Unraid OS: NAS Server Operating System and Virtualization

We present a solution that will blow your imagination. The Unraid operating system is what you need to be able to accomplish all your goals without having to worry about spending too much money on hardware. There are activities such as online games, the use of multiple operating systems (Virtualization) and video production / editing that do require many computer resources, in addition, Unraid is an ideal operating system to use as a powerful NAS server and take out the most of your computer. You just need to download the necessary software, make some configuration adjustments and you will have a world of possibilities to combine hardware components.

Introduction to Unraid OS

Unraid OS is an operating system that is aimed at fans of multimedia media, gamers and other data intensive users, especially those who love NAS servers. The objective of this operating system is for these users to have maximum control over their data, media, applications and desktops, using practically any combination of hardware.

Unraid OS

Unraid is characterized by being a very easy to use solution. It is flexible and scalable so it will not be a problem if your needs change eventually. Something very important is that its modularity allows any upgrade that you can think of to make to your hardware combinations can be carried out in minutes. Not only will you be able to customize the hardware components, but also all the necessary software and operating systems, since it supports virtualization and Docker.

According to the official Unraid portal itself, you will be able to break any barrier regarding how to take advantage of an operating system, its hardware and software components. This solution will allow you to partition system resources for storage and protection. In addition, you can run any application you need like any other operating system. On the other hand, you can create virtual machines in isolated environments. In this way, they will perform better and you will be able to get the most out of the characteristics that you assigned to them.

Unraid OS is an operating system that can be used by video producers to broadcast digital content. These professionals to whom we could add musicians, photographers, media publishers, and music collectors have extensive libraries. Thanks to Unraid, you can reduce your initial cost to work with two units and scale when your needs increase.

It can also be benefited by users looking for data storage such as 3D designers and animators. In this case they use it to store local files that can be accessed quickly, that is, it performs the functions of a NAS server, in addition, it can be used with Apple Time Machine and Windows Backup so that we archive large amounts of files to which we access infrequently on our local devices.

The other segment is the hardcore gamers who require media servers to build their custom systems. Finally, we have the software engineers, game development studios, and virtual reality designers who are users who work with various operating systems. The use of Unraid OS will allow to test the software on multiple platforms, operating systems and devices accessing a single system.

An interesting fact that we think is the most important is that this variant of the operating system is much lighter than any other. For example, if you are going to perform a clean installation of Windows on a computer (it does not have a virtual machine), it will require at least 15 GB. However, the required disk space will increase over time. Especially if you are compliant with regards to updates.

If we talk about Unraid, the disk space requirement is minimal. At the time of writing this article, version 6.8.3 is 213MB. It is clear that it is much smaller than Windows and any other traditional operating system.

Minimum requirements to install Unraid OS 6 and how to install

Now we are going to talk about the minimum requirements for the installation of Unraid OS 6. In this case we need a processor with 64-bit capacity at 1.0 GHz or higher with at least 2 GB of RAM. We also need to have Linux hardware driver support for USB, Ethernet and storage controllers. In addition, it requires two hard drives to guarantee data protection with a parity disk, that is, it uses a RAID 1. However, we should add additional requirements in the case of wanting to add applications or virtual machines.

As for the way of installation, it is done by using a USB memory. As for this USB memory, it has to have a minimum size of 1 GB and it is recommended to use a good brand. In addition, they comment that USB 2.0 is better because they are more reliable than USB 3.0 and that with the latter you do not get better performance.

The best and easiest way to install it is with the USB Creator tool that has versions for MAC and Windows. Once the software is installed we can buy a registration key or request a trial one. You can also do a manual installation and here is a documentation with the introduction to Unraid OS 6 .

Unraid OS as a storage NAS server and more

With Unraid OS we are faced with the possibility of using it as:

  1. Network attached storage.
  2. Application server.
  3. Virtualization host.

When it comes to network-attached storage, a separate approach is taken from the storage hardware that we have attached to our network. Thus, we can manage a series of hard drives that can vary in brand, size and speed. Since it doesn’t matter what those disks look like, it allows us to easily scale and add more without having to rebalance the data.

We can also use it as an application server we can use any x86 application based on Windows or Linux. In addition, these applications can be placed in isolated runtime environments to avoid conflicts. Another way, such as Unraid OS virtualization host leveraging a hypervisor, allows you to divide the resources of virtualized guests in a more secure and isolated way. Thus we can assign virtual machines a wider range of resources than what Docker containers offer us.

Then again, we can specialize the system for digital media creators. In this way, we found an easy to configure and use solution for them to create their own personal media server. In that sense you can choose from a wide variety of media service applications to run on your server such as Plex Media Server, Kodi, Myth, and more.

As for gamers, it allows them to consolidate their server and gaming platform in a single machine to save money. This will make it easier for them to buy better components more practical.

For users of data storage it allows two very interesting things:

  1. Only turn on the units you are using to reduce noise and power consumption.
  2. It allows you to mix drives of different sizes, speeds, brands and protocols as well as making it easy to add storage.

Finally, Unraid OS will allow users of multiple operating systems to run multiple operating systems at the same time on a single machine to facilitate testing.