Part 2: DIY AMD NAS with Unraid & ZFS Software Setup, ft. Level1Techs
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Date: 2020-05-06
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Comments and reviews: 10
Bert
I run my daily work on desktop and laptop in VMs. I run the VMs and the desktop Host from a 512GB nvme-SSD. The host is a minimal install of Ubuntu 19. 10 with the experimental ZFS booting. I have a recovery install of Ubuntu using an ext4 partition on one of my two HDDs. In September 2019 I did try out this dual boot configuration in Virtualbox. I use ZFS to incremental copy my VMs from desktop to laptop, so on the road I have exactly the same distros with the same settings. Desktop and laptop also use the same Virtualbox shared folders (datasets) with all my info using the same mount points. My backup server is a 32-bits Pentium 4 HT (3. 0 GHz) with 1. 2TB in 4 HDDs (2 IDE and 2 SATA-1. It runs on FreeBSD 12. 1 and weekly I run my incremental backups to that system out of 2003. Also this combination has been tested first in Virtualbox. The disadvantage is, that the Pentium limits the 1 Gbps link to 200 Mbps due to a 95% CPU load of the network process. I still have 4GB DDR2 and a 3-core Phenom, so I consider to look for a cheap AM2 motherboard to get 800Mbps.
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I run my daily work on desktop and laptop in VMs. I run the VMs and the desktop Host from a 512GB nvme-SSD. The host is a minimal install of Ubuntu 19. 10 with the experimental ZFS booting. I have a recovery install of Ubuntu using an ext4 partition on one of my two HDDs. In September 2019 I did try out this dual boot configuration in Virtualbox. I use ZFS to incremental copy my VMs from desktop to laptop, so on the road I have exactly the same distros with the same settings. Desktop and laptop also use the same Virtualbox shared folders (datasets) with all my info using the same mount points. My backup server is a 32-bits Pentium 4 HT (3. 0 GHz) with 1. 2TB in 4 HDDs (2 IDE and 2 SATA-1. It runs on FreeBSD 12. 1 and weekly I run my incremental backups to that system out of 2003. Also this combination has been tested first in Virtualbox. The disadvantage is, that the Pentium limits the 1 Gbps link to 200 Mbps due to a 95% CPU load of the network process. I still have 4GB DDR2 and a 3-core Phenom, so I consider to look for a cheap AM2 motherboard to get 800Mbps.
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JDI's
Wendell & Steve - A lot of the frustration mentioned at 24: 33 of missing things like Scheduled Tasks has been solved for awhile with unRAID's extensive plugin and container/app support through the Community Applications plugin. .install that one plugin and you'll have access to tons of plugins and containers that answer basically all your needs. In this case, the User Scripts plugin which adds scheduling tasks and custom scripts in the GUI with an interface for CRON. I'm surprised you didn't add the Community Applications plugin since practically every unRAID user knows this is one of the first things you install on any unRAID build. I'm surprised that this is something even Linus seems to know that Wendell doesn't. There's even dedicated sections of the official unRAID forum for all the apps, plugins, containers installed through the Community Applications plugin. Using unRAID without it is like driving a car without tires.
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Wendell & Steve - A lot of the frustration mentioned at 24: 33 of missing things like Scheduled Tasks has been solved for awhile with unRAID's extensive plugin and container/app support through the Community Applications plugin. .install that one plugin and you'll have access to tons of plugins and containers that answer basically all your needs. In this case, the User Scripts plugin which adds scheduling tasks and custom scripts in the GUI with an interface for CRON. I'm surprised you didn't add the Community Applications plugin since practically every unRAID user knows this is one of the first things you install on any unRAID build. I'm surprised that this is something even Linus seems to know that Wendell doesn't. There's even dedicated sections of the official unRAID forum for all the apps, plugins, containers installed through the Community Applications plugin. Using unRAID without it is like driving a car without tires.
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xpyr
I wonder if it's possible to configure unraid in a way that you don't have to specifically specify which drives are spare drives and instead it just uses the free space on all the drives to recover when a drive goes bad. I do see you can add drives as caching drives, so I like that. Also wondering if it works in a cluster where it magically syncs up the data on all the servers in the cluster. Then runs vm's in the cluster where it moves a vm over to another server, with very little downtime, if the server it's running on all of a suddenly becomes unavailable. And then supports the idea of virtual ip's, such as for dockers so that if the server, for example the lan cache docker, is running becomes unavailable, it starts up on another server and that virtual ip that it was using then is moved over to the new server that docker is now running on.
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I wonder if it's possible to configure unraid in a way that you don't have to specifically specify which drives are spare drives and instead it just uses the free space on all the drives to recover when a drive goes bad. I do see you can add drives as caching drives, so I like that. Also wondering if it works in a cluster where it magically syncs up the data on all the servers in the cluster. Then runs vm's in the cluster where it moves a vm over to another server, with very little downtime, if the server it's running on all of a suddenly becomes unavailable. And then supports the idea of virtual ip's, such as for dockers so that if the server, for example the lan cache docker, is running becomes unavailable, it starts up on another server and that virtual ip that it was using then is moved over to the new server that docker is now running on.
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Kobrar44
I was hoping to learn something about building NAS servers but this series didn't really touch on any basics. Could you make a video on NAS servers sometime please? What platform should I choose? Do I need ECC memory? How many cores do I need? What budget/advanced options would you recommend? Should I go with existing solution? What should I look for when selecting my hard drives? Which RAID X should I choose? Should I rely on my motherboard? Should I use software manager? Should I go for some sort of extension card? When? Which OS should I go for? Why? What if I want to extend my storage capability in the future? Should I just go for more capacity immediately? What if one of the drives fails? How do I know? What do I do then? Are there any other considerations? Is UPS a good investment?
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I was hoping to learn something about building NAS servers but this series didn't really touch on any basics. Could you make a video on NAS servers sometime please? What platform should I choose? Do I need ECC memory? How many cores do I need? What budget/advanced options would you recommend? Should I go with existing solution? What should I look for when selecting my hard drives? Which RAID X should I choose? Should I rely on my motherboard? Should I use software manager? Should I go for some sort of extension card? When? Which OS should I go for? Why? What if I want to extend my storage capability in the future? Should I just go for more capacity immediately? What if one of the drives fails? How do I know? What do I do then? Are there any other considerations? Is UPS a good investment?
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OldTimerGaming
I started using Norton Ghost to do imaging from my Synology NAS. I switched to EaseUS Todo Backup a few years ago as it was faster and easier to use. I now store images at a couple different stages from each of my systems on the network (made offline backups also) and can just put in a USB flash drive or just select the software from the system and re-image the computer and about 10 minutes later. Poof! Fresh drive. I also have a separate SSD in the system that I can switch too in order to modify the base images. Each system has an NVME m. 2 drive to boot from and a regular SSD as an image build drive. Life is so much easier if I need to do a wipe. All of my steam games sit on the server in case I need to copy them over. Not sure if that works with the other stores games or not.
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I started using Norton Ghost to do imaging from my Synology NAS. I switched to EaseUS Todo Backup a few years ago as it was faster and easier to use. I now store images at a couple different stages from each of my systems on the network (made offline backups also) and can just put in a USB flash drive or just select the software from the system and re-image the computer and about 10 minutes later. Poof! Fresh drive. I also have a separate SSD in the system that I can switch too in order to modify the base images. Each system has an NVME m. 2 drive to boot from and a regular SSD as an image build drive. Life is so much easier if I need to do a wipe. All of my steam games sit on the server in case I need to copy them over. Not sure if that works with the other stores games or not.
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asbestinuS
I don't understand why you would use unraid. Just use Proxmox as enterprise hypervisor, it's Debian based and also capable of PCI passthrough. Also since Proxmox v6 you can use ZFS as boot medium as well. Also, proxmox is free, you don't have to pay up front and don't have to pay more if you reach a certain amount of disks. Just use Openmediavault as NAS-VM, it's also debian based. Proxmox itself is very resource-friendly as well. In Proxmox you have the ability to use ceph-storages for your VMs. It has an integrated backup for the VMs as well. At work we are only installing Proxmox lateley, and as you can tell I'm grown very fond of it and really can recomend it. Thanks for reading, have a nice day!
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I don't understand why you would use unraid. Just use Proxmox as enterprise hypervisor, it's Debian based and also capable of PCI passthrough. Also since Proxmox v6 you can use ZFS as boot medium as well. Also, proxmox is free, you don't have to pay up front and don't have to pay more if you reach a certain amount of disks. Just use Openmediavault as NAS-VM, it's also debian based. Proxmox itself is very resource-friendly as well. In Proxmox you have the ability to use ceph-storages for your VMs. It has an integrated backup for the VMs as well. At work we are only installing Proxmox lateley, and as you can tell I'm grown very fond of it and really can recomend it. Thanks for reading, have a nice day!
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CKOD
Ive been casually trying to plan a NAS build for the past month or two, but it always spirals out of control quickly. Z2 because of read failures being so likely during a rebuild of a Z1, and a single VDEV is so slow, limited to 1 drives speed, so why not 2 VDEVs, but usage efficiency is shit if you just have 4 disks per VDEV, , and the 8 and 10 TB WD reds are quieter, and lower power, and faster than the 4 and 6 TB units, and I really want 10 Gb networking because 1Gb is poopy etc, until I'm looking at a 1500+ box before the 8-12 250 drives. And I just keep going screw it, just throw 2 mirrored drives in an old PC and deal with it when its full
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Ive been casually trying to plan a NAS build for the past month or two, but it always spirals out of control quickly. Z2 because of read failures being so likely during a rebuild of a Z1, and a single VDEV is so slow, limited to 1 drives speed, so why not 2 VDEVs, but usage efficiency is shit if you just have 4 disks per VDEV, , and the 8 and 10 TB WD reds are quieter, and lower power, and faster than the 4 and 6 TB units, and I really want 10 Gb networking because 1Gb is poopy etc, until I'm looking at a 1500+ box before the 8-12 250 drives. And I just keep going screw it, just throw 2 mirrored drives in an old PC and deal with it when its full
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PerfectBee
I have been researching FreeNAS and UnRaid and have yet to decide my path. However, I am confused by one statement made by Wendell. Specifically, around 6: 48 he states FreeNAS doesn't do hardware passthrough. Over in the FreeNAS forums I have been asking about the possibility of running FreeNAS in a VM and, although there is lots of debate about that, there seem to be folks there who are specifically using FreeNAS in a VM with passthrough. Who is correct? PS: Not interested the the FreeNAS vs. Unraid debate here - just want to know if the statement about FreeNAS not supporting passthrough is accurate.
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I have been researching FreeNAS and UnRaid and have yet to decide my path. However, I am confused by one statement made by Wendell. Specifically, around 6: 48 he states FreeNAS doesn't do hardware passthrough. Over in the FreeNAS forums I have been asking about the possibility of running FreeNAS in a VM and, although there is lots of debate about that, there seem to be folks there who are specifically using FreeNAS in a VM with passthrough. Who is correct? PS: Not interested the the FreeNAS vs. Unraid debate here - just want to know if the statement about FreeNAS not supporting passthrough is accurate.
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willgart
did you consider Azure File Sync? ssssooooo easier to do then this huge stuff and big server. and 2PB available. you just need a local file server with your capacity required for your standard usage + azure file sync on top. 5 minutes to setup. (really 5minutes) so all the files backed up, only alive files on your local server, the others are removed and kept online, ability to sync another file server anywhere else. you lost your file server? no problem, you'll be back online in minutes with any new server. (without the requirement of setting up a cluster of servers, so less expensive)
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did you consider Azure File Sync? ssssooooo easier to do then this huge stuff and big server. and 2PB available. you just need a local file server with your capacity required for your standard usage + azure file sync on top. 5 minutes to setup. (really 5minutes) so all the files backed up, only alive files on your local server, the others are removed and kept online, ability to sync another file server anywhere else. you lost your file server? no problem, you'll be back online in minutes with any new server. (without the requirement of setting up a cluster of servers, so less expensive)
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Mytime
GN and L1T, I have been posting on LT1 forums about using ZFS and want to give a big thanks to Wendell for all of his help (getting me and my system working correctly) Have you tried checking your throughput on the array? Are you using only the ZFS array, or are you also using the Unraid array (for backup) Wendell suggested my current config for ZFS. 3 3drive raidz1 array I would love to see tests from your array setup. Thank you guys again for the video, because I really like Unraid, but the slow speeds were my biggest issue.
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GN and L1T, I have been posting on LT1 forums about using ZFS and want to give a big thanks to Wendell for all of his help (getting me and my system working correctly) Have you tried checking your throughput on the array? Are you using only the ZFS array, or are you also using the Unraid array (for backup) Wendell suggested my current config for ZFS. 3 3drive raidz1 array I would love to see tests from your array setup. Thank you guys again for the video, because I really like Unraid, but the slow speeds were my biggest issue.
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