ATLAS My Virtualized unRAID server

[WeeboTech]

SMOKIN!!!!

[marcusone]

Do you have a 10 Gigabit network?  Otherwise isn't anything over 90ish MB/s overkill on the cache drive?

[kman321]

Does anyone know how hard it would be to move drives to different controllers in unRaid after having a number of drives populated with data?  For example, I want to start with (3) M1015 controllers to get the best performance for now but in the future i might want to move this over to (1) M1015 and (1) Chenbro CK13601 so i can virtualize another unRaid server if needed.

[c3]

Do you have a 10 Gigabit network?  Otherwise isn't anything over 90ish MB/s overkill on the cache drive?

 

Since this is virtualized the network connections inside the host can exceed 1 gigabit in usage. The driver is for 10G.

[Johnm]

Does anyone know how hard it would be to move drives to different controllers in unRaid after having a number of drives populated with data?  For example, I want to start with (3) M1015 controllers to get the best performance for now but in the future i might want to move this over to (1) M1015 and (1) Chenbro CK13601 so i can virtualize another unRaid server if needed.

 

I'll assume you are running beta5.x because you have M1015's.. then the answer is just, power down, move the drives, power up.. you do nothing..

 

I would however recommend you get a screen shot of your drive listings just in case and that your run a parity check before and after just in case...

[Johnm]

Do you have a 10 Gigabit network?  Otherwise isn't anything over 90ish MB/s overkill on the cache drive?

 

Actually, Gigabit network is about 120 MB/s I easily transfer at sustained 99% pipe speed. almost everything in my house is SSD or Raid5. so usually the copper is my bottleneck.

 

My newsbin scripts tend to move "completed" downloads to my cache drive. I don't have to worry about a performance hit if I am moving files to it while my scripts are copying to it.

 

 

There are many bonuses with a SATAIII SSD cache drive beside the RAW performance:

 

you can write to it from several clients at once and even run the mover all at once with no slow down. a spinner would have a heart attack loosing performance.

 

You dont spin it up or down, it is always at the ready.

 

Low power use. in addition many people dont sleep their cache drive.

 

It generates no heat. you dont have the heat from the cache drive always on.

 

In a virtual environment (especially an all SSD one) of servers/Clients, I can move files at above gigabit speeds with the ESXi VLAN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PCRx]

Johnm,

 

When you "power down" does that mean you are only powering down the unRaid VM?

Or are you powering down all your VM guests and the ESXi host before making changes, swapping drives, etc. to unRaid?

[prostuff1]

Johnm,

 

When you "power down" does that mean you are only powering down the unRaid VM?

Or are you powering down all your VM guests and the ESXi host before making changes, swapping drives, etc. to unRaid?

When I change stuff related to drives and the unRAID part of the server I only shut down the unRAID VM and not the entire server.

[WeeboTech]

This thread has me re-thinking my whole torrent download server -> unRAID server into a new esxi/vm suite.

[prostuff1]

This thread has me re-thinking my whole torrent download server -> unRAID server into a new esxi/vm suite.

I love the setup!!

 

I only have a windows XP VM alongside my unRAID VM, but it is so worth it.  I am going to move my Crashplan install to the new HP Microserver I just picked up but that is for other reasons (going to move it off site, probably to my parents, after the initial sync).

[kaiguy]

My original plan for building an ESXi box was to separate out my usenet downloading and media serving/transcoding into other VMs.  However, when I started to split things off, I felt like I was trying to fix something that really wasn't broken.  Right now my cache drive never sleeps, but if I was to move off some of those activities to SSD-based VMs, I imagine it's just going to speed up the imminent death of the SSD... is my reasoning flawed?

[Johnm]

My original plan for building an ESXi box was to separate out my usenet downloading and media serving/transcoding into other VMs.  However, when I started to split things off, I felt like I was trying to fix something that really wasn't broken.  Right now my cache drive never sleeps, but if I was to move off some of those activities to SSD-based VMs, I imagine it's just going to speed up the imminent death of the SSD... is my reasoning flawed?

 

I have my Usenet VM set with 2 drives. the boot drive is a 30GB VDMK thin provisioned from an SSD datastore, my download target drive is going to a 500GB VDMK off a 2TB spinner. you could still have it write to the unraid cache drive if you want, I just find that the constant write was slowing down my writes to the unraid server other PC's when i was using a spinner.

 

I have been considering putting a spare 500GB laptop drive that i have laying about around in my ESXi box as a dedicated usenet passthrough drive.

 

 

This thread has me re-thinking my whole torrent download server -> unRAID server into a new esxi/vm suite.

 

It is defiantly very nice.. that is once you get past the sticker shock of the hardware cost...

If your existing hardware supports it. it would not be to hard to migrate your existing unRAID server into ESXi for testing..

[WeeboTech]

 

This thread has me re-thinking my whole torrent download server -> unRAID server into a new esxi/vm suite.

 

It is defiantly very nice.. that is once you get past the sticker shock of the hardware cost...

If your existing hardware supports it. it would not be to hard to migrate your existing unRAID server into ESXi for testing..

 

It would be a $1K upgrade, but then again, I could use the ESXi host for VM's that I need for work.

I need to have a few flavors of RHEL when building custom RPMS for work.

Plus slackware dev host and windows workstations for various other tasks..

So it would definitely be used. I could retire a couple machines too.

[c3]

It is defiantly very nice.. that is once you get past the sticker shock of the hardware cost...

If your existing hardware supports it. it would not be to hard to migrate your existing unRAID server into ESXi for testing..

 

For me there was not much sticker shock.

1) The Xeon is more $130 (i3 about $100, Xeon $230).

2) RAM the ECC is more $30 but really what I would like in servers. ($65 vs $35 for 8GB).

3) The case is more $60, 4224 vs 4220, but less expensive than what I was doing (buying tower and adding 3:5).

4) Some would say motherboard, but at $84 (Newegg open box) which other would you pick?

5) Controller cards and cables - same for both

6) Drives - +1 for ESX datastore

 

I couldn't have the additional machines for the difference, ~ $160-$220.

 

I tossed in extra NICs and have four of them in ESX cluster with unRAID, iSCSI Enterprise Target, and DRBD as guests.

[WeeboTech]

I wouldn't skimp on a motherboard. I would bite the buck and purchase the $200 x9 supermicro with IPMI.

I just have too many machines to be adding more onto a KVM.

I've been using Supermicro's since the early 90's rock solid.

I like Asus for a windows workstation, but for a server, I've never had issues with Supermicro and they've been so solid I would not use anything else right now (although I've had success with Tyans in the early 90s too).

[Johnm]

So i have noticed tonight after not physically being anywhere near Atlas in weeks and then sitting next to it., she is getting a little noisier..

 

It looks like she needs a bit of compressed air.  all of the intake vents are getting lint filled.. it is also partly from the parity check i am running, all of the drives are chugging..

I am sure if i pull her from the rack and pop the top, she will need a dusting. maybe next weekend for valentines day... /snicker

 

She is still quiet. just not the soft purr she used to have..

[WeeboTech]

I bit off topic, but i highly recommend this unit instead of those cans of compressed air.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Metro-Vacuum-ED500-500-Watt-Electric/dp/B001J4ZOAW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328670837&sr=8-1

[Johnm]

i actually have an air compressor with a hard line to my back porch..

 

about 3 times a year, I drag all of my PCs out there and blow them out.

I usually set the PSI to about 13 and use a moisture trap.

 

But thanks for the thought. /cheers

 

 

[ldasilva]

I bit off topic, but i highly recommend this unit instead of those cans of compressed air.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Metro-Vacuum-ED500-500-Watt-Electric/dp/B001J4ZOAW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328670837&sr=8-1

 

this looks pretty nice i might have to buy one

[kman321]

Can someone explain why the disks in unRaid (v5.12a beta) are showing up in a different order than they appear in the M1015 bios?

 

For example I have (2) 3TB disks in my current setup and while booting i can see that slot0 has the first disk (disk0) and slot3 has the second disk (disk1) (i'm skipping slot1 & slot2 in case i add a cache drive and in case unRaid ever supports a 2nd parity drive).  But in unRaid these are showing up in reverse order with disk0 = /dev/sdb and disk1 = /dev/sda.  It seems like this could get confusing pretty quickly if they don't match what the hardware is showing. 

 

I hope this makes sense.

[c3]

Can someone explain why the disks in unRaid (v5.12a beta) are showing up in a different order than they appear in the M1015 bios?

 

For example I have (2) 3TB disks in my current setup and while booting i can see that slot0 has the first disk (disk0) and slot3 has the second disk (disk1) (i'm skipping slot1 & slot2 in case i add a cache drive and in case unRaid ever supports a 2nd parity drive).  But in unRaid these are showing up in reverse order with disk0 = /dev/sdb and disk1 = /dev/sda.  It seems like this could get confusing pretty quickly if they don't match what the hardware is showing. 

 

I hope this makes sense.

 

udev rules

 

The disk do not get assigned the same mapping because there are no udev rules defined. unRAID does not use the sda.

[kman321]

should i do anything about it or just choose based on serial number?

[savestheday]

Has anyone passed thru USB hubs on this mobo?  I've got the unRAID USB plugged into motherboard header and the ESXi stick plugged into a header adapter like this:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Koutech-Accessory-IO-UU220-Header-Pin-Adapter/dp/B003UIM142/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1328886569&sr=8-10

 

I really want to pass through another USB header directly to unRAID but have followed JohnM's advice about having a non working ESXi stick afterwards.  Is there and easy way find which is which, or has anyone mapped the headers to USB controllers in ESXi?  I really see this as the only solution to my APC problem (I don't get alerts when the power goes out even though the UPS is recognized in a normal USB pass through).  Easy method would be to install a USB card but currently my only free slot is taken up by a firewire 800 card passed thru to Mac OS X Lion. 

[Johnm]

should i do anything about it or just choose based on serial number?

 

It will sort itself out. Use the serial numbers for reference. Those always stay constant. Then you can label your drives or drive trays and sort them if you like.

 

If you have 5x, you can just cold swap the drives around how you want them and power up.

 

For 4x, there is a little more work to it, but doable.

 

 

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[Johnm]

anyone mapped the headers to USB controllers in ESXi?

 

The easiest way to answer your question is to down your server,

 

install esxi to a test flash drive and test the passthrough and see what happens.

 

If it works, try it on your production flash drive.

 

Just don't accidentally format any drives.....

 

 

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