Proxmox or Unraid

ADrunkTeddyBear

ADrunkTeddyBear

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Im finally getting a proper home server (Upgrading from a NUC)!!!

Now for the hypervisor.

Ill have 4 x 4TB HDD's in there and 256GB nvme SSD and 1TB 2.5" SSD in there.

I am currently using proxmox for my VM's (Plex, Pihole, Nextcloud, home assistant, ansible, etc)

Im looking at buying unraid, truenas or sticking with proxmox (esxi isnt on my list as i feel proxmox free is the superior option)

Is buying unraid worth it and how is the VM support.

I do enjoy randomly spinning up a VM of windows 11 or a new linux distro just to play around with new features so a good VM experience is important to me. I have been enjoying LXC's as well but I can live without it.

What are features that stand out to you in unraid and make it worth the $50
 
Stick with proxmox, you are doing the classic "oh hey, that looks shiny, lets get it" haha. I'd keep the NUC and use that to play around on (test unraid/etc), but leave proxmox as your main platform.
 
DarkSt0rm said:
Stick with proxmox, you are doing the classic "oh hey, that looks shiny, lets get it" haha. I'd keep the NUC and use that to play around on (test unraid/etc), but leave proxmox as your main platform.
Click to expand...
Exactly lol. Its just a chance for me to start fresh again. So im willing to look at options now
 
I haven't tried it yet but XCP-NG could be a Proxmox contender if you're feeling like a change
 
Since when does Proxmox do RAID? Would you be relying on a hardware controller? Or some crappy BIOS based software **** show?

The main benefit with Unraid is that you can grow the array as you go. Could even start with one drive if you really wanted and can mix and match sizes.

And if it all falls apart you can mount any one drive directly and get your data off.

Add parity later (always needs to be largest) if you like or just more storage.

Everything else you can do with containers and VM’s as long as you have the hardware resources.

It’s deeply inefficient to run all those things in VM’s when they could be in docker containers on Unraid.

Nice thing with Unraid is you can use the 1TB SSD as a cache drive and keep the rest of the array offline when not in active use if you plan it right. Then overnight it can move the data to your array. Things downloading 24/7 etc.
 
DarkSt0rm said:
Stick with proxmox, you are doing the classic "oh hey, that looks shiny, lets get it" haha. I'd keep the NUC and use that to play around on (test unraid/etc), but leave proxmox as your main platform.
Click to expand...

The other way round sounds more sensible as Unraid‘s primary goal is storage and Proxmox is VM’s so put Unraid where the storage is and Proxmox on the Nuc.

Either way Unraid is free to try, so take it for a spin and decide for yourself.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Since when does Proxmox do RAID? Would you be relying on a hardware controller? Or some crappy BIOS based software **** show?

The main benefit with Unraid is that you can grow the array as you go. Could even start with one drive if you really wanted and can mix and match sizes.

And if it all falls apart you can mount any one drive directly and get your data off.

Add parity later (always needs to be largest) if you like or just more storage.

Everything else you can do with containers and VM’s as long as you have the hardware resources.

It’s deeply inefficient to run all those things in VM’s when they could be in docker containers on Unraid.

Nice thing with Unraid is you can use the 1TB SSD as a cache drive and keep the rest of the array offline when not in active use if you plan it right. Then overnight it can move the data to your array. Things downloading 24/7 etc.
Click to expand...
1) No raid right now. In the new server, I'm looking at a RAID card for proxmox. If I'm going Unraid, then a HBA. I heard that you cant use RAID cards on unraid, is this true?

2) I have 32GB of RAM so I think Ill have enough memory for any VM or docker container

3) Im gonna use Unraid for 1 month to try things out. I have 2 x 10TB Ironwolf drives arriving on Monday or Tuesday. Should I wait for them before I build everything and use 1 x 10TB as parity, or can I add them anytime I want?

4) If I do plan on running a few VM's on Unraid, can I setup my nvme SSD as cache and only use the 1TB SSD for VM storage due to the high IOPS?
 
Looked at UNRAID a few times, but never seen enough of a reason to move from Proxmox. I'm happy to run everything myself and dont need the plugins or fancy storage options, as I'm using external storage anyway.
To me, Proxmox is pure compute without funky overheads.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Since when does Proxmox do RAID? Would you be relying on a hardware controller? Or some crappy BIOS based software **** show?

The main benefit with Unraid is that you can grow the array as you go. Could even start with one drive if you really wanted and can mix and match sizes.

And if it all falls apart you can mount any one drive directly and get your data off.

Add parity later (always needs to be largest) if you like or just more storage.

Everything else you can do with containers and VM’s as long as you have the hardware resources.

It’s deeply inefficient to run all those things in VM’s when they could be in docker containers on Unraid.

Nice thing with Unraid is you can use the 1TB SSD as a cache drive and keep the rest of the array offline when not in active use if you plan it right. Then overnight it can move the data to your array. Things downloading 24/7 etc.
Click to expand...
Proxmox has ZFS and Ceph and while both are software based they're both in a different league to the BIOS based software RAIDs that you are referring to.

Ceph is actually pretty sophisticated software defined storage more akin to Nutanix or MS' Storage Spaces Direct and can scale out over clusters. It has some resilience benefits over traditional RAID, especially in large arrays. On the downside, Ceph does seem to require significant additional RAM (1GB RAM per TB storage)and is more complex to understand.

The LXC containers in Proxmox would provide similar resource usage benefits over VM's to docker and I think their intended use case is more for lightweight, persistent VM's versus the intended ephemeral nature of Docker containers (one of Docker's killer features.) There's obviously a lot of other good stuff that comes with Docker's extensive ecosystem.

I'm not a Proxmox fanboy or have anything against Unraid but i just wanted to mention some Proxmox features that are actually quite cool.
 
InvisibleJim said:
Proxmox has ZFS and Ceph and while both are software based they're both in a different league to the BIOS based software RAIDs that you are referring to.

Ceph is actually pretty sophisticated software defined storage more akin to Nutanix or MS' Storage Spaces Direct and can scale out over clusters. It has some resilience benefits over traditional RAID, especially in large arrays. On the downside, Ceph does seem to require significant additional RAM (1GB RAM per TB storage)and is more complex to understand.

The LXC containers in Proxmox would provide similar resource usage benefits over VM's to docker and I think their intended use case is more for lightweight, persistent VM's versus the intended ephemeral nature of Docker containers (one of Docker's killer features.) There's obviously a lot of other good stuff that comes with Docker's extensive ecosystem.

I'm not a Proxmox fanboy or have anything against Unraid but i just wanted to mention some Proxmox features that are actually quite cool.
Click to expand...

Is a ZFS array (say striping with parity) faster than your average gaming motherboard doing RAID5 onboard its BIOS? More reliable or not?
 
neoprema said:
Is a ZFS array (say striping with parity) faster than your average gaming motherboard doing RAID5 onboard its BIOS? More reliable or not?
Click to expand...
I can't really speak to the quality of the RAID in a modern gaming motherboard and I haven't really used ZFS for any high performance applications but it would certainly be better than the traditional BIOS RAID. ZFS does have some advanced features around data consistency and from a reliability point of view generally I'd trust it more than a BIOS RAID.

For performance, I always put VM's on RAID 10 as they are a random read/write workload and RAID 5/6 have relatively poor write performance. Obviously you give up some storage capacity here in favour of performance and it might not be such a big deal in a home use scenario. You could also got with RAID 0 for performance if you aren't concerned about redundancy.
 
InvisibleJim said:
Proxmox has ZFS and Ceph and while both are software based they're both in a different league to the BIOS based software RAIDs that you are referring to.

Ceph is actually pretty sophisticated software defined storage more akin to Nutanix or MS' Storage Spaces Direct and can scale out over clusters. It has some resilience benefits over traditional RAID, especially in large arrays. On the downside, Ceph does seem to require significant additional RAM (1GB RAM per TB storage)and is more complex to understand.

The LXC containers in Proxmox would provide similar resource usage benefits over VM's to docker and I think their intended use case is more for lightweight, persistent VM's versus the intended ephemeral nature of Docker containers (one of Docker's killer features.) There's obviously a lot of other good stuff that comes with Docker's extensive ecosystem.

I'm not a Proxmox fanboy or have anything against Unraid but i just wanted to mention some Proxmox features that are actually quite cool.
Click to expand...

Yeah it’s been a couple of years since I used Proxmox and I think ZFS was very much beta back then and Ceph probably didn’t exist yet.

Unraid makes very user friendly use of Docker in the form of “apps” from their AppStore which takes a lot of work out of it and their library is pretty huge.

I would imagine LXC wouldn’t be as well supported but saying this purely at a guess with research into it.

Proxmox did do VM’s very well and I always preferred it over VMWare and other options for many reasons. VM’s are just not the right thing for many applications any more in the modern world.
 
ADrunkTeddyBear said:
1) No raid right now. In the new server, I'm looking at a RAID card for proxmox. If I'm going Unraid, then a HBA. I heard that you cant use RAID cards on unraid, is this true?

2) I have 32GB of RAM so I think Ill have enough memory for any VM or docker container

3) Im gonna use Unraid for 1 month to try things out. I have 2 x 10TB Ironwolf drives arriving on Monday or Tuesday. Should I wait for them before I build everything and use 1 x 10TB as parity, or can I add them anytime I want?

4) If I do plan on running a few VM's on Unraid, can I setup my nvme SSD as cache and only use the 1TB SSD for VM storage due to the high IOPS?
Click to expand...

1) HBA? You don’t need a Raid card because UnRAID is literally doing that. It’s kind of it’s main purpose. The whole point is avoiding such a need and the OS itself manages it.

2) Can add it any time you want. Just takes some time and effort of course.

4) Yup you can configure anything and everything exactly as you want.

I did much the same at one point keeping VM’s and Dockers on a single drive so the array didn’t need to startup for no good reason. These days for a lack of drive slots I don’t even have a cache drive any more and instead just a 5 drive array. But I don’t use any VM’s any more.
 
SauRoNZA said:
1) HBA? You don’t need a Raid card because UnRAID is literally doing that. It’s kind of it’s main purpose. The whole point is avoiding such a need and the OS itself manages it.

2) Can add it any time you want. Just takes some time and effort of course.

4) Yup you can configure anything and everything exactly as you want.

I did much the same at one point keeping VM’s and Dockers on a single drive so the array didn’t need to startup for no good reason. These days for a lack of drive slots I don’t even have a cache drive any more and instead just a 5 drive array. But I don’t use any VM’s any more.
Click to expand...
HBA- I am running about of SATA ports on my mobo. so need a HBA. Found a nice LSI HBA on ebay for a good price
 
Ive been running OMV 5 for about 2 years on a rpi 3b with a 1tb 2.5" as NAS with transmission and unifi controller in a docker, mainly as a download box, when it gets full it gets copied to a thecus nas or hp microserver with xpenology. I run it off a small solar setup 24/7 , so power consumption is a critical point for me.

Its takes a bit of time to setup, but has been serving me well, although the USB 2 and 100 Mbps ethernet has been frustrating me, to the point that I have to upgrade + I am just barely proficient in OMV, I'd like to do more.

So I've also been looking for a replacement OS + hardware, something easier to setup and maybe more functional without having to read thick manuals, learn new commands and watch hours on hours of how to videos.

Two years back I tried freenas, but settled on OMV as I found it easier to work with

Also tried Win server 22, it feels overkill + steep learning curve for me and I will be running it on modest hardware to keep up with the solar power requirements.

I decided sceptically to give the 1 month free unraid trial a go this weekend, and wow I am impressed. Everything just works and its really really easy to get things done. It costs a bit, but its an extremly polished product, if your time is precious its totaly worth it.

In less than an hour I setup NAS shares + dockers for transmission, unifi and a wiregaurd vpn + vm for home assistant.

I wont be using the raid functionality now, but the seamless ease of use with dockers, vms and no hassle NAS makes it worth the price.

Ill play with proxmox a bit this weekend, but so far I am sold on Unraid for my usage scenario.

This is how easy it is to setup the home assistant vm.

 
insect said:
Ive been running OMV 5 for about 2 years on a rpi 3b with a 1tb 2.5" as NAS with transmission and unifi controller in a docker, mainly as a download box, when it gets full it gets copied to a thecus nas or hp microserver with xpenology. I run it off a small solar setup 24/7 , so power consumption is a critical point for me.

Its takes a bit of time to setup, but has been serving me well, although the USB 2 and 100 Mbps ethernet has been frustrating me, to the point that I have to upgrade + I am just barely proficient in OMV, I'd like to do more.

So I've also been looking for a replacement OS + hardware, something easier to setup and maybe more functional without having to read thick manuals, learn new commands and watch hours on hours of how to videos.

Two years back I tried freenas, but settled on OMV as I found it easier to work with

Also tried Win server 22, it feels overkill + steep learning curve for me and I will be running it on modest hardware to keep up with the solar power requirements.

I decided sceptically to give the 1 month free unraid trial a go this weekend, and wow I am impressed. Everything just works and its really really easy to get things done. It costs a bit, but its an extremly polished product, if your time is precious its totaly worth it.

In less than an hour I setup NAS shares + dockers for transmission, unifi and a wiregaurd vpn + vm for home assistant.

I wont be using the raid functionality now, but the seamless ease of use with dockers, vms and no hassle NAS makes it worth the price.

Ill play with proxmox a bit this weekend, but so far I am sold on Unraid for my usage scenario.

This is how easy it is to setup the home assistant vm.

Click to expand...
I agree. After my trial is up, i will definitely be staying with unraid. Im getting 2 x 10TB IronWolf Drives today, then I will be done with my server!
 
Been running Unraid since 2017 on a Dell T20 with Xeon E3-1246, 2x16TB(Seagate Exos) and 2x4TB(Seagate NAS) still on xfs which was originally done 5 years ago,
started upgrading the drives but now spending money on other things.
I have a 500GB SSD cache drive, which helped speed things up, and can store VM's on there if needed.

Running a lot of Docker containers and a few VM's and I don't have any issues.

Community Applications should be the first plugin to get.

follow SpaceInvader One and IBRACORP on youtube for all the cool things on unraid.

​

 
Colsuldel said:
Been running Unraid since 2017 on a Dell T20 with Xeon E3-1246, 2x16TB(Seagate Exos) and 2x4TB(Seagate NAS) still on xfs which was originally done 5 years ago,
started upgrading the drives but now spending money on other things.
I have a 500GB SSD cache drive, which helped speed things up, and can store VM's on there if needed.

Running a lot of Docker containers and a few VM's and I don't have any issues.

Community Applications should be the first plugin to get.

follow SpaceInvader One and IBRACORP on youtube for all the cool things on unraid.

​

Click to expand...
Definitely watching Ibracorp.

Ill check out space invader tonight.
 
I went with truenas scale.....
by the way i haven't used unraid in ages....so pm if you want to buy my license.
 
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