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Anyone using a Unraid server?

SPOautos

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I very recently built a Unraid server and am fixing to load all my music on it and integrate it into my 2 channel audio system.

I'm looking at various Unraid dockers and trying to figure out the best approach. I am a Tidal subscriber so Roon looks good since it incorporates Tidal and would let me use both my music and Tidal together. I have a Chromecast audio that I can use on my preamp so long as Roon can use that in a Unraid server environment (not sure).

Plex does the same....but what is the audio quality of Plex compared to Tidal? Would there be any difference?

There is also Emby.

I dont HAVE to have Tidal incorporated into the same app but it would be nice. Roon is ridiculously expensive at $120 per year....ludicrous if you ask me. There are many similar apps that are nearly free! At $120/yr it should include music....basically it should be a Tidal. Anyway, I'd like to find good alternatives but am prepared to go with Roon if I have too.

Whatever I go with, I want to be able to control it using a android phone app. Roon has one but it's pretty low rated, Plex has one highly rated.

What are other Unraid users in here using?
 
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SPOautos

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Why would anyone pay for and use Unraid? Too lazy to properly configure a RAID 5/6 + dm-integrity or RAID-Z?

Thats a bit off topic.....however, what do you perceive is the benefit of Raid 5/6 + dm-integrity or Raid-Z over Unraid? Unraid isn't that expensive at $80. I like having a Windows 10 VM that is running continuously, I like that I have a Wireguard VPN built in. Additionally, I like the Unraid parity setup better than Raid 5/6 because all of the drives in the array can be different sizes, which makes it much easier to add additional drives and replace a single drive with one that has a lot more space.....can you do that with your Raid 5/6?

What are your reasons for choosing Raid 5/6 over Unraid? Just to save the $80?
 

Aldoszx

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There are best open source alternatives to Unraid.
I am using FreeNAS & Openmediavault.
Both are working like a charm.
 

bluefuzz

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What are other Unraid users in here using?
I keep my music and movies on an aging HP N54L Microserver running Openmediavault. OMV is more capable (IMO) than Unraid and cheaper (open source). Currently 4 x 3 TB disks with Snapraid for parity and mergerfs for disk pooling, though I'm beginning to run short of space so I'll need bigger disks soon. This has been rock steady for the best part of a decade now. I can stream anything to various Raspberry Pis, OSMC (Kodi) boxes round the house as well as my NAD C658 which is my main music rig. I've never seen the point in either Plex or Roon. As long as your metedata is in order on the server there's no need. I use bliss for music metadata organisation on the server and TinyMediaManager for movies.
 
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SPOautos

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Because it's not proprietary software, of course.

That doesn't matter to me. I just want what is going to work best for me. Unraid works great and is economical
I keep my music and movies on an aging HP N54L Microserver running Openmediavault. OMV is more capable (IMO) than Unraid and cheaper (open source). Currently 4 x 3 TB disks with Snapraid for parity and mergerfs for disk pooling, though I'm beginning to run short of space so I'll need bigger disks soon. This has been rock steady for the best part of a decade now. I can stream anything to various Raspberry Pis, OSMC (Kodi) boxes round the house as well as my NAD C658 which is my main music rig. I've never seen the point in either Plex or Roon. As long as your metedata is in order on the server there's no need. I use bliss for music metadata organisation on the server and TinyMediaManager for movies.

Plex is free and makes everything simple, even my wife can use it lol....its our main source of TV usage. I dont need to do anything with metadata, it assigned great posters to all my movies and series, auto creates collections for movies that have more than 1 in a series (like Starwars), even plays the theme music when you click on one, brings in trailers, actor bios, etc. Displays it all on the TV awesome, looks better than Netflix. I can search by any metadata including a list of every actor in my movie collection. All I had to do was point Plex to the folder of movies and do nothing, then on any device I just log into Plex and it's all there. We can watch any of them on every device, iOS, android, tablets, laptops, TV's, ps4, and it automatically transcode to what's best for that device. If you have a Plex Pass (which I do since I travel) then itll transcode to a resolution that fits your internet connection when away from the house on cellular. The only reason for a Plex Pass is to use it away from your local network....if not needing that, its free.

Super easy and free. Not sure why someone wouldnt use Plex or Emby since they are free.

I researcher Openmediavault, but with four 6Tb drives and one being used as parity, I knew I'd outgrow it fast and need to upgrade harddrives. With Unraid your array can have mismatched drives. So in your case, you could just pick up a single 10tb drive and add it. Well your biggest disk has to be a parity drive, so really youd add the new one as a parity drive and take your old parity drive and make it part of the array. Just add a little at a time as needed without being concerned about drive size since they dont need to match.

I cant recall, with OMV can you set up a Windows 10vm and do hardware passthrough making it perform pretty much just like a baremetal computer rather than a typical VM? To use for gaming and such? I dont recall for certain, but if not, that may be another reason I went with Unraid.
 
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SPOautos

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I have to admit, the Roon setup and mobile app is all real nice once you get used to its layout. I've been playing with it for several hours now....have the core installed on Unraid with the android app on my phone as a endpoint. Its using Chromecast audio to my stereo system. Have Tidal setup and my own library pulled in. It's working great and I have full ability to play the Tidal Master quality....which I didnt with Plex. I dont really see much advantage to Roon over Plex except the Tital Master capability and little things like Roon giving you more of a bio and lyrics to what your listening too. Aside from that they have about the same capability. Except in favor of Plex, you can play your library anywhere....I can play over cellular and bluetooth my phone to my car. Pretty sure with Roon its local network only.

Hmmm, decisions decisions.
 

bluefuzz

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Not sure why someone wouldnt use Plex or Emby since they are free
Because I'm used to Kodi + TMM which are also both free and to my mind simpler and more reliable. I see no end of people having problems with Plex on various AV forums. I have no need of transcoding which is the only reason I can see to use Plex ...
I knew I'd outgrow it fast and need to upgrade harddrives. With Unraid your array can have mismatched drives.
???. Why would you outgrow it? There is no limit to the size or number of drives OMV supports and you can run mismatched drives easily. It's the recommended setup.
I cant recall, with OMV can you set up a Windows 10vm and do hardware passthrough making it perform pretty much just like a baremetal computer rather than a typical VM? To use for gaming and such?
OMV has a Virtualbox plugin to run VM's if needed. Obviously the hardware is the limiting factor for what sort of performance you get. OMV is basically vanilla Debian with a nice GUI, so anything you can do on a Debian server you can do with OMV ...
 
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SPOautos

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???. Why would you outgrow it? There is no limit to the size or number of drives OMV supports and you can run mismatched drives easily. It's the recommended setup.

I meant I knew I would outgrow the drives I started out with pretty quickly. Many setups require you to use the same size drives so if you want to add one it has to be just like your old one, or replace them all at once. I went with Unraid for the flexibility of upgrading drives.

OMV was on my list, cant recall exactly why I chose Unraid over it...probably something small. I've thought about too much since then lol. Either way, Unraid has been working great....and thinking back, it was $60 not $80....peanuts in the grand scheme of my electronics and such.

I've had zero problems with Plex, it is excellent. I think the problem most people run into is based around not having capable hardware for transcoding, especially for transcoding 4k. With SO many people serving Plex on things like Shield TV, ps4, NAS....it finds the limits of their hardware and network. Transcoding takes a lot of resources. I travel a lot and wanted transcoding for cellular when I'm traveling. I use every aspect of Plex...it all works great, you should try it out, it's very easy to setup. I dont know how much CPU your box has but if your not transcoding it doesnt use much resources at all.
 

rkbates

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Never used Unraid, but not keen on a single point of failure ie if your server goes down it's a major job to recover everything. For years I've been running distributed hardware with synchronised storage - recovery has always been quick and trivial and never lost any data.
Been using Plex for years with no problems (performs much better with Linux compared to Windows).
 

Aldoszx

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The better way to use a NAS server is to have RAID10 and, preferably, SAS HDDs.
That means you have to have a SAS RAID card.
For FreeNAS, you can use only a HBA card and use ZFS for RAID.
 
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