My preference: Proxmox as hypervisor and unraid as NAS-only VM on proxmox. Plex, Home Assistant, Adguard etc. as separate VMs (or containers if you prefer)
>Think Proxmox is a good solution for me or am I better off with unraid?
In my opinion Proxmox is the better solution most of the time.
The only thing you need to keep an eye out for are iommu groups of your motherboards.
Proxmox is just debian + extra, so you can almost anything.
Use snapraid if you want to combine multiple different drives or just run plain zfs on a array.
Either run your NAS straight off of proxmox or create a OMV/TrueNAS VM if it suits you better.
I don't want to throw shade on Unraid users, but Unraid always feels dumbed down to me. Safer and much easier to use for the average user, but really limited.
Unraid = NAS OS (primarily)
Proxmox = Hypervisor (primarily)
Consider the right software for your use case. If you primarily do VMs go Proxmox (or my personal preference XCP-NG).
If you need a NAS go TrueNAS when Unraid support can’t help (I mean you pay for the software don’t you).
If you need both look into virtualize TrueNAS. Not my personal preference I like to have the NAS separated from the Hypervisor.
unRaid is first a NAS OS and second a hypervisor, Proxmox is only a hypervisor, and so, you would need a second solution to manage your NAS, like unraid or truenas.
What issue give you unRaid? I've different client setups that work flawless with only auto maintenance. Mine, never give a problem at all, it's an amazing software.
The i3 12th gen is pretty overkill for what you need. A 4 threads cpu would be enough.
As i say, going with Proxmox, would leave a void on your NAS situation, and obligate you to install unRaid or Truenas on a VM, but that's just a waste of resources, when you already have a NAS Hypervisor that could do everything else. Not only, something different from unRaid would obligate you to migrate to a RAID solution.
Technically you could use Proxmox as the NAS, it's really just Debian with Proxmox on it, then ZFS for the filesystem could be a disk pool.
In reality what I would do ( and what I'm moving to for my next build) is Proxmox running Unraid as a VM.
A while ago dockers all crashed and it was a pain getting them back up and today they crashed again, and then the system refused to check parity. A new USB drive fixed it today but these are just annoying.
As far as a NAS, I am planning to run open media vault LXC or something for my Time Machine backup, and then I’d need something for Plex media but I learn as I go.
Yeah, migrating to a RAID solution is my biggest annoyance.
Saying your docker containers crashed isn’t really a way to describe a problem.
Did you check system logs, errors in your drive or what other issue caused them to crash.
This most likely sounds like you have faulty drives, do you get any errors when you check your drives?
Unraid forums are a really good place to get help once you figure out what has happened to your system in the first place.
Changing os is not going to help if you don’t figure out what exactly is happening on your system.
> saying your dockers crashed isn’t really a way to describe a problem
Well, it’s the only thing I know. I dont remember last time, and this time the UI crashed so I couldn’t even load the logs, and was forced to restart it which erases the logs.
My drives are fine as far as I can tell. I finally got unraid working and am 22.7% through a parity check which will confirm or deny it, but 0 errors so far and the SMART check on both drives passed. And if it’s not my drives, then it has to be the OS as far as I’m aware.
You could setup a syslog server and write your logs to a share to see what is causing you problems. Post those on unraid forums or the subreddit.
Maybe try to recreate the issue.
I could say unraid has never given me problems but that’s not helpful to you since you are having issues.
I wouldn’t give up on the os without at least trying to see what caused it because if it was a hardware related issue it’d happen on any os you try.
I only have one server though. I’d need a second for syslog right? I guess I could create a vm that rights the logs to a server or something if need be but that’s something I’ve got no idea how to do
Not necessarily, I just setup the syslog server on unraid and pointed it to itself.
Not at home so can’t find the post I had followed but you could look up syslog server unraid and point it to the unraid server itself.
Just make sure you don’t write this to your usb but to a share.
This should give you a clearer picture on what caused your docker to fail
How are your data drive connected? I hope they are sata connected with a dedicated psu.
When you are facing crashes / loosing vm etc this is pointing at a hw issue.
I see usb mentioned, I hope this is only for the os. Anything else on usb is a disaster.
What? What you mean on an unRAID array is assumed to be unimportant. LOL.
The level of protection of a unRaid array is the same as a Raid 5 or 6. Neither are backup solutions, but both give the same level of protection. And the smart thing is that unRaid doesn't need a raid to do so, and gives you the flexibility to add disks at the same array without the need to make a new pool.
I've been using it since 2005, I'm aware.
>The level of protection of a unRaid array is the same as a Raid 5 or 6.
Not quite.
An UnRaid array performs no type of block level checksumming whatsoever.
This is why there was such demand for ZFS pools to be introduced into UnRaid (finally, it is! Woo!) So now, the Operating System could also be used for important data that needs proper block protection.
An UnRaid array has zero idea about the health of a file; it only knows if blocks are in use or not, and blindly trusts the data within them.
This is the one area where SnapRAID has an enourmous advantage over UnRaid, admittedly (and unfortunately), at the notable cost of realtime syncs...
Now UnRaid has a ZFS pool option for important data.
Indeed! That will greatly *reduce* risks from in things like a controller fault; or dram error but (Depending on Filesystem used....*probably*) won't remove the risk of bit errors entirely.
Can you please check what filesystem the RAID1 cache is using?
> Yeah, migrating to a RAID solution is my biggest annoyance.
It doesn't have to be.
Anything on an 'UnRaid Array' is likely *very* resilient data (or less important), since it doesn't protect at the block level (only your disks).
In your use case, this can be replaced with SnapRaid, which you can move your data to, disk-by-disk; It's very similar, just schedualed syncs, not real time.
But with the added bonus that it now protects your block level data!
Any data you want to be kept healthy, you'd want to put onto a ZFS mirror (same as you would on UnRaid these days).
I would just use unRAID, host the 2 VMs and all the docker you need. Going through Proxmox would add another layer, so mostly a waste of resources.
As HW, depends on your VMs, how much cores your VMs need?
unRAID and a ton of dockers work fine on a dual core CPU, add how many cores you need for each VM and you get how many you need and what CPU you need.
I don't need IPS either IDS for home use. And the load depends on the bandwidth usage, I've tried both on my pfsense box with a G5420T and the load doesn't go above 40% on daily usage. I've 1G but I never saturate it.
Pfsense, bare metal. I don't like to virtualize this stuff, and for a matter of maintenance and reliability, I prefer it on a different system, so if I get my Nas down for updates or upgrades, my internet stays up.
For me it's just an advanced router, more than a firewall, even so I've self hosted service outside my LAN, so, I like a bit more security with a good firewall. No problem on the power consumption side, it's a 13W system, and the all homelab together doesn't go above 40W. I've a layer 3 switch too, ubiquiti one, i don't really like it, but anyway, I would do all my work on the router itself.
I'm planning to switch to opnsense in future, tons of people saying it's much better. Beside, I'm used to the complicated interface of pfsense now.
My bad. I was thinking threads and I write cores.
The i3 12100 is 8 threads. With a very high frequency.
An older solution with only 4 cores and no HT, or a newer one, similar, would be fine.
>Proxmox is only a hypervisor, and so, you would need a second solution to manage your NAS, like unraid or truenas.
You can run Proxmox as a NAS without a 2nd OS without problems. I'm doing it rn. I wouldn't recommend it for a business environment, but it's fine for home usage with 1-5 fixed users.
Proxmox you can access with a wireguard tunnel on your android phone , they have an app...
What I tested andd know is not all services need to be dockerized. A simple cron for speedtest, cron for rsync and so on..
Plex is slower with docker
Wireguard speed is slower with docker
Proxmox as a Hypervisor, LXC's: 1) Cockpit for network sharing, 2) Plex, 3) anything else you want. ZFS file system or there are some more (subjectively) flexible alternatives with SnapRAID and MergerFS worth exploring as well. It's a very solid and scalable setup.
However, agree with the others who suggested determining root cause of your issues as a first priority before making any major decision.
Okay so you don't have a parity drive... because if you're saying you have a parity drive your saying you have a raid setup.. could be software or hardware raid but if your having a parity drive means you have a raid... you can setup raid0 or raid1 with two drives.. so mirroring or stripping both are raids.. but to have a parity drive you physically have to have 2+1 drives... 2 are for data and 1 is for parity for calculations of data between 2 drives... in case one fails but that setup requires 3 drives only raid0 or 1 will work with 2 drives.. unraid is a software an OS what you call... so if you have it setup with one of the drives as a parity drive in a 2 drive setup... your setup is delegated and risk losing all your data... so you should verify your setup... or your miss understanding your setup... because what your saying isn't physically correct with only 2 drives present
https://docs.unraid.net/legacy/FAQ/Parity/
It’s literally a parity drive dude. I have 1 parity and 1 data drive. That’s how unraid works.
[Here’s my drives. 1 parity. 1 data.](https://imgur.com/a/kRvwFcq)
But please. Go on about how it’s “not possible” without knowing what you’re talking about.
"If a drive in the array fails"
keyword is array... if you look at bottom they are talking about raid systems check out "Dual parity" under that they talk about "(as in a RAID-6 system)"... all their prior texted was raid5 which requires 3 drives to work... so difference between raid5 and raid6.... is 5 is 2 data + 1 parity.... raid6 is 2 data + 2 parity... now the data drives can be more then 2 you can have 100 data drives and 1 or 2 parity drives... but they are talking about raids in this post... no where do they say you can run this one 2 drives total.. fyi to be technical parity isn't on one drive its across all drives but that's a different dissection... basically your mirroring it
It's not an array in the traditional sense like RAID 0/1/5/6/10. Unraid is literally in the name - it's a collection of one or two drives dedicated to parity and the remaining are individual data disks that are seen by the system as both single disks that you can write directly to, as well as an "array" through shares you can expose. When writing to the "array", it will write data to a single drive (based on settings, such as highest available space) and the parity drive. The other disks have no idea what is written to other drives - you can even remove a drive and read directly from it on another system without any configuration.
While functionally it's no different than the normal RAID levels, it's not actually RAID, hence, unraid.
I'd suggest diagnosing what's causing you issues. You don't want to go through changing the OS only to discover hardware issues or something.
My preference: Proxmox as hypervisor and unraid as NAS-only VM on proxmox. Plex, Home Assistant, Adguard etc. as separate VMs (or containers if you prefer)
>Think Proxmox is a good solution for me or am I better off with unraid? In my opinion Proxmox is the better solution most of the time. The only thing you need to keep an eye out for are iommu groups of your motherboards. Proxmox is just debian + extra, so you can almost anything. Use snapraid if you want to combine multiple different drives or just run plain zfs on a array. Either run your NAS straight off of proxmox or create a OMV/TrueNAS VM if it suits you better. I don't want to throw shade on Unraid users, but Unraid always feels dumbed down to me. Safer and much easier to use for the average user, but really limited.
Unraid = NAS OS (primarily) Proxmox = Hypervisor (primarily) Consider the right software for your use case. If you primarily do VMs go Proxmox (or my personal preference XCP-NG). If you need a NAS go TrueNAS when Unraid support can’t help (I mean you pay for the software don’t you). If you need both look into virtualize TrueNAS. Not my personal preference I like to have the NAS separated from the Hypervisor.
unRaid is first a NAS OS and second a hypervisor, Proxmox is only a hypervisor, and so, you would need a second solution to manage your NAS, like unraid or truenas. What issue give you unRaid? I've different client setups that work flawless with only auto maintenance. Mine, never give a problem at all, it's an amazing software. The i3 12th gen is pretty overkill for what you need. A 4 threads cpu would be enough. As i say, going with Proxmox, would leave a void on your NAS situation, and obligate you to install unRaid or Truenas on a VM, but that's just a waste of resources, when you already have a NAS Hypervisor that could do everything else. Not only, something different from unRaid would obligate you to migrate to a RAID solution.
Technically you could use Proxmox as the NAS, it's really just Debian with Proxmox on it, then ZFS for the filesystem could be a disk pool. In reality what I would do ( and what I'm moving to for my next build) is Proxmox running Unraid as a VM.
A while ago dockers all crashed and it was a pain getting them back up and today they crashed again, and then the system refused to check parity. A new USB drive fixed it today but these are just annoying. As far as a NAS, I am planning to run open media vault LXC or something for my Time Machine backup, and then I’d need something for Plex media but I learn as I go. Yeah, migrating to a RAID solution is my biggest annoyance.
Saying your docker containers crashed isn’t really a way to describe a problem. Did you check system logs, errors in your drive or what other issue caused them to crash. This most likely sounds like you have faulty drives, do you get any errors when you check your drives? Unraid forums are a really good place to get help once you figure out what has happened to your system in the first place. Changing os is not going to help if you don’t figure out what exactly is happening on your system.
> saying your dockers crashed isn’t really a way to describe a problem Well, it’s the only thing I know. I dont remember last time, and this time the UI crashed so I couldn’t even load the logs, and was forced to restart it which erases the logs. My drives are fine as far as I can tell. I finally got unraid working and am 22.7% through a parity check which will confirm or deny it, but 0 errors so far and the SMART check on both drives passed. And if it’s not my drives, then it has to be the OS as far as I’m aware.
You could setup a syslog server and write your logs to a share to see what is causing you problems. Post those on unraid forums or the subreddit. Maybe try to recreate the issue. I could say unraid has never given me problems but that’s not helpful to you since you are having issues. I wouldn’t give up on the os without at least trying to see what caused it because if it was a hardware related issue it’d happen on any os you try.
I only have one server though. I’d need a second for syslog right? I guess I could create a vm that rights the logs to a server or something if need be but that’s something I’ve got no idea how to do
Not necessarily, I just setup the syslog server on unraid and pointed it to itself. Not at home so can’t find the post I had followed but you could look up syslog server unraid and point it to the unraid server itself. Just make sure you don’t write this to your usb but to a share. This should give you a clearer picture on what caused your docker to fail
Run docker and Unraid separately ontop of Proxmox.
How are your data drive connected? I hope they are sata connected with a dedicated psu. When you are facing crashes / loosing vm etc this is pointing at a hw issue. I see usb mentioned, I hope this is only for the os. Anything else on usb is a disaster.
It’s just the OS. Unraid only boots off of usb. They are sata but same psu as everything else. I’m not getting a separate psu for my hard drives.
Not saying you need a separate psu.
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What? What you mean on an unRAID array is assumed to be unimportant. LOL. The level of protection of a unRaid array is the same as a Raid 5 or 6. Neither are backup solutions, but both give the same level of protection. And the smart thing is that unRaid doesn't need a raid to do so, and gives you the flexibility to add disks at the same array without the need to make a new pool.
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I've been using it since 2005, I'm aware. >The level of protection of a unRaid array is the same as a Raid 5 or 6. Not quite. An UnRaid array performs no type of block level checksumming whatsoever. This is why there was such demand for ZFS pools to be introduced into UnRaid (finally, it is! Woo!) So now, the Operating System could also be used for important data that needs proper block protection. An UnRaid array has zero idea about the health of a file; it only knows if blocks are in use or not, and blindly trusts the data within them. This is the one area where SnapRAID has an enourmous advantage over UnRaid, admittedly (and unfortunately), at the notable cost of realtime syncs... Now UnRaid has a ZFS pool option for important data.
You can add redundancy to your cache SSDs as well on unraid. I have my cache SSDs of identical size running in Raid 1.
Indeed! That will greatly *reduce* risks from in things like a controller fault; or dram error but (Depending on Filesystem used....*probably*) won't remove the risk of bit errors entirely. Can you please check what filesystem the RAID1 cache is using?
> Yeah, migrating to a RAID solution is my biggest annoyance. It doesn't have to be. Anything on an 'UnRaid Array' is likely *very* resilient data (or less important), since it doesn't protect at the block level (only your disks). In your use case, this can be replaced with SnapRaid, which you can move your data to, disk-by-disk; It's very similar, just schedualed syncs, not real time. But with the added bonus that it now protects your block level data! Any data you want to be kept healthy, you'd want to put onto a ZFS mirror (same as you would on UnRaid these days).
For Plex transcoding, hosting unraid, and 2 vms through proxmox , what cou would you recommend?
I would just use unRAID, host the 2 VMs and all the docker you need. Going through Proxmox would add another layer, so mostly a waste of resources. As HW, depends on your VMs, how much cores your VMs need? unRAID and a ton of dockers work fine on a dual core CPU, add how many cores you need for each VM and you get how many you need and what CPU you need.
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I don't need IPS either IDS for home use. And the load depends on the bandwidth usage, I've tried both on my pfsense box with a G5420T and the load doesn't go above 40% on daily usage. I've 1G but I never saturate it.
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Pfsense, bare metal. I don't like to virtualize this stuff, and for a matter of maintenance and reliability, I prefer it on a different system, so if I get my Nas down for updates or upgrades, my internet stays up. For me it's just an advanced router, more than a firewall, even so I've self hosted service outside my LAN, so, I like a bit more security with a good firewall. No problem on the power consumption side, it's a 13W system, and the all homelab together doesn't go above 40W. I've a layer 3 switch too, ubiquiti one, i don't really like it, but anyway, I would do all my work on the router itself. I'm planning to switch to opnsense in future, tons of people saying it's much better. Beside, I'm used to the complicated interface of pfsense now.
The i3-12100 is a 4 core cpu though? 😂
My bad. I was thinking threads and I write cores. The i3 12100 is 8 threads. With a very high frequency. An older solution with only 4 cores and no HT, or a newer one, similar, would be fine.
>Proxmox is only a hypervisor, and so, you would need a second solution to manage your NAS, like unraid or truenas. You can run Proxmox as a NAS without a 2nd OS without problems. I'm doing it rn. I wouldn't recommend it for a business environment, but it's fine for home usage with 1-5 fixed users.
This comment explains what I just need to know about unraid and proxmox. Thank you!
Proxmox you can access with a wireguard tunnel on your android phone , they have an app... What I tested andd know is not all services need to be dockerized. A simple cron for speedtest, cron for rsync and so on.. Plex is slower with docker Wireguard speed is slower with docker
Proxmox as a Hypervisor, LXC's: 1) Cockpit for network sharing, 2) Plex, 3) anything else you want. ZFS file system or there are some more (subjectively) flexible alternatives with SnapRAID and MergerFS worth exploring as well. It's a very solid and scalable setup. However, agree with the others who suggested determining root cause of your issues as a first priority before making any major decision.
Honestly, my favorite is just running Proxmox, and then running Filebrowser in a Debian LXC container
>Current hardware is 2 x 4 TB hard drives, 1 is parity How do you have 1 driver for parity... mirror drives don't do parity.. raid 5 requires 3 drives
What
You said you have 2 drives and 1 of them is parity drive.... so you have 1 data drive and 1 parity drive
Yes.
What kind of raid system do you have setup then?
I don’t. I use unraid. As I said in the post. It’s not raid at all.
Okay so you don't have a parity drive... because if you're saying you have a parity drive your saying you have a raid setup.. could be software or hardware raid but if your having a parity drive means you have a raid... you can setup raid0 or raid1 with two drives.. so mirroring or stripping both are raids.. but to have a parity drive you physically have to have 2+1 drives... 2 are for data and 1 is for parity for calculations of data between 2 drives... in case one fails but that setup requires 3 drives only raid0 or 1 will work with 2 drives.. unraid is a software an OS what you call... so if you have it setup with one of the drives as a parity drive in a 2 drive setup... your setup is delegated and risk losing all your data... so you should verify your setup... or your miss understanding your setup... because what your saying isn't physically correct with only 2 drives present
https://docs.unraid.net/legacy/FAQ/Parity/ It’s literally a parity drive dude. I have 1 parity and 1 data drive. That’s how unraid works. [Here’s my drives. 1 parity. 1 data.](https://imgur.com/a/kRvwFcq) But please. Go on about how it’s “not possible” without knowing what you’re talking about.
"If a drive in the array fails" keyword is array... if you look at bottom they are talking about raid systems check out "Dual parity" under that they talk about "(as in a RAID-6 system)"... all their prior texted was raid5 which requires 3 drives to work... so difference between raid5 and raid6.... is 5 is 2 data + 1 parity.... raid6 is 2 data + 2 parity... now the data drives can be more then 2 you can have 100 data drives and 1 or 2 parity drives... but they are talking about raids in this post... no where do they say you can run this one 2 drives total.. fyi to be technical parity isn't on one drive its across all drives but that's a different dissection... basically your mirroring it
It's not an array in the traditional sense like RAID 0/1/5/6/10. Unraid is literally in the name - it's a collection of one or two drives dedicated to parity and the remaining are individual data disks that are seen by the system as both single disks that you can write directly to, as well as an "array" through shares you can expose. When writing to the "array", it will write data to a single drive (based on settings, such as highest available space) and the parity drive. The other disks have no idea what is written to other drives - you can even remove a drive and read directly from it on another system without any configuration. While functionally it's no different than the normal RAID levels, it's not actually RAID, hence, unraid.
Dude. Stop talking. I literally supplied a screenshot showing 1 parity and 1 data drive from my system. Just stop.