Unraid Defunct?

[forest]

Hi,

 

I have been occasionally lurking in the Unraid forums for about 2.5 years now. It feels like the product never really gets updated, and the sole developer very rarely responds and disappears for months at a time.

 

Is this a product that anyone could reasonably consider in active development? Is this a product that anyone should buy if they want basic support and compatibility upgrades? Does the developer just let unraid sit and sell as he carries on with another life?

 

Just want to know before I make a purchase. Thanks.

[dikkiedirk]

Look here, it is still alive!

[graywolf]

sounds like a troll to me

[Helmonder]

Hi,

 

I have been occasionally lurking in the Unraid forums for about 2.5 years now. It feels like the product never really gets updated, and the sole developer very rarely responds and disappears for months at a time.

 

Is this a product that anyone could reasonably consider in active development? Is this a product that anyone should buy if they want basic support and compatibility upgrades? Does the developer just let unraid sit and sell as he carries on with another life?

 

Just want to know before I make a purchase. Thanks.

 

I got my licenses a couple of months ago and have been happy since. The 4.7 unraid system (which is what the license is for) worked off the bat without any issues. The only reason for 5.0 is support for 3TB drives, I have run beta 14 and have had no issues with it. Am now running RC 1 without issues and am expecting to run RC2 and final without issues.

 

The basic product is rock-solid (except some specific hardware issues that are largely the result of the kernal that is not a specific unraid product).

 

The support community is excellent, there is a lot of extra stuff developped that enhances unraid above what the basic product is. Support for those components is great. Personally I have not had any issues with the core product, if you check the forum you should say that that is the case for the larger amount of users.

[forest]

I guess my concern is not that there isn't a large and involved community, my concern is that the development seems lackluster at best.

 

I've been bitten before by great software that, after a few years, goes out to pasture. I don't want to spend the time and money on an unraid system where basic upgrades come at the same rate as leap years.

 

Something like Freenas I have confidence in, and my decision would be easy if one could dynamically expand the pool in zfs.

[S80_UK]

It's pretty obvious from the postings over the past week that there is active development.  Yes, it slows down from time to time, and yes the developer is not always active on the forum, and the current release candidate version has been through a very prolonged beta cycle.  But a lot of that has been due to the expectation that kernel related issues would be resolved in a timely manner when they have not been (and the Linux kernel is not under the developers direct control, of course).  Despite absences from the forum, the developer does seem to commit considerable time to direct customer support, and has recently committed to moving to new business premises and to changing the legal status of the company (according to my limited understanding of the way these things work in the US), all of which suggests that they are committed to the future of the product.

 

Any great software can "go out to pasture" for a variety of reasons.  In my view the question should always be, does the software do what you want it to do at the time that you buy it and at a price that you consider to be fair value?  For me, with unRAID, the answer was Yes.  On that basis, any subsequent development or new features are an added bonus and not something that I feel I should have as a right.

[BRiT]

Are you f'ing blind to not notice the 2 Release Candidates on the 5.0 front in the past week alone? And to not notice the community involvement in releasing plugins and addons at a frantic pace for the base product?

[graywolf]

Are you f'ing blind to not notice the 2 Release Candidates on the 5.0 front in the past week alone? And to not notice the community involvement in releasing plugins and addons at a frantic pace for the base product?

 

Exact reason why I think the OP is just trolling.

 

Otherwise, if he had been reading the forums for 2.5 years like he said (although only registered for 1 yr) he would already know the answers to his questions and the likely responses he would get.

 

 

[Influencer]

Otherwise, if he had been reading the forums for 2.5 years like he said (although only registered for 1 yr) he would already know the answers to his questions and the likely responses he would get.

 

Can't base it off the time registered, not that I think thats your sole reason for your opinion. I have "lurked" around the forums for quite some time as well, but have only been registered since February of this year. I was interested in the product, kept tabs on it as well as ZFS, flexraid, and others. Actually, up until a month before I registered, I was leaning towards WHS, but on a last study binge I decided unRAID was right for me.

 

Anywho, I do not consider unRAID to be a dead product by any means.

[RobJ]

Guys, may I respectfully request that you always treat other users with respect, especially new users?  I believe it is always best to give others the benefit of the doubt.  And I feel that any time you publicly disrespect one user, numerous other lurkers are dissuaded from de-lurking.

[mrmachine]

unRAID development is pretty stagnant, in my opinion.

 

Ignoring the recent RC, 5.0 has been in "beta" since forever now. I don't know if the unRAID beta/RC life cycle is typical of other projects. There doesn't seem to be a solid development or release road map.

 

For the actual product, when you don't have any hardware failures, it works great. But that is the same with almost any system.

 

When you do have hardware failures, it can be pretty frustrating to depend almost solely on community support, however good it is. There are definitely very helpful and knowledgeable people here, but it can be way too easy, especially for non-technical people and people who don't love spending hours tinkering at a command prompt, to screw things up and lose data.

 

Again, this is just my opinion. I really love the idea of unRAID, which is RAID4 without striping, for benefits like spinning down drives when not in use, and only losing drives with failures and not the whole array when you suffer multiple failures.

 

But I really think unRAID needs a lot more polish, official support, and guidance in the web interface for non-technical users.

 

unRAID needs to do a better job of detecting and informing users when there is a problem, and guiding them through the steps to recovery, and without making them log in as root via SSH/telnet or at the console. Relying on a community support forum, however good it is, doesn't cut it in my eyes.

 

All that said, while I've thought about switching to an alternative solution, I'm still using unRAID, even as I am facing a hardware issue right now. Any kind of alternative system that involves striping, scares me. I've had traditional RAID go wrong on my too many times, and lost whole arrays because of it.

 

However, I think the single parity disk idea has problems as well. I would like to see a system that is easy to use which can concatenate (not stripe) a bunch of RAID mirrors, combined with a way to balance your writes across those mirror sets like unRAID does with individual disks, and spinning down mirror sets when not in use.

 

Maybe that system is already out there, and I just missed it or have forgotten about it.

 

[reggie14]

But a lot of that has been due to the expectation that kernel related issues would be resolved in a timely manner when they have not been (and the Linux kernel is not under the developers direct control, of course).  Despite absences from the forum, the developer does seem to commit considerable time to direct customer support, and has recently committed to moving to new business premises and to changing the legal status of the company (according to my limited understanding of the way these things work in the US), all of which suggests that they are committed to the future of the product.

 

I would be far more sympathetic to Tom on the kernel incompatibility issues if it didn't seem like a fair amount of the problem there was due to his negligence.  It didn't seem like he tried to work around it.  It wasn't until he put out RC1 and had several people complain that he did something about it.  He seemed to say he didn't think there was a problem, despite the fact that the LSI issues were well-known on the forum.  Once he accepted there was a problem it seemed to only take him a day or two to put out a workaround.  I lost a lot of confidence in Tom over the handling of that issue.  It really seems like he checked out for 6 months after beta12 and that he wasn't paying attention to testers until the RC1 thread went up. 

 

The v5 beta issues, in my opinion, further demonstrate the need for a good bug/issue tracking system.

[reggie14]

Are you f'ing blind to not notice the 2 Release Candidates on the 5.0 front in the past week alone? And to not notice the community involvement in releasing plugins and addons at a frantic pace for the base product?

 

I mostly agree with your sentiment, but to be fair, at the time of his post RC1 had been pulled (though the thread was still there) and pre-RC2 was just in a post buried in the RC1 thread (with no indication it existed in the OP).

[WeeboTech]

I can't believe what I'm reading here.

 

We've had a working 4.7 stable product for quite a long time.

The free upgrade did not work as expected, and as we all now know, Tom  had to drop to an older kernel to get things working more reliable.  Then the kernel driver had to be adjusted for timing factors.

 

In addition, Tom's been letting us know there was a move, a business level change to a new corporation class and new hardware on the horizon.  The Forum was upgraded, then the site was migrated to a new virtual server service so that we do not get out of bandwidth messages when we use the forum allot.

 

I like how Tom put it out there....

You guys all need to calm down. 

 

 

--- SNIP SNIP --

 

 

If you have specific company questions or gripes, please email me directly: [email protected].

 

As for perception of my lack of involvement, rest assured I do nothing but work my ass off, sorry if that's not reflected in constant forum updates.

Granted the software didn't move as fast as we like, but we've been given tidbits about what's going on as much as possible for the situations occurring.

 

I'm kinda embarrassed that people are harping on lack of stability on the free beta upgrade.

In addition it was worked on by Tom AND other members of the community putting out patches and kernel upgrades.

For the record, the latest kernels failed for them too.

 

 

It feels like an angry mob with a bunch of pitchforks just waiting to poke and burn'em at the stake.  Gimme a break some of these points are really drama fodder and flame bait.

 

 

If it were ready and reliable, it would have been done.

[WeeboTech]

The v5 beta issues, in my opinion, further demonstrate the need for a good bug/issue tracking system.

 

 

Without a doubt. This would go a long way towards keeping the proper problem areas in the forefront.

I think the forum format fails for this kind of support/use.

[StevenD]

When you do have hardware failures, it can be pretty frustrating to depend almost solely on community support, however good it is. There are definitely very helpful and knowledgeable people here, but it can be way too easy, especially for non-technical people and people who don't love spending hours tinkering at a command prompt, to screw things up and lose data.

 

 

While I might agree with you on a couple of points, I find it VERY hard to believe that "non-technical" people would even attempt an unRAID (or FreeNAS or FlexRAID or OpenFiler) installation.  If they do realize they need some storage, they are going to run down to Best Buy and pick up a D-Link or Netgear NAS.

 

And with unRAID (and the others), you don't have to "tinker" if you don't want to.  Out of the box, it does as advertised.  I built a test box for 5.0 the other night in about 15 minutes.  Most of the issues are because of add-ons, virtualization or upgrading hardware.  unRAID was not designed to run on top of ESXi or be a torrent downloader.

 

I'm not going to be an apologist for Tom/unRAID, as I feel some better communication is in order, and would eliminate most of these types of threads, but unRAID just works!  I've been using it for about four years now, without a single hiccup.  <knocks on wood>

[Johnm]

I keep seeing "more support, more info, more patches, more this, more that..."

 

While i keep seeing people reminding everyone that we bought 4.7.. the beta is free. use at your own risk...

 

Yes, I'll admit that at times the updates can seem a little stale. yes there were a few broken promises . but that is the normal with IT in general, especially software dev all over the world.

 

Lets not forget at how much you paid. $150 for 2 Pro Licenses?

free upgrades for life and pretty decent forum support and i hear pretty good offline support if you're in a bind...

 

If you want Microsoft level support or Sun level of support. you would have to pay $1000's for all of that..

 

the price of licenses would have to go up if this was Toms only source of income. if you expect him to hire a staff for tech support... even higher prices..

 

I'm sorry but if this product cost more then it does now. I would have to seriously consider other options...

 

Bottom line is I'm happy. my data is safe. I could be happier once in a while.. but it is not worth shaking my fist at.

 

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.. That one of the main uses for the internet these days... sharing those opinions.

[Influencer]

The v5 beta issues, in my opinion, further demonstrate the need for a good bug/issue tracking system.

 

 

Without a doubt. This would go a long way towards keeping the proper problem areas in the forefront.

I think the forum format fails for this kind of support/use.

 

/climbs up on soap box

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18615.0

 

If some interest was generated, maybe Tom would give this a try. I think it would help out tremendously.

 

  It didn't seem like he tried to work around it.  It wasn't until he put out RC1 and had several people complain that he did something about it.  He seemed to say he didn't think there was a problem, despite the fact that the LSI issues were well-known on the forum.  Once he accepted there was a problem it seemed to only take him a day or two to put out a workaround.

 

As is apparent I've been more-or-less ignoring this LSI issue for these reasons:

- these cards were very expensive when they first came out, so I never purchased one

- lots of talk on various forums of people re-flashing the cards, so I thought the issue might go away on it's own

- lots of talk on various forums of it working on some kernels, and not on others, so I thought a kernel update might solve the issue

- LSI is notorious for requiring download of their custom driver, though apparently this is not the case here

- very few support emails complaining of this issue (far more emails for other issues)

 

The reason he's been updating kernels for beta's, hoping it would solve the issue. He wasn't saying he thought there wasn't a problem, just that he hoped it would "go away" because it worked, then it didn't work, so the obvious answer would be a kernel issue. Upgraded kernel = more support, backing up to a older kernel breaks the new support, so screw customer B so customer A is happy?

 

And apparently not many e-mails went out about the issue. Forums are for general support and community support, if there are serious problems, such as with the LSI card, e-mail limetech, it is MUCH more likely to be noticed in an e-mail than by Tom coming across the thread. As everyone has noted, these forums are very active so threads get buried quickly.

[Joe L.]

The v5 beta issues, in my opinion, further demonstrate the need for a good bug/issue tracking system.

 

 

Without a doubt. This would go a long way towards keeping the proper problem areas in the forefront.

I think the forum format fails for this kind of support/use.

+1

[Johnm]

I do agree. a running list of known bugs helps both users and developers.

[pantner]

I only have one thing to say....

 

[WeeboTech]

I only have one thing to say....

 

 

 

Let's not go down that road, It's flame/drama bait.

 

Post facts which support either side of a debate and it will keep the temperature on key.

 

The only reason I began posting what I did was all of the facts were not explored.

 

People get upset when their goal is not in the forefront.

 

I wanted to remind others that tasks for unRAID and limetech in general have been moving along.  Albeit not as fast as they like, but there have been other tasks occurring for the company and product.

 

 

[RobJ]

I strongly agree with the comments about a bug tracking product or process.  Since we don't have one yet, I created a Wiki page UnRAID Bug Tracking.  It is just a trial page, completely depends on users keeping it up to date (and we know how undependable that is!), comes way short of any bug tracking solution out there, perhaps falls too far short to be useful, but who knows ... could be helpful until someone gets something better up and running.  Please edit away, hack it to pieces, until it begins to work the way you want it to (well, sort of...).

 

If nothing else, this page AND its shortcomings will increase the interest in moving to a true bug tracking solution!

 

Perhaps I should post this also in the RC2 thread...

[bonienl]

I like the initiative, though with such a free format it can go either way: good or bad... 

 

Btw didn't Limetech start a similar initiative at the time: http://download.lime-technology.com/develop/infusions/aw_todo/project.php?id=1&view=roadmap

[WeeboTech]

I strongly agree with the comments about a bug tracking product or process.  Since we don't have one yet, I created a Wiki page UnRAID Bug Tracking.  It is just a trial page, completely depends on users keeping it up to date (and we know how undependable that is!), comes way short of any bug tracking solution out there, perhaps falls too far short to be useful, but who knows ... could be helpful until someone gets something better up and running.  Please edit away, hack it to pieces, until it begins to work the way you want it to (well, sort of...).

 

If nothing else, this page AND its shortcomings will increase the interest in moving to a true bug tracking solution!

 

Perhaps I should post this also in the RC2 thread...

 

Great Job!!

 

I like the initiative, though with such a free format it can go either way: good or bad... 

 

Btw didn't Limetech start a similar initiative at the time: http://download.lime-technology.com/develop/infusions/aw_todo/project.php?id=1&view=roadmap

 

I thought the roadmap was more of a todo list of goals, then bugtracking, although it could be used in that manner.