Hoopster

Yes. A Xeon supports ECC RAM (so does the i3); whereas i5 and i7 (also i9 in later generations) do not support ECC RAM.

Probably not since it is only powered on for backup. I have ECC RAM in my main server and non-ECC RAM and a non-Xeon CPU in the backup server. You could also have run a less-expensive Core i3 or even a Pentium on the board and been fine for backup purposes. Whereas I intend to use my backup server as a true backup (it becomes my main server including for Plex, etc.) in the case of a really big problem with main server, I have a more powerful CPU in it even though it is not a Xeon.

That is non-ECC RAM, but it should still work on the motherboard as it supports ECC Unbuffered and non-ECC RAM. You just won't won't get the single-bit error correcting capabilities.

There is a note on the motherboard specs that only Xeon E3-12xx v6 CPUs can support 2400 MHz RAM. The highest speed the v5 (which you have specified) can support is 2133 MHZ. The RAM you linked has a stated speed of 3200 MHz. It is not clear if that is is native speed or the fasted speed at which it can run. In either case you should be able to run it at 2133 or 2400 MHz through BIOS settings. Make sure you update to the latest BIOS for the boards. Sometimes BIOS updates support higher RAM speeds.

No. That motherboard requires Unbuffered ECC RAM which is not the same as registered ECC. My prior main server motherboard was the ASRock Rack C236 WSI (non-IPMI version) so I know it needs Unbuffered ECC. These are specified as UDIMM.

It was a Crucial MX500 SSD. Other models appear to be fine, I think. It was largely a Linux problem and was fine in Windows (until it wasn't). When it started popping up in Windows, suddenly it was "expected bahavior" according to Crucial and they saw no need to fix it.

Here's what it looks like (I turned off 197 because it was a false pending sector count reading):

Yes, because of some cabling issues, I was getting a lot of UDMA CRC errors on a particular disk. The error notifications were frequent and almost instantaneous. I ended up attaching that disk to a different HBA SATA cable/port and rebuilding. It was the same disk and I just rebuilt it onto itself and all was good. Because of all the errors, unRAID eventually marked the disk unreadable. Notifications can be email but also pop up in the unRAID GUI. I had another case where I turned off SMART monitoring of a particular attribute because I was getting notified of an "error" that minutes later corrected itself. It got so frequent it was annoying and was due to a firmware bug in that particular SSD model.

I was not trying to imply otherwise. Sometimes I reply thinking of others who might be reading the thread in the future because of a search. FYI - here's the GUI SMART section:

@Corvinus This an important point. Many wrongly assume parity is a backup of the data on all the drives. How can one (or even two) 12TB parity drives have a full backup of several 12TB data drives? All the parity drive contains is a bunch of bits that contain the parity calculation for that location for ALL the drives. If a drive needs to be rebuilt or replaced, parity can rebuild the drive by using the parity calculation and reading ALL the other drives (they must all be readable) to figure out what is missing. Now, if you need to rebuild a drive, yes it will come back exactly as it was. This will include all folders, files permissions, etc. It will also include any errors or corruption introduced to parity before rebuilding; thus the need for a monthly parity check to ensure parity integrity. And, yes SMART checks can be run on demand or scheduled via a script.

There is a plugin app (Backup/Restore Appdata) that will periodically backup the flash drive to a location outside your array; an unassigned device is a good idea as the array is inaccessible if unRAID cannot be booted from the flash drive. The flash drive is only accessed when booting the server and updating configurations. In general, there is not a lot of activity on the flash drive except in rare cases of having the syslog server write to the flash drive when trying to troubleshoot issues. You can contact Limetech if you need more than one replacement within a year. They are generally very understanding in cases of legitimate problems. Yep, lot and lots of unRAID users with SuperMicro boards. They are very well supported (even older ones). In unRAID, each data disk has its own filesystem and can be read independent of the array outside unRAID on a system that supports the unRAID filesystems - XFS, BTRFS and even the older ReiserFS which is no longer recommended. ZFS is supported via plugin and may soon become a native supported filesystem in unRAID. The parity drives have no filesystem and are just buckets of bits holding the parity calculation for every corresponding block on all the data drives. Each supported filesystem has some repair tools which generally work very well if the filesystem on a particular drive is somehow corrupted. unRAID tracks disks by serial number. It generally does not care to what or how they are connected (a few exceptions). If you have a freshly built USB stick with defaults and you have the same data disks connected even to a different machine or different HBA, just create a new config and assign the data disks to data slots and you will have a new array with all your data intact. There are some special considerations with disk order if you have dual parity, but, not with single parity. If you forgot which is which, there is also a way to discover which are your previous parity disk(s) so you don't accidentally assign them as data disks and lose your parity data by starting the array. Only with a trial license. Once licensed, you never have to be connected to the Internet to boot unRAID. The license is associated with the GUID of the flash drive. No online validation is needed.

There is no hard and fast rule, but as I mentioned, many recommend a second Parity drive once you have 8 or more data drives. The chances for two drives failing at the same time at lower drive counts is low (but not zero). Of course you should also have data backups and parity is not a backup. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When transferring lots of data to the array, many choose to do it without a Parity drive as the transfers will be much quicker. When all the data is on the array, you can add parity drive(s) and let parity calculation run then. How many data drives will be in your array? Unless you really think you need dual parity from the outset, many do not add a second parity drive until there are 8 or more data drives. Of course, that is totally up to you and your preferred protection level.

Before I had an IMPI capable motherboard in the backup server, I was using wake/sleep functions instead of IPMI power on/off. Sleep and wake is highly dependent on the motherboard and NIC combo and some work much better than others. The one I had a few years ago happened to work very well, but it can be hit and miss. It is hard to know which motherboards/NICs will work well unless you get some advice from fellow unRAID users. There have been a few discussions about that in these forums. Instead of the ipmitool commands in my script, I just had a wake command sent to the NIC to wake up the server for backup and, when finished, the script sent it a sleep command. This worked great until I decided I wanted IPMI power on/off instead. For non-IPMI boards, some have made Raspberry Pi BMC/KVM setups to power their servers on/off. See this thread. The low-tech way of doing it is to manually turn the server on before backup happens or to just leave it always on. At the end of the day, IPMI is the easiest, most reliable way to do it, but, yes such boards are more expensive. My current MB cost me about $280 but can be found for $240 now here in the US. I don't know what availability or cost is for IPMI boards in your area.

What's your use case for this? Knowing what you want to do and why may be helpful.

"The IBM M1015 is based on the LSI SAS2008 ROC controller, its LSI OEM name is LSI 9220-8i" See https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/ Based on that, I believe IT firmware for the 9211-8i should work. The 9211-8i, IBM 1015 and Dell H310 (which I have) are all based on the SAS2008 chip. I flashed my Dell H310 with Broadcom 9211-8i IT firmware.

Well, that did not last long. Both unRAID (System Temp plugin) and IPMI are now reporting an MB temperature of 84C. Of course, they both supposedly read the same nct6791 sensor. It was always interesting to me that most times System Temp in unRAID was reporting a 27-32C temp and IPMI was just stuck on 80 something. After a server reboot, the unRAID temp usually is correct again but IPMI temp never changes.

I have two UAP-AP-LR and one UAP-AC-IW. So, not a lot. The problems reported earlier in this thread with firmware version 4.3.24.11355 were related to Chromecast. I have seen no issues and have been running that firmware for about 51 days.

Take your time, no hurry. Get your first issue resolved and then we can talk about the second server boot issue. I should pretend to do some more work anyway.

OK, that is an older board with a built-in Realtek NIC. It should work as Realtek drivers for Linus/unRAID have improved a lot lately. The problem is that without diagnostics (or at least the syslog) we can't see what is happening when unRAID tries to initialize the NIC and load drivers. If you happen to have a PCIe NIC laying around you could put in the server (preferably with an Intel chipset) we could at least determine if the NIC is the problem. Sorry about the cloud data loss. That sucks. I always pull the Ethernet cable when I suspect data issues just for that reason. CrashPlan backup is constantly running in the background and I don't want to think about it so I just pull the cable. That way it can't get propagated to the backup server either even though that is only once a week.

What version of unRAID are you using and what is the motherboard and NIC? Diagnostics would tell me that but you can't get them. Some people get similar errors with newer hardware and stable unRAID (6.8.3) but running the 6.9.0 RC works. Others get the issue because of flash drive problems. (sorry for the delayed response. It was early afternoon here and I had a work meeting even though I mostly just pretend to work 😁)

All my APs have the 4.3.24.11355 firmware and no update is showing for a later version.

How are you creating the flash drive? USB Creator or manually? On the unbootable USB stick try running the appropriate make_bootable for your OS (make_bootable.bat for Windows). If on Windows, run it as administrator. Are you inserting the USB flash drive in a USB 2 port? They have fewer problems than with USB 3 ports with some flash drives. I doubt this is the issue, just a question for another data point.

Do you have a keyboard and monitor connected to the server? Do you ever get a command line? If so, type 'diagnostics' at the command line and post them here. If diagnostics cannot be written to the flash drive, your flash drive has problems and could be the cause of the problems.

Another option is to just delete network.cfg and unRAID will recreate it on boot with defaults which is with bonding disabled.