You made the right choice and decided to go your own way, skipped buying a pre-built NAS and opted to build your own with the incredibly flexible Unraid operating system. Unraid provides an extremely easy setup, along with the ability to mix and match hardware, which suits hobbyists perfectly. Due to Unraid allowing such flexibility with expansion of storage and other hardware, over time you will find that your simple set up slowly begins to get more complex.

The native Unraid OS features will often be enough to help you manage all this power, or simply better see what is happening with your machine immediately through the dashboard. In other cases, you may find you need additional tools, easier to use controls, or new dashboard widgets. Thanks to the Unraid community, so much of this has been covered and there are many essential quality of life plugins that no Unraid user should be without.

7 Dynamix System Temp

Keep an eye on those temps, avoid Unraid heat exhaustion

Unraid could be running a basic storage solution, or maybe you’re pushing the metal and it is running intense workloads. Either way, you will want to keep an eye on how hot things are getting inside that machine. Heat is an electronics-killer, and when it comes to components such as spinning hard drives, you are at higher risk of failure should temps exceed the manufacturer's recommended values.

Disk temperatures are displayed by Unraid on the dashboard, but it is useful to also monitor CPU, motherboard temperatures, and fan speeds. Monitoring everything while the system is under load will help when adjusting your settings for CPU, GPU, case cooling, and placement.

The Dynamix System Temp plugin will add in key temperature values for your CPU and motherboard probes directly into each relevant section within the main dashboard. It will also change the bottom status bar on every page to show CPU, motherboard, and fan speeds so that you don’t need to be on the main dashboard to get an overview.

6 GPU statistics

Add visual performance statistics to your Unraid dashboard

Unraid already provides a great deal of information at the front end for almost everything, but one thing that is missing is statistics on GPU usage. If you are utilizing your server for heavy GPU workloads such as transcoding or rendering, there is a lot of value to monitoring load levels, temperature, and power draw.

GPU Statistics fills this gap very nicely, allowing you to customize the data provided by your GPU to easily visualize its performance. This add-in supports metrics from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs, and creates a new section to display it all directly on your main dashboard.

5 Unassigned Devices

Have this on hand to use external drives

There may be times when you will need to access and use disks which are not part of Unraid disk groups or perhaps you'll want to mount a remote share. One example, for instance, is that you may need to access an external USB drive directly in order to import or export data to it on a temporary basis.

With the Unassigned Devices plugin, you can quickly see any devices which have been plugged in and mount them for operation within Unraid. The utility interface will helpfully show you unassigned disk devices, SMB, NFS, and ISO shares, along with a helpful history of all the items you have mounted previously. It’s not something you should often need, but when you do, you’ll be glad to have it on hand.

4 ZFS Master

Integrate ZFS statistics and control into your Unraid user interface

While not new, ZFS is a newer addition to recent versions of Unraid, offering enterprise grade reliability and data redundancy. Currently, Unraid doesn’t expose many of the ZFS features or information in the native user interface.

ZFS Master is a handy utility that will integrate right into the main drives tab within Unraid. It is designed to visually list the shares which are hosted on your ZFS pool, check health, and perform actions conveniently using the main drives page instead of the command line. If you are using ZFS snapshots, then you can quickly create and view your snapshots through this utility.

3 User Scripts

View and manage your scripts from the familiar Unraid user interface

Unraid will, of course, allow you to run scripts, but you will need to do that from the command line. For many, that can be daunting or just mean scripts and schedules get forgotten about. Having all your scripts and essentials for managing them available in a central place can be helpful for easily accessing and keeping track of everything.

User scripts will fill a gap here by giving you a visual interface where you can add, view, and edit scripts. The User Scripts add-in also allows you to set up a schedule for each script, along with buttons to run manually as needed. The add-in will additionally allow you to quickly view and download logs for each script too.

2 Fix Common Problems

An Unraid essential for keeping your server ticking along well

Without a doubt, this one should be installed on your Unraid configuration from the moment you start your journey with this OS. Due to Unraid being so flexible, it can be easy to get carried away with dockers, VMs, and other hardware you may add with such careless abandon that you may find a few things get missed.

Fix Common Problems will periodically check the Unraid configuration and alert you to potential configuration issues which may cause you instability. The list of checks conducted is extensive, covering everything from network configuration issues to basic things like updating apps and docker containers. Not only will you get the alert, but you will also get suggestions as to how to fix things. Fix Common Problems has been updated very regularly since its inception to adopt new checks and keep pace with Unraid OS updates.

The utility itself is very configurable, allowing you to set the frequency of checks while letting you choose the number of notifications you’ll get about what is happening. You will have the option to selectively stop scanning and notifying you for certain errors or warnings. Being able to tailor these checks and warnings in a granular way helps to avoid notification spam. It is a nice addition and helps keep you focused on the problems that do require your attention.

1 Appdata Backup

Automating backups of your most important applications

Most applications on Unraid run in the form of docker containers and, subsequently, they will store their data in the Unraid appdata folder. While dockers are easy to install and set up, they often contain internal application settings and cached content which are very time-consuming to rebuild. Personally, I have lost count of how many times this utility has saved me time and pain restoring lost or broken docker applications.

Appdata backup will take on this critical role of providing a recovery solution for your applications. It will give you precise control over frequency of backups, use of compression, system resources, and exactly what dockers you want to include.

This helpful utility will also take care of stopping, starting, and updating your dockers while it gets down to business. As if that was not enough, it will also create a backup of your essential Unraid USB boot drive too. This is an absolutely essential installation on day one of an Unraid installation.

Unraid community plugins will make your life easier

The Unraid community has been incredibly active in creating and supporting applications and plugins for the platform. As such, there are just under 200 plugins available at this time, which are all designed to enhance your experience. Plugins are arguably the superpower of Unraid, so make sure you dive into the Community Applications store and check them out!