Multiple licenses for big array? [solved]

So I plan on building one of those storage pods by 45drives.com but I'll be making it out of wood. I hope to house about 45 drives in one enclosure like the one they're selling on their website. My question is this, since one license is only good for about 20-25 drives I would have to purchase a second one. However, how would I do this for the same box (provided I bought all the drives)? Wouldn't the software tie the original 1st license to my hardware and say it can't take on a second license?

Can't have 2 arrays in one unRaid server.

Unraid by itself can't currently do what you want. The only way I can think to even attempt supporting that many drives with one motherboard using unraid would be to set up 2 virtual unraid servers under esxi with passthrough drive controllers. Showing the contents of both servers under a single mount point would be challenging as well.

As noted, the maximum # of data drives in an UnRAID array is 23 -- a Pro license supports 23 data drives plus a parity and a cache drive.    To build 2 arrays in one of these pods, you'd need two physically separate computer systems, with enough capacity to handle 45 SATA devices.  Certainly an interesting challenge -- although you could probably do it with mini-ITX boards.

And if you did it, you wouldn't have a single large storage array -- you'd have TWO large arrays (perhaps Tower1 and Tower2).    Bottom line:  UnRAID isn't the right OS to choose if you want a single array that addresses that many disks.    On the other hand, you also wouldn't want that much data only protected by a single parity drive !!

Well I like the simplicity of unRAID so I might just separate them into two separate boxes. I could go with FreeNAS but then comes the downside and complexity of expanding ZFS arrays. So, I'll probably just do that and get the two licenses. Also, I've seen Rocket Sata cards that support 45 drives but they're $700 a piece.

I've seen Rocket Sata cards that support 45 drives but they're $700 a piece.

Where have you seen these?    The highest-capacity card I'm aware of is the Highpoint Rocket 750, which supports 40 drives.

You could possibly get away with using an Areca card to provide a consolidated view of 'some' drives, thus providing a unRAID over RAID view.

While I do not recommend it, it's possible.  I've done it before for the parity drive.

Create some RAID0 drives, pair them off and add them into unRAID.

unRAID cannot spin these down, but the areca controller can.

This could be a real PITA to manage as some drives would be RAID0 pairs and others would be single drives.

Still that's allot of drives to be managed in this way.

I might consider two towers, or use ESX/XEN to virtualize two unRAID servers bitting the bullet regarding consolidated view of everything.

You could also ask Tom where his plans are to increase the drive count.

However, that in itself could be an issue in regards to safe keeping of your data.  I.E. 1 parity drive for so many data drives.

Not sure where I read it, but doesn't unRaid have an issue if the SATA drives go past sdz. I believe the next device would be sdaa, and I don't think unRaid is able to handle 4 character devices.

Is this true?

Not sure where I read it, but doesn't unRaid have an issue if the SATA drives go past sdz. I believe the next device would be sdaa, and I don't think unRaid is able to handle 4 character devices.

 

Is this true?

You could possibly get away with using an Areca card to provide a consolidated view of 'some' drives, thus providing a unRAID over RAID view.

 

While I do not recommend it, it's possible.  I've done it before for the parity drive.

 

Create some RAID0 drives, pair them off and add them into unRAID.

unRAID cannot spin these down, but the areca controller can.

 

This could be a real PITA to manage as some drives would be RAID0 pairs and others would be single drives.

 

Still that's allot of drives to be managed in this way.

I might consider two towers, or use ESX/XEN to virtualize two unRAID servers bitting the bullet regarding consolidated view of everything.

 

You could also ask Tom where his plans are to increase the drive count.

However, that in itself could be an issue in regards to safe keeping of your data.  I.E. 1 parity drive for so many data drives.

If parity could be increased to 2 or more drives similar to how FreeNAS has its pooled drives with ZFS then that would probably work if the drive count did ever increase in future updates.

I don't think that would happen though seeing as most people use Linux distros and a combination of RAID cards or rack-mounts from Dell or something if they're spending tons of money on drives so there's really no point because the current limits of unRAID satisfy most users.

By the way, this is only a hypothetical situation because at most I'd probably only be able to afford 16 drives at a time.

You could possibly get away with using an Areca card to provide a consolidated view of 'some' drives, thus providing a unRAID over RAID view.

 

While I do not recommend it, it's possible.  I've done it before for the parity drive.

 

Create some RAID0 drives, pair them off and add them into unRAID.

unRAID cannot spin these down, but the areca controller can.

 

This could be a real PITA to manage as some drives would be RAID0 pairs and others would be single drives.

 

Still that's allot of drives to be managed in this way.

I might consider two towers, or use ESX/XEN to virtualize two unRAID servers bitting the bullet regarding consolidated view of everything.

 

You could also ask Tom where his plans are to increase the drive count.

However, that in itself could be an issue in regards to safe keeping of your data.  I.E. 1 parity drive for so many data drives.

 

If parity could be increased to 2 or more drives similar to how FreeNAS has its pooled drives with ZFS then that would probably work if the drive count did ever increase in future updates.

 

I don't think that would happen though seeing as most people use Linux distros and a combination of RAID cards or rack-mounts from Dell or something if they're spending tons of money on drives so there's really no point because the current limits of unRAID satisfy most users.

 

By the way, this is only a hypothetical situation because at most I'd probably only be able to afford 16 drives at a time.

Given the current state of monitoring. I would never advise having an array that wide anyway.

In the future with some sort of automated smart long test, badblocks test and file change monitoring, then possibly.

Not sure where I read it, but doesn't unRaid have an issue if the SATA drives go past sdz. I believe the next device would be sdaa, and I don't think unRaid is able to handle 4 character devices.

 

Is this true?

I think that is the reason for the 23 data drive limit. 23 data + 1 parity + 1 cache + 1 flash = 26 letters of the alphabet.

This is correct.