Chia farming, plotting; array and unassigned devices

[sota]

just loaded kale crypto.

 

[TexasUnraid]

29 minutes ago, sota said:

just loaded kale crypto.

 

 

Link?

[sota]

https://kalenetwork.org/

 

also, getting ready to migrate the install to an SSD.

what a pain in the ****.

Edited July 12, 2021 by sota

[TexasUnraid]

I created a script to help setting up new windows installs about a decade ago and have been slowly adapting and adding to it. Has cut my install time to a fraction of what it used to be lol.

 

If you current install is fine, there is always the option of cloning the drive as well.

[sota]

backup and restore is my main method with windows 10.

GHOST was my go-to for the longest time, but the version I have doesn't work with win10 properly.

[TexasUnraid]

I used Ghost WAY back in the day, I use an open source program now, forgot the name.

 

Never trusted the built in backup tools, lost a lot of data and time with the early versions of those and can't bring myself to try them again.

[sota]

The native backup tool that comes with Windows 7 and up, including the server versions, is solid as a rock, especially when you want to do disaster recovery.

 

My production servers use it exclusively.  Also works flawlessly, and Any-Monkey-Can-Do-It, even with native encrypted drives.  I have recovery down to a single USB stick, plus the backup drive obviously, and some ridiculously simple instructions, which predominantly consist of "click <NEXT>" about 6 times.

[TexasUnraid]

I will keep that in mind. When things go wrong I have always followed the start fresh approach. Too many times I would restore backups only for the same or new issues to pop up and then have to do it all over again.

[sota]

testing backups is always a good idea.

[TexasUnraid]

1 minute ago, sota said:

testing backups is always a good idea.

 

It is but it is so much work 😪

[sota]

part that's killing me right now with his drive move, is USB 2.0 is all that's on this machine

currently doing a restore to the target disk, connected to another box, so I can get 99% of the work done before moving it into the 'production' farm.  I'll take a folder snapshot of all the .coin folders, then just restore that into place when I make the move.

 

[sota]

1 minute ago, TexasUnraid said:

 

It is but it is so much work 😪

less work than rebuilding from scratch, at least in my case.

all these customer VMs on this server... I need retardedly simple restore procedures, even for myself, as it'll be stressful enough if this thing smokes itself.

[TexasUnraid]

Lucky for me my home setup is just personal data, worst case I get some angry looks around the dinner table lol.

 

As long as I have backups of all the data itself, it is not a big deal if it takes a day or 2 to get everything back up.

 

I got out of IT a long time ago due to the stress, I kept up a lot better with that stuff then.

Edited July 12, 2021 by TexasUnraid

[sota]

well on a good note, the SSD upgrade has made the machine SO much more responsive overall.

 

[TexasUnraid]

I refuse to use an HDD for the boot drive for the last ~10 years. I got my first SSD around 2008 and never looked back. I quickly upgraded every pc in the house to SSD's.

 

It is amazing what it does even for an old system. I have an old laptop with a core 2 duo from 2006 that is still usable for basic web browsing etc with an SSD. With the stock HDD it lived in the closet for many years it was so slow.

[sota]

I was cobbling stuff together early on for this project, so it was whatever I could reach at the time.

[TexasUnraid]

yeah, I did pretty much the same, had the parts laying around just not all in the same place. Tossed them together to get a few working systems.

 

I need to get in gear and start re-plotting soon, have not had time to see if the forks have updated to the pooling plots yet.

[tjb_altf4]

Had lots of problems with IO sending farm response times through the roof when I had my final directory on the array.

Ended up creating a RAID0 array of 2x HDD as a faster "final" directory, then transferring to array with rsync + ionice.

I am now running 4 plot transfers at a time with zero impacts to response times

As long as all dirs are mapped to the chia app (and added in its config), there is never any plot downtime

[TexasUnraid]

I would love to have multiple pools or another unraid license so I could setup the plots on unraid. I am almost running out of drive letters in windows right now lol. Plus selecting a single dir is a lot easier then 20+

[tjb_altf4]

12 minutes ago, TexasUnraid said:

I would love to have multiple pools or another unraid license so I could setup the plots on unraid. I am almost running out of drive letters in windows right now lol. Plus selecting a single dir is a lot easier then 20+

I'll be super bummed if multi array isn't in the 6.10 release, I really want to isolate my chia adventures from my other data.

Unraid itself has solved so many issues others have struggled to resolve without using 3rd party tools.

 

FYI, you can mount drives into a folder, instead of as drive letter to get around the windows drive letter limitations.

[TexasUnraid]

yeah, I know you can mount them into a folder, it is just more work lol.

[sota]

Ambient temperature is about 73F

All are inside the 1U case, except as noted.

 

     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 27 C (80 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 26 C (78 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F)
     Temperature : 43 C (109 F) SSD in a poor air flow spot in the case
     Temperature : 25 C (77 F)
     Temperature : 25 C (77 F)
     Temperature : 25 C (77 F)
     Temperature : 25 C (77 F)
     Temperature : 28 C (82 F) laptop drive outside connected, in free air
     Temperature : 41 C (105 F) outside USB connected drive

 

I'd say, this NR12000 does a remarkable job keeping the disks cool.

[sota]

15 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

yeah, I know you can mount them into a folder, it is just more work lol.

 

diskpart can let you do it via command line.

[sota]

This is getting out of hand...

 

Tue 07/13/2021 22:07:45.31
   -Total Balance: 0.0 avo (0 slice)
   -Total Balance: 2500.0 cgn (2500000000000000 mio)
   -Total Balance: 2.000001500136 xch (2000001500136 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 0.0 xdg (0 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 12.0 xfx (12000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 12.0 xfl (12000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 200.0 gdog (200000000000000 dog)
   -Total Balance: 30.0 xgj (30000000000000 moji)
   -Total Balance: 46.0 hdd (46000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 18.0 xka (18000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 28.0 xse (28000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 10.0 tsit (10000000000000 mojo)
   -Total Balance: 48.0 spare (48000000000000 graviton)
 

[tjb_altf4]

I think there have been some solid efficiencies introduced in the new chia plotter, my CPU is barely trying with 10 parallel plots.

It used to be at +80% usage, lets see how 14 jobs in parallel go haha