Behind the Code: 20 Years of Unraid

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Uncast Show, or, if thisis your first time tuning in,
well, thanks for joining us Now.
Today's episode is a reallyspecial one, and, in fact, we're
just a few months away fromUnraid's 20th anniversary, and
we thought this was the perfecttime to do something we don't do
nearly enough Pull back thecurtain and show you what's

(00:24):
really been happening behind thescenes.
Now this episode is going to bea little bit of a mix.
We're going to be talking aboutbig internal changes that have
taken place at the company overthe past few years, how Unraid
is investing the dollars or, ifyou're from the UK, like me, the
pounds or euros that you, thecommunity, have put into the
platform.

(00:44):
And, of course, we're going tobe talking about what's coming
next, including some majorfeature upgrades that you've
been asking for.
In fact, we're going to bewalking through at least six new
major features during thisepisode, so make sure you stick
around to the end so you don'tmiss any of them.
Plus, you're going to see someexclusive clips from our recent
offsite in California, where thewhole Unraid team got together

(01:07):
just a couple of weeks ago.
So I've got the perfect guestson the show today to talk all
about this.
I'm joined by Tiffany, unraid'sco-CIO, and Eli, director of
API Platforms and Cloud Services.
They're here to share insightsfrom both sides how the company
is evolving and where Unraid isheading technically.
So hello Tiffany and hello Eli.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hey everybody, Great to be here with you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Hey everybody, it's nice to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So, anyway, before we get into all the company
details, I'm just going to sharesomething that really stuck
with me recently.
So we all went over toCalifornia for an offsite and I
spoke to a friend of mine beforegoing who I had met through my
YouTube channel about 10 yearsago.
A good friend of mine calledDan, and he very kindly said

(01:54):
that he'd pick me up from LosAngeles airport and actually
drive me to where I was going.
So I was really grateful aboutthat, especially having just
flown from the UK to Amsterdamand then Amsterdam all the way
there I can't remember it was along flight so it was very nice
to actually have a friend pickme up.
We'd never actually met before,which was really cool, so it's

(02:15):
the first time I'd ever met himin 10 years.
And on the way down we stoppedat this really nice kind of
diner place for pizza and whilstwe were there, dan brought up
something we'd never reallyspoken about before.
He said that he'd always lovedUnraid and he bought his license
way back in 2008.
So he's a real OG Unraid userand he said that he basically

(02:38):
was really confused about howLime Technology actually managed
to make money.
He was going look, I boughtthis license in 2008, and I've
never given any more money tothe company and Unraid's been
getting better and better.
And he was actually quiteworried about it, saying, like
what if new users stopped comingin?
Would Unraid just disappear oneday?

(02:59):
So basically I explained the newlicensing model that we
introduced last year that it'sstill perpetual.
You own the license forever,but if you want to support
continued development, you'vegot the option to renew for
another year of update, soyou're basically kind of paying
for devs.
That's how Dan put it to me.
He's going oh, so you're payingfor devs, basically if you want
.
And I said, yeah.

(03:21):
That conversation really stuckwith me and I think it's a
perfect lead in to talk abouthow Unraid actually works as a
business.
So, tiffany, can you walk usthrough how the company is
funded and how licensing modelhelps keep Unraid sustainable
and also independent?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
And one of the very first things that was talked
about when I first came in kindof as a consultant actually in
2019, and then my role grew fromthere.
You know, it's pretty obviousthat the one time license sale,
one time model, where the onlyother way that someone even was

(03:58):
able to invest more in Unraidwas through upgrading their
license, was an unsustainablemodel.
Now I will not say my dad and Igo back and forth on this
sometimes that it was bad orwrong that we were in that model
for so long.
I think there are a lot ofreally great things that came
out of being in that type ofmodel.

(04:20):
But as we were getting closerto, you know, our 20 year mark
and watching our customer basegrow and grow and grow, we knew
that this path was not onlyunsustainable as a business, but
unsustainable in our commitmentto our community.
So when you, from a businessperspective, when we look at

(04:40):
that model, there's kind of twopaths we can go down.
If we were to continue withthat model, one thing we were
going to need to do was investheavily in marketing in order to
constantly be reaching newcustomers, and so that meant
that money coming in was goingto need to start going more and
more and more to the marketingside and not taking that money

(05:02):
and putting it into the product.
So that is an option, somethingwe explored and looked at, but
ultimately not something we feltgreat about.
And another option would be totake outside dollars, investment
into the company and then nowwe're beholden to whoever those
people or companies are, andthat didn't feel right either.

(05:23):
Another option would have beento go down more of an enterprise
type of path maybe huge supportcontracts, working with larger
businesses and that also has itsdownsides.
And at the heart of it, wereally felt like none of those
options were going to end wellfor our community and for the

(05:45):
product in general, and so wespent a lot of time years,
actually a lot of money investedinto.
We worked with a consultinggroup to help analyze our data,
our customers' usage of Unraid,what our customers are looking
for, what's important to them.
Obviously, we knew a lot ofthat, but we wanted hard data,

(06:05):
we wanted information straightfrom our customers.
We put out a survey if some ofyou might have taken that a
couple of years ago, that reallyhelped to steer a lot of this
decision making and ultimatelywe came up with a model that we
feel really confident about,because it's not this
traditional sort of SaaSsubscription model where you
stop paying and you lose accessto the product.

(06:26):
We knew that if we put that outthere, we would die.
Our users would never have beenokay with that.
Our community would haverevolted, and we knew that,
because our team is made up ofcommunity members.
We hire from our community, sowe're not just working on a team
of random people who don'treally know about Unraid OS or

(06:48):
not passionate about it.
No, we're working with usersplucked right from the community
, and so they really arerepresenting our community at
large out there.
And so the model that we cameup with not only gives our users
the freedom to choose whetheror not they're going to extend

(07:08):
their license for another yearand make it eligible for the
next year of updates, but wealso really wanted to show, with
our actions, our commitment toour community, and so, with this
model, we give our users theoption to pay and, furthermore,
we do not penalize them if theywant to jump in later on.

(07:31):
So let's say you, your yearcomes up on your license.
You decide, for any reason,you're not ready to pay to
extend your license, no problem.
Come back in a couple months ayear, pay that fee and you're
right back into it.
There's no penalizing for that,and so this model has been
really received really well.

(07:52):
Obviously, we were nervous aboutit, but one of the core things
that we always had as somethingthat was a non-starter,
something we were never going tomess with, was grandfathering
our current basic, plus and prousers into the new system.
That was never a negotiable forus.
There was never a model that weran through that questioned

(08:16):
that.
That was like just anon-starter.
It was put on a table in a boxand said we do not touch that.
And I just want people to hearthis out there, and I think we
need to keep repeating it thatthat is not going to change.
We are never going to comearound to you guys and screw you
over.
I promise you that as long asI'm here, we're not going to do
that.

(08:38):
So you guys can trust that.
So that's how we moved.
That's why and how we kind ofmoved into this, this new model,
and it's been going really well.
So thank you to everyone whohas defended us out there in the
online world and tried tounderstand where we're coming
from and ultimately know thatyour investment, your, whatever

(08:59):
your currency is that is goinginto Unraid is going directly
into the product to bring moreand more value to you guys.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
And what I really like about it, tiffany as well,
is when you buy the Unraidlicense, you are buying it and
you're keeping it.
So even if you don't renew,you're not actually having
anything taken away from whatyou actually bought.
Now, what you bought, you keep,and it's only if you want to
actually extend your license.
You're then going to getsomething new.
So nothing's ever taken away.

(09:29):
It's not like what somecompanies and products are.
The term is, you know, andshitification.
So you know excuse my Frencheveryone, but you know that's
something I'm really glad isn'thappening.
And you're talking aboutmarketing as well, um, about how
the other kind of way wouldhave been putting money into

(09:49):
marketing.
And if you think about it aswell, if you put money into
marketing like that, you're kindof quite beholden to how much
the marketing costs.
It might cost x amount ofdollars one year, and then I
don't know if it's kind ofthings on youtube they decide
adverts are going to be twice asmuch.
Well then, twice as much moneyis going to have to go into that
.
So what I really like about thelicense is how it actually

(10:13):
keeps not only fundingdevelopment, but it keeps us
independent as well.
So how I kind of see it is.
It wasn't just a businessdecision, it's actually a
principle as well.
That's something Tom, I think,feels really strongly about.
And for people who don'tactually know who Tom is Tom is
Tiffany's dad and also thefounder of the company.
We were recently at an offsiteand some of the talks were being

(10:37):
recorded.
At the end of the talk, tomstarted speaking about VC
venture capital and I don'tthink he actually knew he was
being recorded at the time andI'd actually gone out of the
room and I didn't hear thisuntil I was actually going
through the footage preparingfor the podcast.
But I think it gives a realinsight into what the founder
actually thinks about thecompany being independent.

(10:59):
So I'm going to actually playthat clip now for everyone to
see.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah, the other thing is kind of odd thing to say,
but I'm growing up in SiliconValley and working in, you know,
working with a lot of techcompanies.
I got a real sour taste in mymouth for a VC.
I did not want to go to VCroute.
I didn't want to put on a suitand get presentations and pitch
decks.
You know, pitch decks, businessplans.

(11:24):
You know I didn't have theenergy for that.
Beholden to Beholden.
You know, yeah, didn't everwant to do that.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
So, Tiffany, it definitely seems that your dad
really wants to keep Unraidindependent and has always
thought that, right from thebeginning.
You know what are your takes onwhat your dad is saying there.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, it's funny.
This is like father, likedaughter kind of moment.
Both of us do not like beingtold what to do.
That is just something that isa through line in my life in
general, and I think he's thesame way and very similar, and I
think that was his biggest fearis being told what to do, where

(12:08):
to take the product, being toldno, you can't do that needs to
go this way.
You know that was not somethinghe wanted, especially at the
time in his life when he startedthis company.
Well, when he started theproduct, really I should say he
was just coming out of thatworld.
He was on his own.
Finally, after many years of,you know, working very long

(12:28):
hours.
I remember going to the officewith him on the weekend.
My brother and I would runaround this huge office building
just causing all kinds oftrouble while my dad sat there
coding, you know, and working,and he was finally in a place
where he didn't have to do that.
And so you know him and I agreeon a lot of things.

(12:50):
Obviously, there's we havedisagreements on certain things,
but our general sort ofcharacter and the things that we
really value are very similar,and one of them is being able to
have our own say in what'sgoing on with the product.
And again, this is going to be athrough line throughout the
podcast and it's it is verygenuine in that we are we.
We are very beholden to ourcommunity and if we were to go a

(13:16):
different route, if we were togo a different path where we
were taking money or even hadvarious shareholders or whatever
model is out there where otherpeople are able to tell us what
to do, this would be a verydifferent company, if it even
existed at all.
So I'm really proud of my dadfor bootstrapping this company

(13:37):
for many years and even when hetook the leap in 2015 to
actually hire a couple ofemployees, there were some rocky
days, there were some rockymonths, but he pushed through,
he didn't give up and reallyhung in there, and that has paid
off tremendously now and we'rein a really, really great
position to continue to build onthat legacy, to continue to
build out our team and,ultimately, to continue to bring

(13:59):
more and more value to thisreally awesome product.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
And I think it kind of ties back as well to the
origins of Unraid.
So if we can take a moment to goback to where it all started
because I think the origins ofUnraid aren't where many people
might expect it didn't beginwith a business plan or even
really the idea of building aproduct at all in the first
place.
It started with somethingreally simple a personal need
for your dad.

(14:23):
He had a growing DVD collectionand, after spending lots and
lots of time ripping his discs,he wanted to make sure he didn't
lose them.
So, like a lot of us back then,we were using a mix of cheap
white label drives and Tom waslooking for a way basically to
keep his data safe, but withoutthe overhead and complexity that
came with traditional RAID andthat one practical problem.

(14:46):
It led to the really creativesolution that became the
foundation of UnRAID.
So if we can, let's hear itfrom Tom himself in the recent
offsite where he tells us aboutthe early days of UnRAID.
So I'm going to play a clip foreveryone and let's listen to
that.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
And some guy wrote a program that took that off so
you could copy DVD content to ahard drive.
Okay, and so I started doingthat with my DVD collection, you
know, and it took a long time.
You know, each one it wouldtake about as long as it takes
to show the movie to do it.

(15:24):
Okay, maybe a little fasterthan the DVD player.
And I was using cheap harddrives and I thought, okay, this
is not good, and my backgroundat the time was disk controllers
and RAID systems arrays, and soI thought, okay, this is what I
need.
So I started looking around andLinux had a driver called MD and

(15:45):
they had RAID 1, raid 5.
And I thought, you know, thesecret was that the data coming
from a DVD drive was so slow.
Modern hard drives at the timeanyway, had no problem keeping
up.
I mean, coming off the DVD wasonly a few megabytes per second,
10 megabytes maybe, but thehard drives were, you know, an

(16:06):
order of 60, 70 megabytes persecond.
So I thought you don't need tostripe data across the array and
I didn't want to have to move.
You know, I had all these harddrives.
I didn't want to have to try tobuy another set and somehow
transfer them to a RAID 5 array.
So I came up with the idea ofUnRAID, where there's just data
drives and then one parity andit does a block level across
them all.
So that's what started it.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
So, tiffany, you were obviously there for a lot of
that well before Unraid wasactually a company.
So what was it actually likegrowing up around that whole
early phase seeing your dadworking on this thing that would
eventually become Unraid?

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, you know, at the time it was cool for us
because he would put all of theDVDs that he was ripping onto
our TV, which was a really coolplasma, which was also like new
and fancy.
And so we were like the coolkids on the block where we could
be like come over and look atour great movie collection and

(17:04):
we could just scroll through.
And if it wasn't there we wouldjust request it from dad and he
would get it set up for us.
And so, you know, at the timewe were just reaping the
benefits of the whole thing.
And then I watched as thingsevolved and my dad started
building servers and shippingservers and all of a sudden our
garages were turning into serverbuilding shipping stations.
He eventually moved.

(17:25):
He was in Colorado.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
And Tiffany, what was your favorite machine?

Speaker 2 (17:30):
My favorite part of the server assembly line was he
had this thing, this tube,attached to the ceiling that you
could reach up and pull thesebig handles and it would release
a ton of those packing peanutsand that was the best part.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
You never wasted any of them at all, tiffy did you?

Speaker 2 (17:49):
No, I did not do that for fun or anything, never
Didn't make a mess that pissedmy dad off at all.
So that was really fun to watch.
You know, at one point him andmy brother got a big warehouse
and they were both buildingservers in this warehouse and
also brewing beer.
They had an extensive beerbrewing setup going on and so
you'd walk in there'd be musicblaring and there'd be servers

(18:11):
being built and there'd be mybrother doing whatever needed to
happen for the next round ofbeer brewing.
And it was a really fun timeand just a really fun thing to
be around and to watch my dad dothis.
And in the background, you know,I'm in my career.
I'm, you know, in filmproduction and running design
studios and doing all theseother things.

(18:31):
And then, slowly, as I'mgetting more and more into my
career, him and I start talkingmore and more about his business
and what's going on there.
And so you know, I'm startingto give him advice.
So what if you did this?
What's going on with this thing?
And and eventually, you know,he sucked me into the business
and here I am.
But you know it's really specialto have seen the, to watch my

(18:55):
dad's commitment to the productand his just diehard attitude
about taking care of customersthe best way possible.
Attitude about taking care ofcustomers the best way possible.
You know we'd have familyvacations, family functions,
different things going on andyou know he was, you know he was
present but he was alwaysmaking sure because he was a one

(19:17):
man show taking care of thecompany side of things.
You know that customers werebeing answered in the email
inbox and I just I just rememberhim always saying to me like
this is the most important partof running a business like this
is making sure that yourcustomers are happy and they're
taken care of and you're doingthe right thing by them.
Even if that is difficultinternally for the business,

(19:38):
doing the right thing is alwaysthe best thing to do and so you
know, hearing those principlesalong my career helped shape me
as a professional person.
But then also, when we startedworking together, it was really
great to kind of have thisshared foundation of values of
how to run a company, both forcustomers and also with our

(19:58):
internal staff.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
So it's clear then, right from the start, tom just
wasn't building a tool, he wasbuilding around a set of values.
So I guess values like keepingthings simple, solving real
problems and giving people thefreedom to use technology their
own way and over the years Iguess that mindset's really
stayed at the heart of howUnraid operates Staying lean,
staying focused and stayingconnected to the community.

(20:22):
Now, during our last teamoffsite, the team actually spent
a lot of time putting intowords something that's really
guided Unraid all along.
Now I know we've never sharedit publicly but, tiffany, would
you be up for sharing themission statement and what it
means to you personally?

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Absolutely.
We're really excited about this.
It's kind of our North Starinternally, and I think what's
really cool about it and I'llsay it in a second is that we
can break down each kind ofsection of the mission statement
and see how that plays out andis playing out today and the
past and even going forward.

(20:59):
So I'll just go ahead and sayit.
You know, limetech believesthat technology should be
accessible, not intimidating.
We give our users the freedomto follow their own path,
unleashing not only what theirhardware can do but what their
imagination can achieve.
And so for the first part wherewe talk about the technology

(21:19):
should be accessible and notintimidating, actually our word
of the year this year internally, has been accessibility, and
I'm not going to talk too muchabout that right now because Eli
has a lot to say about that,and especially as it relates to
the API project, but even beyondthat.
So I will put a pin in it andlet Eli expand on that part.
But giving our users thefreedom to follow their own path

(21:42):
, unleashing not only what theirhardware can do but what their
imagination can achieve, youknow, obviously is a nod to our
tagline, which is unleashingyour hardware.
But I really love this lastpart where you know, unleashing
what our customers' imaginationcan achieve.
One of the really coolsentiments that I see out there
as I'm reading all of yourcommentary and chatter about

(22:05):
Unraid Online definitely not allof it, just a small portion,
but I try is that you know,people come to Unraid for one
specific use case oftentimes,and once they get into the
product and they check out allof the incredible resources out
there many of which are createdby the one and only Space

(22:28):
Invader sitting in front of menow they realize that there's so
much more that they can do, andthat part is really fun for us
to see internally, and even formy dad.
I've talked to him and sometimeshe cannot believe what people
are doing with this product.
He's like I never realized hehad no idea it would go in a

(22:54):
certain direction, or peoplewould take it and do this, that
or the other with it, and he'sjust he.
It's fun to see the founder andcreator in awe of what people
have been able to do with hisown creation, and so that part
of the mission statement Ireally love what their
imagination can achieve.
So hope that lands well witheverybody.

(23:15):
I don't know, eli, do you haveanything that you wanted to add
to that mission statement, ormaybe what it means for you as
not only an employee, but alsoas a user of the product?

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, I mean I think I've been.
I've been using the product forfor many years now.
I started using it in collegeand what?
The whole reason I even startedusing the product was through
this like accessibility aspect.
I had limited time and myfriends all wanted to watch
movies and I was trying to solvethe problem with a Windows

(23:43):
machine and a custom.
I was trying to run likeGluster FS at one point, which
is this crazy distributed filesystem, and then I found Unraid
and I was like, wow, I don'thave to do any of the setup I
had to do with all these otherthings, and then I just sort of
snowballed into this ecosystemand I think it has really
unlocked a lot of my desire andwhere to go with my career and

(24:07):
even on like what I'm interestedin in technology because of the
opportunities that opened up.
So I think it reallyencapsulates how the product is
like transformative for for meand for a lot of our users, just
like really introducing peopleto a much nicer and more
friendly way to use serverhardware.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
I'm going to have to stop you there, eli, because
you've really sparked myinterest with something you just
said.
So you are using a distributedfile system, glusterfs, and that
was it.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
How are you using that for?
Not well, my friend was like,hey, you should definitely try
using this file system as a wayto do like you know, you have a
bunch of drives like maybe it'sa good solution to solve, like
you know, your storage needs onone server.
It obviously was not the righttool of choice, but I was naive
at the time and, yeah, I'dspinning that up and it was

(25:02):
extremely painful because reallyit's designed to run an
enterprise and many file, manyservers and different data
centers and all sorts of stufflike that.
So, yeah, it was not the rightchoice for me.
And then before that, I wasusing Windows storage pools,
which are I'm sure a lot ofpeople came to on raid with
those and they're they're fine,but they're a little

(25:23):
questionable, and using Windowsas a server is super painful.
Raid with those and they'rethey're fine, but they're a
little questionable, and usingwindows as a server is super
painful.
So I'm sure a lot of peopleended up going the other
direction.
Just, I mean the, the web guibeing a web gui and not just
like having to like rdp intosome server is so helpful.
So yeah, in itself is a majordifferentiating feature for me,
coming from, not a NAS product.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
It's like really nice , so I'm just going to switch
gears.
Well, not switch gears really.
I'm going to go back to what wewere talking about before.
So, living out that mission, itdidn't really happen overnight.
In the early days there were, Iguess, definitely moments of
trial and error, and one of thebig ones was trying to run a
hardware business on top ofbuilding software, and Tom

(26:07):
actually talked about thispretty openly in a recent
session, so let's take a look atwhat he said.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
I look back on it was kind of a big mistake okay,
because I spent a lot of time onserver hardware building.
No, not only building them onserver hardware, not only
building them but getting theright parts and ordering the
parts and bringing them in andtesting.
I spent a lot of time on thatwhich should have been spent on
the software.
But I came remember I came fromthis background of Maxtrat.

(26:39):
We sold hardware, they soldsystems to Cray supercomputers
and that was my whole mindset,which was wrong in hindsight.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
I ended up selling 254 servers.
I built every single one ofthem.
I know I told you it's dumb.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
I love how honest that is, just calling it what it
was.
Tiffany, what was the shiftlike from those early hardware
focused days into really leaninginto the software side, and how
did that change the way thecompany started to grow?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
sort of we have different perspectives on is,
while his stance might be thatthere were mistakes made, you
know I really don't.
I don't believe in that kind ofmentality.
Like, I really believe thatthings happen at the right time

(27:38):
and for the right reasons and,without getting into all all the
things going on during thattime, I think there was a lot of
value in my dad starting thecompany that way and I think
that everything that we learned,that he learned along that
journey, was incredibly valuableand brought us to where we are
here today.
Sometimes even, you know, welook back and regret not

(27:59):
changing our licensing modelsooner, but again, I think there
were a lot of reasons of why itdidn't change sooner and I
think that when we actually madethat change and the big shifts
that have happened in thiscompany have happened at the
exact right time, and a lot ofthat has to do with our team.
It's really, really important tohave the right team in place to

(28:19):
navigate through these bigchanges and you know we had the
right team in place to getthrough the licensing model
change.
We had the right team in placeto get through the licensing
model change.
We had the right team in placeto move away from hardware sales
into software sales, and thatwas really a huge part of it,
and so I think it all happenedand it's in the right time.
I actually kind of joke thatthe product has gotten smaller
and smaller and smaller overtime, like physically smaller,

(28:44):
and so moving to a digitaldownload, to to only having
having that as our product.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Excuse me, tiffany, when did that happen?
You know so.
When did the shift to justsoftware actually happen?

Speaker 2 (28:54):
In September of 2015, the very last server was sold,
and then in April of 2016, ourlast pre-configured flash is
sold.
So we used to also mail out apre-configured flash drive with
Unraid OS on it, and we stoppeddoing that in 2016.
So you know what that allowedus to do again, going back to

(29:16):
resourcing internally is toreally consolidate our resources
into the product itself andnothing else, and to really
focus exclusively on Unraid OSand no other product lines.
Around that time, interestinglyand we'll get into this more I
plan on putting out a reallygreat kind of look back video

(29:37):
for our 20th anniversary inAugust of 2025 here, so you'll
get more details about this.
But around the time ofSeptember of 2015 is also when a
really big video from LinusTech Tips dropped about Unraid
OS, and that really put us onthe map.
As soon as we stopped sellingservers, lots of other things

(29:57):
were happening too.
That wasn't the only thing, butlicense sales went way up, and
that a lot of that has to dowith the fact that we were
dedicating all of our resourcesand time into the OS itself and
nothing else.
So that was a huge, pivotalmoment for the company.
2015, 2016 time.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
And if I've got this right, tiffany, correct me if
I'm wrong M-Tech didn't actuallybecome an official company till
around 2015.
That's when it actuallyincorporated.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
It had been around for 10 years and then became an
official company then and also Iknow you've always been part of
this as Tom's daughter, but I'mespecially curious about what
things look like once you becameon board officially in 2019 and
how the company has also grownsince then, from when you came
on board.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah.
So in 2019, a lot of thingshappened.
Spencer, my husband, came on asthe community manager, so that
was the very first time thatthere was a dedicated full-time
person internally to managingour community.
That should tell you guys a lot.
We didn't hire a developer, wedidn't hire a salesperson, we
didn't even hire a supportperson.
We hired a community managerbecause what was happening is

(31:15):
that my dad was basically thecommunity manager, the
accountant, the developer, theroadmap, the director, the CEO,
the founder he was all the hatsand he felt, as time was going
on, he was getting further outof touch with the community
because he was so focused on theproduct and keeping this
company going and he felt veryuncomfortable with that and he
knew that that was not a goodpath and that we needed someone

(31:37):
dedicated to making sure ourcommunity was being heard.
And then that information wasbeing brought into our team in a
really useful way that helpedus make decisions for the
product and for the company.
And so Spencer came on as acommunity manager and really
just immersed himself inunderstanding what our community
is asking for and then gettingthat to the team.

(32:00):
And then, a couple months later, I came in as an operations
consultant At the time therewere about five of us.
Larry was brought in around thattime, zach was brought in
around that time.
Larry's now our director ofproduct and Zach is working on
the API team, with Eli workingon some really cool things that
I won't steal Eli's thunderabout, but we'll get to in a

(32:20):
little while.
Responsive web going excuse me,had a little cough there, and
so the very first thing Inoticed coming in was that we
were severely understaffedCompared to the amount of
customers that we had and ourgrowth that we were experiencing
.
We were understaffed, and sovery quickly I started getting

(32:42):
things in place internally froman operation standpoint to
prepare to bring more people on.
But again, remember, we werebootstrapping.
So this wasn't like oh, I haveall this money to just like hire
all these people, how exciting.
No, no, I kind of viewed my jobas a surgeon with a scalpel I
have limited money, I havelimited resources, and, not to

(33:06):
mention, flooding the companywith a bunch of extra people was
also not really going to workfor a lot of reasons, and so we
had to be very, very strategicabout who we hired and when and
how we shaped this team, andthat is how we have moved
forward.
Every decision we make, whetherit's about the product or about

(33:28):
hiring or restructuring orwhatever the decisions are we
have to be really careful,because we don't have money to
just burn like that, we don'thave resources to just burn like
that.
We can't go down a path for ayear that isn't well thought
through and has a strategy to it.
We just we can't waste timelike that.
And so you know, when I came inand even up until now, the way

(33:50):
I describe what I do here is I'mjust in the bowels of the
company.
I am down there making sure thatwe are creating a great place
for our employees to be, andthen that extends into creating
a really great product.
So that is what I've come inand done here is set an
environment where our developershave a lot of freedom, our

(34:11):
leaders have a lot ofempowerment.
I trust everyone on this teamcompletely and as a remote team,
that is the fabric of our teamis that trust, and my role here
is to make sure that when Elisits down to do his job, when Ed
sits down to do his job, youguys are not distracted by

(34:32):
stupid bureaucracy and rules andpolicies.
There's just enough to get usby, but you are focusing on
creative, awesome work that isbringing more value to our
customers.
So that's been my focus herefor the last six years.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
So it's basically a scal here for the last six years
.
So it's basically a scalpel,not a sledgehammer approach.
You mentioned how the team'sbeen growing and bringing in
fresh ideas and stuff, andactually that reminded me of
something Tom said recently thatreally stuck with me.
He was talking about what hewas most excited about for the

(35:09):
future.
I think that ties in reallynicely with what you just shared
.
So let me just take a moment toplay a clip so you guys can
hear it from him directly.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
The most exciting thing to look forward to for the
future is to see how the people, especially the younger people
that we have on staff, are goingto bring in new ideas, new ways
of doing things, new ways ofwriting code, and I think one

(35:40):
thing that we've always tried todo is be flexible here at Lime
Technology about whattechnologies we use.
I wrote a lot of code, but Idon't care if it's all thrown
away, if it's better, and so Ithink that's probably the
biggest thing I'm lookingforward to is what are all these
people that we're hiring?
What are they going to create?
How are they going to improvethe product and help our users?

(36:04):
So that's it.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
All right, eli, I feel like Tom might have been
talking about you in that lastclip as one of the younger devs.
Now, eli, enjoy that young devtitle while it lasts, by the way
, because I tell you, time comesfor us all.
But anyway, seriously, you'vebeen working on some big stuff
behind the scenes, especiallythe public API, so can you walk

(36:27):
us through what it's enablingand why it's such a big deal for
Unraid right now?
Oh, and actually someone fromthe community asked we've had
quite a few questions which I'mgoing to sprinkle in through the
podcast, and the ones thataren't sprinkled in we'll have a
section later on.
So someone from the communityasked is it still targeted for
7.2?
And will it include the newfront end and back end or just

(36:50):
the API layer to start?
So, eli, over to you.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Just a couple softball questions for you, Eli.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
For sure.
Well, first of all, I want tosay I love that.
I love that video of Tom beinglike, yeah, you could throw away
all my work as long as you knowas you build some good new code
.
I love that Tom has no egoabout his coding work.
That's one of my favorite partsabout working with him is that
he's very capable of steppingaway from the work that he does

(37:18):
and seeing code as not anidentifier of himself, but just
as something you have to do toget the job done, and I think a
lot of developers struggle withthat.
So it's awesome.
It's been so fun working withthem and having somebody who's
created such an amazing productbe so open to feedback.
But yeah, so I guess, about theAPI, right now, our internal

(37:39):
7.2 build has a built in versionof the Unraid API, which you
guys may have seen through theyears in various forms.
Uh, recently, unraid connecthas had the unraid api inside of
it, but it has not been a keycomponent, and there were some
other parts of that, like theexternal access and connect on

(37:59):
myunraidnet that we're planningon basically uh, removing from
the base os so that you'll justhave access to this new GraphQL
layer.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
I guess a good thing to also talk about here is just
Sorry, eli, I'm just going tojust stop you just a little bit.
For people listening who don'tknow what GraphQL is, I'm just
going to get in.
Oh I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, it's all good.
Go on, man go ahead.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
You might be wondering what graphql is and uh
.
Graphql is essentially like away of similar to how most
websites use uh, somethingcalled uh rest, which is
essentially like you send amessage from your computer and
it your server responds with aspecific message format back and
then that tells us your clientlike what it needs to do.

(38:47):
Graphql is a form of that, butit essentially creates very
tight bindings between what youcan send to the client and or
what the client can send to theserver and what the server can
send back.
So that means that as adeveloper, you have a lot of
tools that can basically tellyou exactly what endpoints
you're allowed to call.

(39:07):
They can even generate code foryou if you want.
So, rather than having us haveto write a bunch of
documentation about these, arethe exact responses for all of
our endpoints, the endpointssort of self-document, which
means that when you install theConnect plugin right now, or
even on your server, when youboot up 7.2 for the first time,
there'll be a little toggle thatsays enable developer mode and

(39:31):
you can go to a page on yourserver where you can just hit
queries against this api runninginside of unraid and get data
out, um, and it's really.
It's been really cool becausewe've actually had multiple
people in our community havelike created already there's
like an iOS app and an Androidapp in testing.
There's somebody just built anAI powered log viewer.

(39:54):
There's all sorts of reallycool work happening and please
join our Discord Just a call outfor that If you want to follow
along the API show and tellchannel, connect API, and then
the connect plugin channel,which will be renamed at some
point to Unraid API with aconnect subcategory once we get
around to that.
But that watching the communityjust build off of what we've

(40:17):
created has been so fun and it'sgoing to really help also just
add in a ton of additionalfeatures that developers can use
to make it easier to work andbuild things for their on-rate
servers.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
That sounds really awesome, eli, and on that note,
we had someone ask if there areany plans for a more guided
setup process, something morekind of noob-friendly for people
just getting started, I guesslike a wizard thing.
Is that the kind of thing theAPI work you've been doing could
help make possible, and whatwould that mean for the whole
onboarding experience to havewizard?

Speaker 3 (40:52):
And I'm realizing it didn't answer the second part of
your question.
On the first part, which waswill this impact the front end
or the back end?
So what I was talking aboutjust now is mostly back end
stuff.
The first thing you're going tosee in 7.2 is there's a whole
new notifications view that'sbeen built from the ground up
with GraphQL and the really coolthing about that is that you
can actually go now use the APIto get those notifications

(41:14):
somewhere else.
So, like, if you want to getthose notifications into I don't
know, like a mobile app and youbuild a consumer, you could
push them to your phone.
So that's really cool.
But just to talk aboutessentially the you know the
plan for setup guides and thatsort of stuff, the idea right

(41:34):
now is that we're going to gothrough and build out individual
pages and individual flows andtry to make them as
user-friendly as possible.
What I want to do is try tomake it so that the setup guide
for Unraid is just walking youthrough the pages that Unraid
provides to you.
One of my least favorite thingsabout software products and I
don't know if this iscontroversial I hate wizards.

(41:56):
From the perspective of it beinga wizard that dumbs things down
and then you get into theproduct and it's really
impossible to use because youdon't really understand what the
actual product looks like,since the wizard took away all
of the stuff that wouldtypically be shown to you by the
actual product.
So a lot of companies, I think,go that route where they'll do a
setup wizard that sort of dumbsdown the UI and then you get

(42:19):
into the real thing and you'relike Whoa, I've never seen this
before.
My goal is that we will have aguided setup, but it's going to
sort of walk you through how touse the tools that we're
building and we're going to tryto make it so that we're giving
you smart defaults everywhereand there's an advanced toggle
if you want to go advanced.
But typically the setup that weare providing you is going to
be like the easy mode, if youwill, and so we can sort of get,

(42:43):
I guess, two in one, which islike we get set up wizards and
we also get brand new UI forusers that use the product every
day in one go.
So that's the hope and I thinkit'll start becoming very clear
as we continue to work through7.2 and beyond.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Tiffany, just seeing the kind of stuff Eli's been
building, like the API, itreally feels like that devs have
a lot more freedom, like youwere saying beforehand to kind

(43:30):
of just run with things.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
So this has been a conscious shift, giving people
more room to lead team, like Isaid before, came from the
community and has been a user ofthe product, because when you
have a team made up of users Idon't even know how to put that
into words it's like it's likesome another layer of value that
you're getting out of your team, and I think it's pretty unique
about us, and you know you willhave when we are discussing

(43:51):
what's going into a release.
99% of the time, the debatethat's going on is based on what
our users are asking for, whatour employees as users, are
struggling with themselves, withthe product not in service of
again going back to the VC orany of that.
It's not in service of anybodyelse other than like how do we

(44:12):
make this product better in themost strategic way?
And so, in order to do that, I,as the leader here, need to
make sure that our staff membersare empowered with a level of
trust, and so what we have beenworking on is coming up with
guide rails around.
These are the types ofdecisions that you should feel
empowered to make.

(44:32):
I hired you as the expert inthis position.
You have a ton more experiencethan I do, or maybe even other
any other person on this team inyour specific position.
You are the expert here.
You guide us as the team intowhat you think is the best.
And then there are somedecisions that do need to be
brought to the leadership teamto make a group decision about.

(44:54):
But within those boundaries wehave a lot of leeway and Eli
here has been such a greatpartner working with me over the
years as he's come in andreally shared his vision for
where things could go and how wecould get there.
We had to spend many yearsdigging out of some tech debt,
dealing with the pricing change,that licensing change man, that

(45:16):
took up a ton of resourcesinternally, and we're so glad to
be on the other side of that.
So you know trusting our peopleand, when things go wrong,
having their back and being youknow how do we put better
guardrails in place to protectourselves from things going
wrong and just peopleunderstanding that we are all a
team.
We're here working together.

(45:37):
If one thing happens thatdoesn't go quite right, it's
good, it's all good, let's workthrough it, and I truly believe
that every single person on thisteam has the best of intentions
and is doing their absolutebest to make the best decisions
they can, and that is a reallyawesome way to be leading this
company.
It feels really good and reallyempowering.
And you know, last thing I'llsay about that is I've seen a

(45:59):
lot of rumors online about whatkind of company we are, how big
we are, what we're up to it'spretty funny when they're like
so way off are what we're up to.
It's pretty funny when they'relike so way off.
But sometimes I've seen peoplethinking that we're this huge
company, you know 150 employees.
They just kind of assume we'rethis OS.
We must have some, you knowmassive staff, and I actually

(46:19):
think that's kind of coolbecause it shows you how fast we
move, how productive we are,how many things we have going on
all the time with a reallysmall staff.
And I think a lot of that isdue to the fact that we empower
people with a lot of trust.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
And also going back to what you're saying about
hiring people from the communitythe recent offsite what I
noticed is everyone there.
They are working for thecompany, but also it's a passion
and a hobby for them as well,so it's literally combining
their job and their passiontogether.
So it was just a whole bunch ofreally passionate people and I

(46:57):
just really enjoyed being arounda whole bunch of really smart
people who had loads in common.
I thought that was really coolfor me.
So during the offsite, reallycool for me.
So during the offsite.
One thing I found quiteinteresting was, even though the
web UI has evolved quite a lotfrom the beginning of when

(47:19):
Unraid first came out, you canactually still see the DNA of
the original version in the webUI today.
And actually Tom brought thisup and I'd like to play a clip
of where he mentions it, solet's take a look yeah, this is
v1.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
It looks kind of similar, right, and it uh it had
.
It wasn't php, it was ahomegrown system that was able
to parse data and display itokay, so eli the web ui.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Let's talk about that and where it's heading now,
because we had a great questionfrom the community, I'm going to
read that out Any major UIchanges planned, aka something
more modern?
What are the biggestimprovements we can expect and
how is this new design going toimprove things for users on a
day-to-day basis?

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Well, yeah, I think there's two parts to this.
So the first part is that rightnow and in 7.2, we're going to
have a responsive web GUI, andwhat that's going to mean is
just that when you go to thewebsite on your phone, it's
going to actually fill yourscreen, you're not going to have
to like pinch and zoom a bunchof times, and the nav bar won't
be totally broken and and allthese other little quirks that

(48:30):
have been around for as long asI can remember with Unraid will
at least be.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
So that will be such a major thing for me because
I'll tell you like today Iactually went to the barber.
Yeah, I know I've got no hair,but I do go to the barber.
I have my beard trimmed, okay.
So that's why.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
That's why I was there and it was a whole big.
I have a question for you aboutyour bald head do you use?
Uh, do you use shampoo or bodywash on your head?

Speaker 1 (48:51):
I just use, like the shower, all-in-one soap stuff.
Yeah, that's good, that's goodenough, yeah.
But anyway, I was.
I was in the barber and therewas a really huge queue in front
of me and I had my had myearbuds with me, which I'm
pushing in my ears again now,and I thought, oh, it's going to
take probably half an hour.
So I thought maybe I can watchsomething on my Envy server and

(49:15):
I realized the Envy server wasoff because I'd been fiddling
around with it.
So I had to tail scale in andtry and pinch and zoom, and when
you've got glasses it's notreally great.
So I can really see how usingthe phone is going to be more
and more useful going forward,especially now we've got tail
scale integration, everyone canjust have a straight interface

(49:36):
to their unraid server throughtail scale.
And when we've got a responsiveweb ui as well, wherever we are
, we can just be controlling ourserver really, really easily.
Sorry to interrupt eli.
Anyway.
No, no, please, please, go on Ifeel the same pain.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
There's so much time I'm like sitting on my couch and
I have to go, like I don't,like my buddy will message me
and be like, hey, the mediaserver is down, can you please
fix it?
I'm like, oh my god, I likeliterally it.
I swear he's like on there likeevery hour of every day,
because if it's down for 10minutes I get a message.
But anyway, um, I'm oftenlogging into my server on my

(50:12):
phone and trying to manage it.
I've even been at, I've gottento the point where I'm like, man
, I really gotta like try to getlike a phone that like folds
open or something so I canmanage unrate on there, and I'm
like I'm so sick of it.
I just want to be able to usethe product on my phone, and so
this responsive Web GUI is goingto be huge for that.
But to talk a little furtherabout future UI changes, I think
that the responsive Web GUI isjust the first step.

(50:35):
It's not going to fix thesethings where, like, I find the
Docker page very hard to use,even in responsive mode, because
it's still a really big tablethat you have to scroll across.
So ideally, we're going to getto a point where we're actually
rethinking a lot of these UIflows to be really good for both
desktop and mobile users.
So I'm not saying we're goingto go mobile first.

(50:56):
I'm saying we're going to makesure that when we rebuild our UI
, we're thinking about whathappens when the screen gets
small.
What can we hide?
How can we make the UI moremobile friendly and make it so
that, instead of scrollingacross a big table which is what
you're going to see in seventoo, which is a huge improvement
from the current state it'sstill not as good as, like,

(51:16):
native mobile UI, and so the isthat we'll start building that
sort of stuff into the product,and the way that's going to work
is you'll start seeing it comein.
So, like the notification viewis a great example that's going
to come in in seven to.
That's an API feature that'sbuilt using view j s.
It's not on the same like unrateOS is on a completely different

(51:36):
web framework than the newstuff we're building, and we're
going to keep adding features inlike that.
So we'll keep replacing pagesas we go and basically slowly
migrating in this new UI, andthe reason we're doing it that
way is so that we can sort ofreplace things in Unraid without
having to totally disrupt yourexperience.

(51:56):
We don't want to Windows 8 ourusers, like we really want you
guys to feel like the upgradesare happening in a very
thoughtful way that feels likeit's really easy to, you know,
navigate.
I have been through a lot ofpain with companies trying to
upgrade their UI frameworks andupgrade the way their interfaces
look, and it can be prettypainful.

(52:16):
So I really want to try to keepthat minimal, because I'm a
user too and I use the productevery day, so yeah, so you know
the responsive web UI.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
it's been a big request for a long time and
looks like it's finally here now, and I think that's a great
example of truly listening towhat users want.
Tiffany, something you'vetouched on before is it's not
just the requests themselvesthat matter, but it's how users
actually talk about their needsand the words they use, the
context they give.
That helps the team buildfeatures that feel natural and

(52:48):
actually solve the rightproblems.
Can you share how that kind ofinsight actually shapes the
roadmap and how it helps youstay grounded in what the users
are really experiencing?

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Sure.
So one of the major benefits Ithink I touched on earlier was
about having a small, reallytight knit team of users of the
product is something that hasreally helped us to be able to
be just the right amount ofreactive to what's going on with
our customers, what's going onin the market, what

(53:20):
opportunities are out there.
And one of the reasons why wehave not put a roadmap out thus
far is because we are a we'remaking decisions.
We don't want to put out aroadmap that says this is
exactly what we're doing,because that's just not how we
operate internally.
You know we have an internalroadmap.
You know, seven, two, seven,three, seven, four.

(53:40):
What would eight look like?
We have all that, but there isflexibility within that based on
current situations.
So a couple of examples.
Number one a security issuecomes out of nowhere, a bug
issue comes out of nowhere andwe have to deal with that,
especially security.
We drop everything.
I don't care what time of day,what day it is.
If it is something major, weare dropping everything and

(54:02):
we're working on that.
I don't care what the roadmapsays.
But there's other situations,for example, the tail scale
partnership.
That is something that came upvery organically, very
serendipitously, last year in2024.
And had we been in a situationwhere, no, we have a roadmap we
can't change it's already beenout there.
This is what we're doing.

(54:23):
We could have missed a reallyamazing opportunity to partner
with a really amazing companyand product and technology.
And so those are some of theexamples of why maybe we talk
about things coming and they getpushed, and I want you guys to
hear that we do not take thosedecisions lightly.

(54:43):
Every single conversation wehave, we go round and round
until we all feel really goodabout the feature set that's
going into the next release, andsometimes there are people who
will fight for a certain featureto be in there or a certain
thing to be fixed.
And then there's reasons why wehave to move things around and
we make trade-offs.
Actually, let's push that tothe next one so that this thing

(55:04):
could come forward, becausethat's gonna unlock this whole
other thing or it needs to laythe groundwork for a future
feature.
You know we're reallyintentional with our decisions.
So what I ask for you, ourlisteners, you, our community,
is your trust in knowing thatthese decisions that we are
making internally while from theoutside might feel frustrating
for you because maybe it'ssomething you've been waiting

(55:26):
for.
You're holding off on somedecision because you think this
feature or something is comingand then it doesn't in the time
that you hope for.
Just know that.
We know that that can befrustrating and we really try
hard to make the best possibledecision for the product and for
our community when we'redeciding on feature sets and on

(55:46):
roadmap.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
So it's kind of like just being precise, and it's
much easier to turn I don't knowa jet ski into, to do, like you
know, a 180 than a cruise liner.
Yes, we're able to actuallyrespond to real world events,
basically, yeah yeah, exactly,and not too much.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Like I said, just the right amount of that, because
we can't constantly be swayingin the wind of everything.
We can't constantly be likereacting to every little blow up
that happens on the forum or inReddit or wherever it may be.
We are reading that, we'retaking that in.
That's all being taken intoconsideration and ultimately,
there are other internal factorsthat a lot of people, you know

(56:29):
you guys just don't hear about.
And something that I'm reallyinterested in hearing from our
community after this podcastgoes out is how much of this
stuff do you guys care about?
Like how much of the type ofstuff we're talking about here
is something you want to hearmore of, or that you're just
like, meh, just keep working onthe product and putting out good
stuff, and that's how we'llknow what's going on.
But let us know, I don't knowhow much you guys, how much

(56:50):
people, care about all that.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
We'll see.
So it's really exciting, eli,to hear about new stuff in the
Docker interface.
That's going to be somethingI'm going to be really looking
forward to because that'ssomething I've wanted for a
really long time.
So it's really cool to hear howeverything's evolving and I
think a lot of users theyactually forget how much effort
goes into making something thatfeels simple, and behind every

(57:14):
one of these changes is a teamof people, and in Unraid's case,
that team is spread across theglobe.
Tiffany, what's it likeactually running a fully remote
company and keeping thatcollaboration between the team
going when it's a remote team?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, that is a challenge, but it's also really
rewarding.
You know, on the one hand,everybody gets to live where
they want to live, live the kindof life they want to live,
wherever that may be, we get tosource amazing talent, no matter
where they are, and that isreally really rewarding and
great to know that people arehappy where they're at.

(57:52):
We're not forcing them to comeinto an office all the time or
live somewhere they don't wantto be.
So that's really awesome.
You know the challenges there.
Obviously are a lot of the samechallenges that in-person or
even hybrid companies face, andwe just have to have a different
way of addressing them.
So obviously there's thechallenge of, you know, all of

(58:12):
us making sure we get to knoweach other on a human level, not
just on a co-working level, andso to solve that, we have
multiple off-sites each yearwhere we all get together for a
week.
Generally, there's a mixture offun and work, you know, put
together into a week.
We're starting to have manyoff-sites.
So, for example, eli and histeam and the support team met up

(58:35):
in Florida earlier this yearbecause they're all kind of on
the East Coast of the US, andthey did a really focused
smaller group working throughsome cross collaboration between
our support department and someof the things that are going to
be coming out soon, and sothat's really cool to see and
it's a really fun way to investour dollars is to getting

(58:55):
everybody together and it'sreally crazy.
There's a ton of data aroundthis.
I'm really immersed in theremote working world.
I'm part of a community calledRunning Remote, which is an
online group of all remoteleaders and founders.
So if anybody who runs remotecompanies, I'd recommend
checking them out.
But the power of off offsitesis really incredible.

(59:17):
Even just the week after,everybody's just buzzing with
excitement and enthusiasm andthat lasts for months and then
you really feel it start to kindof like.
As we're nearing the nextoffsite, you can feel that we
need an offsite Because when weget to see each other and get to
know each other beyond justscreens and work you know, I

(59:38):
know that Eli is getting marriedsoon.
He's heading out and you know Igot to meet his fiance and I
get to meet people's familymembers and children and one of
our co-workers, larry.
His daughters are interning forus this summer and it's really
a special vibe to be able tobring us all together while
still respecting that people getto live the way that they want
to live.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
So, since we're talking about being remote, our
team is remote.
We work across time zones.
Let's stay on that theme for aminute.
This is my attempt at a segue.
Eli, you've been working onsomething that helps users stay
protected remotely to flash backup to the cloud.
Can you explain how that works,please?

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
yeah, so, um, I'm actually working on a really
cool system that's not justactually flash back up to the
cloud I kind of misled you there, ed um, it's gonna be a fully a
full backup system for unraisedoh wow, we've been sort of
missing a backup system and aproduct, and over the last
couple of weeks I guess about amonth in my spare time which I

(01:00:40):
have very little, but I've beenspending a little bit of my
spare time at work workingthrough trying to build out a
backup flow, and so I've beenusing Rclone and I've set up now
a service that will eventuallylet us do.
You'll be able to choose like Iwant to back up to my Google
Drive, and then you'll be ableto choose even like I want to

(01:01:00):
back up this ZFS pool to myGoogle Drive, or something like
that.
So I'm building this system in away that will let us actually
support not just flash backupbut other backups too.
We may launch with more simpler, like a much more simple
approach, which is just going tobe like a flash backup and then
you can choose a folder tobackup to the cloud, but the
goal is that you'll be able toconfigure multiple backup jobs

(01:01:22):
and any one of those jobs can goto any remote target you want
to go to.
Using our clone means that wecan do like our clones, the tool
that lets us like you know.
It basically lets you map anysort of file provider as just
like a drive so we can use, likeour clone, to back up to any
cloud provider like s3.
You can back up to anotherlocal device.

(01:01:43):
You can back up to like an smbshare.
There'll be all sorts ofoptions in there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
So pretty much, however you want to back up,
you'll be able to do it so, sowe can back up you know, not
only to the cloud then we canback up to another server yeah,
that's the goal our buddy'sserver if we want to.
Oh, that's really really,really, really awesome yeah so,
um, we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
I think it's probably at least a couple months out,
but, um, I'm making really goodprogress on that and I think
that it'll be really exciting.
That's sort of like a side noteto the rest of the stuff my
team is doing.
We have some really excitingthat's sort of like a side note
to the rest of the stuff my teamis doing.
We have some really excitingstuff actually happening with
Docker right now, where we haveMike, who is a trained designer
on our team, who's also adeveloper, is working through

(01:02:24):
redesigning our Docker views andcreating basically a way to
manage Docker that'll be, Ithink, more friendly for people
on mobile, but not just thatAlso just easier for people on
desktop.
I really want to have a moreunified design where I'm not
just popping out new tabs allthe time.
If I want to tweak a containerpath or a variable, I don't have

(01:02:46):
to go into the entire containerdefinition to edit and add a
path, because often there'sspecific flows with Docker where
you're doing them all the time.
We don't need to give you thewhole Docker edit view every
time you go to manage, like thepath the containers mounted to
or that sort of stuff that sortof.
Those sort of edits are muchmore like quick, and so the hope

(01:03:07):
is that we'll have views thatallow you to do this stuff
faster, and we're building allthis based on our usage of the
products.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Yeah, at our offsite recently, Eli, your team led a
really great presentation aboutthe plans of how we're going to
attack updating the UI, and oneof one of the reasons why we're
going to be doing it piece bypiece is to quickly get you guys
value and we're not just likepicking random pages.
We went through and did anexercise where we heard from the
whole room of 20 people or youknow however many were sitting
in that room that day of andusers of the product, what, what

(01:03:42):
is the most painful, what kindof and even down to super fine
details of you know this settingdoesn't make sense or whatever
it is.
And again, just going back tothat value of having users on
staff like you guys as acommunity are being represented
in the room at the mostimportant level of decision
making.
And so I don't know, eli, ifyou want to talk a little bit

(01:04:04):
about the strategy there and howyou guys are approaching
enhancing our UI and modernizingit in the next couple months
and years.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Yeah, I think the big thing for me and for the team
is to try and make sure that weminimize the amount of you know.
I don't want people to get a newUI and feel like man, this is
really painful, or like someoption I use every day has been
taken away from me.
I really want it to feel likeeverything that I was using is
still just as accessible, butnow it's better, and so the hope

(01:04:32):
for me.
I really want it to feel likeeverything that I was using is
still just as accessible, butnow it's better, and so the hope
for me is that we can build aUI in a way that we're
considering exactly how usersuse the product, and the other
way we're going to try tofacilitate this is through.
I'm sure I'll be in touch onthe forums and discord with
people as we go to try to makesure that we're taking feedback

(01:04:53):
and if things aren't going wellwith one feature or another,
we'll update it and we'll getyou guys like a fixed version
that will have, you know, betteruser experience.
So we really want to keep thecommunity in mind here,
especially around all of ourbuild out.
So, yeah, and Mike, who isdoing a lot of our design work
right now is really good atconsidering user input, and he

(01:05:14):
is also a user of the productand has been for many years, so
he's just as much of a user asyou or I, so I think it's going
to be really cool to have himworking on it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Awesome, awesome.
I just want to bring up a userquestion, if I may, eli.
Someone asked recently if wemight eventually support booting
from NVMe or even a ZFS mirror,while keeping licensing tied to
a USB drive.
Is that kind of flexibilitysomething you're thinking about

(01:05:43):
integrating into the product?

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Yeah.
So there's been a lot ofinternal discussions about boot
devices and I think, as we seeflash drive failures increasing
because the NAND chips thatthey're using on these flash
drives are getting cheaper andcheaper, it seems more and more
like it's inevitable that weswitch to something else for
licensing and for booting.
I will say right now, like weare, we are in the process of I

(01:06:09):
think there's actually a fullRFC that's being actioned on to
implement booting off of anotherdevice.
So we are in the process offiguring out booting off of
another device and actually, Ithink, even licensing off
another device.
And if we can figure out thosetwo things, we're going to be at
a point where we don't have toworry about the flash drive and
these failure cases that usersare experiencing, and a big

(01:06:32):
reason a lot of people might noteven use the product is the
flash drive.
So my hope is that we cancontinue down this path and
hopefully see a new boot devicepretty soon, I think.
So it'll be really good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
One thing, too, that you might want to mention, Eli,
is that our intention at thispoint in time is not to get rid
of the current option.
Right, we are adding to options, so you know we're not doing
this switch over where it's justgoing to be majorly impactful.
It's a matter of offeringdifferent options to people for
whatever suits their particularuse case.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Yeah, like my usage.
I kind of like the flash drivebecause it doesn't really fail
on me and I sort of have like anextra slot in my system, if you
will, but a lot of peoplereally hate it.
So, yeah, I'm probably going tokeep using flash drive
licensing, but I'm sure peoplewill be using internal boot the
second it's available becausethat's going to be awesome and

(01:07:26):
about that also, I'm pretty surewe're going to end up
supporting utter FS mirrors forbooting in the first iteration
of this new boot pool, sothat'll be mirrored.
You can take snapshots.
Same situation with cfs.
Uh, so it's pretty much likenets, about the same for user
benefit as a cfs boot mirrorawesome.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Thank you, eli.
Anyway, um, let's switch gears,eli, if we may, to account
security um can you explain howlogging in with Unraidnet works
right now and what changes arecoming with OpenID?

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Yeah, so in Unraid Connect there's a feature right
now that lets you enable singlesign-on with Unraidnet, and
we're going to build thatactually into the base operating
system.
The way that works is that itactually does the token fetch on
your browser, so you don't yourserver itself actually doesn't
even need an internet connection.
If you can get to your server'sweb page and your browser has

(01:08:21):
internet, you can do single signin with unreadnet, which is
kind of cool and that allows youto do like you know click up
single sign in button and thenyou already have an unreadnet
account, most likely because youneeded one to buy the product,
so we allowed that.
The cool thing is that thatwhole system is very extensible.
So the plan is actually thatwill enable other open ID

(01:08:45):
connect is the provider name,but a lot of people use
something like authentic or theyuse like Google authentication,
or they use Appleauthentication, or they use
something.
They want something, some otherservice that you could think of
.
There's so many that supportthis protocol.
You could just add anotherservice which would add another
sign in button to your unreadGUI, and so the hope is that

(01:09:05):
we'll have our you know built inone that we're going to provide
for you, but eventually we'llactually allow you to configure
additional endpoints that youcan sign in with.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Awesome, that sounds great.
And while we're on the topic ofsecurity, we did get a question
from a user from userghost115784, who was concerned
about malware risk, particularlybecause Unraid and its
containers run as root.
And he asks are there anythoughts internally about

(01:09:32):
improving, protecting orlimiting damage if something
malicious were ever introducedthrough a plugin or the terminal
or something?

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
so I think he's worried about something being
downloaded and you're going intoterminal and you kind of run a
file that you shouldn't um, Ithink, like the, the, there are
some definitely some bestpractices there which is just
making sure you're not usinguser ID and group ID.
I think it's either zero, Ithink it's zero for root in
Docker it might be 99 100.

(01:10:01):
But I'm not 100% sure that canhelp.
The other thing that can begood is just making sure that
your containers are likeanything you're downloading.
You're making sure yourcontainers aren't executing that
.
That's a big deal, and then theother thing that I think is
going to eventually happen, andwe'll see more of, is the plugin
system, and the or the APIitself is being built from the

(01:10:22):
ground up, with support forroles and access based
permissioning.
So I have a strong suspicionthat as that gets built out and
we consider, you know, thefuture of Unraid, we'll probably
start considering whether ornot we'll end up adding in other
Linux users as time goes on.
I do need for the company toeventually move off of the root

(01:10:42):
user.
It can be really nice fornewbies, though, because you
know you boot the system and youdon't have to worry about
permissions.
You never have to run sudo oranything like that.
So, for me at least, when Istarted using Unraid, that was
actually one of my favoriteparts was just never having to
worry about permissioning andnever having to zone files.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Me too as well, eli to be, honest and just going
back to what you said about bestpractices, I'd also say best
practices for people whenthey're running containers is
don't map to things you don'tneed to Like.
A lot of times you see't map tothings you don't need to.
A lot of times you see peoplemap to forward slash, MNT,
forward slash user.
Don't do that unless you reallyreally have to, because then if

(01:11:21):
anything goes into thatcontainer it's got access to
your whole shares.

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
Things to their concern, that's the big Docker.
Containers are just inherentlya much better way of doing this
kind of stuff because you'rejust, by virtue of it being in a
container, you have some amountof protection of it breaking
out into your root system.
But it's still.
You know, you still have to becareful with them because they
definitely can do some damage.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
And in terms of security best practices, we can
link to this in the podcast shownotes.
We do have a post on our blogthat's pretty extensive,
literally called Unraid SecurityBest Practices.
So if people want to check thatout and help to just educate
themselves, at the bottom ofthat blog post there's also even

(01:12:08):
more links that you can diginto.
So we do have resourcesavailable for people on the
website right now.
You can check out for that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Yeah, so that'll be really useful, you know,
especially for new users.
Definitely go and go and checkthat out.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
We'll just say that the best place to stay the most
up to date on what's happeningwith Unwrite is our newsletter
Once a month.
Spencer spends a lot of timecurating a newsletter again,
making sure that you guys arefront of mind, our customers.
You know we're not wasting yourtime with a bunch of crap.

(01:12:41):
There's not a bunch of fluff inthere.
It's like this is what ishappening.
This is what's happened in thelast month.
It's a look back.
So each month it's a look backat the last month.
Here's some of the most popularguides that came out.
Here's some announcements weput out.
It's free, it's easy.
Go to newsletterunraidnet, signup, and that is the best way to
stay the most up to date andcurrent with what's going on in
the product and the company.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Nice.
So I'm going to direct thisnext question, I think, at Eli.
How's the discussion ofchanging the base distro come up
?
And we currently use Slackware.
Eli, has that been discussed?

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
yeah, so that's actually was a big topic, topic
of conversation at the last uhoff site.
I think there's a lot of youknow concern and just you know
interest in the community andpotentially having unraid be on
another distro.
And for the time, slackware hasserved Unraid very, very well.
It has been a extremelyflexible distro.

(01:13:37):
It's super unopinionated.
It is like the lowest levelLinux you can get, maybe even
lower than Arch.
If you really want to, you know, go there because there's not
even really a package managementsystem.
So it's kind of pretty hard touse.
But yeah, we definitely talkedabout it at the last offsite and
I do think that it's kind ofpretty hard to use.
But, um, yeah, we definitelytalked about it the last off
site and I I do think that it'sbeing explored and we'll

(01:13:58):
probably end up looking at someoptions and seeing which one uh
will work the best for us andwe'll announce it way in advance
and people will know what'sgoing on.
So, yeah, awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
So that's great.
Great to know.
I'm sure the community will beglad to have that answer today.
So, um, my next user questionis is Unraid planning tiered
storage, automatically movinghot and cold files between SSD
and maybe HDD?

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
I don't think that's currently on the roadmap, but
that is definitely somethingthat could be really cool.
I think, like there'sdefinitely improvements to the
mover that can be made tofacilitate that kind of thing,
and I actually think as the APIgets built out more, we'll see
stuff like that becoming muchmore possible.
The biggest barrier that wehave to that kind of feature is

(01:14:46):
actually UI, because it's verypainful to build out the
interfaces around this kind ofthing, and the API is making
that really easy.
So my hope is that we'll have alot faster development pace,
and we so far have been having alot faster development pace.
So this kind of thing canabsolutely start being
prioritized more, but right nowI don't think it's on the

(01:15:06):
roadmap, at least not in thenear future.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
Thank you.
And another question any updateon support for multiple Unraid
arrays?

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Yes, that one is, I believe, on the roadmap.
We're doing some other stuff inadvance of it, like trying to
get alternative boot methods inplace, so that, plus trying to
like work on some of our APIintegration stuff, has been
taking the bulk of the work.
That feature will probably comewith a rewritten main page for
Unraid that's going to be usingthe API, so there's a lot of

(01:15:37):
stuff that's going to come withthat.
It won't just be multiplearrays, it will probably be like
a whole new look and feel toyour drive management page, so
that's going to be a reallyexciting feature when it comes
out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
Yeah, it's being fought for pretty hard by
certain employees here and weknow that it's something you
guys are asking for, and this isone of those great situations
where we just ask for your trustand patience that we have our
reasons for where things are at.
We've been laying thegroundwork for multiple releases
now for that and building up toit, so keep an eye out.
We hear you, we know and we areworking on it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Awesome.
And another question kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
I guess it loops back a little bit to what you were
talking about with the backup,but kind of in the other way'm
hoping that eventually we'll getto a point where we can just
have that and built in so youwould add a like a desk, an r
clone.
There's a whole r clonemanagement screen that I'm
building and as part of that Iwould love to have mounts as a
part of, you know, that wholesystem so you can mount a drive
and then use it like you wouldwith unassigned devices or
something and do operationsagainst it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Awesome.
Well, thank you very much.
Okay, so I've got one lastquestion that another user has
asked Do we have anythingspecial planned for the 20th
Unraid anniversary?
I'm going to ask that to you,please, Tiffany.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Yes, so we've been looking forward to this for a
while now, and Spence and I havebeen working behind the scenes
to prepare a really cool thingin August.
So in August is when the actualanniversary is, but all of
August we'll be celebrating.
So you guys can look forward tosome great content coming out.
Potentially a nice little salecoming out and also I can tease

(01:17:32):
it here a brand new merch linecoming out for Unraid.
So we're working with somedesigners to put some cool stuff
together, a little bit higherquality than what we currently
have on our Zazzle store, muchmore unique, fun designs.
This has been a really creativeoutlet for us to be working on
and we know our customers aregonna love it.

(01:17:52):
So, yes, the answer is yes.
We have some special plans forthe anniversary coming up this
August 2025.
So stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Nice.
So I think that was some reallyawesome questions from our
awesome community, and I thinkwe're very, very lucky to have
such a passionate and supportivecommunity.
Those questions came from theforums Discord, reddit where our
community has expanded into.
It was just the forums at onetime, and I think that leads us

(01:18:21):
perfectly into this next clip,which I'm going to play now,
from Tom.

Speaker 4 (01:18:25):
Well, clearly our community is really the secret
to Limetech's success.
In fact, some of the peoplehere today are here because they
first were either moderators orforum users, love the product
and we ended up hiring them inone way or another.
Just about everybody has got abackground in using the product

(01:18:51):
and we do spend using theproduct and we do spend have
spent a lot of time trying tocurate a very friendly and open
community.
So often in tech you seecommunities where people ask the
same question a hundred timesand no one has patience and they
tell you you know, go read thedocs, go do a forum search.

(01:19:12):
Well, maybe that happens in ourforum.
I won't say it will neverhappen, but for the most part it
doesn't happen.
We have friendly people,friendly moderators and they're,
you know, willing to help outand it's a very important part
of our business and we protectthat very carefully.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Tiffany, you've spent a lot of time listening to and
engaging with the communityacross all the various channels.
I'd like to ask you, from yourperspective, what makes our
community so unique?

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
Well, you know, a lot of what my dad said is true.
The friendliness of ourcommunity is something that I
see come up time and time againand over the years he started
with that curating that spirit,because that is how my dad is
just his personality he is.
I think he would have made, ormay still make, a great teacher

(01:20:03):
one day, an actual professor.
He is able to really break downvery complex topics into
explanations that almost anybodycould understand, and he does a
lot of that through metaphorand different types of ways.
But he's really passionateabout making sure that everybody
feels included and heard andunderstood, and I'm the same way

(01:20:24):
and Spencer's the same way, andSpencer has worked really hard
to continue to take that legacyand build on that in our
community.
As you said, ed, like you know,it used to just be a forum, but
now it's so much bigger thanthat.
You know we're on Discord,we're on Facebook, we're on X,
we're on all the things.
We're on all the things.
There's places that we arebeing talked about and in lots

(01:20:45):
of different languages, and sowhat he said that you know we
would be nothing without ourcommunity is absolutely the
truth.
Yes, the product is great, butif, in coming to use the product
, you were met with jerks allthe time or it was really hard
to get the information you werelooking for, you know it

(01:21:05):
wouldn't be nearly as successful.
So to all of our moderators, ourcommunity devs, all of the
people out there who are helpingto curate these communities, we
thank you from the bottom ofour hearts, because we can't do
it all ourselves.
For the first 10 years of thisproduct's life, my dad was fully
supported by the community,working with community

(01:21:25):
developers across the world whohe still, to this day, hasn't
even met in person, but havemade massive, massive
improvements to the product, andI just think that that is so
special.
You know there's good thingsand bad things about the
internet, but one of the reallyspecial things about the
internet is this connection thatwe get to have with each other
on a common ground, and for thisone it's, you know, technology

(01:21:47):
and making technology moreaccessible and fun, and so I'm
really proud of the community,we're all really proud of the
community and we let thecommunity drive, you know, the
future of this product in a lotof ways.
So thank you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
So, as we start to wrap up, I just wanted to ask
you something a bit morepersonal please.
Tiffany, You've talked beforeabout stewardship.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
What does that really mean to you, especially in the
context of carrying forward yourfather's work and vision for
Unraid of the money that we havecoming into this company and

(01:22:33):
what we do with it and how wetreat people.
So you know, for me I am verypassionate about the second part
of that.
I mean, both things, obviously,are important to me, but I
really want to make sure thatwe're a great company to work
for, that we treat people likehumans, that we let people
really spread their wings andexplore all kinds of

(01:22:54):
technologies and innovations andideas and have a really safe
place to do all of that.
And I feel like being a stewardof the money that our customers
entrust us with, that you allwork really hard to earn and
then you spend with us.
You know you can take thishowever you want, but it is
completely genuine that I takeit really seriously when that

(01:23:15):
money comes into our businessand what we do with that.
So that's one aspect of thestewardship.
On the other hand, when it comesto the product, as we talked
about earlier in this podcast, Igrew up around this product.
I've seen my dad work reallyhard to build this.
I've seen how it's been able tosupport our family and
everything that he's done withit.

(01:23:35):
I feel a sense ofresponsibility now to take that
into the next generation and tocontinue to expand on the legacy
that he's left behind.
We've worked really hard overthe last couple of years to
capture a lot of his values andthe way that he wants this thing
to go.
And, as Eli alluded to ortalked about earlier, you know

(01:23:56):
it's really special that he isso open to all these new kids on
the block coming in and shakingthings up.
You know he has been able tolet go of a lot of stuff in
service of continuing to makethis product better and I think
that that's a really special anda really great trait that he
has and we all get to benefitfrom that.

(01:24:18):
So you know, I take stewardshipreally seriously in all of
those ways and I hope that youcustomers, community, that you
guys feel that from us becauseit really is genuine.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
Well, thank you very much for those thoughts, tiffany
.
That's really awesome, and Ijust want to say how genuinely
excited I am about the future ofUnraid.
I feel there's so much momentumright now, not just with the
platform itself, but with thecommunity, the ideas, the energy
behind it, all being part ofthis journey, both as a user and
now part of the team.
It has been a real privilegeand I want to give a huge thank

(01:24:55):
you to you, tiffany, and you,eli, for taking the time to join
this conversation and for beingso open about where things are
headed.
It's clear there's a lot tolook forward to.
It's being shaped by realfeedback from all of the
community, and I also want tosay, most importantly, thank you
everyone for watching, thankyou for being a part of the
community and thank you forsupporting Unraid.
So, whether you've been using itfor years or you're just
getting started, we reallyappreciate you spending your

(01:25:16):
time here with us today, and ifyou found this useful,
interesting or even just a goodlisten while you're working on
your server, let us know.
Would you like more of theseupdates, maybe twice a year,
maybe more often?
Well, just drop us a comment inthe YouTube comments or on the
forums.
Just let us know what you think.
And again, thanks for tuning inand we'll see you all next time

(01:25:37):
.

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