Some unRAID Questions

[TempestCatto]

Hello! I have few questions on unRAID. Long story short, I'm working on a large collaborative project with over 100+ people, all remotely (not for a company, this is a passion project). I was wanting to setup an unRAID server for us to use a place to dump our files, rather than have to jump between Google Drives and Mega.io, etc. I have a mishmash of HDDs, biggest in size being 2TB, smallest being 500GB. Some are 5400rpm, some are 7200rpm (in total I have 10 HDDs). This should be fine, right? Also the system I plan on using is an i7 4790 (non K) 16GB of 1866 MT/s RAM, AsRock z97 motherboard, WD Black sn850x 1TB, an EVGA 750ti, and a Sea Sonic x650 Watt Gold PSU. I assume this spec of machine would suffice? If so is it possible to use the SSD as a scratch drive/the drive where data is initially uploaded to, then have it automagically moved onto the array?

 

My next question, how can I share this unRAID server with everyone without having to add other software/too much complexity into the mix? Ideally I'd like to be able to share them a link, they login with a password, and then it just acts like one giant storage device connected to their computer. I would assume through a web browser would be easiest here. It would also be ideal if I could set it up so everyone can upload/download, but only certain users can delete files. If that's too complex, is there a way to just share it openly but only with certain people? (I know that's not nearly as secure, but I'm trying to minimize complexity on my end).

 

Also is this whole thing compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android? Our users have a verity of devices both desktop and mobile.

 

If all this is possible, would I be able to use the free trial of unRAID to set it all up, make sure it works, and then seamlessly upgrade/pay for the license?

 

I may have more questions but that's all I can think of for now. Cheers!

[porina]

On the hardware side:

Mixing disks is fine. Note the license disk count limit applies to all of cache, data, parity drives. The OS flash drive is not counted. The parity drive(s) have to be same or bigger than the data disks. Read performance is same as the native disk. Write performance depends on configuration, but yes you can use the SSD as cache which means that wont matter. The cache will not have redundancy unless you use two cache disks as a mirror. Cache is normally emptied to array once a day, usually overnight. If you fill the cache before it empties it'll start writing directly to array. Given the tiny size of those drives, I'm guessing they're also ancient, it may be worth scrapping them and getting new modern ones.

 

Ram speed doesn't matter. GPU doesn't matter unless you use it for something else like encoding.

 

Software side I'll have to pass. You will probably need 3rd party software to enable that functionality which I've not looked at.

 

Native/local shares on Unraid are compatible with Windows. 

[bjorntp]

The size and speed of the disks won't matter except for with performance and if you want to use a parity drive it would have to the same size or bigger as the largest drive in the array. You can use an SSD as cache storage which will work roughly the way you are writing.

 

I believe a Nextcloud setup with a reverse proxy would work the way you want. Spaceinvader on Youtube have some great videos on how to set it up. You could use Unraid's docker container and have one for Nextcloud, one for the DB and one for swag. It is easy to manage and use, when you share files and directories there are quite a few options with permissions. It works great with all the platforms you mentioned as well.

 

All though I am not sure how it would work on your setup with that many users, Nextcloud in itself is not very heavy to run.

[OddOod]

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

large collaborative project

Out of curiosity, what project?
 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

This should be fine, right?

Defo, though you might actually save some cash buying a couple larger disks and getting a lower tier license.

 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

EVGA 750ti,

Probably don't need this given the iGPU exists 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

is it possible to use the SSD as a scratch drive/the drive where data is initially uploaded to

This is the default behavior on unraid. It will suck back all the download to the cache SSD and move it to the array as needed. It is a pretty slick bit of automagic

 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

My next question, how can I share this unRAID server with everyone without having to add other software/too much complexity into the mix?

Gonna need other software. Own/Next cloud is probably the way to go, though I've never successfully made it work. You might be able to get away with just setting up wireguard, then creating users for each person, then creating a tunnel for each user that gives server access. Regardless, you'll want either a static IP or a cloudflare reverse proxy thing (I haven't looked too deeply into it...). Also, user management is gonna *suck*
 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

Also is this whole thing compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android? Our users have a verity of devices both desktop and mobile.

By and large file serves is file servers. It'll depend a bit on how well supported files are on the various endpoints. 

 

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

If all this is possible, would I be able to use the free trial of unRAID to set it all up, make sure it works, and then seamlessly upgrade/pay for the license?

 

Yup. Though, depending on the number of drives, you could try out TrueNas. It's not as nice about the different drive sizes, but at least it's free. 

[TempestCatto]

1 hour ago, bjorntp said:

The size and speed of the disks won't matter except for with performance and if you want to use a parity drive it would have to the same size or bigger as the largest drive in the array. You can use an SSD as cache storage which will work roughly the way you are writing.

Yeah I have two 2TB drives I had wanted to use as a parity each.

 

1 hour ago, bjorntp said:

I believe a Nextcloud setup with a reverse proxy would work the way you want. Spaceinvader on Youtube have some great videos on how to set it up. You could use Unraid's docker container and have one for Nextcloud, one for the DB and one for swag. It is easy to manage and use, when you share files and directories there are quite a few options with permissions. It works great with all the platforms you mentioned as well.

I'll look into Nextcloud. But what do you mean by a reverse proxy?

 

57 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Out of curiosity, what project?

I don't think I wanna say outright just yet as we have a long way to go. But it's MLP Generation 5 related.

 

57 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Defo, though you might actually save some cash buying a couple larger disks and getting a lower tier license.

Problem is I already have all the hardware. I was trying to set this up as cheaply as I could with what I already had lying around.

 

58 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Gonna need other software. Own/Next cloud is probably the way to go, though I've never successfully made it work. You might be able to get away with just setting up wireguard, then creating users for each person, then creating a tunnel for each user that gives server access. Regardless, you'll want either a static IP or a cloudflare reverse proxy thing (I haven't looked too deeply into it...). Also, user management is gonna *suck*

Someone else had suggested Nextcloud as well. I'll definitely look into it. When I was researching this yesterday, before posting here, I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was really reading. It seems a bit more complex than I initially thought.

 

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

Yup. Though, depending on the number of drives, you could try out TrueNas. It's not as nice about the different drive sizes, but at least it's free. 

Can I have a mish mash of drives using TrueNAS? I'm just reusing what I already have.

[porina]

One thing to check which I don't think has been mentioned. How fast is the internet connection? That will obviously impact the experience of users if you go this route. If the files typically wont be too big maybe it wont matter, but something to consider.

[OddOod]

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

But it's MLP Generation 5 related

Rock on 

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

But what do you mean by a reverse proxy?

TBH *shrug* 
I think there is something that allows you to get a direct public port through Cloudflare for ~free even if your ISP doesn't support static IP/uses NAT routing
 

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

Can I have a mish mash of drives using TrueNAS? I'm just reusing what I already have.

You can, but you're limited to the smallest drive size per disk in the pool
That being said, I just stumbled on BTRFS on ubuntu which looks like you should be able to use different drive sizes and do tiered storage with a cache drive. Unfortunately it looks like it's a bit complicated to learn

[bjorntp]

13 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

I'll look into Nextcloud. But what do you mean by a reverse proxy?

 

In short, it redirects the traffic that is coming to your network to  a web server instead of just opening the port directly to the server, i.e. Nextcloud. The biggest advantages in my opinion is that it is easier to set up certifications so you have proper encryption and if you want to have more than one service on your server your can just use subdomains.

 

If you are also using DDNS it does not really matter whether you have a static IP or not.

 

You might want to look at Owncloud as well, when Nextcloud was new everyone agreed that it was the best but Owncloud has built up some popularity lately.