UnRAID 6

Discussions about anything Computer Hardware Related. Overclocking, underclocking and talk about the latest or even the oldest technology. PCA Reviews feedback
Post Reply
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32773
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

UnRAID 6

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I retired my HP Proliant N40L MicroServer running UnRAID 4.7 last year when I bought a Synology NAS, but it still worked fine and had 4 perfectly good 2TB drives in it with relatively low hours.

Well I decided to dust off the old UnRAID NAS today, figuring it was probably worth upgrading to the latest version of unRAID and putting it back in use as a local backup storage device for my server.

I did a little research and found out that my old unRAID version 4 Plus license was still good for the latest version 6 release. I looked through their FAQ and they have a whole section on how to upgrade an older version like mine without losing your configuration, and how to migrate your license. After confirming that version 6 would run just fine on my ancient HP Proliant N40L with 2GB of RAM, I went ahead and upgraded.

After a couple of hours of research it took about an hour to install and it's all good. The version 6 GUI is a LOT more full featured than the old version 4. It looks a lot like Synology's GUI now. Version 6 also supports Docker container apps, and VMs. This little server isn't powerful enough to run VMs (it's an AMD Turion dual core 1.5GHz), but the docker apps add a lot of features similar to Synology's Packages.

unRAID 6 adds the ability to install an SSD and use it as a cache drive to speed up writes (the slow write speeds was my only complaint about my unRAID box. Read speeds were always good). I'm going to toss a spare 240GB SSD I have laying around in there (I can connect it to the unused CD-Rom SATA port so as not to lose one of the four main SATA bays).

Overall, a fun experiment to play around with on a slow day, and it all went pretty well.

I put the little guy in my network closet on the opposite side of the house from the server for isolation in case of theft, fire, etc. I must say I've gotten a good little run out of that MicroServer. I bought it used from b-man1 WAY back in 2012. Can't complain.

Image
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

Image
User avatar
Pugsley
Posts: 7454
Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2002 11:54 pm
Location: NW Indiana
Contact:

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by Pugsley »

Need to draw a face on that wall plate with all the cables coming out of it to make it look like its puking or eating.
User avatar
Genom
Steely Eyed Missile Man
Posts: 866
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2014 4:14 pm
Location: Hotlanta

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by Genom »

Yep, been running my home storage/server off unraid 6 and only time reboot is if I am installing a update for a new feature since I also run my Plex server off it and use the DVB version. Current uptime is around 4 months since I moved it to a new battery backup, but otherwise it's been flawless. Have mirrored SSD cache drives. DOnt need more than 240GB since my wife only reads off it and I have local SSD's on my main rig for capturing/editing, but run all my daily backups to one of the shares.

Also run a duplicati docker that makes my important docs and pictures backup to Amazon S3 storage (differential backups every night as needed), and a few others. Very painless, mostly ignore it once it was up and running unless I needed to do something new or add/remove stuff (like I am now setting up a VM to run a NZB indexer locally since I have bandwidth to burn now)

Yes there are free solututions like freenas and nas4free, but I ran those in the past and there was always something breaking with them, and unraid has been solid since I first installed it.

Also Bob, check the dockers. You have stuff like Unifi controller and a million others that provide a lot of extra utility if needed.
User avatar
psypher
Golden Member
Posts: 884
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2014 1:05 pm
Location: Marietta

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by psypher »

Welcome back! I'm a big Unraid fan, been using it for probably 10+ years? So I've seen it grow a lot over the years. Current version is great. I run mine on a Norco chassis with 19 disk drives (dual parity + 17 data + 1 free slot) and 1 SSD for cache. I also have several dockers running on it as well.
User avatar
b-man1
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 10:23 am

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by b-man1 »

Nice...glad that little server is still getting put to good use!
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32773
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Welp that SSD cache sure helped. Writes went from 10 MB/s to 90 MB/s.
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

Image
User avatar
Losbot
Almighty Member
Posts: 4991
Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2014 8:59 am
Location: South Florida

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by Losbot »

Nice performance improvement.
User avatar
psypher
Golden Member
Posts: 884
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2014 1:05 pm
Location: Marietta

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by psypher »

FlyingPenguin wrote:Welp that SSD cache sure helped. Writes went from 10 MB/s to 90 MB/s.
FYI, those slow speeds (10 MB/s) isn't 100% unraid. That's partly your hardware. My direct writes (without cache) average about 53 MB/s.

Image
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32773
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Re: UnRAID 6

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Oh I agree.
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

Image
Post Reply