Unraid
How Unraid fixed my data problem
How Unraid fixed my data problem
#Unraid #fixed #data #problem
“9to5Mac”
When dealing with massive amounts of data, there are a variety of storage options. Eventually, I settled on an Unraid build that allows me to store hundreds of Terabytes – while opting for used devices to save a bit of cash along the way. Here’s my setup.
HPE Server:
Disk…
source
To see the full content, share this page by clicking one of the buttons below |
love the choice of unraid, but not really a very pragmatic hardware solution (not much of an upgrade path) these days, unless the goal is reducing E-Waste, etc. This was a better (cost effective) idea maybe 5 years ago, but older AMD/Threadripper boards now are going to be a better value, and not jet engine loud, and frankly surprisingly low power when idling, which of course is mostly what storage servers do. Back when I needed alot of drives (before they got denser), I bought an ATX (ASUS) server board and put into a tower server Supermicro case – the case is no more expensive than the drive rack he bought, and could use any ATX board of course as well for indefinite upgrades – but for basic storage, think cheap older ATX AMD board (or older gen Threadripper if you need more PCIe lanes) etc – and can scale the board / CPU up or down to meet your pricepoint / horsepower need. Drive arrays need very little CPU "horsepower", tho you do need more CPU lanes if you get a large number of drives going. But of course UnRaid can leverage CPU horsepower as Virtual Machines if you want the best of both worlds. Also, no faster than the CPU's were in his rig, that Ram is pretty much wasted – traditional unRaid array doesn't need that much RAM. The RAM with UnRaid is for VM's, or potentially now for taking advantage of ZFS arrays which he didn't seem to be doing. Perhaps he's thinking of moving in that direction later.
This Supermicro case I used (tho of course many server style ATX sized cases can get you 8-12 drive bays) stacks the drives vertically and uses a backplane, so would be used with one (or more) LSI SATA port expansion cards (JBOD cards only FYI if you want to use ZFS disks), tho the ASUS dual Xeon CPU board I had had a daughterboard you could add and get 12 onboard SATA ports (that board was awesome!). Anyway, something like that would wind up using less power and being alot less down a single non-upgradeable rabbit hole than the hardware chosen here, still be good protection if it's behind a power backup unit, and you still have all the extra PCIe ports for one or more GPUs etc etc. And it was quiet enough to tolerate having in the house – he had to really modify things here to make that doable, way up on hassle factor frankly.
Also, pretty much any modern day use of UnRaid for large array storage could/should take advantage of it's ZFS drive option (drives need to be same size, but way faster and easier/better redundancy vs. hardware failure than the traditional unRaid array) – as he mentioned, having to write parity drive means you split your throughput in half when writing to the traditional unRaid array vs how ZFS can easily overcome that. Unraid does expect to have a traditional array, so I "faked" a regular array (onto a USB thumbdrive – essentially a non-parity protected single "array" to check that box for unRaid – works fine for making backups of UnRaids USB boot drive) and then still used all my 3.5" drive bays for ZFS, which is what I expose as the NAS shared drives.
I actually have now moved to a large QNAP (10th Gen Xeon) machine – repurposed to boot UnRaid, so I have 8 3.5" drives and 4 2.5" drives (2.5's are set up as a BTRFS (Raid 1) cache array – which would be great for things like video editing, general VMs, etc. Actually that machine also has 2 NVME slots as well, you can use that as yet another cache array (Windows gaming VM, etc.) or potentially for the ZFS array (metadata cache, fast write cache, etc.) My current setup is NOT cost effective (QNAP was >$2K) but in this case the goal is form factor – it's tiny / tidy (more the size of a mid tower case) and actually quiet enough to keep on the desktop (after I replaced fans with Noctuas). Anyway, highlights the flexibility of UnRaid which is VERY cool and continually getting better. Didn't even mention the Docker array that UnRaid provides (Plex, Audio server, etc. etc.)
0:00: š¾ The video discusses a solution for storing large amounts of data on a local network for cheap.
2:55: š» The video discusses the features and setup of a server and disc shelf for storage purposes.
5:34: š¾ RAID and Unraid are two different approaches to data redundancy, where RAID spreads data across multiple drives with parity, while Unraid allows for flexible configuration of parity and data drives.
8:34: š¾ Setting up a network attached storage device with unraid allows for easy access to storage from multiple computers and supports virtual machines and Docker containers.
11:09: š» The video discusses a server setup using a loud Rock Mount unit and the cost breakdown of the components.
Recapped using Tammi AI
The average user wont need that much storage, perhaps consider making a video with more like low end systems, 4 max 8 drives. Additionally, what file system did you use? how do you configure that? …you still need a haircut.
You need a haircut papa.
Really nice project, but how about backups? Do you have any backup disks or backup strategy? I Imagine with that amount of disks it's going to be really expensive to keep a single backup of all stuff. Note that RAID / UNRAID is not backup, it's only redundancy.
If you want my advise (I do this professionally and at home) Don't use a xx number of drives random rack mount case and consumer mbrd/ram/etc. Get used enterprise hardware. A 10 year old high end enterprise server will be cheaper than the modern consumer hardware and will more than cover your requirements for home. Its redundant everywhere, has ECC RAM so no flip bits corrupting your data, ilo or idrac remote management and a myriad of other features. You can even install an OS remotely if you want to.
At home I have 2 R630's and an R720, I do use 2nd hand enterprise drives (SAS not SATA) and have had no problems, but i can totally understand wanting to use new ones.
1. They are super cheap and have USUALLY been treated like pampered princesses in properly rack mounted server bays with a boat load of aircon, they only get turned off once in a blue moon for maintenance.
2. I only buy SAS drives, they are built to take a tonne of abuse and tend to run a lot faster than SATA drives (the R630's are SAS3 and have 15k drives in them- so 12GB/s or – potentially – twice as fast as SATA3)
You could have cleaned it lol
I went through a few server configurations, but when I got to unraid, it was a hard stop.
Be interested to know what noise and power usage is with that setup. I am currently rebuilding my NAS (personally prefer TrueNas) and VM server into one machine and went slightly overkill with an Epyc (Rome) system. Some testing has shown my power use will be about the same as running the 2 servers so it's not the most efficient but it is nice and quiet in a Fractal Define R5 case. My old systems were V2 and V3 Xeons. I'm all about that repurposing old server for the homelab life.
MORE DEREK!
Hey!
O just tried interesting investigation. Look, i have 3 drives.
1. Parity
2. & 3. – data
I created an array. Made it full by data. Than – by dd program i wrote randomly 1 byte to disk 2 (data).
And guess what? After parity check – it always corrects (writes) changes to disk 1 – parity.
It means, that in case of silent corruption of data disk – it believes that its data is true, and corrects parity table! What the heck ? I am confused a lot.
I bought an even newer dual socket Fujitsu server (Fujitsu Primergy RX2540 M2) for only Ā„12,000 with shipping included in Japan where I live. That's like $85. Built in 2017. Came with 48GB RAM. Works fine. Hope to imitate some of the ideas in this video using UNRAID which I have a license for and have used with smaller regular PC. Used enterprise computer gear can be super cheap in Japan if you know where to look.
That was beautifully made! Such a pleasant video to watch! Please make more! And, Iām a TrueNas user and after watching this video Iām considering trying out Unraid.
I'm running that same UPS and a FL 380P Gen 8! I've been thinking about unraid also. This video was helpful. My question was what is your server running? are you using ESXI? I installed a GPU and have a VM for plex also but I'm using vmware workstation pro and I am unable to passthrough my GPU so debating rebuilding with ESXI this summer.
As a hardware geek – this is an interesting solution – until you listen to the jet engine fan sound of these servers ramping up – and get a real scare with the power bill each month. Seeing that the server alone uses 500W power supplies – and the disk array is probably twice that to spin all those 3.5" drives – that'd be like leaving your hair dryer on 24/7 – ouch. While having lots of available storage is great – does it all need to be live 24/7? (and just to be clear – playing with old servers and stuff is fun – I have a few Dell rack servers I dabble with – but they're noisy, so not something I'd want running near me all the time) – still – geek heaven. š
Unraid is awesome!
What about the power and noise? Most servers only take 220V.
Did you consider using TrueNAS instead of Unraid?
This feels like a LTT video, which is a compliment.
I low key thought you were a girl in the first 2 seconds of the video lol sorry š