Free alternative to limetech unraid

[Justin_]

First of I have a server with 7x2TB HDD's, 20GB RAM DDR2 ECC and 2 Intel Xeons that I will be installing Windows 7 on to use as my desktop.

I want to use the HDD's as a NAS in an UNDERLYING system like unraid NOT in the Windows OS, but don't want to pay for an OS, what alternatives do I have (if any)?

 

Thanks!

[Mcmole]

FreeNas is decent. And you have the perfect setup for it.

[Justin_]

Yes and I would use that if I was going to use it only for a NAS and not also my desktop. Please read the post before responding.

[leadeater]

What you actually want is a little hard and very few cater for it, unRAID being one of the only I'm aware of. Most virtualization products assume you are using it for server purposes not primarily as a desktop.

 

What is wrong with using Storage Spaces within Windows to pool the disks and create shares from that?

[sybreeder]

Hm From what i understand you want to use solution like unraid and windows machine that was presented on the LTT YT ? 7GPUs and sth like that ?
ESXi can do that and basic version is free. You can create 2 VMs - 1 for freenas, second for windows 7. Then passthrough GPU, USB, etc for win7 and HBA for Freenas. It should work. But it can be problematic. And that server needs to support VT-D

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, sybreeder said:

Hm From what i understand you want to use solution like unraid and windows machine that was presented on the LTT YT ? 7GPUs and sth like that ?
ESXi can do that and basic version is free. You can create 2 VMs - 1 for freenas, second for windows 7. Then passthrough GPU, USB, etc for win7 and HBA for Freenas. It should work. But it can be problematic. And that server needs to support VT-D

GPU passthrough in ESXi with local monitor connection and keyboard mouse etc isn't exactly well supported and often doesn't work. Passing through the GPU to the VM is easy but using it like unRAID can, not so much. HBA passthrough to a VM does work fine and I currently do it, not with FreeNAS though.

[tt2468]

Look up XPEnology

[Mikensan]

You could just setup linux, setup ZFS or BTRFS, install KVM, and call it a day. There are a lot of software based raid solutions for linux. That is all unRaid does except they slap a GUI on it.

 

ESXI doesn't make life easy sharing USB mice/keyboards to a VM. I have not tried Microsoft HyperV but it is free with similar restrictions to vmware's esxi.

 

Or you could use Rockstor, and install KVM manually...

[Ralms]

On 12/02/2016 at 11:45 AM, leadeater said:

GPU passthrough in ESXi with local monitor connection and keyboard mouse etc isn't exactly well supported and often doesn't work. Passing through the GPU to the VM is easy but using it like unRAID can, not so much. HBA passthrough to a VM does work fine and I currently do it, not with FreeNAS though.

What are you using instead of FreeNAS? 
Im fairly unhappy with unRaid so Im looking for good alternatives to handle storage. 

[techmattr]

SnapRAID is what you're looking for.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Ralms said:

What are you using instead of FreeNAS? 
Im fairly unhappy with unRaid so Im looking for good alternatives to handle storage. 

I use Windows Server and Storage Spaces but that may not be an option for you. Using straight linux as @Mikensan suggested and setting up the storage yourself and installing KVM will do the job nicely, while a little harder to initially setup it's a once only thing.

 

The other option is what @tt2468 suggested, XPEnology which is the software on Synology NASs. Basically it's build your own Synology and that will happily run your storage and VMs all managed with an easy interface.

[Ralms]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

I use Windows Server and Storage Spaces but that may not be an option for you. Using straight linux as @Mikensan suggested and setting up the storage yourself and installing KVM will do the job nicely, while a little harder to initially setup it's a once only thing.

 

The other option is what @tt2468 suggested, XPEnology which is the software on Synology NASs. Basically it's build your own Synology and that will happily run your storage and VMs all managed with an easy interface.

Im migrating from Windows Storage Spaces. Never again. Took me 2 weeks fighting against it to be able to remove the drives wihout just deleting the entire thing at once. 

 

Im currenly in Unraid but finding this thread I was thinking on using ESXi as base and VMs on top. The sugestion from techmattr to use SnapRaid seemed interesting too, where its sort of like Unraid but simpler and I can just handle storage with that. I need to try both and see how they manage. 

Have you ever used XPEnology? is it reliable?

 

Thanks. 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Ralms said:

Have you ever used XPEnology? is it reliable?

I have never used it but I have a friend who does. For reliability that's up to the hardware, the software itself is running on I don't know how many millions of Synology NASs which is one the best brands out there. As far as storage goes it will be extremely good, I don't know how good it's VM hosting ability is.

 

I guess it's rather difficult to actually try these out enough to get a true idea without having to constantly go through the pain of data migration every time.

[Ralms]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

I have never used it but I have a friend who does. For reliability that's up to the hardware, the software itself is running on I don't know how many millions of Synology NASs which is one the best brands out there. As far as storage goes it will be extremely good, I don't know how good it's VM hosting ability is.

 

I guess it's rather difficult to actually try these out enough to get a true idea without having to constantly go through the pain of data migration every time.

Yeah true, 

Ok I though that XPEnology was some sort of fork or open source project from the official thing. 
Didn't know about this:

Quote

XPEnology is a bootloader as IMG image. XPEnology compiled from the source code provided Sinology under license GNU. XPEnology and does not contain the operating system.
In addition to the kernel in the boot loader included some scripts and driver packages to work on most particular hardware platforms.

I guess I will give it a try than. 

My idea to try these things without migrating everything, that is a freaking pain, speacially when you have a few TB of stuff, is to create like a 100GB Disk Image on each hard drive to fake an array and see how they handle on a VM lol. It will be fun seeing this software's freak out if they realize they dont have fulll access to the drives

Well, thanks for the suggestions. 

[tt2468]

On 2/6/2017 at 5:13 PM, Ralms said:

Yeah true, 

Ok I though that XPEnology was some sort of fork or open source project from the official thing. 
Didn't know about this:

I guess I will give it a try than. 

My idea to try these things without migrating everything, that is a freaking pain, speacially when you have a few TB of stuff, is to create like a 100GB Disk Image on each hard drive to fake an array and see how they handle on a VM lol. It will be fun seeing this software's freak out if they realize they dont have fulll access to the drives

Well, thanks for the suggestions. 

I have done a good share of testing with xpenology. The nice thing is that xpenology is actually just the bootloader, and all the OS data is stored on the hard disks. While testing, my bootloader USB broke. I borrowed a friend's legit Synology NAS, popped the disks in from the xpenology, and it booted without a hitch. XPenology is resilient. 

[kelly.clubb]

ESXI sadly wouldn't work for the scenario the op asked about because it runs VMs on it.  I love ESXI though.  It's one of the best VM based OS I've come across and is easy to setup.  While they won't support my CPU much longer for updated versions my dual 4 core Optitron CPU & full array of SAS drives allow my rack servers to host many VM.  You just can't run windows on top of it sadly.  If op had a 2nd computer to console or remote into the said computers it would work that way but not cover multiple monitor setups like I use.

[Genius1237]

Like someone previously suggested, install something like ubuntu for this server, and install windows 7 as a kvm virtual machine and enable gpu passthrough. There are lot of guides on how to do it. VT-d support is needed, so check if your cpu supports it.