Initial questions on unraid

[Coke84]

Hi,

 

currently I have my NAS running on a Raspberry Pi 4, but I want to go further and create my own NAS using more performant hardware. With a new NAS, also Unraid comes into the game. However I currently have no clue about RAID or something else, but my current solution utilizing external harddrives is to unsecure regarding any data loss.

 

With a new NAS, I want to have one or two bigger storage drives for my media, pictures and movies. For the relevant data, I also have another backup solution (e.g. iCloud), therefore in case of a broken Drive, I do not really care. Which means, I don't need another mirror / parity solution for these drives.

 

Furthermore I want to have another Drive (2-4gb) which I will use for important data like macOS time machine backups, documents, backups of my other RPi's. To sum it up, I will use these drive for data which really would hurt in case of data loss. Guess I can solve this request by using a parity drive which mirrors this drive? Do I understand that correctly? Or is there a way to utilize a RAID 1-functionality to mirror this drive to another drive to have all data still available in case of a broken hard drive? Will it also be possible to use this drive for docker-images which will be installed on unraid?

 

Secondly, I understood that I have to use a USB pen drive for using unraid, correct? Does this pen drive only store the licence for unraid and the system itself will be installed on a hard drive, e.g. internal M.2 drive? Or will also the full system be installed on the pen drive, which means I'd need a really fast pen drive? If yes, do I also need to install all Plugins, Addons, VM's, etc. on that pen drive or can I utilize one of my drives mentioned above for? I'm also planning to use a small m.2 drive as cache drive. What is a reasonable size? I will not transfer files which are bigger than 20gb individually.

 

I know, a lot of very beginner's question, however I'm really thrilled to be enlighted

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

[itimpi]

Regarding the USB flash drive, then you do not need a high-speed drive.   In fact USB 2 drives are recommended as they tend to be more reliable.    Every time Unraid boots it installs itself into RAM from the archives kept on the flash drive (in this sense it is rather like firmware) so a faster drive might gain a few seconds during the boot but nothing measurable after that.   The flash drive also stores your licence and your configuration information but these files are very small so again speed is irrelevant.

[Coke84]

Thanks, this really helps. 
 

one more question came in my mind. 
 

I do not plan to use a dedicated video card, but the internal GPU in my CPU (Ryzen 3 3200G). Is it possible to pssthrough the internal GPU to VM‘s? I‘ve read some threads which say it is hardly possible, however these threads have been posted in 2018. 

 

i do not plan to use several VM‘s actively in parallel. It‘s more having Windows 10 in a VM to play/stream with my Shadow Account, using Media Clients like Plex, Emby, Sky Go, etc. Or do I need a dedicated video card as the iGPU is been used by the unraid system?

 

//edit: what I have learned is, that iGPU passtrough with AMD does not work really well, if any. Therefore I think it makes sense to add a low-end GPU to my system, e.g. Geforce GT 1030. It is possible to use the (primary) iGPU for unRAID and passtrough the dedicated one to the VM's, isn't it? And it is also possible to use the dedicated with multiple VM's, even not with parallely used VM's, correct?

 

Additionally, I decided not to use a m2 drive but my already available 512gb Samsung 860 Pro SSD for cache. Think that makes sense since the bottleneck will be my Gigabit LAN. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by Coke84