Currently unRAID Server Pro handles Up to 16 drives: 15 data, 1 parity.

 

I am about to purchase a new rack-mount case for a non trivial amount of money to house unRAID. It has 16 drive bays.

 

So my question is "Are there any plans for unRAID to handle more than 16 drives in the short/medium term".

 

I can purchase a 24 drive version of the case but it is a considerable cost overhead should I not use it in a reasonable time frame.

 

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

 

Ta

side question ... what case and where are you purchasing?

here is an example of one

 

http://supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/846/SC846TQ-R900B.cfm

While I can't answer the "what are the odds 16 will be increased in the near future?" question, there are a few points that I think should be made:

 

1. Unless you are tapping out 16x1TB drives (an unusual user), you would more likely jump up in drive size than go nuts on the number of drives.  For example, I have a small unraid, at 5x300GB.  My next step will be to buy 750GB drives, once I hit the limit of my enclosure, I will likely be then moving my 300GBs to the 1.5TB (or whatever is reasonably priced two years from now).

 

2. To take this to an extreme, if unRaid supported an infinite number of drives and you used that infinite amount, the chances of losing a second drive while you were replacing a bad first drive would be 100%.  Now ratchet the number down to more earthly quantities, there is still a non-trivial chance of a second drive failing and that chance increases with the total number of drives.

 

3. I didn't price out the 24 vs. 16 drive versions of the rack case you list, but it may be such that the incremental cost of the additional eight drives is such that going with multiple smaller unraids is preferable.  Performance is almost certainly going to be better (fewer drives to parity at a time, multiple GigE streams, ....)

 

In conclusion, it may actually be both smarter and cheaper to have multiple unRaids rather than an uber-sized single unraid.

 

 

Bill

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

To answer some of the posed questions:

 

The 16 drive case is a Chenbro RM 414B

 

 

The proposal that you are more likely to jump drive sizes is sound but in my world i dont like replacing drives. I also dont like paying a premium for expensive new technolgy drives. Now to counter my own argument the price of the drive needs to be the cost of the drive + the cost of the case slot+ card port but at this time i try to go for the sweet spot drive pricing wise which is 500gig.

 

I like the idea of more than one unRAID but the cost of say a 16 HDD + second 12 HDD is considerably more than one 24.

 

I am ordering the case in a week so hopefully Limetech might reply with a clue between now and then. TBH its not the end of the world if they dont I was just trying to cover some bases.

The proposal that you are more likely to jump drive sizes is sound but in my world i dont like replacing drives. I also dont like paying a premium for expensive new technolgy drives.

 

I hear you - I don't like paying a premium either.  When I built my unraid, 750GB drives were all the rage at $300 so I bought 300GB drives for $70.  When 750GB drives drop to $100 or less, I will add them (not replace the 300s).  Then I will start replacing the 300s in ~two years with whatever is the $100 drive at that time (probably 1.5GB).

 

However, if my space usage were growing more rapidly than it is, I would be forced to escalate my drive purchases and (perhaps like you) would be less inclined to toss out the 300GB drives.

 

 

Bill

Newegg has WD OEM 750GB drives for $155. That's in line with 300GB at $70 and 500GB at $100.

 

There's always a sweet spot for this stuff, but I think it's always best to seek it out at GB per dollar rather than a flat dollar amount.

Newegg has WD OEM 750GB drives for $155. That's in line with 300GB at $70 and 500GB at $100.

 

There's always a sweet spot for this stuff, but I think it's always best to seek it out at GB per dollar rather than a flat dollar amount.

 

Yep, but my 300GBs were bought six months ago when 750GB was double the price.  Of course, after I wrote about my likely storage growth plan I filled up about about half of my remaining storage with my newest DVD collections over the weekend (100 DVDs), so I may be purchasing sooner than I thought.

 

 

Bill

Newegg has WD OEM 750GB drives for $155. That's in line with 300GB at $70 and 500GB at $100.

 

There's always a sweet spot for this stuff, but I think it's always best to seek it out at GB per dollar rather than a flat dollar amount.

 

Not all of us live in the USA. I can buy 2* 500GB disks for the price of one 750GB here and 3* 500GB disks for the price of one 1TB.

 

But this is not really my issue. At some point I am going to need more than 16 drives (probably sooner rather than later) and it will either be a new unRAID or an expansion of the current one. If I dont have enough hard drive slots though no matter what disk size i buy I wont be able to upgrade without replacing a drive which I am not going to do unless absolutely necessary which... is the point of this post.... will it be necessary or will unRAID support > 16 drives soonish

Have you thought about using eSATA and enclosures (like this - not necessarily recommending that one, just using it as an example) that cause multiple drives to look like one drive to expand? There are many eSATA enclosures that will let you put the drives in RAID 0, so it will look like one big drive to unRAID, and then unRAID can give you some redundancy on it. Not ideal, I know, but possible. You could also do the same thing internally, though I don't know how well unRAID plays with internal hardware RAID controller arrays.

Finally purchased a case.

 

this one fit the bill perfectly both cost wise and drive count wise.

 

Its not as high quality as i would have liked but as soon as you go past 16 drives chassis exponentially jump in price

 

Nice case!

Who makes this case? Please provide link.

----

 

I do see 20 and 24 drive arrays being feasible and worthwhile.

I think part of the issue is memory. Which as we know of late, has been expanded.

For some of us, it's sheer archival storage.

 

As far as parity time. For some of us, it's not that much of an issue. For others it is.

 

A far as more and more smaller drives vs 1 larger drive.

You have to also weigh how much electricity it costs in keeping these multiple small spindles powered on.

 

My drives are not that old that I fear multiple drive failure.

Again, there comes a point in time when it's just not worth powering the smaller drives.

 

I have about 10 300GB ide drives I'm going to dump on eBay because of that.

 

http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/445733/x-case-rm-420---20-drive-sata-ii-hotswap---inc-rails-optional-psusuks-lowest-priced-multidisk-4u-.html

 

A few other people sell it rebranded as their own but this was the best deal i could find. Even comes with rails.

 

At that price its almost cheaper than the equivalent amount of HDD trays.

http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/445733/x-case-rm-420---20-drive-sata-ii-hotswap---inc-rails-optional-psusuks-lowest-priced-multidisk-4u-.html

 

A few other people sell it rebranded as their own but this was the best deal i could find. Even comes with rails.

 

At that price its almost cheaper than the equivalent amount of HDD trays.

 

Hi,

I have been looking at the Norco 4020 case for some time now, but with shipping and customs (to Denmark) it is going too expensive for me.

 

Then I did some research and came acrosse www.xcase.co.uk and ended up in this thread

 

You have owned this case for some time now. Do you still recommend is?

 

It looks VERY similar to the Norco 4020 case, but according to sales at xcase.co.uk it is not the same case.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

BR Søren

Ya know.. I was going to reopen this subject.. I.E. Expanding unraid for additional drive capacity.

 

Tom, with cases like this and a number of people ordering them, is there a reason to keep unRAID at it's current limitation.

 

Can you expand unRAID support to 20 data drives?

 

I'm about ready to purchase this case along with a Supermicro Server board and 2 of the 8 port PCI-X supermicro sata cards. With the 6 onboard ports that would bring me to 22 sata ports.

 

Even with regular motherboards and port multipliers, the ability to have 20 drives or more is feasible...

I think the largest Areca card supports 24 esata ports.

Probably not practical, yet it's still feasible.

I think that past 16 drives another parity drive would be crucial.  Until there is more serious talk from Limetech about additional parity I would STRONGLY advise against going over 16 drives event if it is opened up from the software side.

 

I would be for additional drives with additional parity but there are a host of other considerations.  Port density is not QUITE there yet.  You can get 10 or 11 ports from a board and 8 ports on a card now but there are issues and tradeoffs to consider.  (Anyone running twp 8 port cards yet?  Can the bus handle that?) My main concern would be that data rebuild would take A LOT more time in a 20 drive system for example which makes it even more likely for a 2 drive failure.  Port replicators are an option BUT there was thread here recently from someone who had a port replicator go bad and that caused all kinds of issues. (Not sure if he lost data but I think there was some corruption)

 

Just some thoughts.

I realize the parity calculation time and bandwidth is a potential issue.

However, I don't fully agree with the whole 2 drive failure thing for a few more drives.

I've never seen this happen in all of my years with data centers. Then again, we don't use drives that should be retired plus we do enable and check smart logs.

I have a feeling most of these two drive failures are because the drives are very old and/or the health of the drive is not monitored.

Of course having multiple parity drives or multiple arrays as a choice is a great thing,

I don't see a reason to limit people's choice. There are cost effective 20 drive cases out there.

I've heard of raid5 arrays failing during rebuild due to "bit rot" (a new term to me). This is possible now if we use old drives and do not check smart logs.

I think the saving grace for us is to do the monthly parity checks which will give you a hint something is amiss.

 

I'm in the process of configuring a cost effective 20 drive system which will still cost less then a large Areca RAID card and I estimate will have satisfactory performance.

 

Therefore,  even though it's not recommended, I would like the choice to do it if I'm going to use good hardware and good service maintenance practices.

I'm in the process of configuring a cost effective 20 drive system which will still cost less then a large Areca RAID card and I estimate will have satisfactory performance.

 

Question, will you be using unRAID for this or some form of software RAID stack (Linux, VST Pro, Veritas, etc)?

Question, will you be using unRAID for this or some form of software RAID stack (Linux, VST Pro, Veritas, etc)?

 

unRAID, I have need in striping drives right now.

Question, will you be using unRAID for this or some form of software RAID stack (Linux, VST Pro, Veritas, etc)?

 

unRAID, I have need in striping drives right now.

 

I'm confused.  Unraid does not stripe data at all.

Question, will you be using unRAID for this or some form of software RAID stack (Linux, VST Pro, Veritas, etc)?

 

unRAID, I have need in striping drives right now.

 

I'm confused.  Unraid does not stripe data at all.

 

He probably meant to say "I have no need in striping drives right now.

 

@WeeboTech

How will you implement the 20-drive array? Hardware RAID with a SteelVine motherboard, perhaps?

 

 

Question, will you be using unRAID for this or some form of software RAID stack (Linux, VST Pro, Veritas, etc)?

 

unRAID, I have need in striping drives right now.

 

I'm confused.  Unraid does not stripe data at all.

 

He probably meant to say "I have no need in striping drives right now.

 

 

Oops typo! Yes, No need in striping data as those software layers do. I really do prefer the whole Protected JBOD approach to unRAID.

 

@WeeboTech

How will you implement the 20-drive array? Hardware RAID with a SteelVine motherboard, perhaps?

 

Either with steelvine processors via bridge boards installed internally or via a hardware raid card.

I have a couple of 3ware cards to play with, Yet the Areca interests me because it can do the whole SAFE50 / SAFE33 configuration more elegantly.

Plus it has a cache which should help the parity writes.

All I'm waiting on now is an open box special for a 4 port card.

 

http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/445733/x-case-rm-420---20-drive-sata-ii-hotswap---inc-rails-optional-psusuks-lowest-priced-multidisk-4u-.html

 

A few other people sell it rebranded as their own but this was the best deal i could find. Even comes with rails.

 

At that price its almost cheaper than the equivalent amount of HDD trays.

 

Hi,

I have been looking at the Norco 4020 case for some time now, but with shipping and customs (to Denmark) it is going too expensive for me.

 

Then I did some research and came acrosse www.xcase.co.uk and ended up in this thread

 

You have owned this case for some time now. Do you still recommend is?

 

It looks VERY similar to the Norco 4020 case, but according to sales at xcase.co.uk it is not the same case.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

BR Søren

 

sorry i missed this quesiton. To my eye it seems the same case. The case is excellent value for money. Heat is still a problem so budget some time and money to change the fans and close up all the pointless holes that just cause the air to flow the wrong ways.

 

Also do the case latch mod i mention straight away.

 

I would and probably will buy another one so thats a high recommendation.

 

Any more questions just post.

sorry i missed this quesiton. To my eye it seems the same case. The case is excellent value for money. Heat is still a problem so budget some time and money to change the fans and close up all the pointless holes that just cause the air to flow the wrong ways.

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

How have you closed up the holes? Duct tape?

 

Are the orginal fans of poor quality since they need changing? What have you replaced the orginal ones with?

 

Cheers,

Søren

 

 

Right now im using black electrical tape. Not a neat solution.

 

I only replaced the back 2 fans since i dont want to rewire the sata (discovered the heat problem after full install). Cant remember what they are but i don know they are 34cfm ones.

 

You also want to close the gaps in the cable hole belw the fans. I have done that myself either. The general idea is to force the air to go front to back only and accross active kit only.