MicroServer N36L/N40L/N54L - 6 Drive Edition


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Upgrade the BIOS to the "modified" one.

Turn on the write cache.

 

You still may not see that fast speeds. Using the "dirty writes" hack, I see 100MB/sec, but then writes slow down to about 45 to 50MB/sec on my N54L (7200rpm 4TB Hitachi, almost full).

The writes will be faster on an empty drive.

 

On my N36L (a slower Microserver), I'm seeing writes to a single drive of 70MB/sec+. But, that is running the Xpenology OS as a test.

 

My BiOS is upgraded. I turned on the write cache when I had a parity and a couple of array drives inside the N54L. It made a big difference in the parity check then but I never tried it with a cache drive. Now that I have around eighteen array drives i am not going to get 100MB/s+ parity check speeds. So with the write cache on or off the speeds are the same. It's just more consistent with it off now.

 

But with the cache drive I've tried an old 750GB WD green drive and a 1TB 7200 rpm Seagate drive. Both of these drives get much faster speeds from my first unRAID setup. The drives are fine. But for some reason my write speeds over the network aren't exceeding 50Mb/s to the cache drive.

 

When I pick up a few more drives I'll stick some in the N54L to test it out with just a parity, cache and three array drives to see what speeds I get. But until I find some drives on sale for a great price I'll need to wait and just live with the speeds.

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OK, I forgot that I mostly had test data on my unRAID3 setup. I only had around 100GB of data I needed to keep, so I copied that to another location and started from scratch.

 

I'm using a Seagate 2TB 7200 rpm drive for parity, three 5900 RPM Seagate drives for the array, and one Seagate 5900 rpm drive for the cache drive. All the drives that are in my N54L enclosure. I don't have any of my external enclosures turned on. So while it's doing the initial parity sync(I'm getting 107MB/s parity sync speeds) I'm able to copy files directly to the cache drive and I'm getting between 70MB/s and 110MB/s write rates and between 90MB/s and 110MB/s read rates. It is fluctuating alot between those speeds but it is much higher than before. I'll need to gradually add enclosures and drives to see where the copy speeds start to drop down.

 

So my next step is to move the drive I was using as the cache drive before into a slot in the N54L to see what speeds I get. Then if that goes well, I'll need to add one enclosures after another, testing speeds after each one is added.

 

 

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What speeds are people getting to the N54L when writing to a cache drive over the network? I recently setup a cache drive and I'm only getting around 45MB/s to 50MB/s write speeds. The read speeds are OK but it seems to be writing slower than I would expect. The same cache drive in my unRAID1 setup gets write speeds of 70MB/s to 75MB/s. So I'm curious if these speeds are normal.

 

I've tried the cache drive in a drive bay inside the 54L and also in a couple of my external enclosures. It made no difference in the speeds. Is there a setting I need to change in the BiOS to increase the speeds or is this normal?

I thought I was getting faster results to cache drive then that on my N40L but I'm at work currently and can't test for you.  I will see when I get home tonight.  Maybe someone else can confirm earlier.

Writing to a user share which writes to the cache drive I get 50-60MB/s.  Writing directly to the cache drive share and not through the user share file system I get 75-85MB/s.  This was using Windows Explorer in a Windows 7 VM from one unRAID server to the N40L unRAID server.  I copied a BluRay folder of a movie (34.8GB) - "2001 A Space Odyssey".  The cache drive is a EADS 1.5TB green drive and the rest of the drives in the array are WD 2TB Reds.
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What speeds are people getting to the N54L when writing to a cache drive over the network? I recently setup a cache drive and I'm only getting around 45MB/s to 50MB/s write speeds. The read speeds are OK but it seems to be writing slower than I would expect. The same cache drive in my unRAID1 setup gets write speeds of 70MB/s to 75MB/s. So I'm curious if these speeds are normal.

 

I've tried the cache drive in a drive bay inside the 54L and also in a couple of my external enclosures. It made no difference in the speeds. Is there a setting I need to change in the BiOS to increase the speeds or is this normal?

I thought I was getting faster results to cache drive then that on my N40L but I'm at work currently and can't test for you.  I will see when I get home tonight.  Maybe someone else can confirm earlier.

Writing to a user share which writes to the cache drive I get 50-60MB/s.  Writing directly to the cache drive share and not through the user share file system I get 75-85MB/s.  This was using Windows Explorer in a Windows 7 VM from one unRAID server to the N40L unRAID server.  I copied a BluRay folder of a movie (34.8GB) - "2001 A Space Odyssey".  The cache drive is a EADS 1.5TB green drive and the rest of the drives in the array are WD 2TB Reds.

Thanks.

 

My N54L finished the parity sync last night. Now when I write to a share that uses the cache I'm back to only 50MB/s write speeds. If I write directly to the cache drive is up to double that. Why is there such a disparity between the two?

 

So it sounds like when I had all my drives in the array in external enclosures everything was fine. But I don't like those slow speeds to a share that uses the cache drive. Since my other unRAID setups can get much faster speeds in the same situation. I just don't understand why the N54L is so much slower.

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Since my other unRAID setups can get much faster speeds in the same situation. I just don't understand why the N54L is so much slower.

 

 

There's a whole level of virtualization going on there with FUSE.

 

What is the difference in CPU between the two machines?

What are the bogomips on the machine(s) you are comparing.

 

 

How much ram is in each machine?

do you have the himem is dirtayable option set?

 

 

 

 

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Since my other unRAID setups can get much faster speeds in the same situation. I just don't understand why the N54L is so much slower.

 

 

There's a whole level of virtualization going on there with FUSE.

 

What is the difference in CPU between the two machines?

What are the bogomips on the machine(s) you are comparing.

 

 

How much ram is in each machine?

do you have the himem is dirtayable option set?

 

My unRAID1 setup has a 2.4 Ghz(or 2.6Ghz I always forget) single core Athlon CPU, but with 4GB of memory. My unRAID2 setep has a dual core 2.8 Ghz Athlon but with 2GB of memory. Both machines have dual channel memory while I guess my N54L is only single channel since it's got only one 2GB stick. I had thought about getting another 2GB stick before I opened it up but I figured my other machine was perfectly fine with only 2GB of memory so I figured it wasn't needed.

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OK the ram I have is registered, explains why it doesn't work.  Doubt you have to use kits from that list as long as it compatible.

Nope. You need to use specific RAM. 16GB is not supported by HP at all. Using 16GB is a bit of a "hack", so there is plenty of RAM that doesn't work.

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Hope this isn't off-topic but can anyone recommend a good UPS for my N36L? I got 5 WD 2TB greens and a 500g scorpio cache. I only intend to have my server running off this.

 

How would you rate this one?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/APC-BE700G-UK-Interface-Power-Saving-Back-UPS/dp/B002RXED6A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374789343&sr=8-1&keywords=APC+BE700G-UK

 

thaks alot :)

That's the one I have connected to my N40L. Only had it a few weeks though, and not had any power issues in that time :)

 

I'm currently running 2x 3TB WD Greens (1 is parity), 2x 1.5TB Samsungs and the 250GB Microserver drive as cache

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  • 2 weeks later...

i've been trying to find a uk stockist for that rosewill rc218 card with no luck so far :(

I couldn't find one either, but I did discover that the StarTech PEXSATA24E is the same card, and is available in the UK.

http://www.ebuyer.com/162229-startech-com-2-port-esata-4-port-sata-pci-express-x4-sata-pexsata24e

 

I ordered one from ebuyer last week and installed it at the weekend. I currently it setup to enable the 2 esata ports, and have my cache drive connected to one of the internal ports (eliminating the esata to sata cable coming in through the rear of the chassis).

 

At some point, when required, I'll look into getting hold of one (or more) of the external enclosures discussed in this thread and connecting up to the new esata ports.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

DUMB QUESTION AMNESTY    :P

---------------------------------

 

Recently acquired one of these n54L micro servers and a 2GB ECC DIMM (SAMSUNG) was included.  I replaced it with an 8GB ECC DIMM (KINGSTON), but I was wondering if it is best to remove the original DIMM or add to it.  I wasn't sure if different RAM chipset manufacturers cause issues on ECC RAM or something else that I am not aware of.  Thank you for any pointers

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That's the one I have connected to my N40L. Only had it a few weeks though, and not had any power issues in that time :)

 

I'm currently running 2x 3TB WD Greens (1 is parity), 2x 1.5TB Samsungs and the 250GB Microserver drive as cache

 

Thanks for the reply. I had alot of trouble finding one that could be shipped to me. I ended up going with this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/FSP-800VA-Off-line-Comprehensive-Protection/dp/B00ATO6WTA/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1378424457&sr=1-1&keywords=ups+fsp

Would of much preferred a smart UPS but this will give me peace of mind. We dont have many powercuts but had a problem with some fuses lately.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello,

 

I'm a new owner of a N54L.  nice little box by the way !

 

I have see a build with 8 disks : http://images.wikia.com/n40l/images/1/1b/MyN54L.png

But I don't find any information about it (how ? with what ? and so on ...).

Have you any information about this ?

 

Regards,

Your link show a modified box as in metal has been removed.  There are ways to do it without doing that.  You could get a Double Twin to increase the drive count to 6 drives.  The Double Twin is mounted in the optical drive bay instead of a CD/DVD drive.  You could also use a 4 x 1 or 6 x 1 2.5 drive cage to go to up to 10 drives.  This also mounts in the optical drive bay.  You could expand it even farther by putting more 2.5 laptop drives under the optical drive bay.  I've had up to 4 underneath it working.  You could also update the bios to the custom bios to get the eSata port to work as a port multiplier and get an external drive cage.  Going more than 6 drives will require the purchase of a controller but 6 drives could be done with just the eSata and optical drive sata ports if need be.
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

On another side note, has anybody implemented the so called fix for the N54L? Adding the below to the go script.

 

echo 50 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold & logger Go Script - ondemand up_threshold set to 50
echo 50 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor & logger Go Script - ondemand sampling_down_factor set to 50

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On another side note, has anybody implemented the so called fix for the N54L? Adding the below to the go script.

 

echo 50 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold & logger Go Script - ondemand up_threshold set to 50
echo 50 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor & logger Go Script - ondemand sampling_down_factor set to 50

 

Yes. Resulted in quite an increase in transfer speed, mainly when copying data to the microserver. Reading was fast enough without the "fix".

 

 

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