UNRAID vs. TrueNAS CORE

[dennis111]

Hello forum people,

 

I'm in the process of getting my first self build NAS up and running. The problem is that I'm not sure which OS I should pick.
I've done some research but it left me inconclusive.

My conclusion are:

UNRAID:

•  is easier to set up / manage
•  hardware pass through to VMs
•  VMs / Docker is easier
•  expanding the disk array is easier
•  is less reliable then TrueNAS? (some people said that)
•  the USB-Stick has to be replaced frequently (also some people said that)

 

TrueNAS CORE:

•  is more difficult to set up / manage
•  VMs / Docker is harder
•  expanding the disk array is harder
•  is more reliable then UNRAID
•  having the OS on a dedicated drive is better then the "USB-Stick" Solution

 

I'm primarily looking for something reliable. With the option of expanding my disk array, because i have Toshiba's 18 TB drives and in the future i will be adding 16 TB ones. I should mention that I have some experience with Linux so I'm no stranger to the terminal, but I'm far from being an expert.
I would like to hear your thoughts, recommendations and experiences.

[RONOTHAN##]

27 minutes ago, dennis111 said:

 is less reliable then TrueNAS? (some people said that)

The actual file system of UNRAID is less robust than ZFS (the file system of TrueNAS), but it's still pretty decent. If you plan on running <10 drives either one will be fine. Plus, you should be doing a backup anyway with both, so in the event something goes wrong your data is still safe.

 

31 minutes ago, dennis111 said:

With the option of expanding my disk array, because i have Toshiba's 18 TB drives and in the future i will be adding 16 TB ones.

If you're planning on mixing drives, you really should go UNRAID. ZFS does not enjoy mixing capacities while UNRAID doesn't really break a sweat. 

 

If you were planning on running all the same drive, I would suggest you look at TrueNAS scale instead. It's basically the same as TrueNAS Core but based on Debian instead of FreeBSD and with much better VM/Docker support. That said, with how you plan on upgrading the drives, UNRAID seems to be the best method.

[leadeater]

UnRAID if you have a primary need to host VMs and/or you want to be able to add new disks piecemeal i.e. 1 or 2 at a time. ZFS if you can stick to adding disks in groups of 4-6 and don't have a primary need to host VMs (although getting much better at this now).

[dennis111]

16 hours ago, leadeater said:

UnRAID

Did you run UnRAID before? I really want to be sure that the USB stick doesn't die every 5 to 6 months or so.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, dennis111 said:

Did you run UnRAID before? I really want to be sure that the USB stick doesn't die every 5 to 6 months or so.

Personally no but I know it works well. USB can be a little hit and miss, better ones can last long time and bad ones die about what you said. I've run ESXi on USB drive before and hasn't really been a problem, SD Cards too, but not any super cheap ones.

[dennis111]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

Personally no but I know it works well.

Thanks for the info. I've bought a SanDisk USB 3.0 drive which should be high quality. I'll definitively test it.

[Mihle]

I use Unraid, have had it running for 3 years or something, and haven't experienced the USB thumb drive dying.

I have an SanDisk one.

 

Unless you set it up things to log to the USB thumb drive a lot or restart Unraid a lot, it shouldn't really get used that much as Unraid itself is loaded in to memory at startup and stays there.

[dennis111]

8 hours ago, Mihle said:

I use Unraid, have had it running for 3 years or something, and haven't experienced the USB thumb drive dying.

Thanks a lot. That sounds great

[voyager_]

Unraid, ive been running it for 6-7 years at this point and have two machines running 24x7. Each 07 has its own usecase. if your after performance i would go truenas, personal use Unraid. I've never had a Usb die (*knock on wood*) unless your logging or writing to the drive you dont do much with the usb other then boot, then it loads to memory. Unraid is great for expansion, plugins, vms, etc...  Get the community plugin! its basically an apps store. I have one machine as my primary backup running plex, vms for - home assistant, linux, windows, windows web server - , Vpn, Minecraft server. my second is a backup of my first and runs a windows vm for my security cameras. Overall its been pretty stable and reliable. get your self a good UPS and power supply.

 

Unraid setup is straight forward and there are a ton of videos, look for ones from space invader and byte my bits. Plex setup is great and supports gpu transcoding and ram transcoding. SSD cache and many other useful features. Adding more storage is very easy!

[dennis111]

On 5/12/2022 at 5:25 PM, voyager_ said:

Unraid, ive been running it for 6-7 years at this point and have two machines running 24x7. Each 07 has its own usecase. if your after performance i would go truenas, personal use Unraid. I've never had a Usb die (*knock on wood*) unless your logging or writing to the drive you dont do much with the usb other then boot, then it loads to memory. Unraid is great for expansion, plugins, vms, etc...  Get the community plugin! its basically an apps store. I have one machine as my primary backup running plex, vms for - home assistant, linux, windows, windows web server - , Vpn, Minecraft server. my second is a backup of my first and runs a windows vm for my security cameras. Overall its been pretty stable and reliable. get your self a good UPS and power supply.

 

Unraid setup is straight forward and there are a ton of videos, look for ones from space invader and byte my bits. Plex setup is great and supports gpu transcoding and ram transcoding. SSD cache and many other useful features. Adding more storage is very easy!

Thanks for your detailed answer. My machine has been running for 4 days by now.
The unRAID experience has been great (mostly). 
My Problems so far: 

• sometimes the web ui is not reachable after booting
• the hardware encoding with jelllyfin is not working properly yet (Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G)

I’ve already discovered the App Store plugin. It’s really sweet. I’ll definitely install home assistant (again), Bitwarden and other containers. 

I love that the machine is less audible then my qnap, especially my hard drives. My PSU is a Seasonic fanless 450W (any recommendations for a good UPS?). Putting everything together in a SFF case was a little bit challenging.

 

I’ll take a look at your YouTube recommendations.

 

[gcs8]

My opinion would be to try TrueNAS Scale, it's still newish, but the underlying ZFS code is still solid. Does some of the things unraid does, etc...

 

The downside is if you plan to be like me, I have 24 disks in my current storage array, I had to order a 44 bay JBOD to expand the way I want to and shift from the old encryption to the new encryption. So I am going to wind up with 42 disks and ~344Tb after raidz2 and pool restructuring. 

[gcs8]

7 hours ago, dennis111 said:

Thanks for your detailed answer. My machine has been running for 4 days by now.
The unRAID experience has been great (mostly). 
My Problems so far: 

• sometimes the web ui is not reachable after booting
• the hardware encoding with jelllyfin is not working properly yet (Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G)

I’ve already discovered the App Store plugin. It’s really sweet. I’ll definitely install home assistant (again), Bitwarden and other containers. 

I love that the machine is less audible then my qnap, especially my hard drives. My PSU is a Seasonic fanless 450W (any recommendations for a good UPS?). Putting everything together in a SFF case was a little bit challenging.

 

I’ll take a look at your YouTube recommendations.

 

Whoops, missed this, Honestly anything APC is pretty good, followed by eaton and cyberpower. Would just get one that has a USB interface so you can plug it into your storage server and make sure it can see it and safely shut down when it needs too. For what you are running, you can get by just fine with a 1000VA unit, but I would just buy once/cry once and go 1500VA if you can and call it a day. 

[dbx10]

The difference in learning curve is marginal by now. Most people don't know this, but iXsystems is actually making TrueNAS products as easy to use as possible. Even when you make a pool now, it automatically sets a monthly scrub for it. (Probably to avoid issues like when Petabyte project had irrecoverable data loss because GENIUS MAN LINUS TECH TIP never set a scrub task on his pools.)

TrueNAS Core in my experience is not really hard to learn, and is extremely rugged. My server has been running it for years now, and I'm impressed:

• Even when I had a defective motherboard and crashes occurred, the Linux server VM for docker stayed up, and all the jails too. I'm still puzzled as to how, but hey uptime is uptime I guess?
• I've recently had my boot SSD overheat in the case and the kernel crashed as a result, yet all my jails and VMs were still fully functional and the pools accessible. There was no way to gracefully shutdown from this unfortunately.
• ZFS will not even let me use a drive if it's returning bad checksums, it'll mark the pool as degraded and kick the drive out. I've had this happen to a customer's server just last week, and had to order multiple drives. No downtime, no data loss. Just resilver over the weekend.

I'm not hating on unraid, and I know they have plans to integrate and support OpenZFS down the pipeline, but until that time comes I'm not running an OS without ZFS on my server. Just ain't happening.

[Jarsky]

On 5/8/2022 at 10:42 PM, dennis111 said:

Did you run UnRAID before? I really want to be sure that the USB stick doesn't die every 5 to 6 months or so.

My UnRAID Server has been running for nearly 3 years, its had 1 USB stick die in that time. I just replaced it with a new one and transferred the key. 

That seems to just be the nature of USB keys though, they could last 10 years, or 10 months. 

(Its worth noting as well that UnRAID doesnt actively run off the USB, it uses it for boot and for saving configs but thats about it)

 

Also, if you want Docker, hardware passthrough etc, why isnt TrueNAS SCALE an option rather than CORE?

CORE doesnt even support Docker, it uses FreeBSD Jails. 

 

Jails is a more matured platform and actually supports both BSD & Linux, but Docker has a much larger community.

 

 

[dennis111]

15 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Also, if you want Docker, hardware passthrough etc, why isnt TrueNAS SCALE an option rather than CORE?

Well I chose unRAID because the general consensus is that it is easier to use. The flexibility it allows comes in really handy. 
I might take a look at TrueNAS in the future (backup server for my new build :) ). It sounds like TrueNAS is more robust.

[dbx10]

On 5/17/2022 at 8:28 PM, Jarsky said:

Also, if you want Docker, hardware passthrough etc, why isnt TrueNAS SCALE an option rather than CORE?

CORE doesnt even support Docker, it uses FreeBSD Jails. 

 

Jails is a more matured platform and actually supports both BSD & Linux, but Docker has a much larger community.

 

 

You can run docker in a Linux VM, and pass hardware through that VM quite easily on TrueNAS Core. Jails are nice too, I use them quite often.