Help! New to UNRAID

[Sebastian Engman]

Hello everyone!

I´m thinking of moving to Unraid with my existing hardware. (Dell Poweredge R520)

 

Today I run Ubuntu on the machine and utilize the RAID-card for creating volumes. The server is used mainly for Plex and other docker containers, and also holds my media database. (Movies etc)

 

Currently the server has this disks:
Slot 0: 512GB SATA SSD

Slot 1: 512GB SATA SSD

Slot 2: 4000 GB SATA 7200RPM

Slot 3: 4000 GB SATA 7200RPM

Slot 4: 4000 GB SATA 7200RPM

Slot 5: 4000 GB SATA 7200RPM

Slot 6: 14000 GB SATA 7200RPM

 

How would a typical setup using Unraid look like? And also, what would be the benefits. 

 

Would be nice to for example run som VM´s on the SSD drives. 

Which drives would I use for parity? 

Thanks in advance!

Edited July 16, 2020 by Sebastian Engman

[Energen]

With those drives you would need to make the Slot 6 drive your parity drive, if you wanted parity.  Parity always has to be at least as large as your largest drive in the array, so you could not use a 4GB drive as parity for a 14GB drive... make sense?

 

You'd also have to add the drives to the array one by one or something like that if they have data on them already.  You'd need to move all the data off a drive before you can add it to Unraid.  That's the most tedious process of all.

 

For example, if that 14TB drive were empty, you could move all the data from the 2 SSD's and 2 of the 4TB drives onto the 14TB drive, then add those SSDs and empty drives to Unraid, then move the data from the 14TB drive onto the array, and then move the next set of 4TB drives onto the 14TB drive, add those and repeat until eventually you got all your data onto the array and all the drives added.  It's a process for sure..

 

Other than that you'd be good to go.

 

As far as the benefits of Unraid.. for that you'd have to do your own research and comparison to what you use now.  Unraid is very cool, I like it.  That's all I can tell you...

[Sebastian Engman]

Thank you so much!

Regarding the migration of data, everything actually fits on the 14TB. So I can move all the data on that drive and then wipe the others.

 

But.. Does the 14TB need to be parity drive? 

For example, can one of the 4TB drives be a parity drive, and then, the 14TB used in the system but without parity (Backup?)

 

My RAID setup today is

 

RAID 1:
2 x 512GB SSD

 

RAID 5:
4 x 4TB 

 

RAID 0:
1 x 14TB

 

So, I as you can see, I dont mind the data on the 14TB to be lost. 
How would you then setup this in Unraid?

thx so far btw

[Energen]

6 hours ago, Sebastian Engman said:

or example, can one of the 4TB drives be a parity drive, and then, the 14TB used in the system but without parity (Backup?)

Yes you could use the 14TB separately by mounting it outside of the array with Unassigned Devices plugin, and then you can access it via SMB just like normal.. but just know that you would never be able to add it to the actual parity protected array because it would be larger than your parity drive.

 

So if you wanted to do that then you could do something like this in Unraid:

 

cache: 1x 512GB SSD

- the other SSD could then be used as a parity protected fast disk in the array where you run VMs off of, or whatever.. limiting writing to the disk to only specific things.

 

or cache pool: 2x 512GB SSD (basically a RAID for the cache drive itself, better option for protection of the cache drive)

 

parity: 1x 4TB

array disk 1-3: 3x 4TB

 

unassigned devices outside of parity: 1x 14TB