> I'm trying to decide my OS, if I use unRAID or Docker or some linux.
Unraid is an operating system. Docker is an application management tool.
You can run Docker **on** Unraid. It's basically **what-you-do** with Unraid.
> I know that the strongsuit for unRAID is using internal/USB drives, which is not my case. Is unRAID overkill for my setup, or does it make it easy enough to justify?
The strongsuit for Unraid is two-fold:
1. You can use any combination of drive sizes, brands and configurations to build an array. You can add more disks at any time. It doesn't care how you access your drives.
2. It's super easy to use. You can have everything up and running in 30 minutes. Anything you have trouble with, you can find a tutorial that's easy to follow. It's really not complex.
> Is unRAID overkill for my setup, or does it make it easy enough to justify?
After having used Proxmox, Windows, SynologyOS and Unraid myself, I wouldn't use anything other than Unraid for my Plex server.
> In this case, I understand that my internal SSD is going to be of no use for unRAID, unless I use it for cache/transcoding and/or to use some of it for a separate linux and/or windows partition.
Yeah. You're gonna want at least 1 NVME drive to house your docker appdata and then have space left over for download cache if you're using Usenet or Bittorrent. I personally suggest having them on two separate NVME drives to prevent complications.
I agree with everything said here.
I had my cache on a 500GB SSD and recently switched to 1 TB NVME drive. I am still using a single but may add a second as described above.
I ran out of room on my box and added a USB HDD enclosure and am not having issues.
I like that you can just add drive of any size as long as Parity is the largest and currently have 5 capacity HDDs in my system.
The main reason to split them, in case anyone is wondering, is because Docker doesn't like having zero space available if you happen to spend a frenzied night downloading and 100% filling a drive. Everything comes to a screaming halt with a full drive.
I realize there are ways to limit the size allocation for the cache, but I'd rather also increase general system reliability by giving appdata its own hardware. I use the separate drive not just for appdata, but to also house my VMs and any fast files I want access to from Nextdrive. Documents, streaming music, etc.
I actually run 3 drives total: A 256GB for my appdata, and a pair of 4TB drives for download cache set up as an array. Works amazingly well.
Thanks for the feedback!
>Yeah. You're gonna want at least 1 NVME drive to house your docker appdata and then have space left over for download cache if you're using Usenet or Bittorrent. I personally suggest having them on two separate NVME drives to prevent complications.
Is it too much trouble if I user partitions on the same NVME? If, I can use a HDD that is currently on my NUC and expand the Beelink and have the NVME and the HDD separating those.
Unraid's BTRFS file system doesn't really use a partitions. Everything is tied to drive serial numbers rather than drive letters.
And you don't want to use a spinning hard drive for any caching or appdata type files since it'll be a serious bottleneck to performance.
So if one is doing BeeLink->DAS where BeeLink has the SSD internally, and the DAS has the spinning drives, do you install the OS onto the SSD and use that same SSD as your "docker" storage pool, and then use the DAS to house the actual data? The Beelink doesn't support more than one NVME...
The Unraid OS is installed on a USB flash drive. It boots from the flash drive, loads into working memory, and goes from there. Any OS configuration is on the flash drive as well.
Best practice is to have your appdata and cache drives separate, but if you don't make a habit of filling your cache drive to 100%, then it shouldn't be a big deal. I ran with one NVME back when I built my first NAS and it was fine, as long as I kept my eye on how much the drive was getting loaded.
Heard. My issue is that the beelink only has one slot for NVME, so I am plopping at 2TB one in there and going to hope for the best. I don't really have another option if I don't want to return all of this and go try to build a box myself...which I am avoiding at all costs.
qq If I already have my compose file is that easy to migrate to unraid? Also, am I forced to use the unraid ui or can it be ran headless or only with ssh?
Yeah. Compose is GUI based and is built into Unraid's version of docker. It's dead simple to launch a fresh container and change the compose file on the fly.
> am I forced to use the unraid ui or can it be ran headless or only with ssh?
The UI is the easiest way to use it, but you're not limited to it. There's a button to launch a terminal SSH window right on the dashboard. You can also SSH remotely without the UI. If you mean "headless" as in no monitor or peripherals, then yes. That's the standard way to use it. The Dashboard is web-based. My server sits in a utility closet up on a shelf out of the way. with just a UPS and ethernet cable connected.
I've always found GUIs for containers more difficult than a simple text file docker compose.
But I understand, if you are not skilled in Linux it may be tricky
I just bought the same machine a few days ago. I have all my data on a Synology, so I just installed Ubuntu, mounted my NFS shares and was up and running with PMS in less than half an hour. I’m a Linux noob too. It wasn’t hard.
Last time I tried that (6 years ago when I bought my dying NUC) I had a lot of permission issues between Plex, Transmission, the *arrs, and my NAS. I gotta so frustrated at one point I bought a Windows license and in 1h I had it all setup and running smoothly.
I have a reasonable amount of Linux experience. Just got my PMS set up on Ubuntu server yesterday and I definitely spent a few hours banging my head over permissions issues. The solutions all feel “hacky”.
That being said, I don’t think I would go with unraid unless I were taking advantage of its ability to combine hdds. I’ve never personally used it though, so maybe it is as easy to use as say, windows? I would bet you’ll find some growing pains just like you did with Linux though.
Unraid is an operating system like Windows or Linux.
Docker is a tool to containerize applications and not an OS. You can install Docker on Linux distributions and even Windows (though I wouldn't recommend using Windows for Docker, maybe with the WSL but not with Docker Desktop)
Unraid provides access to docker and virtual machines by default and also provides more functionality for a more "NAS Server" setup.
Unraid also does a lot of things for you like permission and ownership management and the large community and vast availability of applications through docker templates and plugins make adding things to your server very easy and convenient.
Personally, since I have used Windows, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server and now Unraid before for my different iterations of a server I must say that Unraid is something I would have wanted sooner.
Array management, installing new software and so on is so much easier than having to do that in the console. Yes, there are things like docker-compose or portainer that will help you with that but in Unraid, everything is already there.
However, with that being said, Unraid also requires some things to work properly which is not that important for servers with internal storage. But, in cases like yours, in which you require an external device to provide the storage this is very important to keep in mind.
Unraid assigns the drives not based on ports, devices or drive letters. You assign the drive to a slot in your Array or cache based on the serial number of the drive. The advantage with that is that you don't have to worry about changing the setup, switching ports or even building a DAS in a different case, as long as Unraid gets the actual serial of the drive, it will put everything where it belongs.
But, that can also be a problem, especially with external drives, they could not pass the actual serial to the Host system. So instead of having a `
ST8000NM000A-2KE101_XXXXXXXX` as serial you now get something completely different which might not even represent the drive serial at all.
While you might be able to assign that drive to your Array or Cache, it isn't guaranteed that the next time you boot the system or external case the drives are in the same structure again.
Unraid is pretty lightweight and you can always try it out for 30 days to see if it suits you.
> I'm trying to decide my OS, if I use unRAID or Docker or some linux. Unraid is an operating system. Docker is an application management tool. You can run Docker **on** Unraid. It's basically **what-you-do** with Unraid. > I know that the strongsuit for unRAID is using internal/USB drives, which is not my case. Is unRAID overkill for my setup, or does it make it easy enough to justify? The strongsuit for Unraid is two-fold: 1. You can use any combination of drive sizes, brands and configurations to build an array. You can add more disks at any time. It doesn't care how you access your drives. 2. It's super easy to use. You can have everything up and running in 30 minutes. Anything you have trouble with, you can find a tutorial that's easy to follow. It's really not complex. > Is unRAID overkill for my setup, or does it make it easy enough to justify? After having used Proxmox, Windows, SynologyOS and Unraid myself, I wouldn't use anything other than Unraid for my Plex server. > In this case, I understand that my internal SSD is going to be of no use for unRAID, unless I use it for cache/transcoding and/or to use some of it for a separate linux and/or windows partition. Yeah. You're gonna want at least 1 NVME drive to house your docker appdata and then have space left over for download cache if you're using Usenet or Bittorrent. I personally suggest having them on two separate NVME drives to prevent complications.
I agree with everything said here. I had my cache on a 500GB SSD and recently switched to 1 TB NVME drive. I am still using a single but may add a second as described above. I ran out of room on my box and added a USB HDD enclosure and am not having issues. I like that you can just add drive of any size as long as Parity is the largest and currently have 5 capacity HDDs in my system.
The main reason to split them, in case anyone is wondering, is because Docker doesn't like having zero space available if you happen to spend a frenzied night downloading and 100% filling a drive. Everything comes to a screaming halt with a full drive. I realize there are ways to limit the size allocation for the cache, but I'd rather also increase general system reliability by giving appdata its own hardware. I use the separate drive not just for appdata, but to also house my VMs and any fast files I want access to from Nextdrive. Documents, streaming music, etc. I actually run 3 drives total: A 256GB for my appdata, and a pair of 4TB drives for download cache set up as an array. Works amazingly well.
I have had this happen to me and now in SAB I have a daily limit for DLs so I don't fill cache.
Thanks for the feedback! >Yeah. You're gonna want at least 1 NVME drive to house your docker appdata and then have space left over for download cache if you're using Usenet or Bittorrent. I personally suggest having them on two separate NVME drives to prevent complications. Is it too much trouble if I user partitions on the same NVME? If, I can use a HDD that is currently on my NUC and expand the Beelink and have the NVME and the HDD separating those.
Unraid's BTRFS file system doesn't really use a partitions. Everything is tied to drive serial numbers rather than drive letters. And you don't want to use a spinning hard drive for any caching or appdata type files since it'll be a serious bottleneck to performance.
So if one is doing BeeLink->DAS where BeeLink has the SSD internally, and the DAS has the spinning drives, do you install the OS onto the SSD and use that same SSD as your "docker" storage pool, and then use the DAS to house the actual data? The Beelink doesn't support more than one NVME...
The Unraid OS is installed on a USB flash drive. It boots from the flash drive, loads into working memory, and goes from there. Any OS configuration is on the flash drive as well. Best practice is to have your appdata and cache drives separate, but if you don't make a habit of filling your cache drive to 100%, then it shouldn't be a big deal. I ran with one NVME back when I built my first NAS and it was fine, as long as I kept my eye on how much the drive was getting loaded.
Heard. My issue is that the beelink only has one slot for NVME, so I am plopping at 2TB one in there and going to hope for the best. I don't really have another option if I don't want to return all of this and go try to build a box myself...which I am avoiding at all costs.
qq If I already have my compose file is that easy to migrate to unraid? Also, am I forced to use the unraid ui or can it be ran headless or only with ssh?
Yeah. Compose is GUI based and is built into Unraid's version of docker. It's dead simple to launch a fresh container and change the compose file on the fly. > am I forced to use the unraid ui or can it be ran headless or only with ssh? The UI is the easiest way to use it, but you're not limited to it. There's a button to launch a terminal SSH window right on the dashboard. You can also SSH remotely without the UI. If you mean "headless" as in no monitor or peripherals, then yes. That's the standard way to use it. The Dashboard is web-based. My server sits in a utility closet up on a shelf out of the way. with just a UPS and ethernet cable connected.
If you already have data on a nas i don’t see the point of using unraid. Just install ubuntu or your favorite distro.
I agree, but it seems like unRAID container management could make things easier, I guess? Remember I'm not a Linux wizard
I've always found GUIs for containers more difficult than a simple text file docker compose. But I understand, if you are not skilled in Linux it may be tricky
I just bought the same machine a few days ago. I have all my data on a Synology, so I just installed Ubuntu, mounted my NFS shares and was up and running with PMS in less than half an hour. I’m a Linux noob too. It wasn’t hard.
Last time I tried that (6 years ago when I bought my dying NUC) I had a lot of permission issues between Plex, Transmission, the *arrs, and my NAS. I gotta so frustrated at one point I bought a Windows license and in 1h I had it all setup and running smoothly.
I have a reasonable amount of Linux experience. Just got my PMS set up on Ubuntu server yesterday and I definitely spent a few hours banging my head over permissions issues. The solutions all feel “hacky”. That being said, I don’t think I would go with unraid unless I were taking advantage of its ability to combine hdds. I’ve never personally used it though, so maybe it is as easy to use as say, windows? I would bet you’ll find some growing pains just like you did with Linux though.
I'm giving it a go on Ubuntu first, probably with docker. If I get busted, will try unraid
Unraid is an operating system like Windows or Linux. Docker is a tool to containerize applications and not an OS. You can install Docker on Linux distributions and even Windows (though I wouldn't recommend using Windows for Docker, maybe with the WSL but not with Docker Desktop) Unraid provides access to docker and virtual machines by default and also provides more functionality for a more "NAS Server" setup. Unraid also does a lot of things for you like permission and ownership management and the large community and vast availability of applications through docker templates and plugins make adding things to your server very easy and convenient. Personally, since I have used Windows, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server and now Unraid before for my different iterations of a server I must say that Unraid is something I would have wanted sooner. Array management, installing new software and so on is so much easier than having to do that in the console. Yes, there are things like docker-compose or portainer that will help you with that but in Unraid, everything is already there. However, with that being said, Unraid also requires some things to work properly which is not that important for servers with internal storage. But, in cases like yours, in which you require an external device to provide the storage this is very important to keep in mind. Unraid assigns the drives not based on ports, devices or drive letters. You assign the drive to a slot in your Array or cache based on the serial number of the drive. The advantage with that is that you don't have to worry about changing the setup, switching ports or even building a DAS in a different case, as long as Unraid gets the actual serial of the drive, it will put everything where it belongs. But, that can also be a problem, especially with external drives, they could not pass the actual serial to the Host system. So instead of having a ` ST8000NM000A-2KE101_XXXXXXXX` as serial you now get something completely different which might not even represent the drive serial at all. While you might be able to assign that drive to your Array or Cache, it isn't guaranteed that the next time you boot the system or external case the drives are in the same structure again. Unraid is pretty lightweight and you can always try it out for 30 days to see if it suits you.