- Joined
- Nov 26, 2005
- Location
- Concord, NC
http://lime-technology.com/home/87-for-system-builders
UnRAID is another one to look at. I've been using it since '08 and haven't regretted it yet. I guess the only thing I don't like about it is that it basically makes that machine a file server only. There is no easy way to run Windows-based applications without some complicated VM work.
UnRAID is very similar to FlexRAID, but it isn't free. Well it's free for up to 3 drives, but then you have to pay $119 to get the Pro license (or $69 for the Plus license). It is well supported, though, and the LimeTech forum is full of people that can help if you get it any trouble.
http://lime-technology.com/forum/
You can start with only 1 HDD if you want, but you won't have any parity protection. 2 HDDs will also work, so you don't have to commit to 3 HDDs all at once like some other solutions.
It allows adding or upgrading drives of any size or speed easily. I started with (4) 640GB drives I already had in my main rig and slowly added 1TB and then eventually 2TB drives. My case holds 12 drives and filled up a few years ago. Since then I've been upgrading drives as needed. This is a great benefit because you don't have to worry about trying to get matching drives and can avoid buying HDDs in batches which can lead to multiple simultaneous drive failure. You can buy drives as needed and look for good deals along the way.
UnRAID is hardware independent. If the mobo in my server went belly-up tomorrow, I could replace it with any mobo/CPU/Sata-cards of my choosing. My mobo has 8 sata ports, but I needed 12. To add ports I don't need any expensive RAID cards. The $15 Sata 2-port PCI-e cards at Monoprice.com work great.
It uses a web-based interface, so you can run your server without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. You access everything from the web GUI on any PC in your network. You can hook up a monitor to the server and see everything directly if you want, but it is all command line if you do it that way.
The complete unRAID OS is held on a flash drive, so you can dedicate all your HDD space to storage.
UnRAID is similar to RAID5 in that it uses 1 drive for parity. That means that if 1 drive fails you can easily replace it w/o losing any data. But in RAID5 if you lose a 2nd drive before you can completely rebuild your array then you lose everything. In unRAID losing a 2nd drive just means you lose the data on that particular drive. But even on the failed drives all is not lost at that point. Unlike RAID5, which stripes the data across multiple drives, unRAID stores data on individual drives. So, you could take a drive out, put it in another PC, and see all the contents. In most failure situations the drive doesn't completely give up all at once. You usually get errors and grinding/clicking noises as warnings. And you usually have the ability to salvage a good portion of the data. With striped data it doesn't matter if the error was only in the controller, once the array is broken your data is gone. With unRAID most of your data will remain very safe and you at least have a good chance of getting most of your data back even in the worst case of having 2+ HDD failures.
Striped data does have the speed advantage, though, and a good hardware RAID5 array will be a lot faster than unRAID, but over the network you are limited to Gb LAN anyway, so ~125MB/s max. A good RAID5 will max that out. I see anywhere from 35-95MB/s when copying files to-from the server from a single PC. Basically, you get read speeds of a single HDD, and writes have a speed penalty due to the parity calculation. Using a cache drive in unRAID improves write speeds to the speed of a single HDD. But in any case unRAID still does what it was designed to do and can stream a dozen Blu-Ray streams simultaneously to different PCs on your network w/o any problems.
UnRAID uses SAMBA shares which means you create something akin to folders. I have "HD Movies", "Music", "Backups", etc as mine. When viewing my server from any PC on the network I see these listings and I can drag and drop files into them. If I get a new movie I drag it into "HD Movies". The kicker, though, is that I don't have to worry about the size of each "folder" or which drive it resides on. UnRAID automatically puts the file onto a HDD where it'll fit and then just displays the share folder, "HD Movies", to me as a single continuous space even though the individual movies may reside on different disks w/n the server.
UnRAID is also energy efficient. Since the data is not striped unRAID only has to spin-up 1 HDD when you are accessing a particular file. I have my unRAID setup to spin-down a HDD when it hasn't been accessed for 3hrs. So, most of the time all my HDDs are spun-down and the entire system sips very little power.
Afaik, unRAID and FlexRAID are very similar. I'm assuming unRAID is a little more user-friendly due to the way it is supported, but I haven't played with FlexRAID at all, so I can't really compare them. I would look very closely at both these options.
Edit: Looks like FlexRAID is no longer free.
UnRAID is another one to look at. I've been using it since '08 and haven't regretted it yet. I guess the only thing I don't like about it is that it basically makes that machine a file server only. There is no easy way to run Windows-based applications without some complicated VM work.
UnRAID is very similar to FlexRAID, but it isn't free. Well it's free for up to 3 drives, but then you have to pay $119 to get the Pro license (or $69 for the Plus license). It is well supported, though, and the LimeTech forum is full of people that can help if you get it any trouble.
http://lime-technology.com/forum/
You can start with only 1 HDD if you want, but you won't have any parity protection. 2 HDDs will also work, so you don't have to commit to 3 HDDs all at once like some other solutions.
It allows adding or upgrading drives of any size or speed easily. I started with (4) 640GB drives I already had in my main rig and slowly added 1TB and then eventually 2TB drives. My case holds 12 drives and filled up a few years ago. Since then I've been upgrading drives as needed. This is a great benefit because you don't have to worry about trying to get matching drives and can avoid buying HDDs in batches which can lead to multiple simultaneous drive failure. You can buy drives as needed and look for good deals along the way.
UnRAID is hardware independent. If the mobo in my server went belly-up tomorrow, I could replace it with any mobo/CPU/Sata-cards of my choosing. My mobo has 8 sata ports, but I needed 12. To add ports I don't need any expensive RAID cards. The $15 Sata 2-port PCI-e cards at Monoprice.com work great.
It uses a web-based interface, so you can run your server without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. You access everything from the web GUI on any PC in your network. You can hook up a monitor to the server and see everything directly if you want, but it is all command line if you do it that way.
The complete unRAID OS is held on a flash drive, so you can dedicate all your HDD space to storage.
UnRAID is similar to RAID5 in that it uses 1 drive for parity. That means that if 1 drive fails you can easily replace it w/o losing any data. But in RAID5 if you lose a 2nd drive before you can completely rebuild your array then you lose everything. In unRAID losing a 2nd drive just means you lose the data on that particular drive. But even on the failed drives all is not lost at that point. Unlike RAID5, which stripes the data across multiple drives, unRAID stores data on individual drives. So, you could take a drive out, put it in another PC, and see all the contents. In most failure situations the drive doesn't completely give up all at once. You usually get errors and grinding/clicking noises as warnings. And you usually have the ability to salvage a good portion of the data. With striped data it doesn't matter if the error was only in the controller, once the array is broken your data is gone. With unRAID most of your data will remain very safe and you at least have a good chance of getting most of your data back even in the worst case of having 2+ HDD failures.
Striped data does have the speed advantage, though, and a good hardware RAID5 array will be a lot faster than unRAID, but over the network you are limited to Gb LAN anyway, so ~125MB/s max. A good RAID5 will max that out. I see anywhere from 35-95MB/s when copying files to-from the server from a single PC. Basically, you get read speeds of a single HDD, and writes have a speed penalty due to the parity calculation. Using a cache drive in unRAID improves write speeds to the speed of a single HDD. But in any case unRAID still does what it was designed to do and can stream a dozen Blu-Ray streams simultaneously to different PCs on your network w/o any problems.
UnRAID uses SAMBA shares which means you create something akin to folders. I have "HD Movies", "Music", "Backups", etc as mine. When viewing my server from any PC on the network I see these listings and I can drag and drop files into them. If I get a new movie I drag it into "HD Movies". The kicker, though, is that I don't have to worry about the size of each "folder" or which drive it resides on. UnRAID automatically puts the file onto a HDD where it'll fit and then just displays the share folder, "HD Movies", to me as a single continuous space even though the individual movies may reside on different disks w/n the server.
UnRAID is also energy efficient. Since the data is not striped unRAID only has to spin-up 1 HDD when you are accessing a particular file. I have my unRAID setup to spin-down a HDD when it hasn't been accessed for 3hrs. So, most of the time all my HDDs are spun-down and the entire system sips very little power.
Afaik, unRAID and FlexRAID are very similar. I'm assuming unRAID is a little more user-friendly due to the way it is supported, but I haven't played with FlexRAID at all, so I can't really compare them. I would look very closely at both these options.
Edit: Looks like FlexRAID is no longer free.
