Johnm

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Everything posted by Johnm

  1. See quote a page or two back. Seems so e people are having issues.
  2. I don't have time for a formal answer... As i recall, My cache drive is a VMDK on an NFS share on the ZFS server (m1015 in freeNAS). I am using 10GB virtual nics to connect the 2. i do belive it is mounted as an IDE drive insode the VM configuration.
  3. Johnm

    Norco 4224 Thread

    the short answer is no.. long answer.. anything is possible with time and money. but you need a face plate, another entire layer for to drive bay assembly, another 4 caddies, the backplane, the backplane mounting clips X3, a bunch of really hard to source screws, and then umm .. yeah.. not to mention you need the assembly for the backplane you already have. they changed with the different model of backplanes. they might not have them if it is an older unit. even if norco sold all of the parts individually, It would probably cost as much as a new chassis. I guess you could always call their sales dept and ask if they could get you a "kit" to make the upgrade. you might be able to mount 4 drives internal with minor modding so it is 20 swappable and 4 hard mounted...
  4. Newegg will start selling the internal version of the DM drive later this week for $210. that's the cheapest everyday price for an internal 4tb drive i have seen yet. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338 there is no mention of warranty length yet. This might be the start the of price drops for 4tb drive market.. I am assuming the other companies will have to lowwer prices to stay in the same ballpark. I guess now it is just a waiting game..
  5. jesseasi Not sure where you are at now.. Few things.. the MV8's do need the hack.. i think you need to hack each one if you have more then one.. At least I think I did when I had 3 in my system. without the hack, it does pink screen when you try and access a drive on an MV8. Also i had a similar issue with the latest RC and MV8's in passthough. drive(s) were dropping out on my MV8's I never had time to see what was the cause as i was out of town and remoting into the system. i just rolled back to an earlier version that was stable for me. No problems since. I removed my dedicated unraid nic and put the unRAID on the 10GB ESXi virtual adapter and vlan. I found that most of my data transfer in my case is all inside the esxi box and it is much faster for me this way. that is just something to think about. your needs may be different. as you have already learned. doing the updates from the command line inside esxi is much faster. I should probably put that on my first page. it is buried deep in this thread somewhere. in the future for others.. when you have lots of hardware to passthough, it might be best to add one item at a time and test to help troubleshoot where the system may have issues.
  6. The sale is over. I just got back into town last night and was about to go get more drives today. I just checked before i decided to drive out and there realized it ended yesterday. I'm glad i checked. Oh well.
  7. Johnm

    Norco 4224 Thread

    Is this with the drive sleds in place (with drives)? is this with the SAS cables installed? If I understand. the system works peachy fine until ANY single or multiple backplane comes into play?
  8. Johnm

    Norco 4224 Thread

    Be a bit careful with those cables.. they are really cheaply made and the pins tend to push out while plugging them into the backplanes.. I did use those in the past and swapped them out for home made cables after about a year.
  9. True, but the install is almost exactly the same. no need to re-write the setup..
  10. I am running latest ESXi as of February... my unraid is still behind do to other odd issues that I had and have not yet researched.
  11. The X9scm-f is a nice board. it is a true server board built for stability in a 24x7 datacenter environment. The ipmi is a great feature. once you use it, you will wish you has it for all of your servers. the KVM over IP if offers is just nice. Being able to get into the bios without a monitor and remote reboots are just the tip of its features. The intel NIC are just better then any other brand out there.. ECC ram. yes, it is a little more expensive. but you know your data going through the ram is correct. no accidental corruption because of ram. The E3 xeons are more bang for the buck CPUs next to the i5/17 series. this is because they do not have the built in video cards that you cant use. Xeons are serious workhorses. there is a reason servers and high end workstations (and Mac Pro's) use them over I5/I7's. it might be a tough chunk of change right now. but when you have had it on 24x4 for 5 years and it has not died. you might be glad you invested the little extra. in the end, is about what fits in your budget.
  12. Johnm

    Feedback Please

    I would go with larger storage drives. 3x 3TB would yield the same storage space for about the same price. Todays storage servers are all about density. most storage possible in the smallest space
  13. No, but the price is quite reasonable http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235039&Tpk=zalman%20MS800
  14. Yes. you can just make a small VMDK on your data store. youll have to name it UNRAID and follow the steps as if it was a usb. this only works on the free version. if you ever upgrade, you'll have to use a FLASHDRIVE for a GUID.
  15. I have two inside the shell in my norco 4224 right now at the far end by the expansion cards laying on their backs with he front vents up and top vents to the front.. i even have a fan right against the "normally top vent" trying to keep them cool inside and the temps are still high. i hit 54c on the parity drive while creating parity. I'll give them a few more days to a week and start gutting them.
  16. I really wish someone stocked these in the US: 8 Bay: http://nbtaifa.en.alibaba.com/product/484820141-212566619/NAS_Server_Chassis_w_8_Hot_Swappable_SATA_SAS_Drive_Bays_Mini_ITX_.html?tracelog=cgsotherproduct1 6Bay: http://nbtaifa.en.alibaba.com/product/484889010-212566619/NAS_Server_Chassis_w_6_Hot_Swappable_SATA_SAS_Drive_Bays_Mini_ITX_.html The last time I got a quote, it was like $160 a unit after shipping for the 8bay. but you need to order 10.. I would consider buying some and putting the rest on ebay. I just dont have time right now. and when i have time, i don't have the money..
  17. I wont ever go back to cases full of individual drives again. Just messing around inside a case unscrewing drives fishing in wires can be a PITA. especially if you drop a screw and have to fish it out (we all have at least once). I am sure many of us have also accidentally bumped a sata or power connector (and not notice) on a drive we were not working on and put it all back together, put the server back and go to fire it up and a drive or 2 do not come back online.. time to pull it back out.. The biggest reason for me. is to just not have to move the PC. all of my towers are on shelves tightly squeezed together. and my rackmounts are all racked. after you start loading these puppies up with lots of drives, to unrack it for maintenance is a PITA. they are heavy to move and I have to un-wire the backs to get them out. An often overlooked argument for cages.. I tend to used the same type of cage for all of my computers. If i have to swap a drive from pc to the other.. just pull the tray and put it into the other PC.. As drive become larger an cheaper, i tend to upgrade the drives in my primary PC's/Servers and "bump" the older drives down to secondary boxes and possibly bump drives for those pcs down the line to even older boxes. I just moved 40 drives between 2 norco 4224's yesterday. that took about 2-3 min.. instead of hours.. and yes this was an extreme example. but it is one of my reasons for hotswap.. If I only had 1 server and it was easily accessible, my entire reasoning would be moot. when you have a sever room full of them, i don't have time to mess around. I work on servers all day at work.. i don't want to come home and do "work".. I want to go relax, less time spent on a PC is king to me..
  18. I'm not sure where you think there are no 1155 motherboards that work. I'm running 3x 1155 unraid systems. as are a lot of there people. You will most likely need to be on 5x for several of the 1155 features to work, like the NIC. I have been using an ASrock H77M-ITX with an i7 3770k for a preclearing station for my new drives for the last week or so. I have seen no issues other then it is ITX and to small for your needs. it is a bit overkill for unraid. it is a spare workstation that was free for the task. not a full time unraid box.
  19. If you are asking for suggestions on what to upgrade to, you sort of need to tell us what you have now and what you're plans for the future are. unRAID itself can run on almost anything. your limits are going to be resources for plugins and limitations for adding drives (both physical space and ports available).
  20. Good deal! I hope it works out for you. I am actually thinking about a 10 disk system the more I think about it. using 4TB drives should keep my backup needs more then satisfied for years. Thanks for the update.
  21. What city is it in? I could use a new backup server that I only need powered on about 24 hours a month..