max hard drives for Pro


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I cant find an answer but Im looking to know what the max number of Drives that can be used for a Pro license. I hear a while back it was 30 drive cap but the website just says "Unlimited" So I would assume that this isnt a bait and switch by changing Unlimited to a number... so if anyone can properly answer this, I'd appreciate it. 

 

thanks

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5 minutes ago, itimpi said:

It depends on whether you are talking about ‘attached’ devices or ‘array’ devices?     The Pro licence has a limit of 30 for ‘array’ devices but no limit on ‘attached’ devices.   This is all specified on the Unraid Pricing page.

Interesting 🧐 thanks great info? - since I assumed it was unlimited also for array devices. It does state “Unlimited attached storage devices” on the website listed for pro, right now I used hardware raid groups and then use those inside of unraid as array disks. So if I moved up to the 30 limit on raid pools I would be stuck?

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2 minutes ago, Magicmissle said:

Interesting 🧐 thanks great info? - since I assumed it was unlimited also for array devices. It does state “Unlimited attached storage devices” on the website listed for pro, right now I used hardware raid groups and then use those inside of unraid as array disks. So if I moved up to the 30 limit on raid pools I would be stuck?

The array limits for each of the licence levels are detailed in the notes underneath the headline price part.
 

Not quite sure of what you mean about the hardware raid groups?     As far as Unraid is concerned hardwire raid is invisible to it and all drives in a hardware raid group is presented as a single drive to Unraid    This mean all recovery of individual drives within such a group has to be handled by the hardware raid.   It also means you have to have a parity drive/group that is at least as large as the largest hardware raid group.   If you mean that you are going to break the groups down to individual drives then the limits for drives apply.

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12 minutes ago, itimpi said:

The array limits for each of the licence levels are detailed in the notes underneath the headline price part.
 

Not quite sure of what you mean about the hardware raid groups?     As far as Unraid is concerned hardwire raid is invisible to it and all drives in a hardware raid group is presented as a single drive to Unraid    This mean all recovery of individual drives within such a group has to be handled by the hardware raid.   It also means you have to have a parity drive/group that is at least as large as the largest hardware raid group.   If you mean that you are going to break the groups down to individual drives then the limits for drives apply.


I had my old unraid “unlimited” licensing changed when LimeTech made those changes to their licensing. I’m not the original thread op, but thought it was interesting.

 

It depends on the adapters and also how the raid is exposed to unraid. In my case I use Adaptec 71605Q cards, those connect up to external sas expanders with multiple JBODs. As an example I have 3 raid10 groups with maxcache enabled, each raid group is 8 disks however it appears as a single drive in unraid.

 

So as far as unraid is concerned it is only represented as 3 disks, one parity and two for the array. I get all the advantages this way however it reduces everything to a single point of failure - being the raid card itself, I guess my question is I am only limited to 30 of these “devices” ?
 

 

Edited by Magicmissle
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57 minutes ago, Magicmissle said:

So as far as unraid is concerned it is only represented as 3 disks, one parity and two for the array. I get all the advantages this way however it reduces everything to a single point of failure - being the raid card itself, I guess my question is I am only limited to 30 of these “devices” ?

I thought itimpi explanation was very clear that the answer is: your array can have 30 of these "devices" but outside of the array you can have however many you want.

 

However, you are completely wrong in assuming there is "a single point of failure - being the raid card itself".

Every drive behind the RAID card is a point of failure too.

 

Moreover, you also severely compromise your ability to recover your data by mixing RAID into Unraid.

The whole point of using the Unraid array is that each drive has its own drive system so you will only lose all your data if all your data drives fail.

Using your (terrible) scheme of 3 RAID10 group, you can lose ALL your data with just SIX failed drives.

 

Statistically, each parity drive can only reasonably protect for max of (a fraction under) 8 drives (based on my calculation off Backblaze HDD failure stat for 8TB+ drives).

So a 30-drive array is, in my opinion, pushing your luck to the limit.

Edited by testdasi
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thank you all. I do understand its a limitation for the parity. I was just hoping to add more storage to my array :( I have a Ton of 2 TB drives and wanted to add a few shelves of the 24bay netapp disk shelves and scale up but I guess I cant with unraid. thats too bad cause I really really like unraid and its simplicity. 

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3 hours ago, tmoran000 said:

thank you all. I do understand its a limitation for the parity. I was just hoping to add more storage to my array :( I have a Ton of 2 TB drives and wanted to add a few shelves of the 24bay netapp disk shelves and scale up but I guess I cant with unraid. thats too bad cause I really really like unraid and its simplicity. 

HDD failure is a probabilistic. The more drives you have, the more likely you will soon have a failed drive.

And then, based on Backblaze stats, older small capacity drives are less reliable than newer large capacity ones.

 

So if I were you, I would rather spend some money on 4x16TB and save myself for meaningful things instead having to constantly worry at the back of my head that one of the 24x2TB is going to fail imminently.

 

Linus gets paid to have those storinators and he has people working for him who know how to deal with failed drives (poor Anthony).

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