I am currently migrating from WHS V1 to this new toy. Its a slow process as I am transferring almost 16TBs and migrating disks as I go. I am re-purposing that hardware to run Server 2008 R2 with My Movies 4.

 

I went with a somewhat future proof build. Sandy bridge chipset and processor, disks enclosures to grow. My only concern is the 3TB+ drive support on the SAS cards. I have read yes and no but dont plan on moving to those until the price comes down by at least half.

 

 

OS at time of building: 4.7 Pro

CPU: Intel i3-2100

Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O

RAM: 4GB (2 x 2GB) of Kingston DDR3 1333 ECC

Case: NORCO RPC-4224

Drive Cage(s): Included in case

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650W

SATA Expansion Card(s): Two SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 SAS

Cables: 4 x NORCO C-SFF8087-D SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Internal Multilane SAS Cable and 2 x NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable

Fans: 6 x ENERMAX UC-8EB 80mm Case Fan

 

Parity Drive: 2TB Hitachi 7K3000

Data Drives: 1x Samsung 2TB Spinpoint F4 HD204UI, 11x WD 2TB WD20EARS, 1x Hitachi 2TB 7200 Older Model

Cache Drive: 1x WD 750 GB Black WD7502AAEX

Total Drive Capacity: 26TB currently.

 

Primary Use: Houses all digital media used by 3 Media Center Clients running My Movies.

Likes: So far flexibility is great and has much more detail on drive status than WHS, Low overhead

Dislikes: Slow writes, User drive configuration was confusing at first

Add Ons Used: unMenu

Future: Adding a new UPS to mix

 

 

Boot (peak): TBD

Idle (avg): TBD

Active (avg): TBD

Light use (avg): TBD

I'm surprised you describe the writes as slow since you are using a cache drive.  Were writes to WHS much faster?

 

Also, that looks like a great new motherboard!  If you are willing to test it to Level 1 or better that would be great.  If you do so, start a new thread in the motherboards forum with the mobo's name as the thread title.

I guess I should clarify what I meant when I said the writes are slow. Right now I am copying everything from WHS to the cache drive and then letting the mover run and take it to one of the disks.

 

Since I only have a 750 GB cache drive I am filling it up faster than the mover can put these files into a protected disk. I am getting about 29000 kbs writing to the cache and then about 14000 kbs when it moves them to parity drives.

 

So I have been baby sitting the mover to verify it has been running 24X7 to keep up with the cache drive. Every couple of hours I will pause my transfer to the cache drive to let it catch up and then start again.

 

I am sure once I have finished the migration and am back to the normal mode I will change the back to running at night instead of 24X7.

 

So far I am loving this setup. I cant wait to be done with the migration and can use the cache drive as intended.

 

I would be happy to test that motherboard for level 1 certification. I will just need to read what I need to do to get that done.

Why don't you mount directly the drives into your unRAID server and move the datas directly from there? (and maybe disable parity drive till you move everything)

 

You surely would have much better transfer rate.

Agreed.  I would disable the cache drive and potentially even the parity drive for the initial data migration.  I would only disable the parity drive if you are able to do so without putting your data at risk (meaning it is located in at least once other place outside the unRAID server).  Using the cache drive like you are is actually making the process take longer, since the data has to be written twice - once to the cache drive, then again to the array.  You might as well write directly to the array and speed things up.  Once the initial data migration is done, then you can re-enable the cache drive.

 

If you aren't already, I would also recommend using Teracopy (free) with the verify function turned on.  This will ensure that there was no data corruption during the transfer.

Great idea.

 

I have disabled the cache drive on both the user shares I have been sending to. I have also taken the parity drive out for now.

 

I will try the terracopy out too. Been using total commander so it would be nice to see if this is faster.

Quick update.

 

Still pulling my data over from WHS. Been a long and tedious process. When using terracopy I am having random issues where WHS will stop letting my unraid server read. It then locks up the entire WHS share and has to be hard reset. I switched back to using total commander as I have seen the issue as frequently when using it.

 

I cannot wait to be off WHS once and for all!

 

I ordered a new UPS "APC BR1500G" that should be here next week. I also ordered a 2 port SATA card (SIL3132 from monoprice) to complete the last 2 drive connections for whenever unraid supports more drives.

 

I should have everything migrated and tested by the end of next week. I am sure when I add my parity drive back in that will take a significant amount of time to sync up.

 

I will post the syslog for the new motherboard to get it's level 1 test complete when I have completed this.

Nice build!

 

Your build is the same as the the one I am working on.

 

I am still undecided on the route to go for the CPU/RAM.

 

I was looking at the exact same setup, then i questioned if i wanted to do the Xeon instead of the I3.

I'm leaning towards the I3 for unRaid for now.

 

I ordered everything except the mobo/cpu/ram.

For now I am using the SuperMicro MBD-X7SPA-HF-O Mini-ITX with 1 of the 2 SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 SAS cards i ordered

I'm limited to 14 drives for now. For now, I still have "some" room to grow before I need to make that upgrade, this gives me time to shop the sales.

 

 

I can totally feel your pain as you're doing this. you're not alone this week.

I am also killing off one of my WHS servers.

This was a media server with pooled Drives just for testing WHS's DE. it was only in use for about 3 months.

(I'm definitely going to keep one WHS for PC backups.)

I am trying to get a bit greener and  stop using raid arrays for video stream and long term storage.

spinning 16 drives 24x7 is just not a great idea in the home.

I am hoping that unRaid solves this for me, i am also planing on a second Unraid for a back-up of the important data off this one.

 

Fortunately most of the data on my WHS was still on a Raid6 array on a 2008r2 box.

I only need about 3-5TB off the WHS (and 12TB-ish off the raid) before I can reclaim the hardware.

Hopefully i can also scrub the data off the raid after this build proves stable.

 

My stupid WHS  keeps dropping its own shares while copying files over.

I am about mount a non-pooled drive into it and  move the data off that way, then put the drive into the unraid box.

 

How are your drive temps?

I got the exact same fans. during preclears, my samsungs are hovering about 23-27, my WD ears got to about 30-34 and my seagate 5900 RPM's shot up to 46 before I shut down the preclear on them. that's a bit to hot for me. I am going to try moving them to an outer bay and try again later. I'm also going to try the stock mid fans again. they were not that loud. for now i don't need the seagates in the pool.

 

I also ordered 2 of these for the  back fans. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186031 I wanted the PWM off the MOBO header. My thought was if the Mobo gets to hot, it will kick those up to vent. It is possible I screwed up and made a high pressure pocket in the main mobo area hurting my drive cooling. 4x 24CFM sucking in and 2 x 28 CFM's at about 1/4 speed exhausting?

I'll turn these to full power and see if that helps.

 

What kind of network  speeds are you getting with that  Cache drive from a desktop?

I have not yet set up a cache drive. I have an old segate 1.5 TB 7200rpm or a single platter WD 300gig blue i could use. i also have a 30GB SSD but thats a bit small for my usage.

 

Good luck with your build.

Thanks.

 

I would just go with the i3 2100 if you have an LGA 1155 board. It was $125 on newegg. I think the xeon is overkill for this application(the i3 is even overkill).

 

I do love the motherboards ability to get into it without the need for a keyboard or mouse. It can best be compared to HP's ILO feature.

 

The WD EARS drives run about 32 C and the samsung/hitachi runs at around 28 C when spinning. The ambient temperature in the room is around 70 F. I can barely even hear the fans running. My current WHS is about 5X louder.

 

Right now I have parity and the cache drive turned off so I am averaging around 30 MBs when pulling from WHS and around 45 MBs when pulling from my desktop.

 

With the cache drive on I was averaging around the same speeds. This is with gigabit across the board.

 

I am ordering more hitachi drives in the future. I have lost some faith with the green drives from western digital. I was sending 2 a month back for about 4 months straight. The ones they are replacing them with seem to be good but its $5 a shipment and almost a 2 week turnaround time.

 

The hitachi's have 5 year warrantys and are pretty cheap. Samsung F4 drives are pretty good too but they were just purchased by Seagate so they are officially dead to me now.

Ok,

 

Our temps are about the same. if anything mine cooled down a little from the other day now that i pulled the seagates from the server. I was seeing a steady 22-23 on all the samsungs and 27-31 on the WD's

 

I agree with you on the samungs. Those were my favorite LP drives.

I have 3 raid arrays filled with the F4 2TB's and 2 with the older F2 1.5's I just ordered a small pile of F4's for spares for the raid arrays if i need them a year or two from now. I was just about to fill the last 2 arrays with more F4's when they dropped the news. I have not tryed the new hitachi's yet. I hear nothing but good news. I might go right for the 3TB models to replace the 1.5's. I think i am at the end of my 2TB drive purchases. Unless there is some super $60 sale this month at the egg.

 

I was hoping for slightly better network speeds, I have not yet bought my pro licence I just went through filling up the 3 drive free version and preclearing all my drives. then lots of learning, testing, Rebuilding, etc. I'm pretty happy with this build and unraid is almost living up to my needs. I just hope the  Cache drive gives me a speed boost. I might try that small SSD i have and upgrade to bigger one if I like it. I'll probabably buy my licences this week. I just wish I could test it out in full production before I had to buy the pro. It cant be slower then WHS. UGH!

 

I tend to agree with you on the Xeon is overkill, But if the server is going to be 24x7, I might run VM's on it and retire an older Q9550. so this box would replace 2 boxes. part of my going greener plan.

 

The temporary supermicro board I'm running is a mini-ITX Atom board. Honestly, if unRAID supported SAS expanders, I would just get a cheap Intel (LSI) SAS card and the Intel (LSI) expander. then i could run 24+ drives off of a 1 slot atom board. that would be pretty nice on my electric bill and enough Horse Power for vanilla unraid.

 

I feel your pain on bad drives. I have gone through that with every vendor so far. it is not just WD. I had to send back 10 seagates in December. I'm done with them after that.

I might have to add some new fans. It was past 90 for the first time outside and the AC is running a lot.

 

My setup is on a shelf with a couple other servers and one of the 2TB EADS drives went past 40 C while running a parity check (another story on that). I didnt think it was going to be an issue until today.

 

Kind of disappointed with the enermax's I got. They are quiet but don't seem to move that much air. I am not really wanting to go get the 120MM bracket and have to mess with installing that around all the cables. I am pretty sure I would have to pull most of them.

Just a quick update. I have been running this same configuration 24x7 for about a year at this point with no issues.

 

An automatic parity check runs at the first of each month and has only had to correct 1 issue.

 

The alerting I get for a failed or failing drive is fantastic. I am nearing my capacity but have been using new storage sparingly since the floods have doubled/tripled the cost.

 

Upcoming plans: Like many I plan on upgrading to the next stable release whenever that comes out. I am also going to up my parity drive to 3TBs to enable larger drives in my array.

Thanks for the update!  Glad to hear everything has been working well for you.