Smurf's monster 40TB unRAID NAS build [Part II]

MikeK

There are two distinct versions of WHS - WHSv1, the original, and the latest WHS2011, and there are some pretty big differences between the two.

AFAIK, (though I'm no WHS expert), for redundancy WHSv1 mirrored partitions and "pooled" these into one big "virtual" volume (if you wanted that) - there was no raid5 option. This was called Drive Extender.
The main drawback, as it is with any mirroring solution, is that it costs 50% of your native drive space to implement.

WHS2011 lost this drive extender, but "replaced" it with raid5/raid1.

I would say that Flexraid is probably the most commonly used 3rd party "raid" solution for WHS, but personally I suspect that the internal redundancy offering will be the most widely used in absolute terms (possibly mainly because many WHS users may be unaware that there are alternatives, or else don't trust them, or perhaps don't see any need for them).

saguk1234

This is unraid not whs. please start a new thread for whs!

MikeK

Well, it was the OP who opened the door on WHS with

Try getting that with RAID, or WHS for the same money

HugoFJH

While Mark's answer is strictly correct, I would also suggest the parity disc is a "system drive" also as its size has no relation to the amount of available storage space.


I like Unraid alot, but there are still alot of text commands to get one's head around and pre-clearance of drives before adding them to the array etc

Dan201

Ive just received my cages, the same ones used here. They have to be installed so the drives are on their sides, is this ok for them? As they have disks inside id have assumed they be best flat.

update, a quick google search suggests its all fine.

Smurfin

It is fine Dan, all 5 in 3 drive cages have the drives mounted in this way, and its better for heat distribution too

electro

Smurfin and co, can you tell me your experience and advice with folder structure and naming conventions of your files with regard to split level and user shares. I want to make sure I get this right from the start.

i.e. Do you write stuff to the unraid box ONLY via user shares? Do you use split level to your advantage to maintain series/seasons etc on the same physical disk?

Have you tried using NFS instead of samba shares to see if the performance is better?

Do you ever find yourself writing direct to one of the disks outside of user shares?

Do you use security features of user shares?

Have you tried installing a dedicated Intel NIC rather than a typical onboard realtek to see if this improves transfer speeds?



Cheers
electro

electro

Oh and Smurfin, the Seagate drive impressed me that you linked to. I bought one as an emergency top up when I heard of the Thai floods just in time @ £58. I refuse to buy more storage until the prices go back to what they were, or atleast close to aka <£69 for 2TB. The Seagate runs similar temps to my other drives, if anything cooler, and is not noisy. It also has fairly good throughput. I would not hesitate to get that drive if it is the cheapest around. I found no problems with it - having said that, I have not officially used it in a live array yet.

HugoFJH

always used the regular shares on my Unraid - but havent needed / wanted to rip any tv series yet so latter part isnt relevant to me

I cant think of why this is  necessary without (imo) the unlikely event of two or more disks failing at once. Always written direct to the share myself

As long as network is secure, i dont see any need to have additional security implemented (plus its a nightmare to configure in co-ordination with a streamer)

All my pci slots are taken up with SATA cards, and I dont honestly see the requirement for increase in transfer rate being necessary (compared to having more storage). Remember you transfer a rip once, so writing speed may be a pain initially but why pay for such a small gain , playback / streaming speed is much more imporatant and any mobo nic should be good enough

electro

Do you understand split level though? Do you realise the significance and how it works? Naming convention of folders/files, and a combination of split level and another setting (I forget the name) which defines how each disk is filled up, can massively influence how well it works for you. A lot of people will want to be able to watch TV episodes/series or browse pictures or other media without an additional disk spinning up. Each user share can be tailored to meet your expected usage. Storing video files inside their own folder is usually advantageous from what I have seen and allows for much more flexibility regarding split level.


Because you might want to override where unraid deems it fit to distribute your files. Some people might use unraid server not just as media storage, but as a file server for documents and other backups of files/software. You might for example, want to store software which contains several subfolders of which you would want to ensure all reside on the same disk, so as when called upon, only one disk spins up to serve what you want. Not to mention that distributing something like software files accross multiple disks will introduce the latency of each additional disk that needs to be span up during say an install.
I'm just saying, these are the kinds of things that are holding me back as I keep trying to plan for my usage. Perhaps I am over analyzing somewhat.  
For people that do not care for powersaving and have all disks spun up all the time they may not notice these things.

I'm not thinking about it from that angle. More that I do not want people to be browsing shares that have modify access incase of accidental deletion of content. I am wondering how people manage this. i.e. Say I want to be able to write to/modify the share, then I would look to setup a password for this to be allowed. For all media shares I would allow read access to anybody, so clients that are just media players should have no issues.

Yes. I do quite agree. Most uses of unraid should only really require very basic read requirements. However, I would personally be looking for as high a read/write performance as possible since I plan to use it as a general file server as well. I gather than NFS shares are best for performance, but I am not sure if they can be a pain to setup with stability. I probably will run a cache drive and I may explore an Intel NIC. The onboard realtek NICs have been blamed before for being a large bottleneck.

Hugo, how long have you had your setup? Any extra info on your uses, hardware, setup most welcome.