Hello,

 

I heard about unRaid on AVS forum and Xlobby forum. I liked what I read and would like to try it out. I have some questions and would appreciate candid advise and feedback from fellow experienced unRaiders.-

 

Background-

I am computer savvy (work in IT as SAP consultant) but not a geek. My experience with Raid technologies and Unix/Linux is next to nothing other that get/put/ftp commands.

 

Need help

• I am open to learn Linux to the extent required but would like some feedback from fellow unRaiders who were primarily Windows user. How difficult is it to install and troubleshoot unRaid.
  
• Is it possible to tryout unRaid w/o buying the hardaware..I mean using vmware/virtual pc etc.
   
  
• Is unRaid completely command line or it does have some graphics like some linux flavors
  
• I am really concered about power consumption. Are features similar to suspend/hibernate etc are supported. what kind of power consumption can I anticipate if the sytem (celeron 1.7Ghz, 2 500gb hdd and P845 soyo Mobo) and  is idle and nothing is running say when I am not at home
  
• Is WOL supported
  
• How good is the support from the company.
  
• Read somewere (I guess wiki or AVS) that the mangement is completely browser base...How true is it. Couldn't find any screenshot on Lime's website.
  

 

I am still reading the forum/documentation/wiki and may have few more questions.

 

Regards,

Shaurya

 

A few answers:

 

* No Linux knowledge is necessary, though it is often useful when resolving problems

* There is a GUI for the administrative functions

* Support is very good, much of it being from this board

* My server with five drives uses 185W at idle, about 230W when all drives are spinning

 

 

Bill

A few answers:

 

* No Linux knowledge is necessary, though it is often useful when resolving problems

* There is a GUI for the administrative functions

* Support is very good, much of it being from this board

* My server with five drives uses 185W at idle, about 230W when all drives are spinning

 

 

Bill

Thank you Mr Bill for answering some of my questions. That cliarfied quite alot.-

How do I take care of power consumption..what about S3/hibernate like feature. Any info on WOL.

Is it possible to try unRaid in a virtual environmet ..eg vmware etc...

 

Regards,

Shaurya

S3/WOL is on the wish-list - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=266.0

 

VM is something oft-discussed, try searching the boards.

 

 

Bill

Hello Mr Bill,

 

Thanks for your prompt response. Isn't WOL supported...As per http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=19 it appears to be supported (5th line from the bottom). Can you or someone confirm this...

 

If its true than I guess I can live w/o S3 feature for a while.

 

Can some one please confirm the WOL feature.

Regards,

Shaurya

WOL is supported, depending on bios and NIC settings. S3 suspend isn't supported yet. It's on the wishlist. So, WOL will START your computer if it's shutdown and you have the bios/nic settings correct. This works on my system.

WOL is supported, depending on bios and NIC settings. S3 suspend isn't supported yet. It's on the wishlist. So, WOL will START your computer if it's shutdown and you have the bios/nic settings correct. This works on my system.

 

Thanks for your reply. Can NIC be a PCI add on card like Intel Pro Gigbit lan card or it has to be an intergrated card as see in most of the Mobo discussed here...Once the magic packet has been sent for WOL, what's the realistic boot time before unraid is ready to transfer the dvd file i have requested. Would love to know your mobo model no and your sata card model as well.

 

Dumb question - PCI cards' bandwidth is 150Mbps. SataII supports 300Mbps. So if I am buying a PCI promise/SIL sata II card, I am not going to get the 300Mbps.

 

Regards, Shaurya

Thank you all for helping me out. some more questions-

 

1. What kind of boot time with WOL can I expect in a typical setup say with same hardware that Tomm is using. I am really concerned about power consumption so would like to shutdown the unraid server after 10min of inactiveity.. Up here in Houston, TX its around 16cents/KW..Is it possible to have such setup with Meedio so that when I press Play for DVD, WOL command gets sent to unRaid server. After 10 min of inactivity (after movie), unRaid shuts down automatically. Possible???

 

2. Can I have more than 1 Network card with this ASUS mobo..Say the Intel Pro Gigabit card..I attach one to network via a router and the other one to HTPC direclty for faster read/write.

 

3. This one is dumb...Promise Sata II cards are PCI interface with max throughput of 150MB/s and Sata II is 300MB/s. So with the addon card to increase sata II interface I am not getting the max performace. Am i missing something....

 

Regards, Shaurya

 

Thank you all for helping me out. some more questions-

 

1. What kind of boot time with WOL can I expect in a typical setup say with same hardware that Tomm is using. I am really concerned about power consumption so would like to shutdown the unraid server after 10min of inactiveity.. Up here in Houston, TX its around 16cents/KW..Is it possible to have such setup with Meedio so that when I press Play for DVD, WOL command gets sent to unRaid server. After 10 min of inactivity (after movie), unRaid shuts down automatically. Possible???

 

 

2. Can I have more than 1 Network card with this ASUS mobo..Say the Intel Pro Gigabit card..I attach one to network via a router and the other one to HTPC direclty for faster read/write.

 

3. This one is dumb...Promise Sata II cards are PCI interface with max throughput of 150MB/s and Sata II is 300MB/s. So with the addon card to increase sata II interface I am not getting the max performace. Am i missing something....

 

Regards, Shaurya

 

Boot time can be a minute or two... depends a lot on the flash drive used.

 

unRaid only supports one network card.

 

Your bottleneck is usually either the networking or the PCI bus.  It will never be the CPU, or the SATA interface to the disks.  With that in mind, probably never will see any difference between 300MB/s and 150MB/s drives.

 

If you need super high performance, unRaid is not the solution for you.    I can tell you in my experiments on my all IDE array I can stream 4 ISO images of 4 different movies from a disk being rebuilt from parity.    Since I will never play more than 2 different movies, and most of the time, only 1, this is more than sufficient for my home media server use.

 

Joe L.