When to use Unraid?

[Rufftimo 3]

We've decided to rebuild our Emby server with all new hardware, based on a new 12th gen Intel chip with the 770 UHD iGPU and no discrete graphics card, and figure it's a good time to consider the OS and storage configuration, along with any other useful software.

The current/old system is Win 10 with four big drives in a RAID 5 configuration... 

Before we just load Windows 11 onto our new hardware and simply plug drives into the SATA ports and go, should we consider using Unraid instead of Windows? Or does Unraid somehow run in conjunction with Windows? Generally speaking, when should an Emby server use something like Unraid?

Basic question I know, but I've been searching both Emby and Unraid forums and have been so far unable to find noob-friendly info about what Unraid is for, how it works (or doesn't) with WIndows, what its advantages are, what the tradeoffs are, etc.

[Luke 37028]

@trusselo and @sydlexius may have some unraid tips.

[Rufftimo 3]

After spending a few hours learning about Unraid, that it is its own OS and not dependent on WIndows to run, and knowing that this system will not be used for anything but Emby, we're going to try using Unraid exclusively and not even install Windows.

Bad idea? What aren't we considering?

@trusselo

[ebr 14905]

Does unraid still have that "pre-formatting" step necessary?  I moved from unraid a few years ago because of that and that the parity drive had to be the largest one (obviously).  Adding new discs to the array (especially as disc capacity grows) was just too hard.

Moved to StableBit DrivePool and just duplicate my really important files (photos and home videos).  If I lose a normal media drive (haven't yet) I'll just have to re-rip.

 

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

48 minutes ago, ebr said:

Moved to StableBit DrivePool and just duplicate my really important files (photos and home videos).  If I lose a normal media drive (haven't yet) I'll just have to re-rip.

Since drives have become so inexpensive and I do not like the idea of spending time on reripping I duplicate my movie files in my pool as well. I have lost a drive during operation and Emby did not even seriously hiccup even though a video that was playing (except it stopped and the movie had to be restarted to give DrivePool time to switch to the duplicate). But, other than that little glitch I only knew that a drive failed because of the message DrivePool sent me informing of the failure. I simply ordered a new drive and connected it too the server and addedit to the pool and DrivePool took over and re-balanced and re-duplicated all files involved.

In my old age I guess I have become lazy but reripping is just too much trouble when it is so cheap to avoid the need totally.

I know there are raid systems that are as reliable as DrivePool but I just cannot bring myself to try them because DrvePool just works and does not really require and special skills.

I

[CassTG 98]

On 29/11/2021 at 22:55, Rufftimo said:

After spending a few hours learning about Unraid, that it is its own OS and not dependent on WIndows to run, and knowing that this system will not be used for anything but Emby, we're going to try using Unraid exclusively and not even install Windows.

Bad idea? What aren't we considering?

@trusselo

I was a big unraid user up until recently, but i did not like the way it handles dockers to be honest, i also tried TrueNas (beta) and hated that to be fair. Unraid overall as a nas type setup is pretty solid, but i remember there were many tweaks i had to do under the hood to get it where i wanted.

Funny thing is i switched to proxmox to try that out with an xpenology VM (not recommended) and some minimal debian Vms for docker and loved it overall. But to be honest i love playing around with Linux now and anything i could do in Unraid i can do on a minimal install of Debian and throw docker on it and good to go.

Have you checked out DietPI? That OS is minimal yet very user friendly and they have an inbuilt package manager so it can even install Emby Server on setup. They do different versions for various devices. I run it on my Pi4 and it makes setting up a device quick and painless, very light on resources and has tools in the setup now built in for quick nfs and samba mounts if your storage is not local

Edited December 2, 2021 by CassTG

[RanmaCanada 339]

I personally run UNRAID, but I use it more as a smart NAS than anything else, as I have my Emby server on a laptop that is plugged into the network.  Pi-Hole runs on my UNRAID server but that's about it.  I would have run it in a docker, but I was too lazy to migrate my users over manually as there was no way to automagically do it when I created the server (there may be now, I don't know).  But I find having the laptop as a server makes it far easier as I can keep everything nice and compact and not worry about something crashing and having to force reboot the whole lot, and possibly lose data if something goes wrong, and it also prevents any RDP attacks as I can turn off access to anything outside my network.  I also haven't really used linux/unix in over 25 years, so I'm not comfortable with re-learning it again haha.

Never put all your eggs into one basket.

[trusselo 220]

If i KNEW about the unraid dockers that exist..... i would have done unraid MUCH sooner.  simplified my life so much, added more functionality that i never knew existed.  plus the community app store...  so cool