Naslite+ v2 or unRaid v3

[BBCritical]

I am trying to determine a good storage solution. Could someone pls layout the pros and cons of each of these software packages and which one is the best way to go?

[lovingHDTV]

What do you want to do with this?

If it is to "archive" or long term store music, video, dvds, picture, etc then I would go with the UnRaid. But if you want to use it as the "default" storage space for SageTV, I would shy away from UnRaid. It just does not have the write bandwidth.

[BBCritical]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

What do you want to do with this?

If it is to "archive" or long term store music, video, dvds, picture, etc then I would go with the UnRaid. But if you want to use it as the "default" storage space for SageTV, I would shy away from UnRaid. It just does not have the write bandwidth.

I would actually like to do both with it. Store MP3's, Videos and Photos and also have my 750 gb of tv programming storage run from that location

[PGPfan]

As long as you are only recording TV shows in SD, then unRaid should be fine. I personally only store favorites and shows I intend to keep/burn to DVD on my unRaid server, otherwise I just use the hard drive in my Sage box. Important stuff like DVD rips, MP3's, photos, etc. go to unRaid for sure.

I've never used Naslite, but before choosing unRaid I considered it. It just didn't offer anything that compelling for me to use it whereas unRaid is very different from typical NAS solutions (and for the better, imho ).

-PGPfan

[tmiranda]

I'm not familiar with UnRaid at all but I do use NASLite.

If you do not have a hardware RAID card and are interested in backing up "semi-important" data, NASLite v2 has a daily disk mirror function which works well. What it does is automatically mirror one drive to another every 24 hours. It's not ideal for backing up critical data but for things like TV shows and ripped DVD's it works well. It's not resource intensive either.

PGPFan - Please educate me on the virtues of UnRaid. The strong points of NASLite (IMHO):
- Runs very fast, even on very low end hardware.
- Supports hardware RAID cards.
- Very robust and reliable.
- Supports all types of drives (IDE, SATA, USB, Firewire)
- Very easy to setup and administer. Do not need KB and mouse at all.
- Supports rsync so automated backups are easy.
- Cheap. ($29 or $39)
- Well supported.
- Does NOT support software RAID, by design. ServerElements claim software RAID is simply not reliable enough for mission critical data. From the little reading I've done on UnRaid this point seems to be the biggest difference between the two products.

[PGPfan]

For a good overview of some of the unique aspects of unRaid, go HERE.

Also, one additional feature that the website overview doesn't mention is "User Shares". What this does is essentially view your volumes as one 'master' volume. For example I have 12 drives in my server. Each drive has a directory called "Movies" and in that I store DVD rips. Instead of Sage (or any other software for that matter) having to map each drive with it's own drive letter (with 12 drives that would suck ) you would just point Sage to: "//unRaid/Movies" - where you can then see (and playback) all movies as if they are in one drive/folder. Make sense?

-PGPfan

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by PGPfan

Also, one additional feature that the website overview doesn't mention is "User Shares". What this does is essentially view your volumes as one 'master' volume.

Yeah, this is indeed a nice feature, and NASLite has it too


Dirk

[lovingHDTV]

The biggest differences:

1. UnRaid does not stripe the data. So if you loose more than one drive, you only loose the data on the dead drives. NasLite you loose all data. Like other RAID solutions you can loose a single drive and not loose any data.

2. UnRaid you can use hard drives that are of different sizes and utilize all the space. Other RAID offerings limit you to the smallest drive size.

If neither of these is compelling then there is really no benefit of using UnRaid. If you have a lot of different sized drives then it will be.

If I were to go with a stripped RAID solution I would go with OpenSolaris and ZFS. Nothing else can compare. There is lots of data out there talking about the merits of ZFS.

I've also come to the conclussion that putting my temporary SageTV recordings on a redundant system is unnecessary and causes more headaches that needed. If I choose to archive a show I just move it to the UnRaid box.

My $0.02

[PGPfan]

Don't forget the noise/power consumption of traditional raid systems. If it is striped, then ALL disks have to be spinning for read/write operations whereas with unRaid only the drive being accessed at any given time is powered up - the others can (optionally of course) stay powered down. Quiet and cool.

-PGPfan

[Lucas]

I think the best differentiating feature of UnRaid is its "add a drive as you go" capability and the fact that a RAID controller is not needed.
The downsides are probably read and write speeds for multiple video streams and comparatively higher price.

With NASlite you get blazing speeds in gigabit networks but for RAID protection you need a RAID controller and the disks up front.

If you are just starting your media library then UNRaid maybe the most appropriate.

If you are like me who had a 2TB RAID storage need from the start, then NASlite is probably more appropriate.

I already have a full 2TB Raid array and I am starting to add non RAID drives on my NASlite server for less important files.

I am also considering to also create an UNraid server for the expanding needs.

How's that for sitting on the fence.

[tmiranda]

Interesting comparisons. As usual both products have advantages and disadvantages. For me I see no compelling reason to stop using NASLite+. Long live capitalism.

[BBCritical]

From what Ive seen in the unraid forums it appears that it is pretty picky about the hardware it supports. There seem to be less issues with it using Intel motherboards. Any feedback on this unRaid users?

[lovingHDTV]

I used one of the recommened boards and have no issues. I do know that UnRaid is currently using an older version of the linux kernal so the new ICH8 and some of the Nvidia boards are not supported.

The biggest issue I've seen is bad IDE cables, particularly the round IDE cables. I had issues at first and it was the round IDE cables also.

[BBCritical]

Thanks for all the great feedback you guys. I guess it boils down to what the first answer was in "what do you need to use it for". I have decided that I probably am going to build both because I want to be able to backup without losing too much disk space (mirroring) my Music, Photos, Videos, etc. (Unraid) but I also want the Read/Write speed for tv shows when I move over to HD and to be able to support my 3 MVPs and 7 tuners and 2 HDTVs(Naslite). Now I have to justify it to my wife

[kpsmith]

Might be worth taking a look at Freenas as well (freenas.org)

I just set one up with some spare parts and drives I had laying around. Was a little bit of a pain to get setup as you have to format, raid, mount in a specific sequence but has been running well for me the for the last couple of weeks.

Here's more info on my Freenas Test system:

1.3 Ghz Socket A Tbird
ASUS A7V Motherboard
200MB of memory
100MB/s wired network
crappy graphics card (maybe TNT2)

SCSI zip- I'm using this as the system/boot drive as my setup doesn't support booting from USB and I wanted all my IDE channels free. Otherwise I'd use a USB thumbdrive.

DRIVES

2 - 40GB drives that are software mirrored. Here I'm storing all my photos, music, and misc documents that I want to make sure I never lose.

1 - 20GB drive I had this laying around and set it up as a scratch area for all users

1 - 200GB drive I'm using for sage recordings (Note: I'm not currently recording HD)

For me this was just a test box to see if I really like having a NAS as I was storing everything on the HTPC before. This was all just spare hardware I had laying around the house. My biggest goal was to mirror the important stuff and free up some space on my other computers.

I have another system that has hardware raid and 2-80GB drives already mirrored that I might repurpose as my NAS if all continues to go well. It will also support 8IDE drives so I'll be in the market for some more storage.

So far things have been very seamless with SAGE on my HTPC. Just changed or added the new locations. Access time seems a little slower starting the videos but this may be just because I have the drives in the NAS powering down after 5 minutes of non-use.

Overall its a free software you can test out if you want. The only real complaint I've found with it is many say it isn't as fast as NASLite and harder to setup. I've found it to be pretty straight forward and plenty fast though. Definately faster than copying between Windows machines.

Also support is sparse. I ran into 2 bugs setting things up. The work arounds are out there but you have to know where to look.

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

The biggest differences:

1. UnRaid does not stripe the data. So if you loose more than one drive, you only loose the data on the dead drives. NasLite you loose all data. Like other RAID solutions you can loose a single drive and not loose any data.

You can use Raid 5 and then if you loose one drive you do not use all you data. You just replace that drive and rebuild it. Works great on NasLite+ v2

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

You can use Raid 5 and then if you loose one drive you do not use all you data. You just replace that drive and rebuild it. Works great on NasLite+ v2

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on the same thing, since it sounded like NASLite is not as safe in general. It's *your* choice to choose the RAID level, NASLite+ supports them all.


Dirk

[BBCritical]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

You can use Raid 5 and then if you loose one drive you do not use all you data. You just replace that drive and rebuild it. Works great on NasLite+ v2

If I use hardware raid then all the drives have to be the same size and cant mix IDE and SATA correct?

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on the same thing, since it sounded like NASLite is not as safe in general. It's *your* choice to choose the RAID level, NASLite+ supports them all.


Dirk

Obviously I did not explain myself well enough in this regards.

UnRaid does not stripe the data. This means that a single file is wholely stored on a single drive. You can therefore dismantle an UnRaid array and just Linux mount the drives and you are good to go. Because of this, if your data is already on a drive in ReiserFS format, to add it to the array all you have to do is plug in the drive, and regenerate parity. To remove a drive, just unplug and regenerate parity. As there is a parity drive it has the same protections as RAID5. But if you loose two drives, you don't loose the entire array as you would in other RAID5 implementations. With UnRaid you only loose the drives that die, when you have more that one drive die simultaneously.

With NASLite+ if you loose two drives (in a RAID5) config, you loose everything. In a RAID6 config if you loose three drives you loose everything. To add a drive to the array you have to rebuild the entire array. You cannot dismatle the array and then mount the data drives as normal drives.

Hope this explains it a little better.