FlexRAID 2.0 final released
#1
Information 
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.

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. Big Grin
Kodi @ Windows Server 2012 R2 | Pulse-Eight USB-CEC Adapter
Reply
#2
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...
Reply
#3
FlexRAID is great. I only dropped i because I thought the author was dropping it to concentrate on his next project.
Server: Synology Diskstation 1511+ with 8x WD Red NAS 3TB drives, DSM 5.2
Main HTPC: Home Built i3, 8GB RAM, Corsair 128GB SSD, nVidia 630GTX, Harmony Home Control, Pioneer VSX-53, Panasonic VT30 65" 3D TV, Windows 10, Isengard
Bedroom HTPC: Zotac-ID 41 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Rii micro keyboard remote, Samsung HW-E550, Sony 32" Google TV, OpenElec 6.0 beta 4
Reply
#4
(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
Image

If my replies help you, please click on my reputation Image below :) thanks :)
Reply
#5
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!
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
Reply
#6
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...
Reply
#7
(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
Image

If my replies help you, please click on my reputation Image below :) thanks :)
Reply
#8
(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.
Reply
#9
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...
Kodi @ Windows Server 2012 R2 | Pulse-Eight USB-CEC Adapter
Reply
#10
You mention folders, but I believe you can also include network shares in your equation too... Never tried it, but it sounded interesting...
Reply
#11
(2012-03-21, 12:37)Kirky99 Wrote: You mention folders, but I believe you can also include network shares in your equation too... Never tried it, but it sounded interesting...

Yes you can and it works fine
Image

If my replies help you, please click on my reputation Image below :) thanks :)
Reply
#12
I found FlexRAID to be far and away a better solution than unRAID. Just something about unRAID kind of put me off, maybe entering archaic command line commands to prep the drives for 3 days, I don't know, FlexRAID is a wonderful product though.
Server: Synology Diskstation 1511+ with 8x WD Red NAS 3TB drives, DSM 5.2
Main HTPC: Home Built i3, 8GB RAM, Corsair 128GB SSD, nVidia 630GTX, Harmony Home Control, Pioneer VSX-53, Panasonic VT30 65" 3D TV, Windows 10, Isengard
Bedroom HTPC: Zotac-ID 41 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Rii micro keyboard remote, Samsung HW-E550, Sony 32" Google TV, OpenElec 6.0 beta 4
Reply
#13
you mean enter a command into Linux...you know the same thing that A LOT of people do here with xbmc
maybe you haven't caught on to that yet

also it could be considered a good idea to actually run a new hard drive through some paces to make sure that it is actually good....doesn't matter what you are going to use that drive for

how long did you use flexraid to know it is a wonderful product
I am not saying that it is not.....Im just saying please get an understanding about something before bashing or praising it
WE ALL WE GOT
Reply
#14
There is also the fact that i think unraid only supports 1 disk failure and Flexraid supports multiple disk failures...this is what really sold me to FR:

http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/03/26/what...-spanning/
http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/08/20/unde...d-engines/ (Tx Raid mostly)

I have been using Flexraid since 2010
Image

If my replies help you, please click on my reputation Image below :) thanks :)
Reply
#15
(2012-03-21, 18:40)saitoh183 Wrote: There is also the fact that i think unraid only supports 1 disk failure and Flexraid supports multiple disk failures...this is what really sold me to FR:

With Unraid you can have multiple disk failures, and still be able to access the data on all the other disks. You won't be able to rebuild everything, but you'll still be able to access the files on good disks. Depending on the problem with the failed disks you may still be able to pull data off them.

In order to do this you'll probably want to mount the disk on another system.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
FlexRAID 2.0 final released1