kegler

I did the same with my backup server. It worked perfectly. Since then I have upgraded my main server to 6.0.1 (identical hardware). Everything is now working without issue. This is a good workaround until the cause of this issue is found and corrected.

danioj, Nice writeup over on the MS site. You have the events and order down exactly. On my backup server running baremetal, I had exactly the same experience under KVM upgrading from 10130 to 10162. Upgrading from ISO did not work either. I gave up and did a clean 10162 install from ISO. Subsequently I have tried to upgrade from 10162 to 10166 and experienced the same issue. On my main server running under ESXi 5.5U2, I have another Win10 VM that has had no issues upgrading these very same builds. Both of my servers have identical hardware using the Supermicro X9SCM-IIF mb with Xeon E3-1230V2 cpu.

As disk sizes continue to grow, resulting in parity sync/check times are becoming unwieldy. Barring some major breakthrough in disk access/write times, things are not likely to improve. Our arrays are growing faster than our ability to run parity sync/check disk rebuild operations faster. StevenD, not pick on you specifically, but since you have a 48TB array, how long does it take you to do a parity check now? (or anyone else with a large array) Parity operations with dual parity are going to be even slower. NetApp claims that their system only incurs a 2% penalty using their dual parity. http://community.netapp.com/t5/Tech-OnTap-Articles/Back-to-Basics-RAID-DP/ta-p/86123 "The RAID-DP implementation within Data ONTAP is closely tied to the NetApp NVRAM and NetApp WAFL® (Write Anywhere File Layout). This is the key to the exceptional performance achieved by RAID-DP versus other RAID 6 implementations." While they may license their dual parity for others to use, I suspect they will not license aspects of their implementation that give them that speed advantage. At least not at a reasonable price. I hope I am wrong. We can debate single vs dual parity but selection of what to use is dependent on your array size, data type, backup practices not to mention the value you place or don't place on your data. Trying to say one is better than the other will result in an endless debate. Everyone has to make their own call and live with the result. In my opinion, I think the ability to subdivide large arrays into sub arrays is JUST AS IMPORTANT as implementing dual parity and needs to be part of the solution. Sure dual parity protecting 20+ data disk WILL give you BETTER protection than single parity. The question is "Is that enough?" I wouldn't want to protect mission critical data that way, but that's me. It was not that long ago 3TB drives were considered big. Now they are considered small. When you start replacing those 3TB drives with 6, 8 or 10TB drives, how long will a disk rebuild take then? We will soon be talking in terms of days rather than hours. Array sizes are going to increase, not because you should, but because you can.

While my system is nowhere near the scale of yours, I was faced with the same decision about a year+ ago. I am assuming the bulk of your storage is for video. Just about all of mine was mpeg2. I used Handbrake to compress all of it to H.264 using mkv containers. It took about four months to transcode everything. This resulted in my storage needs getting cut in half. I reduced my array from 5 data disks to 3. Another bonus is that my storage needs are now growing at a substantially lower rate. When my current set of disks (now about 2 1/2 years old) gets toward the end of their useful life, I will start replacing them with much larger disks. BTW they are all Seagates of the the model that is supposed to have a high failure rate. I have yet to have a single failure - not even a single reallocated sector. (I know this will now come back to bite me now :) They are also run in a very cool environment. In terms of video quality I am hard pressed to see any real difference, but I am not using really large screens. I use SageTV extenders for viewing. As they say, YMMV. Depending on your use case this may be another option.

Been using SageTV for about 8 years now. Looking forward to what happens with it with opening sourcing. As for rescans, like Bob I batch everything, so I trigger them on an "as needed" basis.

No it is not. Only the 'flash' share is available with the array stopped. i am reasonably certain that there is already a request that covers this. Still does not hurt to ask again. Having said that I have a drive that is not assigned to unRAiD that I use for VM's so the ability to have VM's automatically stopped/started at system start/stop would be very useful. Me too, and a few people, archedraft is one I can recall also use unRAID with a pfsense VM so this feature is very useful to them. And me too. I also have a pfSense VM as well as other VMs where I'd like to minimize start/stop activity.

Will do, thanks for the help! I'll report back when I get a chance to change this. It's times like these when having a pfSense VM is a pain, If I want to make any changes to unRAID I need to stop the array, which will shutdown my VM's, which means that my pfSense VPN will stop and then I cannot access unRAID from work anymore... Been toying with the idea of making my own mini pfSense box... This seems pretty sweet (assuming the wired & wireless NIC's are compatible with pfSense) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173097 I do know that the wireless wouldn't work being AC and freeBSD still not having AC wifi drivers but I could switch it out the wireless with N card... You will be able to get this from pfSense at the end of July for $299. Wireless is $75 additional. https://store.pfsense.org/SG2220 My preference would be for unRAID to have the ability to run a VM, whose disk resources are entirely contained in cache, without the array being started. This is why I will stay with ESXi and run unRAID as a guest for the time being.

Wouldn't switching Dynamix color theme in settings to BLACK work? Yes it would, but I have this add-on enabled most of the time as my default. Keep in mind I may have anywhere from 60 to 80 tabs open (I use sidetabs). However it is easy to toggle it on/off from a toolbar icon. I am used to doing that on some sites and not at all on others. Depends on web page content. I just never needed to do it on the webgui since the display I get is every bit as good as the black theme as far as I am concerned. Color schemes are my biggest complaint about Windows 10. I haven't found a way to tame theirs yet. They have neutered/broke much of what we had in Windows 7. Best solution is not to get old.

Another nit: On the webgui Main Tab, the Used and Free columns remain left justified regardless of the Display Setting for number alignment (left, right or center). The other numeric columns align properly. Yeah I used to write accounting software. Accountants would have a fit when I did that .... I see what the problem is. I use a Firefox addon called "Blank Your Monitor + Easy Reading" which inverts the display (I cannot look at white background screens for very long or I go snow blind ...) This ends up hiding the "bar". Setting the Used/Free to "Text" fixes the problem for me.

I already have the 6.0 in there, but I'll add the 5.0 Since they are plugins.. maybe we start a support thread in here? I think they make sense in both places. I like your idea (start support thread here) better rather than moving it. Makes sense. Nice to finally have all these important threads in one place.

Two more threads for inclusion: VMWare tools for unRAID (unRAID 5.0) http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11449.0 Open VM Tools for unRAID 6 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38279.0 These two threads probably should be moved to this area of the forum too.

It's always been that way. They try not to break unraid as a guest, but when push comes to shove, they will not allocate extra time to sorting out issues that may appear. After things have calmed down a little after the 6.0 release, and they are working on 6.01, they will probably be a little more willing to make changes if you can tell them exactly what needs to be done to fix issues you are having. It will most likely be on the community to sort out the issue and what needs to be done, then limetech will make the changes if it doesn't interfere with bare metal usage. At least that's the way it's worked in the past, I'd wait a month or so and bring it up with Tom to find out if his position on unraid as a guest has changed. Your pretty spot on with our stance on this. Guest support for unRAID as a VM really comes down to virtual driver support in the kernel (e.g. VMWare drivers, Hyper-V drivers, etc.). If we completely unsupported this, we'd drop those drivers completely. I was 99% sure this was the answer and agree with it, but a man can have his wish-list... +1 to all the above. I will stay with unRAID as a guest for the the following reasons: 1) At this point there is no way to run VMs without the array being started. My router is pfsense. I'm not going to invest in separate hardware just for that - nor do I want to go back to a blue box. I also have VMs that run my SageTV service and other functions that makes shutting them all down a PITA. 2) While the webgui is very much improved, there are still too many reports of it locking up, requiring a reboot of unRAID. What is needed is a way to restart the webgui. I don't know if this is even possible. I just don't have this problem with ESXi. 3) I have no need to pass-thru GPUs. I am not a gamer. RDP works just fine for my needs. And as all of us using ESXi know, booting our system bare metal can be done easily, should the need arise. ESXi is VERY stable. About the only thing forcing a reboot is a power cut that exceeds my UPS battery capacity.

GIT OFF MA' LAWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks like you have to have a Twitter account to participate in a Twitter Chat https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-chat-101 Looks way too involved for a one time event. I've got better things to do with my time.

Made a bit of progress last evening. I had previously set up a Win7 Prof 64bit vm on my testbed system. But RDP performance (also noted elsewhere) has been poor. RDP is very important for my use case. Last evening I found where to download a Win8.1 Prof 64bit ISO and patch it so it doesn't require a product key before installation (run in trial mode). RDP performance on it is excellent. It is every bit as good as what I am used to seeing on EXSi. Next, I will install the SageTV server on it for further testing. This SHOULD work without issue. My big concern was RDP performance and this is no longer an issue for me, as I was not going to be using Win7 as a host anyway.

I did a clean install of a Win7 Prof 64 bit vm on my testbed system, fully updated it and found RDP performance to still be "choppy" as you say. Last evening I installed a Win8.1 Prof 64 bit vm on my testbed. RDP performance on it is excellent - every bit as good as I am getting running on ESXi. This raises the question - why is there such a huge performance difference between these two windows versions? I used to have a test Win7 vm on my ESXi system, but don't remember seeing this big a difference. I can make these two vms and my testbed system available for further testing/experimenting, if needed.

You may be able to pass the whole usb3 controller through. That is not fully supported yet. You need to be careful that you don't passthru the controller containing the unRAID usb device. See the below post from jonp. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39322.msg368127#msg368127

Looks to me we are both heading toward the same goal/end point. I'm just coming from a slightly different starting point. Like you I have been using SageTV for a long time (8 years) and have endured this Google induced situation. Going almost four years without an update to SageTV has been trying. If I didn't like the system and the extenders so much I would have given up a long time ago. As it is, there exists a big unknown as to where this open sourcing will lead to. That said there is as much talent over there in the SageTV world as there is around here. So the potential for good things to happen is very good. I will be watching developments closely and give it sufficient time to bear fruit. Currently I have the SageTV server running in an ESXi Win 8.1 vm. My recording disk is configured as an independent disk on a hd vmdk. The windows vm resides on a ssd vmdk. I also use HDHomeRun tuners exclusively, both for OTA and cable. Unlike you I do a fair amount of archiving to Sage import directories residing on unRAID shares. unRAID is also virtualized on ESXi. I access the windows vm using RDP. This works well enough that I am able to edit videos on it using VideoReDo (I do not use comskip). I am not sure this (VideoReDo editing) will be possible over RDP under KVM. It may be neccessay to go to GPU passthrough. ESXi is a type 1 hypervisor where KVM is not. I am not married to ESXi. I would prefer to move to KVM as it would preclude having to possess knowledge of one less world (ESXi). In addition VMware has never made free users feel very welcome. All of that aside, I currently have a very stable system. Granted it is still on ESXi and unRAID 5.0. I am in no need or hurry to change this. I will wait until I see where I am going, will be both stable and mature enough to fulfill my needs. Fortunately I invested in identical hardware for my testbed, so any new configuration can be thoroughly tested. I am open to help test out new configurations supporting SageTV on it, if needed. Just give the word.

Updated my Testbed server. Everything has gone as expected so far. Ran a parity check. It completed in 1hr 17min, which is virtually identical to the times recorded while running on 14B. Next, time to check out my test Win7 VM, installed while on 14B.

See this topic. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31735.0

Yes there are many factors that affect run time. But APC does not go into the detail required to give a better estimate. The only way they can even tell there was a change of batteries is by you setting a new battery date. And they still will have no idea what condition the batteries are actually in. At best they can measure what battery voltage/current is and what the load voltage/current is. There is no magical dipstick telling them how much power the battery is capable of supplying at any point in time. Have you run a load test? Set up a dummy load (incandescent light bulbs, whatever) to simulate your actual load and test it. The accuracy of most consumer grade UPS units can vary. If you have a voltmeter, clamp amp meter and/or kill-a-watt and know how to use them - do it. If they say you have 90 minutes run time, then your load should be about 70 watts. Is it? http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=Br900 The numbers in their chart are they expect with a new, fully charged battery. YMMV.

They are not so out to lunch as you may think. Age of your batteries is a factor when determining available run time. That said, if you abuse your batteries (i.e. completely discharge them on every use, or leave them in a discharged state for an extended period) your battery life will be much shorter. Best practice is to discharge them no more than 50% and recharge them ASAP when power returns.

There is also a better plugin vm manager stickied. You don't need webvirtman or virtman just the dynamix.kvm.manager.plg. It has the link for the drivers right on the Create tab page. Could you please mark the old webvirtman plugin thread as deprecated with a message to use the current stickied thread instead. I too took a wrong turn there wasting time and effort until I realized I was in the wrong place. I've been away from following unRAID development activity and was trying to catch up from June of last year. Obviously a lot has transpired since then. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Here is the one I have been using for the last couple years: HashCheck Shell Extension http://code.kliu.org/hashcheck/ It is a shell extension for Windows Explorer. But it can also generate a hashcheck file that can be used for verification. If the target is a different path you can just edit the file. Double clicking on the file launches the verification. It is Windows only, but it is Open Source. It is not near as complete as the Corz software appears to be, but it works for me.

The info on his site is out of date. You have to listen to his podcasts to get current info. He is essentially a one man operation, like someone else we know. He was working on it last summer and had made some significant progress on 6.1 until he got this idea about doing SQRL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQRL SpinRite 6.1 got put on hold at that time. He says he has about wrapped up the SQRL project and will be back working on 6.1 soon. I will believe it when I see/hear it. He has recognized the need for the update and has committed to do it. It will be a free upgrade for licensees of 6.0 If we do eventually get this update, I think it will see significant use in the testing and maintenance of drives to be used with unRAID. As you probably know, SpinRite is OS agnostic.

I would love to have that option. But the current version of SpinRite (6.0) does not work on drives greater than 2.2TB. In addition, it is extremely slow. I tried a level 4 pass on a 1.5TB drive once and it took 10 days to complete!!! Given the recording density of current drives, problems are only going to get worse. Gibson is working on an update to 6.0 that should resolve both of the above issues. But he does seem to get distracted on to other projects/issues way to easily. Who knows when we will see that 6.1 version. I would not hold my breath waiting for it. I do listen to him on Security Now weekly, so if I hear of anything about a new version I will post an update.