Plex/Storage Server W10 or Unraid

[downloadedskill]

So I'd like some input on my situation. I'm currently running my plex/storage server on just W10 pro. I'm considering switching the system to running Unraid. The only issue I have currently is I occasionally have some crashes when converting video in handbrake but other than that pretty stable(might be the OC). So I'm not super into the idea of real RAID. To me is seems like it makes something simple way more complex than it should be as far as failures, especially for small servers like mine. So I currently just do a "dumb" mirroring of my drives using Bvckup, which is great software. I also then have Backblaze backing up all those drives. So I guess I'll list my pros and cons for my current setup vs Unraid. Any additional input or insight would be great, what I could be doing better in W10 or what Unraid could do better. Currently my biggest reasons to stay with W10 is cheap entire backup using Backblaze and remote management.

 

W10 Pros

Simple

Can backup offsite using Backblaze

Run many programs for other use cases

Offsite management with Pulseway/Teamviewer

 

W10 Cons

Windows updates like to break things

Overhead to run OS vs other OS's

Need to match drive sizes to software mirror properly

Mirroring looses half my storage space

 

Unraid Pros

Very powerful OS

Can run man VMs, dockers, ect.

Can add whatever size drive to array

Multi-drive failure won't ruin whole array

Party/health checks

Only HDD overhead is one or two drives

Easy system dashboard to view system status

Pretty simple UI

 

Unraid Cons

No easy cheap offsite backup

Fixing problems can be more complicated

No easy/secure offsite remote management

 

 

So those are currently my pros/cons with both. Tell me how I might be wrong or maybe doing something wrong here. Trying to figure out what I should be doing with my system.

 

If it matters Ryzen R7 2700 4ghz all core, Adata 16gb 3200mhz, Asrock B450 Pro4, 8 various sized pair wd reds.

 

[thedangerine]

I have been playing around with unraid lately and I have the last part I need for my storage server coming this week, so far I have really liked it. Granted I mostly like it because of the way they handle drive pools, especially with how easy it is to add another drive whether it be in the storage pool or the cache pool. Unraid also seems to have a nice little forum for troubleshooting. For me personally the fact that multi drive failure won't nuke your entire array is huge and running VM's is a nice bonus. But I can see why not being able to easily remotely manage or backup is a major downside

[downloadedskill]

5 minutes ago, thedangerine said:

I have been playing around with unraid lately and I have the last part I need for my storage server coming this week, so far I have really liked it. Granted I mostly like it because of the way they handle drive pools, especially with how easy it is to add another drive whether it be in the storage pool or the cache pool. Unraid also seems to have a nice little forum for troubleshooting. For me personally the fact that multi drive failure won't nuke your entire array is huge and running VM's is a nice bonus. But I can see why not being able to easily remotely manage or backup is a major downside

Yea I've been playing around with it lately too on an old system and a bunch of crap old drives. Yea I agree with all of that. Makes it so nice and easy. I've also checked out their forums, they seem to have a great community there as well.

 

The remote management I kind of have a work around having another system on my network that is always on so I still can remote manage but the con being I have to have another system running.

[jj9987]

4 minutes ago, downloadedskill said:

Unraid Pros

Very powerful OS

Can run man VMs, dockers, ect.

Can add whatever size drive to array

Multi-drive failure won't ruin whole array

Party/health checks

Only HDD overhead is one or two drives

Easy system dashboard to view system status

Pretty simple UI

 

Unraid Cons

No easy cheap offsite backup

Fixing problems can be more complicated

No easy/secure offsite remote management

unRAID isn't real RAID. It's non-standard implementation, it doesn't follow any of the RAID levels. But that's a technical detail. I'm gonna add comments to some of the pros and cons here as I am using unRAID in my homelab.

 

Pros:

+ Can add whatever size drive to array - True, only caveat is your parity drive has to be the largest drive. If you want to add a larger drive, it is going to be a bit of a long process.

+ Multi-drive failure won't ruin whole array - Single parity allows single drive failure. Dual parity allows up to two drive failures. Both imply that you do not lose a drive while rebuilding your new data drive/parity drive.

 

One more pro is the community support and applications. There is a large repository (Community Applications, shortly CA) of applications and plugins to add features to your server without having to really deal with the Docker container configuration in CLI etc. There is somewhat active support community on Reddit /r/unRAID, but LimeTech forums are much more active.

 

Cons:

- No easy cheap offsite backup - Really, use any backup tool that you can run in a Docker or VM.

- Fixing problems can be more complicated - What do you mean by that? unRAID uses Linux as a base. Most of the stuff, that you can break, aren't really unRAID related.

- No easy/secure offsite remote management - unRAID has built-in Wireguard VPN which you can use for outside access to the server or your whole network. Or to even tunnel your whole traffic (encrypted). unRAID does not have a visual GUI that you display on a graphical device like Windows does - it has a web-based GUI, which you can connect to from any device on the network, or from VPN or you can also choose the web GUI from boot list if that's what you desire.

[downloadedskill]

3 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

unRAID isn't real RAID. It's non-standard implementation, it doesn't follow any of the RAID levels. But that's a technical detail. I'm gonna add comments to some of the pros and cons here as I am using unRAID in my homelab.

 

Pros:

+ Can add whatever size drive to array - True, only caveat is your parity drive has to be the largest drive. If you want to add a larger drive, it is going to be a bit of a long process.

+ Multi-drive failure won't ruin whole array - Single parity allows single drive failure. Dual parity allows up to two drive failures. Both imply that you do not lose a drive while rebuilding your new data drive/parity drive.

 

One more pro is the community support and applications. There is a large repository (Community Applications, shortly CA) of applications and plugins to add features to your server without having to really deal with the Docker container configuration in CLI etc. There is somewhat active support community on Reddit /r/unRAID, but LimeTech forums are much more active.

 

Cons:

- No easy cheap offsite backup - Really, use any backup tool that you can run in a Docker or VM.

- Fixing problems can be more complicated - What do you mean by that? unRAID uses Linux as a base. Most of the stuff, that you can break, aren't really unRAID related.

- No easy/secure offsite remote management - unRAID has built-in Wireguard VPN which you can use for outside access to the server or your whole network. Or to even tunnel your whole traffic (encrypted). unRAID does not have a visual GUI that you display on a graphical device like Windows does - it has a web-based GUI, which you can connect to from any device on the network, or from VPN or you can also choose the web GUI from boot list if that's what you desire.

As far as multi-drive failure as I'm aware any drive still functioning after multi-drive failure you can still get the data off it compare to a typical raid.

 

Yea the community applications are definitely a pro.

 

The offsite backup, unless there is an option like backblaze offsite isn't an option without paying hundreds$$$ a month.

 

Fixing problems like dockers not running properly things like that. It's not as simple as W10 for none linux people.

 

Offsite management I haven't messed with the Wiregaurd VPN, I'll have to look into that. Should be a good option.

 

Thanks

 

[jj9987]

1 minute ago, downloadedskill said:

The offsite backup, unless there is an option like backblaze offsite isn't an option without paying hundreds$$$ a month.

 

Fixing problems like dockers not running properly things like that. It's not as simple as W10 for none linux people.

I personally have used Duplicati to upload some shares from server to AWS S3. I don't have a lot of critical data, so I pay like 60-70 cents per month. You could still run Backblaze in a VM and give it access to your data on the unRAID.

 

True, if you are not familiar with Linux, then there is a bit of a learning curve. But nothing too hard + there's a lot of information and courses and tutorials on the internet on basic Linux stuff. unRAID webGUI tries to keep things simple and pleasing. But you can do all that stuff also via CLI (standard Docker and QEMU commands apply).

[downloadedskill]

7 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

I personally have used Duplicati to upload some shares from server to AWS S3. I don't have a lot of critical data, so I pay like 60-70 cents per month. You could still run Backblaze in a VM and give it access to your data on the unRAID.

 

True, if you are not familiar with Linux, then there is a bit of a learning curve. But nothing too hard + there's a lot of information and courses and tutorials on the internet on basic Linux stuff. unRAID webGUI tries to keep things simple and pleasing. But you can do all that stuff also via CLI (standard Docker and QEMU commands apply).

I've heard running a VM and backblaze wouldn't work. Granted I haven't tried it, I probably should to see if that's actually the case.

 

Yea I need to get more linux literate. On my list of many things to expand my computer knowledge. Definitely a goal of mine to get comfortable in linux and working with command line.

[Salacious B Crum]

2 hours ago, downloadedskill said:

Offsite management I haven't messed with the Wiregaurd VPN, I'll have to look into that. Should be a good option.

 

Thanks

 

I run my unRAID box and use wireguard works like a charm heck of a lot easier than setting up opnvpn