unraid NAS Setup - unRAID, FreeNAS & alternatives

[Overlandr]

I have been looking at making a NAS to run 4 x 2TB HDDs. I was initially looking at FreeNAS because it looks good and uses ZFS, but I want to run a Windows VM on it. For cost reasons, it doesn't seem reasonable to use Intel because I want to use ECC memory, but I would need a Xeon for that and they are more expensive for the performance. This is why I now want to use Ryzen because they have better performance/value and can use ECC, but Ryzen can't run stable VMs on FreeNAS, so I looked at using unRAID because it would be possible to run the VM and use Ryzen. The problem with unRAID is that it does not use RAID and has a slower Parity system and cannot utilize the full speed of the HDDs in the array, so to my main question. Does anyone have any alternatives to unRAID that use RAID or ZFS and can run VMs using Ryzen? Thanks.

[88pockets]

What are you doing with the system where you think unRAID would be that much slower due to the parity system.

 

The VM can be run off an SSD either as an unassigned device or as a caching drive.

 

I use unRAID with 6 total drives, mainly as a NAS, VM box (Windows, Linux, FreePBX) and a Plex Server and I have no SSD cache (ran out of SATA ports, lol).

 

I have also used FreeNAS and OpenMedia Vault.  All of them take advantage of Docker for Apps.  FreeNAS is advantageous for the ZFS file system, but there are caveats.

 

Reasons ZFS is less user-friendly to a consumer/prosumer.

1.  Cost, As you said Xeon + ECC Memory is expensive, though you can find decent deals on eBay for older X5670 Series or slightly newer Xeon E-3xxx Series Chips, DDR3 ECC is pretty cheap also on eBay.

 

2.  Your 8 Terabytes will be 6TB usable with a Z1 Raid and only 4 TB usable with a Z2 Raid.

 

3.  You have to add drives to your server in a series, you cannot add to your ZFS pool without getting multiple (I'm pretty sure 3 or 4 drives) at once. (note: could be more).

 

I really think you'd be happy with unRAID or FreeNAS, but I think it's important to weigh the pros and cons.  

 

Another important note on virtualization.  Check your motherboard and it's IOMMU groups and hardware passthrough capabilities.  I have an old Asus P6T (Socket 1366, x58 mobo) with a Xeon X5679 (6c/12c) and I have had issues with IOMMU groups and the BIOS not fully utilizing the CPUs VT-d feature.

[Overlandr]

5 minutes ago, 88pockets said:

What are you doing with the system where you think unRAID would be that much slower due to the parity system

Part of what I want to do is use the NAS as a steam storage box and write speeds aren't such an issue there, but read speeds are. Using unRAID would be slowing doing this as running the drives in RAID 6 would be faster. Unfortunately, this problem couldn't be sorted with cash...I think. For my other uses, unRAID would be fine, but I'm not entirely sure about the redundancy if one of the parity drives go, rather than the main drive, but this might just be my lack of knowledge here as I think that the XOR system might deal with this.

[88pockets]

if the parity breaks at the same time as one of the main storage drives, you would lose data.  If just the parity breaks, pop in a new drive the software will rebuild the parity drive.

 

you can always try out your config, FreeNAS is free and unRAID has a free trial

[Overlandr]

Do you know of any alternatives?

[88pockets]

20 hours ago, Overlandr said:

Part of what I want to do is use the NAS as a steam storage box and write speeds aren't such an issue there, but read speeds are. Using unRAID would be slowing doing this as running the drives in RAID 6 would be faster. Unfortunately, this problem couldn't be sorted with cash...I think. For my other uses, unRAID would be fine, but I'm not entirely sure about the redundancy if one of the parity drives go, rather than the main drive, but this might just be my lack of knowledge here as I think that the XOR system might deal with this.

Sure the read speeds would be slower, but unRAID lets you spin up just one drive at a time, whereas FreeNAS spins them all up and has to locate the data, those the data can be fed from the redundant array.  The real bottleneck for a steam storage drive on the NAS will be network speeds, it will read at 125MBps tops on a gigabit network.  

 

If you saw Linus' recent video on making a steam cache, which is used for installing games from a network source, which is faster than most peoples internet and saves bandwidth / large amounts of data, especially if the same title is being installed to multiple computers on the same local network.  

 

My suggestion is to determine what is best for your NAS needs and pick the OS that works best for you, but install any games locally to your machine and you will have a much better experience overall.  

 

Alternative NAS software, I have only used three and they all have there pluses and misuses.

1. unRAID (costs money though, but the trial can be extended a few times)

2. FreeNAS (See the cons listed in my other post) (Pros: ZFS is super rad if you care about redundancy above all; including money)

3 Open Media Vault (this one is a little less common, but it runs Plex, has Samba shares, etc)  (RAID is done via mergerFS and SnapRAID... learn more here

 

Lemme know if you have any other questions, I'm not a Pro on any of them, but I can point you in the right direction and have installed all three, settling on unRAiD.  I now want to abandon my x58 6c/12t setup and get a Threadripper 1950x or better and a ton of RAM to really run some VMs, get Xen Server going or ESXi and then run VMs of a NAS solution, FreePBX, Windows, Linux (with VFIO support for Looking Glass).  But I'll have to wait for the moneys.