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which license for ZFS only usage

efschu

By efschu
in Pre-Sales Support

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efschu Noob

efschu

Posted
Posted

I'm thinking of switching from proxmox to unraid - but I will defenetly not use your unraid-storage, I want to keep on using my zfs arrays. Can I do so? If yes, which license do I need to? For my understanding I should not have any limit of how many drives I would use with ZFS (as this is not your development, so you are not allowed to limit it), correct?

itimpi Grand Master

itimpi

Posted
Posted

No.

 

The Unraid licence limit applies to the number of drives attached to the system at array start regardless of whether Unraid is actually using them.

 

If you do not want Unraid features, then why use Unraid in the first place?

efschu Noob

efschu

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Well I will not have an "array start" cause, as I said, I will not use your "unraid-array". Forsure I want to use ZFS on disks itself, not on an unraid-array.

I'm looking for unraid because you use more up to date kernel/qemu/kvm then proxmox does. But I have a 4U 60-bay disk enclousure, and no, I do not want to virtualize a "storage VM" to get it done. So I have read that there exists some 30 disk limitation, even on the "unlimited disks"-PRO Version, which kinda confuses me, because unlimited and 30 is a huge difference.

 

Dont get me wrong, I do not want to save money, I am willing to pay but before I start over migrating and test things, I want to know if that will work, or not (which saves me the test-time).

itimpi Grand Master

itimpi

Posted
Posted
  • You cannot use UnRAID features without starting the array !
  • you must have at least 1 drive in the array to start it - although In extreme cases it can be something like a USB drive that you never intend to use to store data.
  • there is no limit on the Pro version on the number of Unattached devices you have - limitations only apply to the maximum number of drives you can have in the array (28 data + 2 parity) or the cache (24 drives), but you state you do not intend to use the array or cache so these are not relevant.

for your extreme case why not use a standard Linux distribution and build you own kernel and KVM/Qemu so you can then be as up-to-date as you want to be.

efschu Noob

efschu

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

I still want to have "some kind of support" and a "full featured" webfrontend, which non-linux-gurus can handle, because I'm not the only one creating/modifing VMs/containers. I had this machine already running with a standard ubuntu etc., but the other guys werent that happy - so we went for proxmox, but - there is this proxmox-lagging behind versions.

So - because of the number of disks, I would have to get the PRO license - but with that I could do what I want to - correct?

Edited by efschu
tr0910 Community Regular

tr0910

Posted
Posted

Support here in the forum is great for people using unRaid in typical data hoarding for movies, audio using auto downloaders and media servers  However, you will find support to be very limited to fringe use cases such as ZFS.  Support here for Windows VMs is broad and good.  There isn't as much experience with Linux VMs, but don't let that dissuade you from proceeding as the base software is solid.  I've been using the product since 2009.

  • Like 1
Marshalleq Collaborator

Marshalleq

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hi, @efschu, welcome to the forum.

 

As I understand it, your use case requires migration from an existing ZFS pool, currently installed on Proxmox, which is large and impractical to shift to unraid's 'Unraid' array.  I can clearly see, this makes perfect sense for various reasons and on behalf of the unraid community, I feel I must apologise if any of our help seems unhelpful, people here are passionate about unraid and love to share their experience and opinions, please don't let that put you off!  Actually I'd say the community is truly one of unraids best features!

 

Anyway, getting a bit more technical - I believe the docker and virtual machine 'services' of unraid are hard linked to 'array start' from the perspective of just starting those services.  I have no idea if that can be changed.  That however absolutely does not mean you have to store virtual machines and docker containers on the unraid array - I've had mine running on unraid, unassigned devices and zfs to name a few.  Currently, all my virtual machines and dockers are on ZFS for reasons I'm sure I don't have to tell you about.

 

If there ever were any issues where the file system was suspected, it would be up to you to move it to a supported FS to rule it out.  The likelihood of that however, is probably at an extreme number of leading zeros i.e. 000000001%.  Just don't ask for ZFS support directly, there are specialist forums for that as you are no doubt aware.

 

Speaking of ZFS, there are now two implementations of ZFS on unraid now, one as a plugin and one compiled into the kernel.  It's also been mentioned by limetech they are looking at potentially including it officially in the future.  Obviously don't count on that, but limetech are typically very good at introducing what the community discuss and vote for on here, in a sort of 'we not going to tell you' kind of way (ie no roadmap unfortunately).

 

Yes, Unraid has better integration with KVM and so on than proxmox, but do understand proxmox (and others) have far more enterprise style features than unraid does.  The unraid featureset is perfectly suited to the home / home enthusiast market and they do a fantastic job at it.

 

I'd suggest you install the trial onto a usb and see if your ZFS array will import, if Unraid still sounds good.

 

Marshalleq

Edited by Marshalleq
  • Like 1
efschu Noob

efschu

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Well I have misread something. Unraid is still on kernel 4.19? Which is even behind proxmox?

I see this topic:

One main reason I would like to have newer kernel version is SVM AVIC/IOMMU AVIC improvement in kernel 5.6 and up. Does Unraid even take advantage of that?

So ... I have to take a deep think, where I will move to, with my EPYC Rome + GPU-"Cluster" + my ZFS arrays.

Marshalleq Collaborator

Marshalleq

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, efschu said:

Well I have misread something. Unraid is still on kernel 4.19? Which is even behind proxmox?

I see this topic:

One main reason I would like to have newer kernel version is SVM AVIC/IOMMU AVIC improvement in kernel 5.6 and up. Does Unraid even take advantage of that?

So ... I have to take a deep think, where I will move to, with my EPYC Rome + GPU-"Cluster" + my ZFS arrays.

The beta version of unraid is on a 5.x kernel too.  It was released because unraid knew people needed that kernel.  The beta is very stable (and their beta's usually are) so don't let it scare you too much, though obviously it is a beta.  Either way, ZFS is not in beta, so that's going to be pretty safe anyway.  I believe they're up to something like beta 12/13 behind the scenes so there is a jump coming soon - there are new multi-array features and such coming so it's a fairly big release for them.

 

Anyway, if you want a newer kernel, see here.

trurl Grand Master

trurl

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, johnwhicker said:

Does the latest beta supports ZFS file system?  I heard that somewhere? 

There's a link to the release thread just a few posts above.

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