I tried Unraid for the FIRST time in 2024

32 thoughts on “I tried Unraid for the FIRST time in 2024”

• I still might try unraid in the future but it’s good to see a take on it. Happy with proxmox and truenas for the other elements

• im using unraid and like it, but if i were to look for a OS right now i'd steer clear of it because if the pricing. you pay 100+ euros just to get updates for a year and thats it, i was lucky to be grandfathered in to the pro version.
  another thing it has over truenas for example is that it can reliably spin down hard drives, i need it since the server is too loud during the night.
  tried doing the same thing on truenas but it would just randomly spin the back up, doesnt matter if you used the server or not

• Interesting, ya this hasn't changed my opinion on unraid. It really seems like it's good for those who know enough to be dangerous but not really capable of running more 'advanced' or enterprise level software, and/or simply need to make the most of one device to be 'jack of all, master of none' so they have a NAS and a hypervisor and containers on 1 box. I have a colleague who also runs unraid, "I work on this [we're in infrastructure] all day, I don't want to worry about it when I get home. I'm the opposite, despite having a personal lab at work, I also want to do more 'complicated' things at home. And much like you, I do have dedicated hardware for the job, so cramming it all into one machine isn't what I need, and at this point I'd go TrueNas Scale for that anyways. It's just not for me, but I'm glad they're here. I'm sure many have started with unraid and actually moved into IT careers when learning what can be done with servers just at home and can only imagine what they could do in a production environment. You summed it up well, but I would say 'Yes" carte blanc, but it depends. Someone whos in IT and doesn't want to be "IT" at home, or someone getting started, yes, else, no, try proxmox and truenas first.

• I love unraid for one reason. If the array will fail, you're not loosing all files. You can always take the drive out, and access the files that are there.

• intels IGPU SRIOV, works quite well on Unraid, oh and Starwinds free VSAN too. 😀

• I have been using unraid for a long long time. Its the most easy and stable and zero surprises. Proxmox is extremely difficult to debug

• There's a lot of plugins that should be default in unraid by now. Things like appdata backup, community applications, fix common problems, nerd tools, unassigned devices, quite a few of the dynamix plugins, ca auto update.
  One of the biggest benefits for me is the notifications and update of all plugins and containers. The other is that most configurations work and it notifies you if there is a conflict (such as a port). To this day I still don't know how to do port mappings and volume mappings from scratch. Nor do I want to know, so unraid is perfect.

• Also, Pro Tip: You can customize the colors beyond just setting dark mode. Settings > Display Settings, there's a few options for custom colors that accepts hex color codes. You can also set a custom header image as well.

• Word on the street is that a lot of the shortcomings of the hypervisor side of things will be getting fixed in 6.12.13 which is currently in Beta testing for community developers. I don't know what all is coming but a big one I know of is snapshots. I think they're also making it so that having an array isn't a requirement to create other pools. Currently you have to have at least 1 drive in the primary array.

  I've been using unraid for probably 6-8 years now and I love it and tinker with it every day. It is fun seeing someone completely new checking it out for the first time. There's a lot of stuff that was a learning curve for me too that now I take for granted so this was a fun video to watch to see how a newcomer sees it.

• Ahhh the many years of manaing Unix NFS and exportfs and all other things…

• Here i am as a fan of both Proxmox and Unraid… so what do I do : Run proxmox as the base os, run unraid on top of that – passing all the HDs.

• From this video, it looks like that you weren't ever really able to pass your GPU over to multiple containers.

  If Unraid can't do that, then I won't have a use for it.

• I got unraid for free from a friend when I was a beginner homelabber. It was my first server OS. Seemed quite appealing having a GUI for everything as a newbie. Set up the basics (kinda like seen in the video) but always kept hitting walls that stopped me from what I wanted to do. Most guides leading me into the terminal anyways.

  I definitely wouldn’t recommend unraid to anyone. Even though it’s a good starting point, the ui becomes redundant after a while when getting into more advanced tasks.

  I’m not familiar with the storage structure unraid has so it is not a point of consideration in my review. This is purely from a plugin/docker/vm standpoint. Though I’d probably recommend truenas over unraid for storage as well solely based on cost.

• Still debating on Unraid for m home server , Sure ples and such are the main job but i find using windows soo lacking et the UI is what makes is best for my smooth brain atm.

• you should look up the TRASH guide for downloading and such if you plan to use.

• CA is the name of the app store. "Community Applications"

• Awesome overview Tim thanks for sharing! Unraid is pretty great for beginner/non technical homelab learners like myself and others in the community.

• I have a few licence Lifetime versions. I use it as NAS and for Docker. Regards to NVIDIA some containers are more popular because the have howto's. I also did not see you assign the gpuid against the Docker container so it knows what card you are giving it

• 9:09 it is like when you add it to the `/etc/exports` you can check the boot file for the export statememt

• I went to Unraid from Windows Server Essentials 2012 using Storage Spaces. That change was amazing to me . Up to that point I was a Windows guy because that is what I had been using for years and was comfortable with. Since switching to Unraid, I've become more comfortable with Linux and Docker. I've even started playing with Kubernetes. I've now dipped my toes into Proxmox, but the x99 board i'm using is having werid issues, so i'm now running XCP-ng on that. But both of my Unraid servers are still running, they are mainly media servers for me. I hope you continue to tinker with Unraid, and i am really looking forward to the next version that is supposed to have an integrated proxy manager.

• I run an Ubuntu server vm in unraid. Whatever I don't want to do or can't do in unraid I simply do in the linux server vm. This pretty much handles all my homelab needs. And I used your Ubuntu server tutorial to setup that vm.

• Great video Tim. I'm currently running the Unraid Beta 6.13 with ZFS and Intel Arc support. It's pretty good. If you're looking at Unraid as a potential candidate, but want to utilize something you're more familiar with like ZFS, it's a beta option!

• Nice video Tim! I bought a license a while back to eventually try UNRAID. I just haven't had the time to do so. My go to is Proxmox with a virtualized TrueNAS Scale VM.

• Watching via a vm with gpu passthrough on unraid. Flawless once hyperv features are turned on.

• btw finding free unraid isn't hard

• What does linus got to do with it? Frankly surprised anyone still watches his technotainment.

• Unraid was my first foray into the homelab and home server world. And while I was already somewhat experienced with getting around in Linux from a user perspective, it still took some getting used to. The community for it is what really is amazing. While other products like TrueNAS have communities as well, I feel like Unraid is a closer fit for "enthusiasts" rather than "homelabbers". While people have used Unraid in an enterprise environment, in my opinion it is not really an enterprise product. Small business, maybe. I do still use it for experimenting and some network services but for pure NAS functionality I prefer my TrueNAS box I built later. I use both of these operating systems for different purposes. Unraid's killer feature by far is the Community Applications via Docker. I had never even heard of Docker let alone used it and it is a very good learning environment for that, as well as just getting containers installed quickly and easily. Nothing else comes close to that user experience. And if you plan to do modifications or scripting to the OS files, Unraid is a heavily modified Slackware based OS, so Slackware packages (.txz) are what you would want to use if just installing from binary. Slackware isn't as common out in the wild anymore, so sometimes that proves more of an annoyance than an asset though. Have fun!

• For what it's worth, unraid is based on slackware

• Thank you for an honest review. I checked out Unraid about the time I was looking at (and learning) Proxmox. Thank you for your tutorials sir. The Unraid disadvantage then was a lack of true parity between drives. It would allow you to add any drive of any size to the "Unraid". Your tutorial showed that Unraid fixed that issue and is making massive upgrades to their UI. At the end of the day, it's all docker. Thank you Unraid team and thank you Tim. Long live the home lab!!!

• I spent a year running unraid and constantly struggling with nvidia support and passthrough, 16:35 is my experience as well and I gave up and run everything on ubuntu and docker. Unraid makes a great NAS, but trying to run an application server on it in my experience was maddening.

• After testing Unraid for a few months – if a friend would ask me if I recommend it, I'll happily throw the unraid USB drive at their head. It might be a great system for people just needing a place for their movies and a container to play them. But such a system with wonky issues with shares, defaults that feel like the classic just 777 everything etc makes me 😢

• Son, you really need to take a step or two closer to your razor.

  edit..I see from your 'jump-cuts' that you at least shaved your neck.

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