Upgrading

[dougnliz]

Hi folks,

 

I've finally decided to upgrade some of the hardware in my UnRAID server.  I have the original hardware recommended by Tom when UnRAID was just starting.  Now I'm upgrading to the hardware in Raj's 20 Drive Beast recommendation.  The hardware should be here tomorrow or Friday and I can't wait.

 

Are there any BIOS settings I should watch out for on the SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O?

 

Thanks!

 

Doug

[prostuff1]

Hi folks,

 

I've finally decided to upgrade some of the hardware in my UnRAID server.  I have the original hardware recommended by Tom when UnRAID was just starting.  Now I'm upgrading to the hardware in Raj's 20 Drive Beast recommendation.  The hardware should be here tomorrow or Friday and I can't wait.

 

Are there any BIOS settings I should watch out for on the SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O?

 

Thanks!

 

Doug

Make sure the drives are set up to use AHCI and not IDE mode, disable init13 on all the SASLP cards, and disable Interrupt 19 on the motherboard.  And then you should just need to set the flash drive as the boot device.

[Johnm]

You might want to set a static IP for the IPMI in the Bios.

 

Also, I believe if you disable the com ports, the IPMI gets disabled.

 

Other then that, You picked a nice board and should last you for years to come.

[dougnliz]

Awesome!  Thanks for the tips guys.  I'm really looking forward to the remote management of this board.  That's a really cool feature.

 

So one thing I plan on doing at least for the short term is continuing to use my existing IDE drives.  I currently have 3 - 2TB EARS drives and 8 IDE drives of varying sizes.  So I don't have the SATA cards just yet.  Instead I'll be using my old PCI IDE adapter cards on a couple of those adapters that convert your PCI-E slot to a PCI slot.

 

These are the IDE controllers I have:  Promise Ultra100/133 TX2 [PDC20268]

 

I know this probably isn't ideal, but do you guys see any issues with this setup?

 

Doug

[prostuff1]

Awesome!  Thanks for the tips guys.  I'm really looking forward to the remote management of this board.  That's a really cool feature.

 

So one thing I plan on doing at least for the short term is continuing to use my existing IDE drives.  I currently have 3 - 2TB EARS drives and 8 IDE drives of varying sizes.  So I don't have the SATA cards just yet.  Instead I'll be using my old PCI IDE adapter cards on a couple of those adapters that convert your PCI-E slot to a PCI slot.

 

These are the IDE controllers I have:  Promise Ultra100/133 TX2 [PDC20268]

 

I know this probably isn't ideal, but do you guys see any issues with this setup?

 

Doug

 

It should work fine, just realize that you are probably not going to get much, if any, speed improvement in parity checks, etc until you start to get rid of those IDE drives.

 

I don't know what size those IDE drives are but replacing now might be a good idea.  If you can replace all the IDE drives with 2 2TB drives and only use the onboard SATA ports it would probably be a good idea.

[Johnm]

+1 for dumping the IDE drives ASAP.

 

They are probably starting to get pretty old for an always on drive.

nothing worse then having one die and then a second puke while trying to rebuild the data.

 

for a file server you want reliable parts in it. Especially the drives....

 

[dougnliz]

The new hardware is in and the parity check is in progress.  Thanks for the help guys I appreciate it.

 

Doug

[dougnliz]

Now that I have the hardware updated if I want to dump the old IDE hard drives what's the best method to do that without having to buy 8 new drives.  I think if I add 1 more 2TB drive to the array I'll have enough space to cover the data on all 8 of the IDE drives.  They are mostly 200 GB and 250 GB with a couple of 300 GB drives.  So I'm guessing I'll need to move the data within the array and remove each drive as I go.  What's the best approach for this?

 

Doug

[Johnm]

I would preclear the 2TB drive.

add the 2TB drive to the array.

copy all of the data to the 2TB from the ide drives with CP commands

run a parity check.

if it goes well..

Note the serial number of the parity drive,

INITCONFIG the array.

recreate the array without the IDE drives making sure you assign the correct drive to parity.

run another parity check.

 

Perhaps an unRAID expert would have a better suggestion?

[ProfQ]

I did not see what you have now as Parity drive, but working on the assumption it's also an IDE drive (or smaller than 2TB anyways), I think your first step in upgrading drive sizes or from IDE to Sata, should be using one of the largest sata drives as the Parity drive.

 

If your parity is not a 2TB (or larger), you'll need to replace first your parity drive with one of the new 2TB sata drives being mentioned. Then follow all steps as mentioned by Johnm in his post to upgrade the rest of the drives and use Sata drives.

 

Best.