bobkart

Thanks Joe, I'll likely do something like that.

I have a bunch of scripts in /boot/bin/ that I use often from the command line. After the upgrade to 6.8 I can no longer execute them. Checking the protection I see 'rw' but no 'x'. Trying to chmod them to 700 has no effect. Is there a way to use the scripts now as easily as before the upgrade? I'd much rather type 'foo' than 'bash /boot/bin/foo' each time I need to run one of these scripts (and I use these scripts frequently).

Archer, I'm interested to know what your idle power consumption is.

I found one of my first posts here, from about a year and a half ago, in the Show Me Your Builds thread, with this picture of my first unRAID server (64TB), in the same 12U rack as the new 88TB server above. That one took up all twelve rack spaces, this one just six. And that one took multiple days to check the parity. And used probably twice the power this new one does.

So yeah, I don't keep this one on 24x7, what with the loud fans and high power consumption. On the Parity Check speed front, my last one took around 10.6 hours, which is still pretty good considering that's 88TB of dual-parity-protected data. Once I get the motherboard throughput up to match the drives/enclosures, I'll probably switch to Turbo-Write mode, which should cut down on how long I need it turned on to do my backups.

In that last picture you can see the smart power strip I use to automatically turn on/off the enclosures when the main server powers up/down. Those enclosures are server grade, with redundant power supplies, heavy-duty fans, alarms, the works. I started with the motherboard that came with the chassis (Supermicro H8SMi-2, Opteron 1385, 16GB RAM), but the PCIe bus was very slow. Had an Asus motherboard laying around (P6T SE, i7-930, 6GB RAM) and am using that now, but it still can't quite keep up with all those drives during, for example, Parity Checks. I have a Supermicro X10SLL-F on order; I really just wanted the simpler X10SLL-S, but I found the "better" board for less ($81 versus $90).

Other than a few more 4TB drives (all the same model, the Seagate Desktop model), this was built out of parts I had laying around: 2x Xtore 12-bay SAS enclosures: http://www.scsi4me.com/product_info.php?products_id=1637 Supermicro 2U chassis/PSU, unknown model numbers 2x LSI SAS9207-8e HBAs Even though those enclosures are only SAS1 (3Gb/s X 4), it works to make a second connection, to the SAS daisy-chain output, to double the throughput. EDIT: In searching for a better link to those enclosures, I see that the second connection I'm making is to a second SAS input (not the SAS output). Although I think I've tried connecting to the SAS output also, with the same result (increased throughput). http://www.rackmountnet.com/rackmount-storage-chassis-sassata-hotswap-bays-depth-single-module-with-expander-460w-hotswap-redundant-p-1649.html

After moving to 8TB drives I found myself with lots of leftover 4TB drives. And having lots of spare enclosures/rackmount chassis/SAS cards/etc. I realized with just a few more 4TB drives I could build a 24-drive backup server that would accommodate two copies of my primary server data, including dual parity. It all fits in six rack units. Since my pictures are close to 192KB in size, I can only attach one per post, so I'll be making a couple more posts to get them all in. First one shows the 12U rack it lives in, taking up the bottom half.

I've had it for over three years; bought the Plus key in September of 2011, the Pro key just about a year later. This one's about 3/4 full . . . working on a second server now. Thanks LimeTech, for building and supporting a great data storage solution.