FlexRAID 2.0 final released

Just FYI. FlexRAID 2.0 has gone final (and it is commercial product from now on). Windows version is up now and Linux version is coming soon.

• Info about FlexRAID: http://www.flexraid.com/2011/09/02/what-is-flexraid/
• More info about final release: http://forum.flexraid.com/index.php/topic,543.0.html (well, there isn't much to see)
• Order page, and prices: http://www.flexraid.com/2012/03/16/flexraid-order-page/ (download link can be found here too)
  

There is no trial version, but it is supposed to be coming in future versions.

Note: FlexRAID is on sale until April 15th, 2012 (sale prices subject to change prior to sale end date).

I hope this doesn't sound like a spam? I'm in no way affiliated with FlexRAID, but I'm only happy user of it. I just wanted to bring this info here too - for other (media) storage monster builders like me.

Oh I've been waiting, my current Beta expires in a few days been getting the sweats...

It's been serving me well, can't wait to get off the Beta train though...

FlexRAID is great. I only dropped i because I thought the author was dropping it to concentrate on his next project.

(2012-03-19 20:03)patseguin Wrote:  FlexRAID is great. I only dropped i because I thought the author was dropping it to concentrate on his next project.

Nope there is no intention of dropping Flexraid even if he has already started work NZFS. I bough my licenses last night for Raid snapshot. I dont use the pooling because i already have Drivepool for that since its for my WHS2011

I'm a pretty happy unRAID user but i hear a great deal about FlexRAID. Can anyone compare\contrast between the two? I see that Flex allows for drive spindown like unRAID so that's a plus. What I'm most interested in would probably be encryption. For some reason getting volume encryption with unRAID hasn't been possible and it's fallen off of the roadmap. As someone who would truly NOT like to have someone pawing through my stuff should anything be taken this is of interest to me! Password at boot and then unlock the sucker. ZFS with dedupe has also interested me but I doubt I'd save much storing videos.

Anyway, tell me more :-) And yeah I'm looking over their site too but I want to hear from users who are happy and yeah those who dumped it too. A trial would be nice but most of my hardware is in use with unRAID lol!

I'm a fairly novice user. I have a modest HTPC setup (three clients plus a couple iPads) and needed something to serve up content. I wanted something that could serve up media on my network, allow external viewing of content, run a few services I've been running, ventrillo, RDP, etc.

Tried and successfully ran a Linux server for about a year, but it quickly became unmanageable. It was Ubuntu server running MDADM for software raid 5 on 4, 1TB drives. It worked well, however updates became problematic, figuring out how to do anything seemed like a chore. I wanted to add a TV backend to it and getting it working was a nightmare. I wanted HDHomerun support along with a built in tuner. Never got it working, between the custom kernel and/or the drivers, I had met my match.

I was running out of space, so I decide to switch to Windows for the TV server. Started with FlexRAID, and is been a peach from almost the beginning. Windows for me is so much easier to manage. Drivers have never been an issue, got Mediaportal up and running nicely, my voice communication work great, Orb is going strong giving me access to my media while away.

I'm using FlexRAID in storage pool mode with snapshot raid. Still 4 drives, (2TB this time) with one of them for parity. Media is shared everywhere in the house, no problems throwing around 3 HD rips to the different PCs. Torrents work fine directly to the pool (this was a problem in the past) as well as Sickbeard/Couchpotato.

The GUI was I bit of a chore to figure out at first, but it's getting a lot better and more intuitive as the ave gotten laser to 2.0 final. I haven't installed final yet. I'm thinking of going real time raid and see what's doing.

I'm very happy I made the switch...

(2012-03-20 02:56)Kirky99 Wrote:  I'm thinking of going real time raid and see what's doing.

I'm very happy I made the switch...

Its not worth it if your pool is for mainly static stuff and RT isnt as stable as snapshot

(2012-03-20 00:13)BLKMGK Wrote:  I'm a pretty happy unRAID user but i hear a great deal about FlexRAID. Can anyone compare\contrast between the two? I see that Flex allows for drive spindown like unRAID so that's a plus. What I'm most interested in would probably be encryption. For some reason getting volume encryption with unRAID hasn't been possible and it's fallen off of the roadmap. As someone who would truly NOT like to have someone pawing through my stuff should anything be taken this is of interest to me! Password at boot and then unlock the sucker. ZFS with dedupe has also interested me but I doubt I'd save much storing videos.

Anyway, tell me more :-) And yeah I'm looking over their site too but I want to hear from users who are happy and yeah those who dumped it too. A trial would be nice but most of my hardware is in use with unRAID lol!

FlexRaid's main advantage over unRaid is the ability to run over top of unix or Windows, so you don't need a separate box or try and run inside a VM. It also doesn't have the same drive limitation that unRaid has and (currently) is half the price of unRaid. There is a web-based console for managing and creating running from a single gui. FlexRaid also allows you to set multiple parity disks or create more then one array based on your needs.

The FlexRaid author just went commercial and the software he released as final. I'm not sure he's gotten a trial for the new version yet, but he has stated its in the works. I believe he's still tweaking the final release of the unix build. If I recall, the trial will have a drive limit of some sort.

Actually, FlexRAID is a quite funny little beast, since it can protect folders too, instead of drives. For (windows) example you might want to protect your drive D and E and only your "Music" folder from drive F.

Or in my case, I have mounted my media storage drives (12 drives) to folders like this:

• C:\Pool\DRU-01
• C:\Pool\DRU-02
• C:\Pool\DRU-03
• [...]
• C:\Pool\DRU-12
• C:\Pool\PPU-01 (used as a parity)
  

I have pooled those 12 drives to one big drive (as a drive P: / 20 TB) so I don't have to worry which one of my drives has enough space left for my data. Now, if for some reason I decide NOT to use FlexRAID anymore, all my data is still available, since FlexRAID doesn't touch my original data.

FlexRAID isn't perfect for everyone, but for me it is. I didn't want to build another box for storage only. Now my W2008R2 frankenserver has many roles: NAS / XBMC / DVB-T PVR (4 tuners) / VMWare Workstation host (Ubuntu Server without gui and WHS v1 for client backups) / AD+DNS+DCHP ...

I needed something that sits on top of existing filesystem and FlexRAID is just the right poison for me. If my W2008R2 for some reason dies, all my "FlexRAID protected" data is still readable and after new OS install I can just reinstall FlexRAID, recalculate parity and pool my drives again.This is quite neat, in my opinion.

But I am still looking closely what Microsoft's new and upcoming Storage Spaces (parity mode) brings to the table. Deduplication? I don't know how useful that is with media files. Waiting for "Server 8" and some reviews first...

You mention folders, but I believe you can also include network shares in your equation too... Never tried it, but it sounded interesting...