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jangjong

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Posts posted by jangjong

    ESXi 5.x - pre-built VMDK for unRAID

    in Virtualizing Unraid

    Posted

    Can someone comment on the performance gain or not between the M1015 and SASLP-MV8 controllers? The M1015 use x8 PCIx and a faster chip which allows for SATAIII ratings. However, with 7200rpm HDD's are going to see a big difference?

    Thanks!

     

    I can comment on this. I recently switched from 1 x MV8 to 2 x M1015

     

    First of all, HDDs can't even reach max speed of SATA II (3GB/s), so SATA III or SATA II, that doesn't affect much.

     

    and there is almost no performance gain in terms of copying stuff to or from unraid when using M1015 or MV8.

     

    HOWEVER, you see the improvement when it comes to Parity Check or Data Rebuild.

     

    M1015 uses PCIe x8, which is able to do 1.6GB/s single direction.

    MV8 uses x4, which is able to do only 800 MB/s

     

    so let's say you have 8 drives plugged in to one of these cards. and let's say your hdd's are able to read 110 MB/s max (this is what i saw during preclear for most drives during pre-read).

     

    If you were to use MV8, your speed will be limited to 800 MB/s or less. it can never reaches that high. that's just theoretical speed.

    With simple feature stats plug in, you can actually see the transfer speed of all drive during data build / parity check.

    I was getting about 500 MB/s. again, this is from SIMIPLEFEATURE STATS. On the index page, i was seeing about 80 MB/s for parity check.

     

    When I switched over to M1015, I was getting about 700 - 800 MB/s total.

    and about 100 - 120 MB/s during parity check. (i also removed green drives from my array which increased my speed as well).

     

    SO with MV8, parity check took 10 - 11 hours, with M1015, took about 7 - 8 hours or less. it is a big improvement in my opinion.

     

     

    So, to sum it up.

    In regular usage, there is no difference because you're accessing 1 or 2 drive at time, so it doesn't get limited by PCIe speed.

    However, when you're doing the parity check or data rebuild that uses all 8 drives at the same time, you see improvment.

    ESXi 5.x - pre-built VMDK for unRAID

    in Virtualizing Unraid

    Posted

    Gotcha. Thanks. Last question. Is it possible to take an existing unRAID system and move it in under ESXi? If so, is there a link you know of with the info? Thanks for all the help.

     

    Yes it's possible since your array data is actually stored in the flash drive and you use that to boot the VM.

    That link should be a good guide on how to do this.

     

    However, without being able to do hw passthroough, like i said before you have to do RDM for all HDD's you have, there is no way around it.

    I am not a big fan of RDM personally, so I wouldn't go with esxi if my hardware doesnt support hw passthrough.

    ESXi 5.x - pre-built VMDK for unRAID

    in Virtualizing Unraid

    Posted

    Thanks for the reply. Went through the steps but under Configuration>Advanced Settings it says "Host does not support passthrough configuration." I'm using a Dell Precision 690 with a Integrated Broadcom 5752 Gigabit Ethernet controller. I'm assuming that doesn't support passthrough? If I check the settings of the unRAID VM the network adapter says its Inactive. It info bubble says "The state of the attached network prevents DirectPath I/O.

     

    Is this just a limitation of the build in nic?

     

    You don't have to passthrough the NIC. you can just add virtual NIC that's provided by esxi.

    It's normal to say inactive under DirectPath I/O if you have a virtual NIC.

     

    i dont know if precision 690 supports hw passthrough. If you go to BIOS, do you have VT-d or some kind of vitualization setting?

    if it doesnt support, you're going to have to use RDM for all your hdd which is not too convenient.

    ESXi 5.x - pre-built VMDK for unRAID

    in Virtualizing Unraid

    Posted

    I've got everything working (I think) except I can't figure out how to map the USB key. I have my ESXi USB key and the UNRAID key both plugged into the esxi box. The computer boots to the esxi key. How exactly so I map the UNRAID key now?

     

    You just add it as a usb device in your VM.

     

    Go to the setting screen on your VM, Click "Add...".

     

    Add USB Controller, then you add USB Device

     

    See this post: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14695.msg138465#msg138465

    Scroll down to "VM#3 unRAID VMDirectPath Hardware Passthough"

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