Got network?

[Guest asrequested]

lol you guys were chatty today!

 

I guess my name is synonymous with buying stuff, now, lol

[MSattler 387]

Seeing MSattler last post, It brings a nagging question for me.

What's a Unraid server?

 

If you don't feel like explaining it from scratch its ok, you might want to just share a not-too-geeky link explaining Unraid vs Raid

 

So typical Raid 5 with 3 3TB disks gives you data and parity striped across all 3 disks.  You lost 1 disk worth of space for parity so you can rebuild if one disk dies.  If 2 disks die you are dead, data cannot be recovered.  If you want to watch 1 movie, all 3 disks spin up.  All disks need to be the same size, else you get the equivalent of the smallest disks.  3TB, 3TB, 2TB disk would give you 4TB usable.  Some NAS devices allow you to mix and match and give you a bit more of that space back.

 

unRaid is different.  With unraid you can mix any disk sizes.  The only requirement, if you want parity, is that you have the equivalent of your largest disk, as a parity disk.

 

So I could do 3TB, 3TB, 2TB.  Out of those disks the 3TB disks is my parity disk, and I get 5TB of usable space.  

 

Data can be written per drive.

 

So a /Movie share for the server would include /Disk1/Movie and Disk2/Movie.   If you watch a movie now only 1 disk is spun up, instead of all the disks.  Less power, less heat, less time your disks spend spun up.  If you lose a disk, using parity and the other disks you can rebuild the missing disk with a replacement.   If you happen to lose your parity disk and one of the data disks, the remaining disk still has any data written to it intact and usable.

 

Why is this all important to me?

 

My Setup

 

5TB Parity Disk

 

5 x 5TB Data Disks

4 x 4TB Data Disks

1 x 3TB Data Disks.

 

With Raid 5 I could never use the 3TB disk.  At best I could go 6 x 5TB disks Raid 5 for 24TB or Raid 6 for 20 TB.  And then the 4 x 4TBs for 12TB Raid 5 or 8TB Raid 6.   So at best 36TB, at worst 28TB.  All the disks spin up all the time.   Lost multiple disks I'm totally down.

 

With unRaid and the same disks I have 5 x 5TB, 25TB, and 4 x 4TB, 16TB, and 1 x 3TB for a total of 44TB, and I still have parity protection.   I could even go dual parity disks, and have 39TB of disk space, allow for a loss of 2 disks.   

 

Do I used it for important documents, family pictures, etc?  Nope that is what my Synology NAS is for.

 

But for movies, it is perfect.

 

Questions? =)

[Guest asrequested]

Stablebit has redundancy options like that. 

[CBers 6771]

[CBers 6771]

I have an XPS 8500 (8Gb ram, i5-3350) that is about to be replaced by a refurbished rack mounted server (8Gb ram and dual Xeon 5506).

 

I only use it as my main office PC, with MS Office and Outlook on it, but it was cheap a few years ago.

 

I've just replaced my old Emby server (XPS 420 Pentium 4) with another rack mounted server (i5-7400 with 8Gb ram) utilising DriveBender storage pooling (13Tb) and it is so much faster.

 

I don't have any remote users, but we have 3 Shield TV's in the house and 99% of my content is Direct Play, so not a lot of streaming.

[Guest asrequested]

You're going to a rack? We'll be needing pictures!

[CBers 6771]

You're going to a rack? We'll be needing pictures!

No, nothing exciting

[mediacowboy 438]

No, nothing exciting

Still need pictures.

[Guest asrequested]

No, nothing exciting

Performance anxiety? Lol

[CharleyVarrick 277]

So typical Raid 5 with 3 3TB disks gives you data and parity striped across all 3 disks.  You lost 1 disk worth of space for parity so you can rebuild if one disk dies.  If 2 disks die you are dead, data cannot be recovered.  If you want to watch 1 movie, all 3 disks spin up.  All disks need to be the same size, else you get the equivalent of the smallest disks.  3TB, 3TB, 2TB disk would give you 4TB usable.  Some NAS devices allow you to mix and match and give you a bit more of that space back.

 

unRaid is different.  With unraid you can mix any disk sizes.  The only requirement, if you want parity, is that you have the equivalent of your largest disk, as a parity disk.

 

So I could do 3TB, 3TB, 2TB.  Out of those disks the 3TB disks is my parity disk, and I get 5TB of usable space.  

 

Data can be written per drive.

 

So a /Movie share for the server would include /Disk1/Movie and Disk2/Movie.   If you watch a movie now only 1 disk is spun up, instead of all the disks.  Less power, less heat, less time your disks spend spun up.  If you lose a disk, using parity and the other disks you can rebuild the missing disk with a replacement.   If you happen to lose your parity disk and one of the data disks, the remaining disk still has any data written to it intact and usable.

 

Why is this all important to me?

 

My Setup

 

5TB Parity Disk

 

5 x 5TB Data Disks

4 x 4TB Data Disks

1 x 3TB Data Disks.

 

With Raid 5 I could never use the 3TB disk.  At best I could go 6 x 5TB disks Raid 5 for 24TB or Raid 6 for 20 TB.  And then the 4 x 4TBs for 12TB Raid 5 or 8TB Raid 6.   So at best 36TB, at worst 28TB.  All the disks spin up all the time.   Lost multiple disks I'm totally down.

 

With unRaid and the same disks I have 5 x 5TB, 25TB, and 4 x 4TB, 16TB, and 1 x 3TB for a total of 44TB, and I still have parity protection.   I could even go dual parity disks, and have 39TB of disk space, allow for a loss of 2 disks.   

 

Do I used it for important documents, family pictures, etc?  Nope that is what my Synology NAS is for.

 

But for movies, it is perfect.

 

Questions? =)

Thanks,

I wonder why the name UnRaid, as it seems Raid to me, one of the many variations of it.

 

I read here and there people being vehemently reminded that Raid is not a backup, nor should it be considered at such.

If someone (me for instance) is already doing daily backups, what would be the benefits to consider in using Raid (in one version or another)?

Edited April 28, 2017 by jlr19

[MSattler 387]

Thanks,

I wonder why the name UnRaid, as it seems Raid to me, one of the many variations of it.

 

I read here and there people being vehemently reminded that Raid is not a backup, nor should it be considered at such.

If someone (me for instance) is already doing daily backups, what would be the benefits to consider in using Raid (in one version or another)?

 

RAID just stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks.

 

Raid is never backup, however it is much easier to replace a drive, and let the system rebuild the drive than it is to replace the drive, and then do restores.

 

Your backups are there in case you ever lose everything.

 

You can also use ARQ5 ($50), to encrypt and back everything up to Amazon Cloud Drive ($60 a year).

[MSattler 387]

RAID just stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks.

 

Raid is never backup, however it is much easier to replace a drive, and let the system rebuild the drive than it is to replace the drive, and then do restores.

 

Your backups are there in case you ever lose everything.

 

You can also use ARQ5 ($50), to encrypt and back everything up to Amazon Cloud Drive ($60 a year).

 

Just realized I didn't fully answer your question, RAID not only gives you redundancy to disk failure, but also can speed up your writes since you are writing of multiple disks vs just one disk.

 

unRaid follows no standard raid practices, so hence the name.

[CharleyVarrick 277]

Raid is never backup, however it is much easier to replace a drive, and let the system rebuild the drive than it is to replace the drive, and then do restores.

 

Your backups are there in case you ever lose everything.

What do you mean by much easier?

 

As for my backups, they've saved my arse from all kind of situation, as big or as small as a single file mistakenly deleted (when network shared, no recycle bin "did I just deleted this" moments?) I've also had whole drives that went south in the course of 15 years.

Edited April 28, 2017 by jlr19

[CharleyVarrick 277]

You can also use ARQ5 ($50), to encrypt and back everything up to Amazon Cloud Drive ($60 a year).

 

A friend I showed my setup to was scratching his head, seeing those piles of 6tb drives, 70-75% full, with me telling him a significant expansion was likely within 2 or 3 months. My towers being somewhat at physical capacity already, I was considering a different architecture (such as Norco RPC-4224).

 

He asked why I didn't use Amazon Cloud? I told him about a past experience with CrashPlan, Back then I had merely 17 or 18Tb to backup, but their stupid upload bottleneck translated in a 18 months eta for initial backup, theoretically. In real world, backup would have never completed, as every month brings anywhere between 1 and 4 tb of new data. I now have close to 30Tb of data (60 if I count my own backup).

 

Why do you suggest ARQ5 along? Can't Amazon Cloud handle it on its own?

Edited April 28, 2017 by jlr19

[MSattler 387]

What do you mean by much easier?

 

As for my backups, they've saved my arse from all kind of situation, as big or as small as a single file mistakenly deleted (when network shared, no recycle bin "did I just deleted this" moments?) I've also had whole drives that went south in the course of 15 years.

 

With Raid, or parity, I replace a dead drive, the data is rebuild from parity and I do nothing other than wait.   Without parity/raid I have to now manage restores of my backups, and manage that.  I suppose you may be able to click and watch, but to me a parity rebuild just requires less work from me.

[MSattler 387]

A friend I showed my setup to was scratching his head, seeing those piles of 6tb drives, 70-75% full, with me telling him a significant expansion was likely within 2 or 3 months. My towers being somewhat at physical capacity already, I was considering a different architecture (such as Norco RPC-4224).

 

He asked why I didn't use Amazon Cloud? I told him about a past experience with CrashPlan, Back then I had merely 17 or 18Tb to backup, but their stupid upload bottleneck translated in a 18 months eta for initial backup, theoretically. In real world, backup would have never completed, as every month brings anywhere between 1 and 4 tb of new data. I now have close to 30Tb of data (60 if I count my own backup).

 

Why do you suggest ARQ5 along? Can't Amazon Cloud handle it on its own?

 

Amazon Cloud with ARQ5 I can do about 600GB a day, but I do have a 150/150 FIOS connection so it uses what it wants.  It's much better than Crashplan which I tried for a while.

 

Amazon Cloud doesn't have any really good clients for backing up.  And additionally in many states backing up of BluRay/DVD's is still a grey area in terms of the law.  ARQ5 encrypts the file, and writes it in chunklets, and no one has any way of knowing what the data is, without an encryption key.   For my personal files as well that is so very key.   

 

While some of the NAS units like Synology let you do a sync to the cloud, even if you encrypt the files, they are stored as their filenames.  So ATeam.mkv is encrypted but still named ATeam.mkv.   Taxreturn-2016.pdf is still labeled as such.

 

 

I'd rather not make it as obvious as to which are my personal files?

[CharleyVarrick 277]

That all makes a world of sense.

You mention getting 600gb/day with Amazon AND arq5; does that imply Amazon by itself (or Amazon along with some other sfwr) would get different results?

 My connection is 120/20, so compared to you, I could expect maybe 100g/day.

 

Very interesting in any case.

[CharleyVarrick 277]

I guess my name is synonymous with buying stuff, now, lol

It's the other way around, buying stuff is synonymous with your name!

[CBers 6771]

I have an XPS 8500 (8Gb ram, i5-3350) that is about to be replaced by a refurbished rack mounted server (8Gb ram and dual Xeon 5506).

 

I only use it as my main office PC, with MS Office and Outlook on it, but it was cheap a few years ago.

 

I've just replaced my old Emby server (XPS 420 Pentium 4) with another rack mounted server (i5-7400 with 8Gb ram) utilising DriveBender storage pooling (13Tb) and it is so much faster.

 

I don't have any remote users, but we have 3 Shield TV's in the house and 99% of my content is Direct Play, so not a lot of streaming.

 

You're going to a rack? We'll be needing pictures!

 

No, nothing exciting

 

Still need pictures.

 

This is the secondhand HP Proliant DL160 G6 server I bought to replace my XPS 8500, which is currently being built with Windows 10 Professional x64 (OS disk being cloned to SanDisk 240Gb SSD now that disk caddy adapter has arrived).

 

 

Once completely setup, it will go into this half-height rack, that has my other self-built server in, that I use for Emby and content storage, utilising Drive Bender.

 

 

The cabinet also contains my switch, connecting all the rooms around the house as well as my CCTV DVR.

 

This is all squirrelled away in my loft, so use my ChromeBook for RDP sessions as and when needed.

 

If needed, I use the top of the server rack as a "desk"

 

 

So as I said, nothing exciting

 

 

.

Edited April 28, 2017 by CBers

[Guest asrequested]

Nice! It'll be cool when you get the proliant on the rack.

[pir8radio 1292]

Yea.... I'm an HP fan...  Except for the hardware limitations they have.. HP is what I use too.  Nice....

Edited April 28, 2017 by pir8radio

[CharleyVarrick 277]

RAID just stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks.

 

Raid is never backup, however it is much easier to replace a drive, and let the system rebuild the drive than it is to replace the drive, and then do restores.

 

Your backups are there in case you ever lose everything.

 

You can also use ARQ5 ($50), to encrypt and back everything up to Amazon Cloud Drive ($60 a year).

@@MSattler

I just signed up for ARQ5 and Amazon cloud.

ARQ5 has a 1 month trial and Amazon offer 3 months

I am well within budget

 

At first glance, the speed seems to be an issue, even though I've left preferences set to max speed, it's barely done 6g in 30 minutes

Task Mgr report network use at 2.3% on avg...

Not showing any actual speed or ETA, but it looks as if it's still scanning the 1st drive and uploading at the same time

Maybe it'll shoot up when it's done scanning (?) I have a "capable" 120/20 plan, not your 150/150 but capable neverthless.

 

At first, I tried to set it up from my workhorse pc, adding network volumes, kept saying it could not connect (had my unc path, user/pass all good, ???

I then killed the job and installed ARQ5 straight on the server pc (local drives).

For now I can live with only local drives being backed up, but eventually, it will be a must

Edited May 1, 2017 by jlr19

[MSattler 387]

@@MSattler

I just signed up for ARQ5 and Amazon cloud.

ARQ5 has a 1 month trial and Amazon offer 3 months

I am well within budget

 

At first glance, the speed seems to be an issue, even though I've left preferences set to max speed, it's barely done 6g in 30 minutes

Task Mgr report network use at 2.3% on avg...

Not showing any actual speed or ETA, but it looks as if it's still scanning the 1st drive and uploading at the same time

Maybe it'll shoot up when it's done scanning (?) I have a "capable" 120/20 plan, not your 150/150 but capable neverthless.

 

At first, I tried to set it up from my workhorse pc, adding network volumes, kept saying it could not connect (had my unc path, user/pass all good, ???

I then killed the job and installed ARQ5 straight on the server pc (local drives).

For now I can live with only local drives being backed up, but eventually, it will be a must

 

I backup my network shares without issue, although I do need to give it a username/password for an account that has access.  Even though guest can browse it as well.

 

It should be scanning all the time, and as it notices it doesn't have that content backed up it will upload it.  

 

Anything else using your network at the house?  Running the latest version of ARQ5?

 

You can always turn on debug logs and take a look at the logs.

[MSattler 387]

Should I post my latest purchase......?  =)

[Guest asrequested]

Should I post my latest purchase......?  =)

 

uuuuuhh....YES!

Edited May 2, 2017 by Doofus