endystrike Posted October 16, 2022 Share Posted October 16, 2022 Hi everyone, this my first post, after very few days of experience with Unraid, so don't blame me for my newbie's questions! I got for free an HP MicroServer G8 and for now I've done the following upgrades: - CPU: from Celeron 1610T to Xeon E3-1265L V2 - RAM: from 2 GB 1333mhz ECC to 16 GB (max) 1600 mhz ECC (already ordered, waiting for delivery) - HDD: 3x 4TB WD Red Plus 128 MB cache (wanna add 1 more in the future) + 1x WD Green 1 TB I had already - Cache drive: Samsung NVME 970 512 GB on PCI-e adapter (Glotrends PA09-HS). This is a temporary cache drive, soon I'll put it back in my PC! 🤣 Now, it seems with default controller (HP Dynamic Smart Array B120i), disks run very slow (moving big .mkv/.iso from a disk to another one at ~30 mb/s), but according to what I read here parity build/check speed is fine (102 mb/s is final average after 10h 50m, it started to go faster after having finished the 1st TB, I suppose because the 1st disk -WD green- is slower). Because of there's only 1x PCI-e slot, I was thinking about removing the NVME controller and putting there a better SAS HBA controller and then use a normal SATA SSD as cache drive... Most probably, in the future I'll do some more modifications, so I need more SATA slots... The problem is that I'm becoming crazy in understanding which controller to buy, I just know I want a controller with good speed and that may support up to 8 drives: I really cannot understand the differences from an item to another one in ebay for the same model... For example: if you search for "LSI 9207-8i LSI 2308" or for "LSI 9300-8i LSI 3008" or for "LSI 9211-8i LSI 2008" there are many PCIe cards, ranging from 30-40€ up to 150-200€... What's the difference between them? Why for the same model there can be so huge price differences?! Are there some particular models that should be avoided? When would I be safe in buying a good card? Should I check the board is from Broadcomm, LSI but not from HP or Dell? Or should I check the chipset is LSI 2308 or LSI 3008? For example, for what regards LSI 9207-8i: those from China costs 1/2 than those in Europe... Is it normal? Are those from China genuine as those in Europe? Ok, from China it would take 15-45 days for shipping + eventually custom's duties and VAT, but it costs 1/2 - 1/3 than those from Europe and many of the already includes SFF-8087 to SATA cables and both full+low profile brackets... https://www.ebay.it/itm/192902515361 https://www.ebay.it/itm/225024668461 https://www.ebay.it/itm/143676698994 https://www.ebay.it/itm/143356890894 In case someone wants to investigate about why trasfer speed is so slow, I attach diagnostic report. endys-diagnostics-20221016-0304.zip Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 16, 2022 Share Posted October 16, 2022 9211-8i is PCIe 2.0, 9207-8i and 9300-8i are PCIe 3.0, note that for up to 8 HDDs they will all perform the same, avoid buying from China, bigger chance you'll get a fake, look for used server pulls. 1 Quote Link to comment
Solution JorgeB Posted October 16, 2022 Solution Share Posted October 16, 2022 7 hours ago, endystrike said: moving big .mkv/.iso from a disk to another one at ~30 mb/s) Also note that and an LSI won't improve this, disk to disk transfers inside the array are always slow because of how parity works, pool to array transfers can be helped if you enable turbo write. 1 Quote Link to comment
endystrike Posted October 16, 2022 Author Share Posted October 16, 2022 (edited) @JorgeB thanks a lot for your support! I have another few questions: when I tried to install MyServer dashboard, I couldn't login anymore from WebUI. I tried 3 times but everytime I had to restore from USB backup. Is there any incompatibility problem of MyServer Dashboard with my build? I wanna remove the pci-e NVME adapter and use 2x SSD SATA (mirrored) as cache drives. is it better to buy a SATA Raid adapter (like this one for example, where I could do a RAID 1 for the 2x SSD SATA drives: https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B076S9VK1M/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A11IL2PNWYJU7H&psc=1) for this purpose or it's better to put them as 2 separate drives and putting both of them into the "cache" pool? What's the best way to change from Unraid the cache drive? How can I move all the data from the existing one to the new one? I was thinking about adding the 2 new drives in the cache pool and then removing the old one... Would it be fine? If I wanna change another drive (e.g. the "old" WD Green 1 TB), what's the best way to do that? Removing it phisically and waiting for the rebuild from Unraid? Moving data from it and then removing it phisically or from the pool? What's the best way to have a bonding on ethernet ports, considering I'll move data only with PCs that have Windows 10/11/2022? Thanks again! Edited October 16, 2022 by endystrike Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2022 Share Posted October 17, 2022 19 hours ago, endystrike said: Is there any incompatibility problem of MyServer Dashboard with my build? No, suggest trying again. 19 hours ago, endystrike said: is it better to buy a SATA Raid adapter Don't use RAID with Unraid. 19 hours ago, endystrike said: I was thinking about adding the 2 new drives in the cache pool and then removing the old one... Would it be fine? Assuming current cache is btrfs that's fine. 19 hours ago, endystrike said: If I wanna change another drive (e.g. the "old" WD Green 1 TB), what's the best way to do that? If it's an array drive just replace and rebuild. 19 hours ago, endystrike said: What's the best way to have a bonding on ethernet ports, considering I'll move data only with PCs that have Windows 10/11/2022? Bonding is mostly for redundancy, unless you have a switch with LACP support, and even with that it won't speed up a single transfer, only multiple. 1 Quote Link to comment
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