First, I know that Unraid is not FOSS and I’m a month late, just to get that out of the way. But for those that are running Unraid and haven’t updated to >7.3.0, there’s good reason to (other than for security patches): internal boot and TPM licensing.
This update allows you to boot from an internal drive, no more chewing up flash drives. As a long time Unraid user (for over a decade), this was a long time coming. My server ate several flash drives. Setting it up was a breeze, once I updated to 7.3.x, the wizard to configure it came up and I was able to move it to one of my internal SSDs. All I had to do after that was go into the BIOS and set the boot priority correctly.
Internal boot works without a TPM, however you’d still need the flash drive with your license on it plugged in at boot. If you have a TPM on your server, though, you can migrate your license from your flash to your TPM, with another simple wizard. After migration, you no longer need a boot flash drive.
I had to get a Supermicro AOM-TPM-9665V TPM chip for my motherboard, but I’ve got it all set now. It’s a relief to no longer have to rely on flash drives now - my server’s rear exhaust fans were blowing directly on them, causing them to overheat and eventually crash my server.
Unraid posted about this in their blog here: https://unraid.net/blog/unraid-7-3-0
That’s pretty neat that the TPM can be used that way, maybe worth migrating over. The flash drive always made me so nervous.
So after the migration, my boot drive and flash drive could both fail, and I could plug in a new unraid boot/flash drive, it’d read my license, and it’d just work?
Yep! Your license would be tied to your TPM GUID and not your flash drive after migration. You might have to activate your license if it’s a fresh install, but it should be read from your TPM.
Very neat! I’ll try it out sometime. What does it use for a boot device? Cache drive?
You can use your cache drive for internal boot too, though it’s likely easier to use a separate drive
Oh really? I didn’t know that was supported, good to know.
It uses an individual drive for it - so your cache and array are separate and you’ll need to install a drive for boot purposes. It does support pooling though, so you can have multiple boot drives in the boot pool, for example. In that case, it will fail over to the secondary drive if your primary dies.