Good luck with that :)
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 01:55:02PM -0500, Brian Weeden wrote:
> After doing much reading and asking questions, I think I'm going to go with
> FlexRAID for the new system (see my other thread). And I might run it on
> top of WHS.
>
> The primary advantages of FlexRAID as I see them:
> - data is not striped across drives, it exists on a single drive
> - FlexRAID works on top of the host filesystem, and can be installed on
> Windows or Linux
> - no need to build a RAID out of clean drives - they can have data on them
> and building the RAID and parity doesn't affect the data
> - the data volumes can be pulled from the RAID and mounted/read in other
> machines
> - the new Tx engine can handle an infinite number of protected drives and an
> infinite number of parity drives, with the only real downside being long
> RAID creation times
>
> Currently, the only real downside to FlexRAID that I can see is that it is a
> snapshot system - you have to schedule a refresh of the parity. That is
> fine with me since I would be mainly protecting media files that don't
> change very often, and a nightly parity refresh is fine. The developer does
> have a new RAID engine in the alpha stage that does realtime protection.
>
> The appear to be a significant number of people who run FlexRAID on top of
> WHS. The idea is that you can have a couple of drives in the WHS protected
> pool which house your really critical data that needs to be protected in
> real time, then you have all your other drives with the media under
> FlexRAID. That way you don't need to have double the storage capacity like
> you would if they were under the WHS protected pool.
>
> So, now the big question remaining is on the hardware side. I am taking a
> good hard look at the 20 HD hot-swappable build on this thread:
>
> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=19553212#post19553212
>
> However, we will be renting a house for the next 4-5 years so I won't be
> able to build myself a server closet, or probably run cables everywhere.
> That could prove challenging for move data around the home network.
>
> ---
> Brian
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:39 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > You might also look into Greyhole, some software like amahi is exploring it
> > Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: "Alex" <[email protected]>
> > Sender: [email protected]
> > Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2011 17:38:23
> > To: <[email protected]>
> > Reply-To: [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: [H] unRAID vs FlexRAID
> >
> > I use unRAID because I'm lazy.
> >
> > Good points about unRAID - never have to use the command line, seriously.
> > There's quite a few user-maintained GUIs and tools (scripts) that help out,
> > but the standard unRAID UI is self explanatory.
> >
> > Some of the features like a cache drive took a bit of reading to understand
> > (as in, how to enable the darn thing).
> >
> > The only time where I've had to use the linux command line is to prepare a
> > drive prior to use - unRAID takes a *very* long time to initialize a drive
> > (2 TB is approx. 20-24 hrs). When I first built my array, I did it via a
> > shell script (again, a user-submitted tool) to help speed this disk
> > initializing process.
> >
> > Bad points about unRAID ? I'm impatient, so I dislike having to wait for my
> > drives to spin up after they have been powered down due to lack of use.
> >
> > Tips: you only need to put in enough drives as you need to, unless you want
> > to outfit yourself with 2 TB drives across the board. I still have 3 drive
> > slots empty out of 9, with 50% free so I overbuilt for my needs at the
> > moment.
> >
> > Speed-wise, not great, reading off a single drive but fast enough over
> > gigabit for most media needs (30-40 mb/s) with modern drives.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected]
> > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian
> > Weeden
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 2:10 PM
> > To: hwg
> > Subject: [H] unRAID vs FlexRAID
> >
> > So now that I'm going down the path of building a new media storage server,
> > I need to look at options for preserving the data. I think I'm going to
> > not
> > go with a traditional RAID system because your data is striped across
> > multiple drives - any one drive essentially has gibberish on it.
> >
> > The two other options are unRAID and FlexRAID. Both are similar in that
> > the
> > data is stored on individual drives and then a parity is made on another
> > device. So if you have multiple drive failures, at worst your data on the
> > remaining drives is ok. And they are also much more flexible with regard
> > to
> > adding drives, configuring the number of parity drives, and using drives of
> > multiple sizes.
> >
> > The difference is that unRAID is Linux-based and boots from a USB stick,
> > while FlexRAID is basically software running on a host OS. I am leaning
> > towards FlexRAID, mainly because I am not very familiar with Linux and I
> > need this box to do more than just store media.
> >
> > Has anyone used either unRAID or FlexRAID? Your experiences?
> >
> > ---
> > Brian
> >
> >
--
Bryan G. Seitz
