[HN Gopher] What Is Unraid? ___________________________________________________________________ What Is Unraid? Author : aargh_aargh Score : 57 points Date : 2022-03-31 06:47 UTC (3 days ago) (HTM) web link (wiki.unraid.net) (TXT) w3m dump (wiki.unraid.net) | elliotpage wrote: | I've used UnRAID for just over two years and it works a treat. | Well worth the cost of entry. | 4kelly wrote: | +1 for unraid. I've been using it for about 4 years. IMO it's | usecase sits in between synology and a completely self | administered server. | | I found synology features great, but was frustrated about the | hardware lock in. I also didn't want to spend too much time | tinkering with a bare bones server. Enter unraid. | | I use it as a backup server, fileshare, time machine backup. As | well as plex and other popular self hosted docker images. | Cyph0n wrote: | I've heard great things about Unraid, but ended up choosing | Proxmox to manage my home server. I am fairly tech savvy and | don't need anything "complicated", so Proxmox works perfectly for | me. | | But I'd love to hear any thoughts from others who have tried | using both! | pocketsand wrote: | Agree. I went to Proxmox and virtualize TrueNAS. Best of both | worlds IMO and not at all any more difficult to manage. | nuker wrote: | Why not just TrueNAS? | pocketsand wrote: | Virtualization on TrueNAS/BSD leaves a lot to be desired | and in my experience just wasn't nearly as mature as on | Linux with KVM/qemu, etc. Likewise, BSD jails seemed to me | to be really well thought out, but when it came to getting | them to work for me to run little apps/services like I | could with Docker, or even a full-fat VM, I quickly gave up | because the juice didn't seem worth the squeeze. | | Whereas on Proxmox it's a cinch for me to run like 20 | different VMs/linux containers that I use for various | projects/jobs/etc. Huge ecosystem and really easy to take | advantage of massive community of linux/Debian | users/Docker/etc. | | TrueNAS Scale, which is based on Debian, I think reflects | an acknowledgement of the pain points of working around BSD | for the types of services a lot of people want to use their | NAS for. I don't think I'm ready to switch yet, but maybe | in a year or two it will be a great solution. | xoa wrote: | Don't disagree with you that using TrueNAS Core as a | general server/VM platform (some other things as well) | has pain points. Some of which are BSDisms, some just as | you say due to the plain fact that the community is | vastly smaller. Even simple stuff like ports frequently | being a bit out of date, or lacking the diversity you'd | find elsewhere. Nothing that can't be worked around, but | always some extra time on a whole different thing which | in more popular environments (be it Proxmox/KVM/ESXi or | whatever) would just be there and then get out of your | way. | | That said I do think though a NAS is one of the things, | even in a lot of homelab environments, that's actually | worth its own hardware separate from the VM if one can | swing the extra cost & space. I virtualized NAS for a | while too but since I wanted to run VMs themselves off | the NAS as well as a lot of other stuff, have a good | backup/restore story etc, I found it started to get | unpleasantly circular in terms of bootstrapping from a | cold start or restore. Also, the hardware requirements | for a good NAS are fairly distinct from a lot of what I | wanted for virtualizing. It's not impossible to cram lots | of hot swap drives _and_ full size PCIe cards including | GPUs for passthrough _and_ tons of CPU _and_ tons of RAM | into a single 4U by any means, but splitting things out | made it a lot simpler to optimize each side better. The | NAS could be smaller, cooler, quieter and good at its own | thing. After all-in-one I ended up with 3 distinct boxes: | router /gateway (OPNsense), VM system, and NAS system. I | know others have gone totally different directions, from | AIO boxes to wild K8s clusters doing it all, but I feel | like those provide a decent balance of flexibility and | stability/isolation, I can mess with stuff and feel | confidence in basic network connectivity or storage. | Isolation also means not feeling quite the same pressure | if one platform isn't as good at something as another, so | long as it's good at its own specialty. | | > _TrueNAS Scale, which is based on Debian, I think | reflects an acknowledgement of the pain points of working | around BSD for the types of services a lot of people want | to use their NAS for._ | | I'm a bit bummed philosophically there. I've used BSDs | for a very long time, like much of the philosophy if not | all the warts, and fundamentally losing diversity in | software platforms even if open source is concerning. At | the same time it's hard to get around the raw power of | network effects in tech, and Linux has a ton of resources | and eyes thrown at it at this point. I have no plans or | interest in moving in the near future either, but it's | hard not to feel like the headwinds are building a bit | for TrueNAS Core. Though FreeBSD continues to put out | excellent releases, and it's gotten this far. I've found | myself on the underdog "but I think it's technically | better!" losing side of a lot of tech in my life though | :). It's always a balancing act in how much it's worth | working on a tool itself vs using the tool to do other | work. | recov wrote: | Slightly on topic, a nice low maintence (other than a | daily/weekly backup/scrub script) option without the need for a | specific OS is mergerFS, combined with snapRaid. The main benefit | is you can add and remove drives/directories willy-nilly. It's | been stable for me for the past 3 years, it just works. | | https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs | | https://github.com/amadvance/snapraid/ | shmoogy wrote: | I moved from FreeNAS/TrueNAS after 5ish years to Unraid. So far, | it's been a lot easier to get things working the way I wanted. | Worth the cost of entry | unixhero wrote: | I just use Proxmox and ZFS on an honest to god X86 box. | vdfs wrote: | Proxmox is better for running VMs and LXC containers, You can | run TrueNAS or unRaid on top of it with disks passthrou | mise_en_place wrote: | I was using it as a headless KVM server but the PHP panel is | rather buggy. Starting a VM doesn't always kick it off, and had | numerous issues with updating. It just lacks the polish of a | commercial product. | hnaccount141 wrote: | I've been using Unraid for a few years now and while it's served | me well I hesitate to recommend it. Were I to start over today | I'd definitely be looking at TrueNAS Scale or rolling my own. | | Unraid seems to be targeting a rather niche market of people who | are used to building PCs for running Windows and would like to | have a home server and self host some apps (usually Plex and the | 'arr stack if we're being honest). It does a good job of making | all this accessible via a nice web UI with basic hypervisor and | container management features. The app store they have for Docker | containers is great for exposing new users to what's out there. | | The problem I've found is that while it does a good job of | offering a low barrier to entry, the ceiling is quite low as | well. It seems to me that the type of user they're trying to | attract is also the type who would want to learn more and tinker, | at which point Unraid's limitations will start to chafe. | | If you've used other Linux distros you'll find the lack of a | package manager and other atypical features frustrating. Once you | want to go beyond their app store for containers the web UI | becomes limiting. There's no first-party docker compose support. | The hypervisor UI is quite limited as well, lacking even the | ability to create and manage snapshots. Of course you can manage | all this from the command line, but at that point you may as well | use another OS with a more performant and reliable filesystem. | | There are also some bizarre security choices that they've seemed | to have had difficulty moving past. The web UI is only accessible | as root, for example. | tylergetsay wrote: | In the same boat, I recently switched to running a VM on top of | unRAID and treating that as my app server and unRAID as a | software raid host, it feels safer than rolling my own | Sparkle-san wrote: | Unraid is interesting. I considered it years ago but didn't want | to spend the money at the time so I went with OpenMediaVault. But | at this point, I just run snapraid + UnionFS. | Ir0nMan wrote: | I have been an UNRAID user for years now and I have been very | satisfied with he product. | vanchor3 wrote: | I've been using unRAID for a while now, and it feels more like a | community GitHub project rather than a closed-source commercial | product I paid for. There are plenty of weird issues that don't | really make any sense but are apparently "by design", and support | usually hasn't been helpful in my experience. | | I ran into an issue once where the Web interface wasn't working | properly. I looked online for a way to restart the service via | SSH, since none of the commands I could think of worked. I then | came across the amazing answer from one of the official forum | moderators that basically said "you don't need to know how to | restart the service, just stop having the problem." I could have | rebooted the entire system, but there were several Dockers | running as well as other systems that had the storage mounted | that I didn't want to interrupt for a simple web server issue. | | There's also the fun BTRFS and Docker issues. Maybe it's just me, | but filling up a file system shouldn't completely corrupt it. | There are rules you can set such as "don't copy a file unless | 30GB is free" but somehow it seems to ignore this. You later find | your Dockers no longer work if you restart them, giving the | unhelpful error of "Error code 403", despite them working fine | moments ago. Sometimes it just seems to do this for fun without | the disk filling up. | | I could go on and on about all the weird issues and odd design | choices. | slickdork wrote: | I've been using it for about 4 years and agree that it the | community feels like it's an open source project... and then | you remember you've paid for it, and there hasn't been a (non | beta) release in almost a full year, and all development is | happening behind closed doors. | | I still really enjoy unraid for what it does, but I also feel | like I can't recommend it any longer. | n42 wrote: | it's such a pet peeve, but the unRAID community normalizing the | usage of "Dockers" for "Docker containers" makes me twitch. | remram wrote: | I regularly cringe when people refer to "Docker images" as | "containers" but this is a step further. | vanchor3 wrote: | That's a good point. I never thought of that before, | unfortunately I tend to pickup bad habits like that by | watching the way others write. Though I do have to wonder if | the Docker team would have used that term were it not already | a registered trademark. I suppose it does sound a little | silly. | n42 wrote: | that's not your bad habit, that's just how language evolves | naturally. like I said, a pet peeve. the part that makes me | twitch is that the evolution of the term is happening in a | hobbyist community, where I've never heard a professional | use the term. when I read it it doesn't make linguistic | since to me -- a "Docker" is not a thing, what is its | plural? | | anyway, you do you. | aborsy wrote: | What does Unraid offer over Xpenology? | | Synology is perfect as a NAS. If you want NAS+ general server, | you are better off separating the two. | francislavoie wrote: | My biggest annoyance is that they don't provide users a first- | party way to run their own containers from a source Dockerfile. | As a maintainer of an open source project, this is incredibly | annoying because our plugin system is build/compile-time, and | many users need to use certain plugins. | | They also flip the order of Docker port mappings, where `-v | "8080:80"` would become "80 <- 8080" or w/e in their UI. And a | bunch of other idiosyncrasies with configuring containers. | | And yeah, as others have said, "dockers" terminology hurts me | deeply. | hanklazard wrote: | The port mapping flip in the UI is seriously baffling. Not even | that it happened but that it continues to be case. | | I feel that overall my unraid experience has been good and they | certainly make the implementation of some basic services and | plug-ins really easy. However I do find myself looking at more | fully manual, open-source "home server" solutions and wonder if | it would be worth a switch ... | yumiris wrote: | I used unRAID a while back for nearly two years. It's | delightfully convenient for managing Docker containers, multiple | disks w/ data parity, network file sharing, and even VMs with | passthroughs. The last feature, especially, is absolutely killer | with how easy it is to accomplish in unRAID. | | Whilst a lot of unRAID's functionality can be achieved with a bit | of tinkering and reading, its UI does save a lot of time and | keeps things very simple. For example, I have yet to figure out a | way of achieving GPU passthrough on an Optimus laptop without my | hair going grey -- a part of me feels like unRAID might simplify | it, despite it being an OS for servers rather than laptops. | | One thing I'd absolutely wish for is ZFS support. I haven't | looked into how ZFS's licence might interfere with its | integration, but if integration is possible, it would be | magnificent. | | Nevertheless, unRAID is splendid at what it strives to do and | buying a pro licence for it was absolutely worth it! | tomschlick wrote: | There is a zfs plugin now. Here is a video outlining it: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKXHO-hr5w | flatiron wrote: | I got lazy in my old years. I just use rclone and google drive. | jpgvm wrote: | Tried it. Decided for my needs that my Arch + ZFS based NAS is | still the way to go. | | At the end of the day it's critical data for me that while backed | up to tarsnap would take a very long time to restore. By just | using ZFS and having regular scrubs etc scheduled properly I have | very high confidence my array will always be online when I need | it. | | I could probably build a similar level of trust in another | product but ZFS (Under OpenSolaris, then Illumos, then FreeBSD | and finally Linux - all the same pool btw!) has earnt my trust | over many years. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-03 23:00 UTC)