FlexRaid, Unraid or other on same box with Windows 7

[berzerker]

I'm thinking about converting an older machine to be a part-time NAS (for backups), but I still want to have a drive or partition running Windows, so I can use that CPU as a rendernode (for 3D animation software).

The main reason to combine both in one box is budget. I already have a running system and would only need to add another drive or two to make this work. Also, I wouldn't need either system running full-time. Backups would be nightly, running a rendernode in Windows would only be a part-time task.

The goal is to have a backup for other machines on my home network (not necessarily the Windows running on this box) that could survive one drive failure. This would be in addition to multiple external USB/eSata drives that I use for backup (+DVD backups). I like the sound of unRaid and FlexRaid because they are both affordable, easily expandable and the single drives can be read as a normal filesystem.

I would start out with 3 or 4 drives:

1: Windows 7 (or dual-boot with unRaid cache)
2: Parity
3: Data1
4: Data2

Options:

1. FlexRaid looks like it already works in/with Windows. It would probably be my first choice, except that the FlexRaid Live 2.0 version is still beta testing.

+ Pro: FlexRaid could provide protection for the Windows system itself.

As for unRaid, I like what I've read about it, but it has to run on it's own OS as a full-time NAS. How would you rate the following options, for dual-booting unRaid:

2. Run Windows on one drive, use the other 3 for unRaid. Just unplug the unRaid USB drive to boot Windows. I'm not sure if I could hide the unRaid drives from Windows or if I would have to power them off/disconnect them in removable drive bays.
3. Dual-boot Windows from a partition on the unRaid cache drive (requires unRaid pro)
4. Run unRaid from a VM in Windows 7. Not sure if this is possible, but it sounds like some people were testing it.

+ Pro: unRaid is already a proven "real-time" solution

- Con: Probably could not use the unRaid to backup the Windows on the same box, although that's not a requirement.
- Con: More complicated and unsupported use of unRaid. Possibly more difficult to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.
- Con: Need Pro version to use a cache drive. Otherwise, I would start out trying the free 3 drive version.

Are there any other cheap options out there (for NAS with parity and Windows in the same box)?

 

[JRS]

3+ year unRaid (very happy) user here...

From your description, it sounds like your best way to use unRaid would be with it as a VM, but as much as I like unRaid, that would not be my lean for your scenario.

I can't speak to the usefulness of FlexRaid.

Have you considered a low end (~$35ish) 4 port pci sata card running a software based raid 5? Or if you don't want to take the write performance hit, go with a couple large mirrored drives, which would by my first recommendation.

There is always Windows Home Server - it may be able to do those other tasks that require Windows.

 

[berzerker]

Have you considered a low end (~$35ish) 4 port pci sata card running a software based raid 5? Or if you don't want to take the write performance hit, go with a couple large mirrored drives, which would by my first recommendation.

There is always Windows Home Server - it may be able to do those other tasks that require Windows.

Thanks for the reply.

The reason I was looking at unRaid and FlexRaid is party because of the ease of adding new drives and capacity. With standard types of Raid, I thought an upgrade would mean having to buy double the drives and move everything off the old array, then build a new array and copy things back. I'm also not sure if individual Raid drives are readable as standard drives in another system (in an emergency).

Is there an inexpensive SATA card with software Raid that supports easy expansion like unRaid, without having to copy back and forth?

I haven't looked into WHS that much. Can it run everything a standard Windows desktop runs, like 3D animation render nodes? I've also been reading that the Drive Extender feature is being removed from WHS v2 and the old v1 has trouble with 2TB+ Advanced Format drives. Ideally, I would want both Drive Extender and large Advanced Drive support.

EDIT: Found this link about WHS:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/faq.mspx

Can I install and run standard Windows applications on Windows Home Server?

No, regular Windows software may not be installed on Windows Home Server. Only add-ins that are specifically designed for Windows Home Server can be installed on a Windows Home Server machine. Attempting to install software that is not an add-in can potential break the integrity of Windows Home Server and is not supported by Microsoft or OEMs.

I just found another option that sounds similar to the basic function of the older version of FlexRaid: disParity

http://www.vilett.com/disParity/

Anyone using this?

 

[dscline]

FWIW, that quote from MS is rather conservative. WHS is basically just a layer of functionality on top of Server 2003 (or 2008 in the case of v2). I and many others run Windows apps on WHS all the time. I also use FlexRAID (basic) on my WHS, and it works perfectly. Of course, the "basic" version is "snapshot RAID", which shouldn't be used on frequently changing data. FlexRAID Live, as you noted, is still in beta.

 

[Dangman]

Just to be clear: RAID IS NOT BACKUP! At least not by itself.

RAID just guarantees uptime of data. It does not protect against accidental or malicious deletion, corruption, modification, and/or moving of of data. A backup is a separate copy of the data stored on a different medium and not directly connected to the main data source.

Are there any other cheap options out there (for NAS with parity and Windows in the same box)?

Well if you're still talking about a seperate NAS and windows install, you might want to check this out:

ZFS File Server:
Links:
ZFSguru NAS fileserver project
napp-it ZFS server appliance
Building your own ZFS fileserver

Pros:
+ Free
+ Fairly resilient against crashes, corruption, and such due to the copy-on-write feature as well as the snapshots feature.
+ Maintenance free in that the file system will periodically check and fix itself
+ Very flexible in terms of hardware and software changes.
+ Supports encryption of data

Cons:
- May be difficult to learn for a person who've never worked with BSD before
- Requires a large amount of RAM (4GB+ recommended)
- Cannot expand an existing RAID array with additional drives.

Notes:
* ZFS uses a different method of storage expansion:

What you cannot do, is expand an existing RAID-Z (RAID5) or RAID-Z2 (RAID6) array with one or more disks.
But, you can add new disks or RAIDs to an existing pool. So if you have a 4-disk RAID-Z, you can add another 4-disk RAID-Z so you have 8 disks. The second array would share free space with the first; in essence it would be a RAID0 of two RAID5 arrays. ZFS can expand this way.

What you can do, is expanding mirrors and RAID0's. In the example above that's what actually happened: a new array is RAID0-ed with the existing array. New created files will be written to both devices, for additional speed. Setting copies=2 would make files in that directory be stored on both RAID arrays; for extra redundancy.

* Here’s another thread filled with tips and an excellent hardware list for a large sized ZFS server:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1572188

But if you're talking about combining the NAS and Windows in the same box, really no cheap option TBH

With standard types of Raid, I thought an upgrade would mean having to buy double the drives and move everything off the old array, then build a new array and copy things back.

Not exactly. While what you're saying is true if you're upgrading to a different sized drive and/or if the RAID controller does not support Online Capacity Expansion (OCE), it's not true if you're adding the same size drive and if the RAID controller does support OCE. If OCE is supported/used, you can add a 2TB drive to a RAID array full of 2TB drives just fine. You generally don't lose data and you don't have to create a new RAID array just to store things on.

I'm also not sure if individual Raid drives are readable as standard drives in another system (in an emergency).

Many times they don't.

Is there an inexpensive SATA card with software Raid that supports easy expansion like unRaid, without having to copy back and forth?

Depends: What slots are free on your motherboard? If it's nothing but PCI or PCI-E x1 slots, you're kind of SOL there since A) PCI software RAID cards are pretty slow and B) most PCI-E x1 hardware RAID cards have a max limit of 4 ports.

EDIT: Found this link about WHS:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/faq.mspx

Not entirely true. While yes MS does not officially support 3rd party software in WHS, some of them do indeed work just fine with WHS. i.e VLC, MPCHC, SageTV server, etc.

I just found another option that sounds similar to the basic function of the older version of FlexRaid: disParity

http://www.vilett.com/disParity/

Anyone using this?

Judging from a search about that here in the forums, not really.

 

[dscline]

Just to be clear: RAID IS NOT BACKUP! At least not by itself.

RAID just guarantees uptime of data. It does not protect against accidental or malicious deletion, corruption, modification, and/or moving of of data.

Well, a snapshot RAID could be considered a backup. If you were to configure FlexRAID with at least as many parity units as data units, you would have enough redundancy for a full backup, and it would be more robust than a conventional backup (from a media failure perspective).

 

[Dangman]

Well, a snapshot RAID could be considered a backup. If you were to configure FlexRAID with at least as many parity units as data units, you would have enough redundancy for a full backup, and it would be more robust than a conventional backup (from a media failure perspective).

Yeah I can see how it's close to being a backup.

 

[berzerker]

Just to be clear: RAID IS NOT BACKUP! At least not by itself.

Well if you're still talking about a separate NAS and windows install, you might want to check this out:

Thanks for the comments and info, Danny and dscline.

As I said, my goal is to be able to recover from a single drive failure in this machine (2 drives +1 parity), but still be able to use it as a fully functional Windows workstation. The 1st drive is mainly media files and the 2nd drive has some backups of files from other machines which are also duplicated on disconnected external drives. So, it's already a 2nd copy (of 3 or 4) of master data on other machines. I want to provide parity protection for that second copy.

After some more reading, I've decided to test FlexRaid and see how it performs with the varied size and number of files on my drives. It seems like the most suitable to overlay on top of my existing system.

I'm hoping to find a solution that will be more efficient that simple 1:1 mirroring or just syncing files across drives.

I have looked into OpenSolaris and zfs. It sounds great except for not being able to simply expand it by adding a drive. Too bad Windows doesn't have native support for zfs. When I can afford a full-time dedicated NAS machine, I'll definitely look at it again and compare it with unRaid.

 

[dscline]

FlexRAID doesn't care about the number and size of files. A high number of files may increase the time of some processes (since i/o is usually the limiting factor), but with just a couple of discs, I can't imagine it being an issue. As long as you're dealing with relatively static data, it's probably the best choice. I definitely wouldn't use it for an OS drive, but it would be fine for protecting images of an OS drive. If you frequently update the images (or whatever content you're protecting), a manual rsynch after the update will keep the array current.

 

[Cool1Net6]

I have had experience using disParity, even worked on making a GUI interface for the command-line-only utility. It isnt very popular on these forums as its a simpler version of FlexRAID, but if you wanted a simple tool that just does snapshot based RAID, then its great. All of the functioning characteristics are the same as FlexRAID (you need to update it every time a file changes, you can only lose up to a single drive, it lives on top of the file system, so you can read the drives directly, etc).

Windows Home Server can run any piece of software Windows can run as it is just a specialized version of Windows Server 2003. Being such, if a piece of software checks the OS version for licensing (like anti-virus, some backup software, etc), it may not install. For the most part, any "Tom, Dick, & Harry" app like uTorrent, Winamp, Firefox, etc runs on WHS perfectly fine.

If you want to keep running Windows 7, then FlexRAID, disParity, or some form of fake RAID or hardware RAID are your only options short of specialized external enclosures.

-Cool-

 

[benogil]

If you can wait, the new DE substitutes for WHS V2 ( stablebit and drive bender ) will probably be ported to Win 7. While their technical attributes may not be exactly what you are looking for, their ease of use may be.

 

[berzerker]

I have had experience using disParity, even worked on making a GUI interface for the command-line-only utility. It isnt very popular on these forums as its a simpler version of FlexRAID, but if you wanted a simple tool that just does snapshot based RAID, then its great.

Thanks for the info on disParity, your GUI looks handy. I had a look at the disParity site and forums. disParity seems basic but solid. It sounds like it was originally written when the FlexRAID developer was inactive for a while. Looking at the latest discussions, it seems that the disParity developer is now busy with other things and spending less time on it. On the other hand, the FlexRAID development and the community seems pretty active right now, so I think I'd have a better chance finding help with FlexRAID if I run into trouble. I'm also interested in the possibility of migrating to FlexRAID Live 2.0.

If you can wait, the new DE substitutes for WHS V2 ( stablebit and drive bender ) will probably be ported to Win 7. While their technical attributes may not be exactly what you are looking for, their ease of use may be.

That sounds good. I'll keep an eye out for it, but I'll probably still try FlexRAID in the meantime. I doesn't look very difficult to remove FlexRAID and switch to another option.


For a future dedicated box, I also came across a few discussions mentioning mdadm + LVM on Linux as an alternative to OpenSolaris and zfs. I'm still reading up on that.

 

[hooer]

Guys is there any way to get FlexRAID 2 or even just FlexRAID-view?? Their forums are closed for registrations and apparently the developer is currently AWOL.

 

[smithkt]

Guys is there any way to get FlexRAID 2 or even just FlexRAID-view?? Their forums are closed for registrations and apparently the developer is currently AWOL.

I went to the openegg.org site and it quite specifically says:
"(Closed - visit http://forum.flexraid.com)"

Going there shows the developer actively participating in discussions just hours ago.

Not sure where the download links are, but if memory served on the old forum you had to register to see them. I'm sure it's the same on the new forum.

 

[hooer]

I went to the openegg.org site and it quite specifically says:
"(Closed - visit http://forum.flexraid.com)"

Going there shows the developer actively participating in discussions just hours ago.

Not sure where the download links are, but if memory served on the old forum you had to register to see them. I'm sure it's the same on the new forum.

lol I'm a nub.. thanks!!