Any experience with unRAID?

[SpeedyVV]

Just installed unRAID for home use.

Got a decent dual xeon setup, so i figured I could run a unRAID as a file server, and to run a bunch of VMs i need.

My only concern is the reliability of the stability of the file system.

Any experience with unRAID? What are your experiences?

This is NOT an enterprise scenario. But I do use it for my work.

I am using a single Parity disk, with 3 additional disk for data (6TB+ 3x6TB).

Also using 3 EVO 850 SSDs for cache (3x256GB).

I use EASEUS Todo backup to a USB enclosure with 20TB of space for backups.

I could move those backup drives to SATA ports on the motherboard. Should I do that?

 

[Sparkyy]

I have been using unRAID since 7/2011 and been working great for me as a file server. Running 10 data drives, 1 parity and 1 cache drive, all spinners of various sizes with no problems, plus once 6.2 becomes finalized, you have the option for a second parity drive. Expanding the system is fairly easy to do and there are plug ins to help assist in getting it set up too.

Currently it is running on my ESXi box with a pass thru set up for my IBM HBA that is also using an Intel port expander and runs from a USB drive, perfectly flawless setup, shuts down gracefully with ESXi, turns on, etc with no problems.

Moving in the coming weeks to its own Supermicro 24 bay server though as I tweak with ESXi on occasion and hate killing unRAID. Longest I had it up was ~95 days and zero issues. I cannot comment on the VMs though (aka Dockers) since I use ESXi for all the heavy lifting and just use it as a file server.

Also just got it working with my APC NMC so once I split up my servers, should still be able to function with no problems.

 

[Syran]

I primarily use unraid at work as a Veeam Backup Repository, has a 3tb Parity, no cache drives (not really needed for this purpose) 4 3tb drives, and 5 2tb drives. Only runs a single VM for the purposes of WAN acceleration of Veeam. It's been working great. I have a 2nd licnese I have never used, but I'm really thinking of someday rebuilding mycurrent computer as a hackintosh/windows 10 machine running on one cpu using passthroughs to seperate video cards. It should be fun.

I'm not sure you need 3 cache disks, 1 will probably work just fine. If you want to move the drives into the computer, that should be fine, as you can always pull out drives and should be able to read them with any linux OS.

 

[spencers]

I've been running unRAID since 03/2012. Overall reliability has been great. Adding new drives is a an easy affair. Disk speed isn't anything to write home about but that's what the cache drive is for. I set the filesystem to XFS on data, parity, and cache drives. Recommend staying away from BTRFS.

The addition of Docker and KVM made the server an excellent multipurpose machine, as I was able to throw a GTX 1070 inside and pass it through to a Win10 virtual machine for gaming.

You can put the backup drives inside but it would take away from future SATA port expandability. If you want to expose them to unRAID you'd just need the "unassigned devices" plugin.

 

[SpeedyVV]

Thanks for all the input.

I am really glad to hear that I am not a "trend setter" here.

Dont fell like doing that for my data ;-)