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Unraid

A commercial (paid license, free 30-day trial) NAS/hypervisor OS that boots from a USB flash drive, with flexible mixed-size-disk storage, Docker, and VM support.

Target: Dedicated hardware (USB boot)NASVirtualizationOfficial homepage ↗Official docs ↗
This guide is synthesized from Unraid's own official documentation, linked above — always cross-check exact package/version names there before running these commands on a production server, since distro and project versions move over time.

  1. 1Note the licensing before starting

    Unraid requires a paid license key after a 30-day free trial -- unlike the other NAS platforms in this section, it is not open-source or perpetually free.

  2. 2Create the boot USB with the official USB Creator

    The USB Creator tool downloads the OS and writes it to a flash drive in one step -- Unraid boots and runs entirely from this drive.

    Unraid USB Creator ↗

  3. 3Boot the target machine from the USB drive

    Unraid boots directly to a console showing its web UI's address -- no separate install step, since the OS runs from the USB drive itself.

    http://tower.local

  4. 4Assign disks and start the array

    In the web UI's Main tab, assign a parity disk and your data disks, then start the array before creating shares.