Running virtual UnRaid, is it for me?

[Oxxy]

Hi folks

 

I know there are a lot of 'is unRaid for me' threads, but mine might be a little different...

 

I am running dual hex core Xeons, and 96GB of RAM, with an ESXi 6.0 install. As part of this i have virtualized unRaid to give it a go - and debating my need for it (was about to buy a key but then paused). I am passing a USB controller through for the unRaid flash drive, and 2 x LSI9211's for the drives. I am on a trial of unRaid, and it virtualized just fine.

 

What i want - At the moment, my storage / media server is a separate Win 10 i7 box, and i want it virtualized so i am not running an extra machine 24x7. Its about consolidation.
 

I guess i am asking if there is much of a point in my use case (assuming i have to keep ESXi on the bare metal) if there is much of a point in me running unRaid instead of say, Server 2012, or even Ubuntu or Win 7 as a VM with all the required drives assigned?

 

I'll play devils advocate  - The cases for NOT needing or using unRaid...

 

• I am diligent with backups, so not sure if i want or need a parity drive (one of the selling points of unRaid). Not having it is certainly an option for me.
• Dockers are great, but in Win/Linux i can just install whatever i want anyway - plex, sabnzbd etc. Anything at all. I am totally dependent on the community for unRaid 'apps'?
• Can run HDsentinel or some such to monitor SMART info, which is what i do now to keep an eye on the health of the drives.
• If i stay with NTFS/EXT4 i can yank any drive at any time (power down first), easily add or remove data without worrying about zeroing a drive, or building parity (assuming i use it)
• Additionally i can pop any drive for whatever reason into another computer if i wanted or needed to. Especially if a drive might start failing or what have you, an unRaid drive outside of unRaid is useless?
• Given i am virtualizing unRaid, GUI is a little slower (no biggie, just of note)
• This is on an ESXi host - so i dont need unRaid passthrough or VMs - one of the other compelling reasons for using unRaid
• EDIT - i used deluge with PIA VPN, i know deluge works, but cant see for certain if PIA would (more of a question i guess). Certainly PIA VPN works just fine on Win VM

 

I get if i was running unRaid on bare metal, things would be different (and it seems simply great for that). But on the premise i cant lose the ESXi host - is there anything i am missing? Why would i run unRaid in my use case?

 

Appreciate any input

 

Thanks folks

 

Oxxy

Edited March 25, 2017 by Oxxy

[JonathanM]

6 hours ago, Oxxy said:

Additionally i can pop any drive for whatever reason into another computer if i wanted or needed to. Especially if a drive might start failing or what have you, an unRaid drive outside of unRaid is useless?

Nope. Unraid uses plain xfs or btrfs single volume per drive for array drives. They work just fine in any OS with the support for xfs or btrfs.

6 hours ago, Oxxy said:

I am diligent with backups, so not sure if i want or need a parity drive (one of the selling points of unRaid). Not having it is certainly an option for me.

Parity doesn't replace or augment a true backup, it just provides a quicker way of rebuilding an entire failed drive instead of restoring files from backup. Parity doesn't keep tabs on file content or file system corruption, it tracks the bit for bit changes on the entire drive to enable emulation or rebuilding of the drive as a whole.

6 hours ago, Oxxy said:

i used deluge with PIA VPN, i know deluge works, but cant see for certain if PIA would (more of a question i guess).

There is a ready made docker with deluge tunnelled through VPN, it's PIA centric but works with many other VPN providers as well.

 

Given that you are comfortable setting up and managing all this stuff for yourself, the only reason I can see paying for unraid is the convenience of having the fuse file system and share security all wrapped up an a convenient management system. It's a question of how much your time is worth. Unraid makes it convenient and easy to manage.

[me.so.bad]

11 hours ago, Oxxy said:

I get if i was running unRaid on bare metal, things would be different (and it seems simply great for that). But on the premise i cant lose the ESXi host - is there anything i am missing? Why would i run unRaid in my use case?

unRAID can spin down unaccessed drives while showing the whole Array as one big/giant volume to the network in a very convenient package. I know there are other solutions for this, but IMHO this is one of the true advantages of unRAID over a standard RAID at all.

Also parity isnt for backup, but for availability (same as RAID btw). So IMHO you should use it an then again unRAID is like RAID5 very cost efficient - especially when performance isnt that much of a problem.

 

So IMHO unRAID still is a good call for you.

Edited March 26, 2017 by me.so.bad

[limetech]

I'll chime in with a little-talked-about unRAID advantage.  Since unRAID does not stripe data across multiple spindles, if a hard drive does fail and for whatever reason files stored on it cannot be recovered, there is still a possibility of using a "data rescue" service to recover your files.  The cost to do so for a single drive might be 4 figures, but the cost to recover files from such a situation with a typical RAID array might be up to 10x that.

 

Granted, this level of protection is not worth the cost for lots of people, but backups do fail.

 

Also, if you use single Parity disk you can suffer one complete drive failure and still recover data.  If you use dual Parity you can suffer two complete simultaneous drive failures and still recover data.  If you suffer more simultaneous drive failures than can be recovered, at least you still have the data on drives that didn't fail, whereas with a typical RAID array that could represent complete data loss.

 

If you use Seagate "Ironwolf Pro" drives, you get 2 years free rescue service from Seagate, so use those to store your wedding pictures

[1812]

6 hours ago, limetech said:

I'll chime in with a little-talked-about unRAID advantage.  Since unRAID does not stripe data across multiple spindles, if a hard drive does fail and for whatever reason files stored on it cannot be recovered, there is still a possibility of using a "data rescue" service to recover your files.  The cost to do so for a single drive might be 4 figures, but the cost to recover files from such a situation with a typical RAID array might be up to 10x that.

 

Granted, this level of protection is not worth the cost for lots of people, but backups do fail.

 

Also, if you use single Parity disk you can suffer one complete drive failure and still recover data.  If you use dual Parity you can suffer two complete simultaneous drive failures and still recover data.  If you suffer more simultaneous drive failures than can be recovered, at least you still have the data on drives that didn't fail, whereas with a typical RAID array that could represent complete data loss.

 

 

^^^^ This is why I went with unRaid vs "faster" raid setups. (Although I'd still like to have multiple cache pools)

 

[BobPhoenix]

22 minutes ago, 1812 said:

 

^^^^ This is why I went with unRaid vs "faster" raid setups. (Although I'd still like to have multiple cache pools)

 

Me too.

[Oxxy]

Thanks for the replies and input folks

 

I think if i purchase I'd go with dual parity if I implement parity at all.

 

As for seeing everything as one volume, it would take some getting used to - i have been using one drive per purpose for a long time Think once i started using it for a bit i would get used to it.

 

For now, renovations have destroyed nearly all of my trial period, and now i am four days into my extension and only just got drives pre-cleared and shares / plex setup. Need to make the most of what time i have left!

[1812]

You can set 1 driver per share folder if you choose. or 2 drives, or 10. If you continue that, then you don't spin up all the other drives when you read or write. Just that drive and parity. 

[PanteraGSTK]

I did pretty much everything you do now, but using a windows 7 server then windows 2012.

 

Dockers (to me) are better/easier than installing the app on a windows box. They are more self contained and the way they are managed in unRAID makes dockers even better.

 

I've had more than one drive fail (when there was only a single parity drive) and recovery was easy. I plugged every working drive into a PC and all my files were there. Minimal recover. Had I gone with "true" raid it would have taken 10x longer to get me back up and running.

 

I actually have my windows 2012 server running as a VM on my unRAID box and it still works perfectly, but it doesn't have very much to do now that everything has been offloaded to unRAID.