Almost ready to buy. Some final qeuestions about Docker and future hardware upgrades.

[Zhono]

I'm using the 30 trial to make sure I can get my system fully converted and up and running on Unraid before deciding on a license.

 

Originally, I had replaced my desktop(ryzen 5 1600/rx560) with a better system(ryzen 7 2700x/rx590), based on what was on sale, then used the old stuff to put together a home server running Debian with Webmin/Docker/Docker-Compose.

 

Since I can't leave the house anyway, I've spent the last 10 days or so trying to get my main desktop converted to running on Unraid, with the original Win10 running as a VM. Getting the VM working was easy enough. Getting the one and only AMD GPU in the system to passthrough to Windows was not, and is what took up a good 8 of those 10 days to figure out. Every solution I found, either turned out to apply to some other configuration, or otherwise just didn't seem to work for me. But anyway, I got it in the end. Got my CPU cores pinned and isolated to dedicate half the CPU to Windows. Then I spent the last few days transferring all of my data to shares on the array, as well as all of my Docker container config data.

 

The part I am stuck on now, is actually recreating my Docker containers in Unraid. I do have the Community Applications plugin to use. And certainly, I could also manually create containers and replicate the setups in my compose file. But with 15-20 containers, each with a big list of custom labels and other assorted variables and settings, I'm now looking for a way to avoid spending countless hours tediously copy/pasting individual variables, over and over and over again. Tried looking up using compose on Unraid, but it seems like it is neither straightforward nor recommended. Various searches only seem to lead to the same basic advice/instructions for manually creating a container and copy/pasting all of the needed labels and variables. Is there no easier/less time-consuming way to migrate my containers to Unraid?

 

And my other question is about hardware upgrades. Obviously, I know the license is tied to the usb stick itself, so no issue there. I'm just wondering about, say, a mother board swap. I'm using a micro ATX board, and a pretty small case, so the board only has 4 sata3 ports, and one usable m.2 port(had my nvme drive with Windows), and the case only holds a few drives. I have 3 drives in the array, and the one nvme drive for Windows, as well as one ssd for Windows to store my Steam games. Don't currently have the ability to even fit parity or cache drives. So I'm thinking about ordering a bigger board and case, that can both accommodate more drives, maybe a USB pcie card(I'm passing through one of the motherboard's controllers to Windows currently) and maybe toss in the second GPU to play with. So the question is, how difficult is it to swap boards? Since I assume that the SATA controllers, as well as other bits of hardware and their related addresses or whatever are going to all be different. I imagine I'll also have to make some changes to the Windows VM config, which seems obvious.

 

Anyway, the Docker question being the most pressing for me at the moment, so I can get everything up and running and make sure everything is going to work the way I am hoping, so I can decide on a license. And actually, bonus question regarding licenses; I have a usb external hard drive I occasionally plug in to Windows to store certain stuff on. Does Unraid somehow track that and count such a drive toward the limit? Just wondering if that's the case, what happens if I get the Plus license, and max out the number of drives, then forget about it and happen to plug in my external drive to grab/save some files?

 

Thanks in advance for any help here. Looking forward to hopefully making Unraid a permanent part of my setup.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Zhono
grammar / tired, and called it a "usb sata card"

[HellDiverUK]

Install the CA Backup V2 plugin.  Create a backup.  Copy the backup file(s) across.  Restore the backup on the new machine.  Once you go in to the Docker tab, you'll see a list of your old Docker templates when you go to create a new Docker.

 

You won't need to mess with setting up all your variables etc again, it'll all be there.

[itimpi]

When swapping motherboards as long as you are using standard HBA or onboard SATA ports in principle it should ‘just work’.   As you mentioned the caveat is VMs using pass-through as the hardware IDs will change and settings adjusted appropriately.

 

regarding the license question UnRAID counts the devices plugged in at the point of starting the array against the licence limit.    Plugging in removable devices later is fine.

[NewDisplayName]

DOcker compose works, just the gui is broken. I create it with portainer. Be sure to include watchdog for automatic updates bc unraid cant do it if you use compose.

[Zhono]

So it sounds like hardware swaps are fairly straightforward, so that's good. I just went ahead on Newegg and ordered an ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus motherboard, a Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X case(in Galaxy Silver, if anyone cares), the very last dual 3.5" drive bracket that Newegg had in stock for that case, and a Cooler Master MasterAir MA620M to replace the stock Wraith Prism cooler that came with my 2700x. So hopefully Newegg can get that stuff shipped without issue, in these times of "maybe it ships and arrives, maybe it doesn't". Going to have to wait and see what kind of IOMMU grouping is happening on that board. Tried searching to see if anyone has talked about those specifics about that board anywhere, but didn't find anything. Hopefully I'll be able to pass through most of the good USB ports to Windows, leaving something for the Unraid drive, without having to also order a usb pcie card. But again, I can't find specfics on exactly how many different USB controllers are on the board. And I'm also hoping I can pass through all the extras to Windows, like the bluetooth, the fancy Intel wifi, etc, without much hassle.

 

As for the Docker stuff, I kinda lost my patience for searching, as I often do, and just bit the bullet and recreated everything manually. Ditched Traefik and instead setup the Let's Encrypt with nginx container, following Spaceinvader's video, and recreated all of my other containers using the stuff available in the Community Apps plugin, adding in all the custom labels and other stuff as necessary. Only ended up taking a couple of hours.

 

So I now have my Windows 10 VM(that's my main desktop/gaming system) running, as well as all of my server type stuff, and everything seems more or less good. Still need to dial-in the best settings for VR gaming on the VM, and for some reason the Nextcloud containers feels kinds laggy. The gaming might just come down to the RX 590 needing an upgrade, and the Nextcloud thing might just be that I'm pinning and isolating 75% of all the cored for Windows, leaving only 2 cores/4 thread for Unraid/Docker/whatever else isn't Windows. Might have to dial that back a bit to just half the cores for Windows and see how that does. My stuff is supposed to come by Friday, so hopefully by Saturday night I'll have my final hardware config assembled and be able to do some final testing to make sure everything runs well and finally grab a license. Let's be honest though, working with Unraid seems WAY better than any of the alternatives, so even if I decide to split everything back up into two system for gaming performance reasons, I'm probably going to want to run the file/media server stuff on Unraid either way. lol