Unraid or NAS - Which one is right for you?

[@deinemuddaisdoof]

Great review thank you! Very helpful! Maybe a little lower volume on the background music ;)

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks, no problem I will do better on the volume. Thanks for the feedback.

[@mj1s735]

Great video, I appreciate the simple, easy to understand comparisons. I have an older QNAP that still works fine, but I do want an upgrade to better unitize my 10G network. Right now it has better read and write speeds than you got in your unraid configurations. But since I have spare parts, I will go ahead and give unraid a try. But if I get the slow speeds that you were getting even if I use SSD cache. It will make more sense for me to get a newer model QNAP that has built in 10G. I want those faster read and write speeds. Right now the only advantage I see with unraid is the ability to use different size hard drives in the NAS drive pool. That was one of the uses that Drobo also had., but they only had a 1G network interface.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like a solid plan. You will definitely like the upgrade to 10GbE. Good luck.

[@georgecondoyannis5371]

Great video Mike, thanks for putting this together. You didn't include the cost of the Unraid license. It's pretty nominal, but probably worth a mention.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great point! You are right I did not mention that and thank for bringing up the point.

[@mosthated1775]

I know I am late to the party, but just wanted to say thanks for the great breakdown. I was finding it hard to find solid explanations on the key differences, as well as actual performance between the two.

[@MikeFaucher]

Glad you enjoyed it!. Thanks for the feedback.

[@theprogrammer1]

Thanks for the review Mike, excellent and thorough. I'm wondering if UnRAID could work well even on an SMB environment for multiple users accessing the same server, if the files they're accessing are on different drives. Of course this scenario is much more dependent on extra variables, but the overall performance should be descent (even though it still wont reach the RAID 5 levels obviously).

[@MikeFaucher]

I think it should be fine. Using Slight fast drives such as the RED PROs, a faster card such as the LSI 9300-8i (if you need a lot of drives,, and caching (multiple cache drives) where appropriate will make big difference. I think you would be very happy with it. Thanks for the feedback and good luck. Let us know what you decide.

[@levelnine123]

hi Mike. if you set up cache ssd drive for the shares you use it will speed it up. after some time it will copy to the array. set the share with type of cache you want is realy important in unraid. I look forward for new videos

[@MikeFaucher]

GodX Thanks. Your right. I actually do for certain shares. Thanks for the feedback.

[@terrisharkles2313]

I was looking at buying the tvsh1668X that costs north of £3000 i could build a similar system myself all hi cost parts and still manage to outperform the Qnap TVSH1668X by a fair bit and build it for only £1490 and would have enough capacity for a 320tb server with QNAP I would have to purchase extender units pushing the price even more I was surprised to see unraid was slow at writing and reading compared to the nas but obviously as you stated the nas operates differently to unraid and that is why unraid is much slower which would make me want to stick with a nas device as speed is everything to me I mean if you are transferring gigabytes of data to the nas and you are assuming 4 to 5 minutes that will soon add up to a lot of time totally wasted hours even. Loved your explanation so will have to make a decision I only worry would be would unraid software ever go bad. But the data would still be there if that happened and easily recoverable how well that will be another learning curve. I doubt a a Qnap 16 bay or 12 bay as I call them is worth the asking money of £2899 as I configured a home built nas device that would far and more outstrip it is quality parts it would trunce it if I am being honest and would cost no more than £1490 that is some saving and that is everything from pc case to power supply sas 24 port unraid friendly HBA card cables ssd m.2 and 4 hard drives to get me started then I can add to it over time without ever needing to purchase an add on. I must find out if unraid will write faster as that would be a deal breaker for me and would make me want to just buy the nas and be done with it but I will be spending double to do the same thing with the added expense of buying a add on device in the future.

[@MikeFaucher]

Good thought process. If you add more caching, and use 7200 rpm drives, the write speeds will go up in UNRAID. For speed, UNRAID relies on the cache heavily. You are better off putting larger faster cache for that size server. The new version also will support ZFS which is fast but is not expandable and you have to create new pools.

[@SteveOwensRoswell]

Good video Mike. Very fair assessment of the two options. I came over from Windows Home Server then Windows Server 2012 Essentials so I had the hardware to go to UNRAID. Of course I have sense upgraded the CPU, Motherboard and added a NVMe for cache. I do have a 10G NIC in it as well, but as you said don't really get much advantage out of pulling to and from SATA drives.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. I also used to run essentials and Home Server before that. I really like Unraid especially for running plex. Appreciate your comments and thoughts.

[@SteveOwensRoswell]

Mike Faucher yes, same as far as running Plex in a Docker. Also running Windows and macOS VMs on the same machine. Big UNRAID fan overall.

[@sharedknowledge6640]

This is a good summary. I have two Unraid servers and multiple Qnap NAS units and have had mostly similar experiences. I will say having 10G Ethernet on Unraid might be a waste of money as in normal use Unraid can barely max out 1G Ethernet. It’s also worth noting many NAS units have dual Ethernet which can be bridged or used with VLANs etc. Unraid licensing depends on a USB drive which are prone to failure and it’s based on an ancient minimally supported distro known as Slackware and both are a bit worrying to some. At the same time I think Qnap does a poor job with their operating system and software in general. They’re all about redesigning the user interface and adding features nobody asked for rather than fixing bugs, improving security, etc. Just look at their security advisory page which has a constant stream of high priority vulnerabilities. Just when something like Surveillance Station starts to become mature and stable they abandon it for something like QVR Pro which is riddled with problems. My experience with Qnap support is they first try to blame the customer and, failing that, they open a service ticket and do nothing. For example right out of the box with a completely default configuration with the last few years of QTS releases the drives won’t stay sleeping. The operating system writes to the array every few minutes preventing the drives from staying spun down even with the Ethernet disconnected. If you contact Qnap they basically tell you that’s normal and not to use that feature-energy consumption and drive life be damned. Many Qnap “features” are like that. They just are unusable. I can’t fathom using their buggy operating system in an enterprise environment. IT professionals don’t want pretty control panels and karaoke apps they want solid reliable secure storage. This seems entirely lost on Qnap. By contrast Unraid actually works pretty much as expected. When it doesn’t work it’s usually user error or bad hardware. And the Unraid forum offers excellent support and I’ve received 1-on-1 support direct from the owner. There are also plenty of helpful tutorials online. Unraid has followed a much more conservative upgrade path with the focus on stability and key features people actually want rather than redesigning the Web GUI to make it look like Candy Crush which seems to be Qnap’s focus. That’s not to say a Qnap NAS can’t be a stable file server. Once you find a version of QTS that works for you firewall it off from the internet and leave it alone. But if you try to run many of their add ons, or follow their frequent updates, good luck. Look at the ratings of their Android and iOS apps. Most are around 2 stars. They just can’t seem to develop decent software even most of the time. I have had mostly good luck with Qnap hardware although it’s frustrating they are constantly changing the form factor for no good reason. Few models even use the same drive trays. The dimensions, controls, back panels, ports, colors, etc are all generally different not only compared to past models but even among current models. It’s foolish and just increases the price to keep re-tooling every model. NAS units are not Nike sneakers. They don’t go out of style and are often hidden away anyway. Again Qnap doesn’t seem to understand what really matters.

[@MikeFaucher]

Extremely detailed feedback. As for the 10gig on UNRAID, I see your point and the only reason I use it is because write large files to the cache and want to transfer them as quickly as possible. It is a limited use case but mine is mainly for media. You have a valid point with some of the QNAP apps but I actually have been pleased with the OS, how often they update it, and so far the three times I have contacted their support it has been awesome. I understand that not everyone always has the same results but that has been mine. I have 4 QNAP units and at work I have 6 Synology. To date none of my QNAP units have failed but we have lost 4 of the six Synology units and they were actually newer. Again, thank you for all the detail feedback on this and you other posts.

[@sharedknowledge6640]

Mike Faucher you’re welcome. I have heard of more hardware failures with Synology and, unlike with Unraid, it’s proprietary hardware so you’re dead in the water until you get a new NAS, have a backup NAS sitting on the shelf, or get your NAS repaired. That’s also true for Qnap but I’ve yet to have one fail. Synology, however, does somewhat better with their software stability than Qnap and it’s easier to set up and use compared with Qnap. I have purchased a total of six Qnaps but only two are powered on 7/24 these days. Another two are used for backups and the oldest two are retired. QTS updates for me, as often as not, have broken something. And the forums are full of complaints around just about every new release from Qnap. They fix five bugs but can’t resist adding some feature and creating four new bugs. I just keep mine firewalled off from the internet so there’s minimal security risk and it also stops them from phoning home which later versions of QTS do excessively. That’s another advantage of Unraid. It’s not constantly sending encrypted packets of who knows what to Taiwan like Qnap does. And annoyingly if you block later versions of QTS from phoning home it’s constantly nagging with notifications to that effect even when you click the box that says “don’t warn me again” which in Qnap tradition apparently doesn’t work either.

[@boggle37]

Thanks for this video. This is serendipitous. Had thought of looking you up last night. Have one of the least expensive QNAP 4 Bays. It works ok, but not powerful enough for transcoding. I have to do that manually using Wondershare Uniconverter on my laptop. Wondershare works well, but that's an extra step and slow. Still also using my old Home Server 2011, but it's old and replacing a failed drive is a pain because of the limitations of Storage Spaces. Have been looking into building a new storage server that will do VM's and debating whether to go with either FreeNas or Unraid. FreeNas has good documentation and is supposed to be fast because of ZFS file system but appears to have the drawback of needing same size drive replacements as RAID in QNAP whereas you seem to be able to add random sizes to Unraid as needed. Any thoughts on FreeNas v. Unraid? Thanks.

[@MikeFaucher]

It is largely personal preference. I think that UNRAID is easier and very flexible and they are adding some form of ZFS in an upcoming version. Personally I would stick with Unraid as the best all around choice. Thanks for the question and let me know what you decide.

[@boggle37]

@@MikeFaucher Drivers occurred to me last night and since I'm going Ryzen, looked around the FreeNas site with no success finding out about Ryzen support. Looks very Intel-oriented which I can understand but not what I want. Was very impressed with their new point and click UI but doesn't help if I can't use it. Have some experience w FreeBSD but don't claim expertise and shy away from Linux because of such complications Then found JayzTwoCents abandoned trying FreeNas because of network card driver issues. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nnKXiGp6rcecoa8 So I guess I''ll look to Unraid.

[@boggle37]

​@@MikeFaucher Been stewing a lot about which way to go. Occurred to me last night that I could repurpose my WHS machine as a backup server using FreeNAS once I have enough space to move its data elsewhere, e.g. to a new Unraid server using a bunch of spare drives. It's only an i3 but does have 26GB ram so it might work if a bit slowly. Would need to get an intel network card because the built-in Realtek networking is not supposed to work well under FreeNAS. But those are less than $35 on Amazon. It does have 6 6TB drives which should provide enough for a couple of vdevs. Thanks agin.

[@mauritsl84]

Just buy a Nvidia shield TV and you have the best media player possible. No need for ttanscoding so you NAS is perfect now ;-)

[@MattHenders0n]

So, is it possible to configure UnRAID for a RAID5 volume set? Or, is a parity drive the only configuration?

[@MikeFaucher]

The current version does not like RAID 5 hardware and prefers the parity drive configuration. The upcoming version does support ZFS so you could create a ZFS1 array if you wanted to do that.

[@robertt9342]

Wouldn't freenas or some other server system where they stripe the disks like they did in the NAS, if you are talking about single user who needs fast access to files?

[@MikeFaucher]

Sure, there are many different options. I have always preferred fast hardware RAID however for certain applications like media servers it is hard to beat UNRAID because of the mix and match drive flexibility and scalability vs having to have matched drives in a typical RAID configuration. I have both and use each for a different purpose. It is just nice to have a choice. Great question.

[@norvin436]

nice video presentation

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback.

[@billvoltmer2569]

Perhaps Unraid would show a performance advantage for simultaneous reads of files it has stored on different drives.

[@MikeFaucher]

It's possible that it would but that is not the default configuration that most would use. Good point though.

[@robertt9342]

@Mike Faucher . Unless I am misunderstanding the OP, I'd argue the serving files to multiple clients including possible media files would be a fairly normal use of Unraid.

[@MegaSunspark]

Mike please loose the background music or keep it to a bare minimum. We could hardly hear your voice over the music.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks, will do.

[@boggle37]

Back to plague you w questions. Have a 7 yr old i3 with 24GB ram running Windows Server 2012 and 6 6T Ironwolf drives using storage spaces to give 16TB usable after mirroring. II is silent in an old Antec case and very reliable, but it is old and not real fast. Thinking I'll try FreeNAS on it for archival storage. 6 same size drives should make it easy to create a couple of arrays. Since the 7 yr old motherboard will give out at some point, it seems FreeNAS will preserve the data pending a MOBO replacement. Being anal retentive, also have backups onto stand alone drives. Also have a QNAP with 4 6TB Ironwolfs t0 give ~20TB. The QNAP is OK for storage and playing Plex but the CPU isn't powerful enough for transcoding and I wind up having to manually transcode OTA recordings on the laptop, so I want to move Plex elsewhere else. Haven't built anything since the old server and think it would be good lockdown therapy to build a new machine. When I get paid for some work, planning to build a separate Ryzen Unraid server using a collection of old drives and a couple of new for storage, Plex w transcoding, and VM gaming. Questions on video cards, how many and how to arrange them: Figure with a fairly powerful Ryzen, may not strictly need a separate GPU for PLEX transcoding but even a low end would make things easier. I am assuming I'll need a separate GPU for gaming and will have to figure out how to feed it through to the game VM. Does that setup sound reasonable? Not a hard core gamer and don't do much FPS. Been looking at lots of videos. Do I need 2 GPU cards for the Unraid? Any ideas on video cards for the Unraid?. Thanks.

[@MikeFaucher]

You obviously can go the Ryzen and GPU route depending on what your are using it for, but if it is mainly Plex, I would suggest an Intel chip as it supports QuickSync which is ideal for transcoding and much more efficient for this application. I did a first time setup here (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpbRh6J4fdyLg7s) if you are interested. I am currently running Plex in a container on that server with a I5-9400 and will easily handle multiple transcoded streams and VMs. If you are looking form more than you can obviously use whatever CPU and GPU you want. Just keep in mind that even though the Ryzen is a better desktop CPU, it may not be a better choice for UNRAID depending on your needs. To answer your question, no you do not multiple cards to set up as transcoding as it will share.

[@boggle37]

@@MikeFaucher Thanks. May go with intel, although would like to experiment with the new stuff on one of the kool new boards :)

[@boggle37]

Been pondering your suggestions and think I will go with Intel. Prices are lower than i expected and I have your posts as cheat sheets. 😉 Since i made 70 yeasterday, this will probably be my last major build. Since cpu prices were lower than expected, thinking of splurging as future proofing: i5-10500 cpu and Asus ROG Strix gaming board. Concerned about noise and heat as I've been spoiled by the almost silent old i3 server that consistently runs at 37°C in an Antec csse tho it doesn't do transcoding. Really just stores backups and only some light VM experimenting. Was thinking of an Antec P101 silent case which comes w 3 fans and looks big enough for an inexpensive gpu for light gaming. Suppose I'd have to find a better air cooler. Can you think of any drawbacks on that? Thanks again

[@saschakretz400]

ZFS in Unraid should fix the performance issue, right ?

[@MikeFaucher]

Not clear that it will but time will tell. It will definitely help but I am not convinced it will be faster than hardware RAID.

[@saschakretz400]

@@MikeFaucher I will try a setting. Just bought used 40GBe stuff and hope Ill manage to combine the "slow" raid and Unraid NVME Array as 40GBe solution. Ill keep you updated on my experiences :)

[@MikeFaucher]

@@saschakretz400 Awesome and good luck.

[@necessaryav]

Your background music!!!

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank you.

[@norvin436]

your background music is louder than your voice , you need to speak a little bit louder

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank you. I will address it in the future.

[@semmunn8322]

please, we could do without the annoying music on the background

[@MikeFaucher]

Understood, this was one of my earlier videos and I do not use music anymore. Thanks for the feedback.