sam9s NAS Project! powered by Unraid!!

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Just a quick question before I reply in detail. Why ain't you going with Unraid. I still could not figure out.

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I still have unraid on my list. These questions are for comparison and please take ur time, I do not mind receiving answers in parts :)

The only reason I am comparing flexraid is because it is still Windows based and does not touch the actual filesystem and if I ever decide to take off one HDD I can always take it to a friend's house and have things copied from there directly since everything is NTFS formatted and flexraid does not touch the file system. Also If I am spending 10K + on mobo + CPU + RAM, I can use that box if that is on windows to run other windows based things which can be even having that used as another HTPC run using xbmc. Moreover flexraid will not touch the existing file system on HDDs.

However if in this comparison turns out to be in negative of course would have to go unraid route
 
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haisaikat said:
Hi sam, one suggestion and a couple of questions

Suggestion : You should take relevant posts of your NAS thread and make on comprehensive blog so that all is in one place, so that everything is very easily acccessible. I will tell you why, since I read the very first post long back so could not retain all of that in memory. Now for last 2 to 3 days I was trying to compare flexraid, unraid all together when today I found that its all there in your first post (while searching using google search), just that it slipped out of my mind initially, could have saved a lot of time :)
Click to expand...

I will see if I can add the thread there in my sam9snews blog under Tech Tut and reviews section.... :)

1. The motherboard that I posted in the previous thread, will it support AHCI for hot swap (as per your first post)? I could not find the AHCI mention as per its specs.

2. As per your initial post (last yr august) flexraid supported only snapshot based parity, but if I am going for a media only server where individual files will be like store and forget types, can I still go for flexraid and have all the safety of data protection that I require?

3. As per the current article on Flexraid website it seems that apart from expert mode, they do support realtime parity. Can you please recheck for me once? It might be possible that they started supported it within the last 1 year. Why is Real-Time RAID in Expert mode not supported? | FlexRAID Wiki

4. In your last post you said that Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition would be better than Win7 or WHS2011 if I run flexraid. Is there any specific showstopper thing in WHS2011 or Win7 that I should consider? I think I found on some sites saying that software compatibility issues can happen on WHS since majority of user utility softwares do not some in Server edition. Will 2008 R2 not also suffer from the same disadvantage over Win7?

5. Does flexraid or unraid take care of parity drive failure?
Click to expand...

1 . AHCI is there in all current gen boards, not to worry.

2 & 3 . At that time I wrote this article, Real Time parity was under Beta, seems now they have released it, they also have changed the name accordingly,... Real Time RAID and Snapshot RAID. And as the name suggest Real time does takes a snapshot (or create the parity) in real time i.e as soon as there is a change in the data. This is good, but couple of google searches also gave me the impression its not as stable as Snapshot RAID. So you might want to be very sure what you need to do.

Checkout this post for example, the guy has shifted from UNRAID to Real Time Flexraid on his new machine, and has faced quite a few issues. Not saying this will happen to your installation as well, but these things cannot be neglected all together as well.

After 3 days of trialling FlexRAID RT...

My recommendation, if you really want to go for it, test the product on VM, configure it, use it for a week or so and then decide. If satisfied configure it for your main machine.

4. WHS2011 is dead and all its variants ..... the new server line closest to WHS2011 is not win 8 but Windows Server 2012 Essentials RC (which is out now). So I would suggest is you do plan to have windows test on WSE 2012.
Personally I have played around WSE 2012, but not for overlying flexraid but just to see how MS product is, if I do decide to have one more NAS based on windows.

In one line I would say the product is heavy and resource intensive, forget about pendrive you need a full blown quad core PC with 4-6 GB ram to properly enjoy this product .... certainly not the one I would recomend to run 24x7 heck even 12x5. Other advantages/disadvantages is an all together different discussion.

5. None of UNRAID or FlexRAID, protects parity drive. It depends on the level of damage on the drive, how much data can it recover (incase of a rarest to rarest situation of corrupting the parity and data drive simultaneously)

In normal circumstances, if your parity drive goes bad, unraid/flexraid would let you know and all you have to do it to replace the drive and rerun the parity.

regards
Sammy
 
Thank you sam, as always :) I will read the links you shared. Regarding the OS, I am thinking whether to start with Win7 and then if things really dont work out then go for WHS or WinServer editions but as you rightly said the later will be heavier for a just file sharing system and also comes software compatibility factors.

Also based on my requirements, snapshot raid can still work since my files change only once or twice a week apart from regaular torrent downloads. But I will still check RT raid for comparison. Btw sam, your NAS is also a similar media server right? what made you go for realtime?
 
If you want to keep your system less cluttered, less resource hungry, and available for like 24x7 ..... avoid windows ...... as simple as that ...

If for any reason you do not want to go for Unaid (still cant figure out why :)) try another product called Open Media Vault. Another linux based NAS OS which is getting popular these days....

Let me share an experience /..... , recently I installed and configured an entire home entertainment network for one of my customer, with XBMC on Zotac Nano Plus along with Foorbar, with everything connected to his NAS.

He took my services for every single hardware from Media PC, NAS to OS and applications. along with configuring his home network via router.

He was also inclined towards windows. We started off with WHS 2011, and in couple of days itself he was pissed off by it ...... then we shifted to OMV and again we had few issues. Finally it all came back to Unraid, which eventually I installed on his NAS and configured rest of the network according to it.......

Now he is using UNRAID for the past week and is pretty happy with it .......

Just a small experience I wanted to share.... :)
 
haisaikat said:
Btw sam, your NAS is also a similar media server right? what made you go for realtime?
Click to expand...

Unraid also is not exactly real time, (though I guess you can configure it that way) ... it does not constantly monitor data change and runs parity, that is not how it should be anyhow as constant monitoring increases unnecessary load. What I use is schedule parity check, I know I dont add movies or music every day, so I have scheduled the parity to run every 3rd day of the week at night from 2,3 AM. This way I dont even know when the parity runs and is updated .....

For highly critical data like my office documents/projects or my family snaps collected over the years I have a backup running on my desk top as well, with an application running on it that syncs data between itself and NAS every-time I add data to either NAS or Desktop.....
 
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so sam what you are essentially using is Snapshot raid right? I asked this because by reading about the technology what I understood that in realtime mode, writing to one disk means actually writing to that disk and the parity drive and hence more power required if same file is changing multiple times a day, not true for movie and music files though. Also as per reviews it significantly drops your file write throughput.

Also the main reason why I want to use windows is because of that being a comfort area for me as compared to linux, had a xandros based netbook once and I still struggle with many features, as if changing anything out of the way always end up as a classroom of learning over google.
 
Yes you got the snapshot concept right, but you are wrong about Unraid, its not at all difficult to configure ..... just as a media server you need to run few commands and you are good to go .... there is a clean step by step guide as to how to do it ...... believe me it is not at all difficult ... and then there are people here to help ..... I am here and people on Unraid fourms as well......... so this should not be the reason to no to go for it ........

yes if there are very specific applications that you wanna run, and are must have, which are like windows only then its a different case and you might go for windows based NAS. Or best it as i said try on VM, have a feel for a week or so and then see if things turn out the way you want ...
 
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Thanks sam for the assurance. I think it would be unjust to not try unraid after this assurance. But windows is not only for my comfort feeling, I already own a DNS323 NAS with dual 1 TB drives in JBOD (and partly mirroring) but it is not in NTFS. Hence the problem is that if I want to carry something to another location, I need to first spend hours copying data to usb portable hdd and then take it along. Same happens when I bring something from somebody else, it is putting back into NAS again. So having NTFS drives will save time for me where after copying something from someone else on NAs drives directly I can plug it back to NAS directly.
 
^^ mmmmm pardon me, but I dont get it, even if the NAS is on NTFS, you still would need to copy data you wanna take to ur friend and vice versa ...... if you want to move data to and fro between different locations you have to do the tiedious task of copying data on and off the drive.

Like for example when I have to share some movies among my friends, I copy data on my WD USB 3 portable drive connected to my desktop which is connected to NAS via cat 6 on gigabt lan, and believe me copying is blazing fast .... I easily get 60-70 MBps (avg), which is like 3.6-4.2 GB in a minute ..... meaning 60-70 GB in 15 minutes .... which is much more than I carry to my friends .... (even I cannot wait for hours for this ...:) )

I never connect any drive directly on to NAS. I dont touch it. Its not meant to be. It is just lying in the corner of my room silently doing what its suppose to do.

Point is make your network connectivity fast and make sure to use USB 3. That will help u to speed up your data transfer ......
 
Sam

I think what haisaiket is meant is that he can physically carry the internal HDD (not sure whether WHS2011/windows2000 allows this but on windows 7 I remove and put it back with files from my friends)to his friends place without the need to copy the files on a portable HDD. And most of the people will be having a windows system and hence NTFS file system. His friend can just pop-in the HDD in his PC and copy the same and vice versa..

Thanks
 
hi sam, can i not directly take one of the disks in the array (if i know it has the relevant contents) to the friends house and connect using sata to usb cables?
 
manniraj said:
Sam

I think what haisaiket is meant is that he can physically carry the internal HDD (not sure whether WHS2011/windows2000 allows this but on windows 7 I remove and put it back with files from my friends)to his friends place without the need to copy the files on a portable HDD. And most of the people will be having a windows system and hence NTFS file system. His friend can just pop-in the HDD in his PC and copy the same and vice versa..

Thanks
Click to expand...

haisaikat said:
hi sam, can i not directly take one of the disks in the array (if i know it has the relevant contents) to the friends house and connect using sata to usb cables?
Click to expand...

Thats a bad idea, you should not pop in pop out HDD from array that often, its not meant to be ......

Hot swapping works on Unraid, but not sure it it creates a file system or not as I have not tried inserting any unraid drive in to any windows machine .... I take the other route that I mentioned above ....
 
Hi sam, back again with questions, since no one else replied to my post in other thread :(

Now I am at the last stage and that is selecting the power supply. I was think it would be better to have a UPS based power backup for the NAS PC and that too with a smart UPS that can shutdown the PC properly if there is a power failure. So I looked up on google and found that in less than 4K range we get line interactive Smart UPS from APC which has USB interface that can shutdown the windows properly if there is a powercut. Found similar product from iBall as well (Nirantar series) having similar functionalities

My questions being
1. Can I go for iBall since it is a much cheaper solution?
2. If I do invest in a Smart UPC that gives out sinewave and also protects from surge then is it also mandatory to buy a good PSU for the PC or can I then go for not so costly (less than 1K) type of PSU?
 
haisaikat said:
Hi sam, back again with questions, since no one else replied to my post in other thread :(

Now I am at the last stage and that is selecting the power supply. I was think it would be better to have a UPS based power backup for the NAS PC and that too with a smart UPS that can shutdown the PC properly if there is a power failure. So I looked up on google and found that in less than 4K range we get line interactive Smart UPS from APC which has USB interface that can shutdown the windows properly if there is a powercut. Found similar product from iBall as well (Nirantar series) having similar functionalities

My questions being
1. Can I go for iBall since it is a much cheaper solution?
2. If I do invest in a Smart UPC that gives out sinewave and also protects from surge then is it also mandatory to buy a good PSU for the PC or can I then go for not so costly (less than 1K) type of PSU?
Click to expand...

I would say the PSU is the main component when it come to almost always on NAS ...... I'd suggest definitely to go with a quality power supply. AFA UPS is concerned, you can go with any decent UPS, I use a low profile Intex UPS model Protector 600 va (mere 1500 bucks) and it is working flawlessly. Thought I have a dedicated sine wave inverter for my NAS making sure it runs 24x7, so there is not need for me to have a power shut down in case of no electricity. If I at all do have the need to shut it down I can do it via my mobile on 3G as well from any where.

If you want something like an auto shut down for ur NAS, then you have to invest on an APC Smart UPS. Thats up to you, But I will not suggest to compromise on the power supply. Get a quality PSU, you wont regret.
 
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sam9s said:
If you want something like an auto shut down for ur NAS, then you have to invest on an APC Smart UPS. Thats up to you, But I will not suggest to compromise on the power supply. Get a quality PSU, you wont regret.
Click to expand...

:( means more cost, was thinking if UPS can deliver the properly shaped wave :) (sine, cos, tan... blah blah) then if we could discount the PSU. Nevertheless please suggest a good PSU for 24x7 , though I have seen the one you have used. Consider that in my case it will be max 400 to 500 Watts.
 
The one I have is the cheapest decent quality PSU one can purchase ...."CM Elite Power". All other will go in a range higher than this one. Also a PSU is not only for proper sin, cos wave :D .... it makes sure that the exact amount of electricity is distributed amount the components, plus more important, it survives long runs specially under summer conditions, when the heat is scotching high. Even if you have a say quality UPS like APC giving power to ur NAS..... if your NAS has a cheap PSU, it will go bad under stress conditions, like running constantly for long hours under high ambient temperatures ....... so PSU should be your first priority and then the UPS..... Just my suggestion/opinion .....
 
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