Does all hardware work with all features in Unraid?


SPOautos

Recommended Posts

I'm building a NAS/light gaming using mostly good older parts. Itll stay on 24/7 to serve media as a Plex server and general file storage/backup and on occasion play games with it.

 

Asus X99 Deluxe ii

Xeon e5-2690v3

4x8gb Trident X ddr4

Asus Radeon Strix rx580 GPU

4x6TB HSGT Deskstar NAS hdd

1x 750GB SSD

 

Heres my questions.....

 

1. Will all of the features of these components work in Unraid? I've only ever used Windows so when I build this will Unraid find it all and all the drivers be able to be installed like normal (or install automatically)?

 

2. Also, with 4x6TB drives how much will be used for the parity storage? I've read but I'm still confused at how Unraid works exactly and how much space I will have for data vs parity. Will it be able to only use 1 of my 6TB disks and leave the other 3 for storage? If so, then would I be safe to only off site backup the parity disk using cloud storage?

 

3. Will pretty much any game run on Unraid? I suppose the games are ran in a Virtual Windows correct? Does that slow it down or cause issues as compared to running it directly on a Windows maching? I suppose I can run my Virtual Windows with games on the SSD correct?

 

4. Is there any kind of iOS and android phone app that will allow me to use my Unraid server as cloud storage for phones/tablets so that pictures and videos save to specific files on the server. Also that does a general phone backup....we have a lot of important stuff on our phones for personal and work.

 

Any info you guys can provide is great....I'm brand new to Unraid and just trying to feel my way through this. 

Link to comment

To add....I guess one thing I'm trying to understand regarding hardware and drivers is once I have all the hardware put together and boot it up for the first time, my only video is the Asus strix rx580. Will Unraid be able to use that automatically when I turn it on for the first time?? 

 

How will that work?

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
3 hours ago, jonathanm said:

There are many elements that you have slightly incorrect or otherwise have totally wrong, I suggest spending some quality time watching some informative videos that should clear some things up for you. Way too much for me to address one at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDfnUn74N0WeAPvMqTOrtA

 

I started watching his series on how to build a Unraid server from start to finish. I'm on part 3 where he is setting up the Windows VM.

 

It's a lot of great information, however the main thing I'm getting from these videos is that nothing is intuitive....and I do not know enough about Unraid to truly use it.  Sure I can follow a video to set something up but if there is any type of issue I'll be completely in the dark with no idea how to address issues. Following steps someone says and understanding it all is two very different things. Im considering that maybe I should just abandon the Unraid idea and stick with Windows.

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

Depends on how much you enjoy learning and playing with technology.

 

Well I like to learn, but dont know that learning Unraid is a necessity if other more intuitive systems will work well. With this no one will understand it but me, which may become a issue at times when I'm out of town.

 

One thing I noticed in one of his videos (that I probably am not understanding)....is if the VM is using the GPU then nothing else can be using the GPU at the same time. So if my son was in the VM playing games, then no one could use Plex which is in a container. At least, that's how it seems from this video at 15:30

 

 

That may would be a issue for us (if I understand it right) as we will be using this media from a lot of different places. On a windows machine as long as the hardware can handle it, I believe my daughter could play a Plex movie on her phone while my son plays a video game.

 

But again, I may just not understand it adequately.

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
6 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

if the VM is using the GPU then nothing else can be using the GPU at the same time. So if my son was in the VM playing games, then no one could use Plex which is in a container.

That statement is true, but the nuance is that Plex does not require access to the GPU. So if you configure Plex to use the GPU, then if the VM is running, Plex won't run. However, most people if they only have one GPU wouldn't put themselves in that corner, and just let the server CPU handle Plex, in which case they will both run quite happily at the same time.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
8 hours ago, SPOautos said:

Will all of the features of these components work in Unraid?

8 hours ago, SPOautos said:

my only video is the Asus strix rx580. Will Unraid be able to use that automatically when I turn it on for the first time?? 

The motherboard, CPU, RAM, drives, you can expect Unraid to know what to do with these. The GPU, it will use as a simple video output since it doesn't require any more than that. And you can run "headless" where Unraid is managed from other computers on the network through its webUI. That would allow the GPU to be used by dockers or VMs.

 

8 hours ago, SPOautos said:

Will it be able to only use 1 of my 6TB disks and leave the other 3 for storage?

yes, but

8 hours ago, SPOautos said:

would I be safe to only off site backup the parity disk

no, parity doesn't contain any of your data.

 

Parity is a very common concept in computers and communications. It is simply an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits. If you lose a drive, parity allows it to be reconstructed from the data on all the other drives. Parity by itself can't do anything.

 

Don't know if you started with the Unraid Basics playlist at that YouTube link or not. That is probably a good place to start:

 

 

There is also the wiki Overview:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment

Okay, so for the Plex container I can set it up to run off only processor with no GPU needed? Does it matter that my processor and mb (xeon e5-2690 Asus x99) has no video capability?  

 

 

For my question regarding hardware drivers and booting up the computer first time.....is my understanding of this correct?.....when turning on I will remote into it from another computer and that will allow me to configure bios, install Unraid, then setup software/drivers for hardware such as the GPU.  Am I understanding that correct?

Link to comment

@trurlthank you for the info....that confirms what I was asking in my comment after yours, you posted as I was typing it.

 

Regarding backing up the parity, wouldnt that allow me to rebuild something if my parity drive was lost? From what I gather having 1 parity will cover 1 drive. But chances are unless something major happens like the computer getting destroyed, I will only lose 1 drive. But I thought it would be good to backup the parity drive in case something happens to it. If I backup all of my data off site, what is the point of having a Unraid parity? I will already have a copy of everything if I backup everything so not understanding the need for both.

Link to comment

You will need a monitor and keyboard to configure BIOS so it boots the Unraid flash drive. Unraid doesn't really "install". The OS is unpacked fresh from the archives on the flash drive into RAM at each boot, and it runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware.

 

You don't install drivers in Unraid but if you run a VM that uses the GPU then the VM will install drivers. Some dockers such as plex can also use GPU for transcoding or other GPU-type processing.

 

8 hours ago, SPOautos said:

iOS and android phone app that will allow me to use my Unraid server as cloud storage for phones/tablets so that pictures and videos save to specific files on the server

There are currently 822 dockers and plugins listed on the Apps page. I'm sure there would be a few that would serve for cloud storage. I have NextCloud docker running on mine.

Link to comment
4 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

Regarding backing up the parity, wouldnt that allow me to rebuild something if my parity drive was lost? From what I gather having 1 parity will cover 1 drive. But chances are unless something major happens like the computer getting destroyed, I will only lose 1 drive. But I thought it would be good to backup the parity drive in case something happens to it. If I backup all of my data off site, what is the point of having a Unraid parity? I will already have a copy of everything if I backup everything so not understanding the need for both.

As mentioned, parity isn't a backup. And in fact, it is probably less important than your other drives, since it doesn't contain any of your data, and by itself is useless, whereas the data disks do at least contain data. In fact, one of the advantages of Unraid is each disk can be read by itself without needing parity or the other disks, unlike RAID.

 

Single parity will allow a single disk to be reconstructed from the parity calculation using the bits on parity combined with the bits on all the other disks. That wiki overview I linked explains parity and I suspect that video I linked does also though I haven't looked at it lately.

 

As I said, parity is just an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits. That is all parity ever is whether talking about Unraid, RAID, or just data transmitted on whatever.

 

And parity can't help recover deleted files, for example. Parity is NOT A BACKUP. Parity doesn't even know anything about your files. It is just bits. It just allows you to reconstruct a failed disk. That will get you going again a lot easier and faster than getting everything from backups.

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, trurl said:

 

 

You don't install drivers in Unraid but if you run a VM that uses the GPU then the VM will install drivers. Some dockers such as plex can also use GPU for transcoding or other GPU-type processing.

 

There are currently 822 dockers and plugins listed on the Apps page. I'm sure there would be a few that would serve for cloud storage. I have NextCloud docker running on mine.

 

Okay, so if I hooked up a monitor to the computer to use Unraid directly as opposed to through a web login from another computer, Unraid can use the basic necessity of my GPU without having a driver installed.....its needs are so basic that it wont matter? THEN if I need the full feature in VM, I will install the driver/software in the VM.

 

Question....this feels so rediculous to ask, but I'm building this with my teen son as a project together....soooo.....we plan on making it 'cool' with RGB lighting since the mb, GPU, ram all has rgb. How would I work the Asus Aorus rgb if I dont install drivers into Unraid? 99% of the time it will be just sitting there in Unraid, would the rgb just not work? Or will Unraid have enough functionality that we can control the rgb.

Link to comment

Never had any "cool" lighting. Maybe the BIOS can make that work without anything. Maybe a VM could do something with it. Unraid itself isn't going to know or care about any of that. Unraid is a NAS OS with docker and VM hosting and doesn't try to do anything else. Dockers and VMs can add a tremendous amount of capabilities, and Unraid only has to host them.

Link to comment
30 minutes ago, trurl said:

As mentioned, parity isn't a backup. And in fact, it is probably less important than your other drives, since it doesn't contain any of your data, and by itself is useless, whereas the data disks do at least contain data. In fact, one of the advantages of Unraid is each disk can be read by itself without needing parity or the other disks, unlike RAID.

 

Single parity will allow a single disk to be reconstructed from the parity calculation using the bits on parity combined with the bits on all the other disks. That wiki overview I linked explains parity and I suspect that video I linked does also though I haven't looked at it lately.

 

As I said, parity is just an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits. That is all parity ever is whether talking about Unraid, RAID, or just data transmitted on whatever.

 

And parity can't help recover deleted files, for example. Parity is NOT A BACKUP. Parity doesn't even know anything about your files. It is just bits. It just allows you to reconstruct a failed disk. That will get you going again a lot easier and faster than getting everything from backups.

 

I've watched the video and read about it but I'm under the impression (maybe wrongly) that if I have 4 drives....3 data and 1 parity. And 1 of the drives holds 5TB of music and that drive dies...the parity drive can rebuild it so that I can install a new drive and have all the music restored on the new drive. So that while it isnt a backup in the sense of a duplicate of the actual music, it can restore all the data....at least on any one lost data drive (or multiple if I add a second parity drive).

 

I'm not used to managing a lot of data, I'm converting a ton of stuff to data and bringing it together in one place from all over....I want it to be safe but I dont currently have the ability to duplicate it all and enough cloud storage to cover it all will be very expensive. Not sure what the best route to take is. I can add a second parity drive which would make more data rebuildable. Having some type of fully duplicated system off site is just not something I can pay for right now.....isnt a 2 drive parity the next best thing? 

 

Am I misunderstanding what the parity actually does?

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
5 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

the parity drive can rebuild it

I think this is where the disconnect is. The parity drive isn't doing the data rebuilding, it's ALL the rest of the remaining data drives, the parity drive is just filling in the last missing piece.

 

7 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

isnt a 2 drive parity the next best thing?

There is a very big gap between backups and parity being able to reconstruct a missing drive. Parity can't recover from corrupted data, deleted data, overwritten data, or anything like that. Parity is meant to allow the replacement of a failed drive, but that's only one way to lose data.

Link to comment
34 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

I think this is where the disconnect is. The parity drive isn't doing the data rebuilding, it's ALL the rest of the remaining data drives, the parity drive is just filling in the last missing piece.

 

There is a very big gap between backups and parity being able to reconstruct a missing drive. Parity can't recover from corrupted data, deleted data, overwritten data, or anything like that. Parity is meant to allow the replacement of a failed drive, but that's only one way to lose data.

 

My initial plan was too use 4 drives in Raid 1 so its duplicated.  Doesnt it seem like Raid 1 may be better? I switched to considering Unraid mainly because three data drives is better than 2 and I thought it would be rare that I'd lose more than 1 drive at a time....so seemed like a good choice. But now I'm not sure.

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
12 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

My initial plan was too use 4 drives in Raid 1 so its duplicated

RAID configurations are not supported in unRAID arrays.  It is, after all, called unRAID; meaning NOT RAID but still parity protected against drive failure by 1 or 2 parity drives. 

 

EDIT: I take it you meant a RAID 1 configuration instead of unRAID?

 

You can create a RAID 1 configuration with multiple drives in a cache pool.  Cache, however, is not part of the parity protected array.

Edited by Hoopster
Link to comment
5 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

Doesnt it seem like Raid 1 may be better?

RAID or Unraid, doesn't matter. They don't protect against

6 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

corrupted data, deleted data, overwritten data, or anything like that

Regardless of the drive failure protection scheme you choose, backups are a requirement if you value your data.

Link to comment
13 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

RAID or Unraid, doesn't matter. They don't protect against

Regardless of the drive failure protection scheme you choose, backups are a requirement if you value your data.

 

Does Unraid have a way to create something like "recycle bin" from Windows? Which would at least help with a accidentally deleted file.

 

I'll just need to consider a ways to make it as safe as possible until I can work out a backup solution.

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment
43 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

RAID configurations are not supported in unRAID arrays.  It is, after all, called unRAID; meaning NOT RAID but still parity protected against drive failure by 1 or 2 parity drives. 

 

EDIT: I take it you meant a RAID 1 configuration instead of unRAID?

 

You can create a RAID 1 configuration with multiple drives in a cache pool.  Cache, however, is not part of the parity protected array.

 

I was meaning that my initial plan, prior to learning about Unraid was to do a Windows setup with Raid 1.  Then I decided to move to unraid....but the more I'm learning about it and all the complexity it will take to have it store and serve media and games and parity....the more I'm feeling like I should just stick with a OS I know better and that other people in my home know better. So I've been considering that maybe I should reconsider Windows with Raid 1.

Link to comment

What is the process like to use a VM and is it bad to keep one running all the time? I'm trying to figure out if I had a VM setup for gaming and Roon music, what would be the steps to access that? 

 

This is in my living room so it will be hooked up hdmi to a TV rather than a monitor. Would someone be able to switch the TV input to see the Unraid server then grab a wireless keyboard/mouse and just click on the VM and open it up full screen and play games?

 

If the GPU driver isnt installed into Unraid will the picture look okay hdmi to my TV when only in Unraid? (I know in the VM itll have the GPU driver and should be able to adjust things to look good)

Edited by SPOautos
Link to comment

So is unraid ONLY accessible through the web interface? You cant just hook up a keyboard/mouse/monitor (or tv) directly to the box and manage unraid directly? Rather you can only access it through a web interface from another computer?

 

Am I understanding that correctly?

Link to comment
25 minutes ago, SPOautos said:

You cant just hook up a keyboard/mouse/monitor (or tv) directly to the box and manage unraid directly?

Yes, you can.  One of the unRAID boot options is unRAID OS GUI mode.  This boots into a GUI on a monitor directly attached to the server.

 

If you click on the the flash drive on the Main page, you can select the default boot option by clicking the radio button on the desired option.

 

You can also select during boot (if you have an attached monitor and keyboard or IPMI) an option other than the default.

 

image.thumb.png.36867036fe1e720b90a9577b5e46505e.png

Edited by Hoopster
  • Like 1
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.