library

--> Ecoding / Video&Photo Editing

 

1x iPad Pro

--> Daily usage for Mails, surfing, social media etc.

 

My intention is to sell my Raspberry Pi's and Mac Pro and combine everything into one device with unRaid.

 

Run the system headless if possible with the iPad Pro as the "main display"

--> 1 Container with pihole

--> 1 Container with Plex (accessable from outside of my network)

--> 1 Container with nextcloud for personal cloud storage

--> hardware power do make some Video/Photo editing (if possible in a macOS environment)

 

Now the question:

 

1. Is this possible, or would you suggest me something else, which suits my use case in a better way?

2. What hardware would you recommend me on a budget? (Due to performance/price, I would love prefer a Ryzen System

3. If I set it up, is there any maintenance needed, or can I run it 24/7 with no issues?

 

I do not have much experience with container, VM etc. So I would really appreciate any help for easy to follow instructions on how to set up everything, correctly, safe and stable.

 

Thanks in advance for any help, it is much appreciated! 

 

 

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1. Certainly possible.

2. Ryzen is the economical choice right now.

3. Define "maintenance". I have to clear my fan dust filter regularly but that's regardless if I run Unraid or not.

 

In terms of experience, go to Youtube and subscribe to SpaceInvaderOne channel. His guides are pretty dang close to having someone sitting at your desk doing it for you.

 

A gotcha that you may want to consider: Your Mac Pro RAID5 will not be readily convertible into Unraid array so don't sell your MacPro before migrating your data.

Depending on your tech savvy-ness, risk tolerance, budget and how much of the RAID5 pool you have used, the migrating approach will be different.

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I migrated from Xpenology to Unraid with no prior knowledge or real experience of implementing what I wanted.  I now have a Gen10 Micro Server running;

1. Pihole - blocking and DHCP

2. Plex

3. Nextcloud

4. Photo library

Plus a whole raft of other Dockers that I'm now using.

 

Unraid has been a joyous learning experience.  Everything is intuitive and reliable, dockers just work and the community is extremely helpful in the rare occasion things don't quit go to plan.

 

Not sure about homebridge or photo editing but you can spin up a Mac for the latter.

 

I'm finding it does what I wanted and much much more and would recommend it to anyone.

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Hi, thanks for your help, it is really apprecuated!

 

A few further questions:

 

I would use some hardware from my MP to fill up this project:

 

4x6TB for RAID (I will make a backup of everything on some external drives, so that I can reformat everything for unRAID.)

 

1x SSD for caching (2nd needed, according to some guides on youtube?)

 

NVIDIA TITAN X gpu for everything graphic related (could I use this gpu for multiple VM's? Like windows 10 & macOS? Or would you suggest another gpu?

 

are the container running within the VM or completely separately?

 

Regarding maintenance: does the system run stable enough, so that I can update it without checking afterwards that everything is still working, like macOS VM (hackintosh...), settings, permissions etc. Or is there any known "incompatibility" with certain VM's, docker, hardware etc? 
 

Is the RAID array itself accessable from every OS, or only with nextcloud/plex etc with the specific client app? 
 

right now I used ~10TB of storage from maximum accessable capacity of 18TB, so thats okay. 
-> using unRAID would allow me to upgrade my HDD's to bigger storage sizes with an automatic rebuild, or is that too tricky if not every HDD has the same size? 
 

 

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1 hour ago, misanthrophy said:

I would use some hardware from my MP to fill up this project:

 

4x6TB for RAID (I will make a backup of everything on some external drives, so that I can reformat everything for unRAID.)

 

1x SSD for caching (2nd needed, according to some guides on youtube?)

 

NVIDIA TITAN X gpu for everything graphic related (could I use this gpu for multiple VM's? Like windows 10 & macOS? Or would you suggest another gpu?

 

are the container running within the VM or completely separately?

 

Regarding maintenance: does the system run stable enough, so that I can update it without checking afterwards that everything is still working, like macOS VM (hackintosh...), settings, permissions etc. Or is there any known "incompatibility" with certain VM's, docker, hardware etc? 
 

Is the RAID array itself accessable from every OS, or only with nextcloud/plex etc with the specific client app? 
 

right now I used ~10TB of storage from maximum accessable capacity of 18TB, so thats okay. 
-> using unRAID would allow me to upgrade my HDD's to bigger storage sizes with an automatic rebuild, or is that too tricky if not every HDD has the same size? 

There isn't really a "need" for a 2nd SSD. Each guide is specific for a particular use case so ask yourself if it's your use case or not. If the guide says you need a Ferrari, doesn't mean you need a Ferrari if you don't have a use for it.

 

1 GPU can only be used for 1 VM at any one time. It can be used across multiple VM's provided (a) the VM's do not run simultaneously and (b) the GPU doesn't have reset issues (mostly an AMD problem).

 

(Docker) containers are independent of VM's. For Unraid, you can more or less consider docker containers equivalent to Android apps.

 

Your incompatibility question is hard to answer. Of course there are hardware out there that are incompatible with a certain feature or down right not work or may or may not work depending on the exact config / model. For example,

  • Intel 660p NVMe SSD can't be passed through via PCIe method (Linux kernel issue)
  • Marvell controller basically doesn't work (again Linux kernel issue)
  • Nvidia driver, under the right (wrong) conditions, will refuse to load with the infamous error code 43 i.e. detected that it's being used in a VM

So really the only way to know for sure that there is zero issue is to confirm with someone with the exact same config.

MacOS VM though is a rather niche use so I would recommend you check with SpaceInvaderOne for hardware issues.

 

In terms of stability (which seems to be what you meant by "maintenance), once it's running, it won't randomly crash unless there's hardware issue (which isn't an Unraid problem). Bad RAM, for example, will crash stuff - you are just more likely to notice it with 24/7 server than a on-demand workstation.

 

It's UNraid array. Very important to make the distinction that it is NOT RAID. For example, don't expect RAID-5 performance.

 

I have Android phone, Linux, Mac and Windows accessing the Unraid server without any specific app. The specific apps is more for specific use case (e.g. if you want the nice Nextcloud interface instead of having to connect via smb).

 

I have added 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 10TB in my array at different points. I wouldn't call it "tricky". Ability to use mixed-size HDDs is a selling point of Unraid so if it's tricky then it would defeat the purpose. :)

Edited by testdasi
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  • 1 month later...
On 11/21/2019 at 1:59 PM, misanthrophy said:

Hi, thanks for your help, it is really apprecuated!

 

A few further questions:

 

I would use some hardware from my MP to fill up this project:

 

4x6TB for RAID (I will make a backup of everything on some external drives, so that I can reformat everything for unRAID.)

 

1x SSD for caching (2nd needed, according to some guides on youtube?)

 

NVIDIA TITAN X gpu for everything graphic related (could I use this gpu for multiple VM's? Like windows 10 & macOS? Or would you suggest another gpu?

 

are the container running within the VM or completely separately?

 

Regarding maintenance: does the system run stable enough, so that I can update it without checking afterwards that everything is still working, like macOS VM (hackintosh...), settings, permissions etc. Or is there any known "incompatibility" with certain VM's, docker, hardware etc? 
 

Is the RAID array itself accessable from every OS, or only with nextcloud/plex etc with the specific client app? 
 

right now I used ~10TB of storage from maximum accessable capacity of 18TB, so thats okay. 
-> using unRAID would allow me to upgrade my HDD's to bigger storage sizes with an automatic rebuild, or is that too tricky if not every HDD has the same size? 
 

 

Have you tried unraid on Mac Pro yet?

 

It's only a matter of using a USB stick. For me, it doesn't boot at all and stuck with a kernel panic.

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