I just downloaded and installed my first attempt at unRaid.  The installation and bootup went flawlessly.  

 

I am one of the people who are looking for a substitue for Microsoft WHS.  They decided to drop their drive extender technology in VAIL which is a major reason for using it.  

 

What would like to do be able to do (suggestions / comments if anyone has them) in order of personal priority.

 

1) Store media files in a central location as I do now - will be no issue, unRaid looks like it is great for that.

 

2) Backup my unRaid server - WHS had a utility to do this where I could split across multiple external drives ... dont know what is a good unRaid alternative other than attaching the shared directories and backing up through another machine ...suggestions?

 

3) Backup my home PCs ... can figure with some client tool but it would be terrific to have a WHS client solution that works the same ... I have recovered a couple pcs with WHS and it works very well .. suggestions on methods?

 

4) Backup a couple mac computers to unRaid - this is supposed to be integrated into VAIL and would be a nice feature to be able to do with unRaid.  

 

5) Be able to record TV programs, save them in a directory on the server for later viewing... similar to what media center does on Win7.

 

6) Have access to other add-in programs that are available and developed ... WHS had addins that others wrote and there were several that I found useful.  If there are other utilities / addins that are available it would be terrific.

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

1) Store media files in a central location as I do now - will be no issue, unRaid looks like it is great for that.

You are correct, unRAID is very good at doing this

 

2) Backup my unRaid server - WHS had a utility to do this where I could split across multiple external drives ... dont know what is a good unRaid alternative other than attaching the shared directories and backing up through another machine ...suggestions?

Do an entire forum search for Crashplan.  I believe it should allow you to backup to external USB drives.

 

3) Backup my home PCs ... can figure with some client tool but it would be terrific to have a WHS client solution that works the same ... I have recovered a couple pcs with WHS and it works very well .. suggestions on methods?

There are many different ways to do this.  I use Crashplan to backup all my files on my computers to my unRAID server running Crashplan.  This allows me to restore the files after I have reinstalled my OS.

 

4) Backup a couple mac computers to unRaid - this is supposed to be integrated into VAIL and would be a nice feature to be able to do with unRaid.  

I run Mac's on my network and use Crashplan no problem.

 

5) Be able to record TV programs, save them in a directory on the server for later viewing... similar to what media center does on Win7.

If you want the unRAID server to have a tuner card in it then you will be out of luck.  If the tuner card is in a HTPC and you want to save the recordings to a folder on the unRAID server then that should not be a problem.

 

6) Have access to other add-in programs that are available and developed ... WHS had addins that others wrote and there were several that I found useful.  If there are other utilities / addins that are available it would be terrific.

Do some searching in the customization forum.  There are quite a few things that can be added to unRAID, thought it is probably not as extendible as WHS was.

Thanks very much for the comments back.  I have just learned about CrashPlan from this forum.  I put together an unRaid server today and am backing up a couple PCs right now using CrashPlan... so far it looks like a great solution.  Seems to address a number of common needs.  If I buy the family plan will that give me Crashplan+ with the higher encryption level?

 

I found the wiki page which describes how to install Crashplan on unRaid.  I know microsoft technology well but am very new to linux.  The instructions were not entirely clear on some of the mechanics on how to install various utilities which I suspect is second nature to a linux user.  Installed sshd, cpio etc requires some additional downloads?  Where can I get them and how do I get them to the unRaid server?  Can I drop them on the shared USB stick on unRaid? 

 

I did find that it possible to back up an unRaid network share .. I found this posting which was very useful:

 

http://www.marriedgeeks.com/2010/01/crashplandroboworkarounddata-redundancy.html

 

I created a shared folder on my pc and then went into the my.services.xml file and changed the c:\xxxx reference to the network file  ...    //tower/backup/computer1  .... and it seemed to work well.  I suspect there are some lingering problems I havent yet discovered with this workaround.  Best case would be to have Crashplan installed on the unRaid box ... I need more help with instructions on how to do that.  Also, if I get it on the unRaid box it wasnt clear if it worked well or not.  Any feedback on that?

 

Again, unRaid looks fantastic so far and I am planning to buy a full license when I get some additional equipment to assemble a full server.

 

Thank.s