On the fence with getting unRAID


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I've recently built a personal server/computer with the intention of having redundancy as the main point for the stored data, with each lettered drive in Windows being in triplicate via RAID 1. My boot drives are M.2 drives with my other storage being SATA III HDDs. Due to X99's lacking support to RAID M.2 drives AT ALL (unless I missed something), I have one M.2 with the system's reserved boot manager partition and Windows 8.1, the 2nd one with Windows 10, the 3rd is untouched, and I have more room that I'm really ever going to use on my zero-redundancy SSDs. The other drives are being managed by Window's data pool thing, and I don't know how good/safe that is.


Would using unRAID allow me to RAID my M.2 SSDs for my desired OS installation setup? If I'm to run Win 10 and 8.1 simultaneously, could I RDP from one into the other to get around needing a 2nd set of peripherals (I have a crossover cable and 2 ethernet ports)? Would using unRAID make it easier for me to allow other people to stream my music and videos without the risk of malware transfer via cross-computer permissions (I don't want Windows to allow any form of writing to my data from my family's not-the-digitally-cleanest computers)?

computer build (relevant parts):
-ASUS X99-E WS/USB 3.1
-i7 6850k
-960 EVO 250 GB (3x; OSs and programs; 2x on PCE card adapters)
-WD Pro  4TB (3x; Steam and pics)
-HGST Ultrastar 8TB (3x; videos; in shipping)

I game on this machine, and if virtualization is to be a thing on this computer, I want to use unRAID, but I'm not sure if I should go for it.

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On 1/10/2018 at 4:07 AM, nuhll said:

Since unraid can be testet for free, test it! :)

 

Unraid need to be installed on usb stick.

 

all othere components can be redirected to vms (as far as i know) How u use them is up to u. It should give you nearly the full performance to redirect it to the vms.

It's exactly what I thought, but I've got to manage my current OS installs so that I don't have to re-set up everything all  over again while still achieving this.

Adding a drive to a RAID 1 array is basically as simple as telling unRAID to include said drive in the desired array (going from a 2-drive RAID 1 to a 3-drive RAID), right?

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On 11/30/2017 at 1:53 AM, Blue Pedro said:

Would using unRAID allow me to RAID my M.2 SSDs for my desired OS installation setup?

 

If I'm to run Win 10 and 8.1 simultaneously, could I RDP from one into the other to get around needing a 2nd set of peripherals

 

Would using unRAID make it easier for me to allow other people to stream my music and videos without the risk of malware transfer via cross-computer permissions (I don't want Windows to allow any form of writing to my data from my family's not-the-digitally-cleanest computers)?
 

Hello and welcome.

 

unRAID would make it easier to stream music and videos, Plex is a popular solution.  You can RDP into a VM.

 

I don't think you're understanding unRAID's redundancy capabilities yet, though.  unRAID isn't a traditional RAID implementation and it's not a hypervisor with various RAID strategies for OS images.  It's an OS with its legacy as a NAS and recent evolution into a virtualization platform for Dockers and VMs.  An unRAID server contains one (1) storage array.  It can be protected by up to two parity drives.  It is well suited to media storage.  unRAID also implements a cache drive.  This is the defacto application drive for Dockers and VMs.  The cache "drive" can also be a pool of devices using BTRFS RAID/redundancy capabilities.  Finally, unRAID allows the mounting of additional devices via the Unassigned Devices plugin (and many people use this to mount SSDs for a VM) but there is no redundancy provided within this capability.

 

Wiki Reference:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/UnRAID_6/Overview#Network_Attached_Storage

 

Edited by tdallen
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tdallen gave a good overview, and linked to the wiki with more overview, but the key point here is that unRAID is the OS, it's not something you add to another OS as you seem to be thinking. It is possible to run another OS as a virtual machine under unRAID, and some have even run unRAID as a virtual machine under ESXi for example.

 

Having said that, the way unRAID handles redundancy is unique, and has a number of advantages, so I encourage you to read more.

 

And it has a great support community!

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