The wiki seems a little old on this.

What do you guys recommend is the best way to set this up?

 

I will be placing the unraid server at my parents' place and basically just want to be notified when a hard drive is failing along with the serial of that drive. So that I can just tell them to slide out a drive and put another back in...

 

Any suggestions? Running Version 5.0-rc8

The wiki seems a little old on this.

What do you guys recommend is the best way to set this up?

 

I will be placing the unraid server at my parents' place and basically just want to be notified when a hard drive is failing along with the serial of that drive. So that I can just tell them to slide out a drive and put another back in...

 

Any suggestions? Running Version 5.0-rc8

No such plugin exists, nor is it as cut-and-dry when a disk fails. 

Best you can do is get notified if a disk fails.  Analysis of the failure must occur prior to any physical disk replacement.

Thanks Joe L, could you elaborate for me a little please? What would you recommend be the steps that I take. The setup will be at my parents' place and I want it to be as easy for them as possible.

 

Am I correct in understanding how unRAID will work in case of faliure?

Drive fails smart test or something, email will get sent to me....

 

In the meantime the array doesn't stop and continues working using the parity drive (or one of the other drives if the parity is the one that fails). I call the parentals, give them the serial number of the drive that is specified in the email unraid sent me. They stop the array, take out the drive, place new drive in, preclear, start the array again.

Thanks Joe L, could you elaborate for me a little please? What would you recommend be the steps that I take. The setup will be at my parents' place and I want it to be as easy for them as possible.

 

Am I correct in understanding how unRAID will work in case of faliure?

No, you are incorrect.

Drive fails smart test or something, email will get sent to me....

Only if a "write" to a drive fails is it taken out of service.  No other type of failure, SMART or otherwise will take a drive out of service.  No e-mail is ever sent by the stock unRAID for any event or problem.  unRAID has no error alerting of any kind other than making the circular indicator in front of the disk drive name on the management web-page turn "red" to show it is disabled.   

In the meantime the array doesn't stop and continues working using the parity drive (or one of the other drives if the parity is the one that fails).

If a disk is disabled because a "write" to it failed then the parity disk in combination with ALL the other disks is used to re-construct the data on the disk where the "write" failed.    It might be perfectly fine, it might be it was loose in the drive tray, or a faulty power supply, or it did not spin up in time and a disk controller marked it as missing and no longer communicated with it.  There are so many times where it is not the disk itself.  (especially when there are back-planes and drive trays involved)

I call the parentals, give them the serial number of the drive that is specified in the email unraid sent me. They stop the array, take out the drive, place new drive in, preclear, start the array again.

It would be wonderful if it was as easy.  Take a few hours and read the posts of those who have a disk whose indicator turns "red"  It is rare where the disk simply stops responding and a simple replacement gets all back to normal. 

 

Joe L.

Oh man, that sucks, I Was under the impression that it's pretty straight forward when a drive fails... Kinda sucks, I Invested almost $900 into this build.

 

I understand the stock unRAID won't notify me when a drive goes red. But is there an app or a 3rd party plugin that I can get that will email me when a drive in fact does turn red?

 

Any recommendations on how I should approach this?

Oh man, that sucks, I Was under the impression that it's pretty straight forward when a drive fails... Kinda sucks, I Invested almost $900 into this build.

Well... it might be that the straight-forward disk replacements do not result in as many forum posts.

I understand the stock unRAID won't notify me when a drive goes red. But is there an app or a 3rd party plugin that I can get that will email me when a drive in fact does turn red?

Yes, lots of them in fact, with each building on the work of the ones developed previously.  However, SMART failures do not turn a disk "red" 

Any recommendations on how I should approach this?

Actually, for remote maintenance the best might be something like this:

 

A motherboard whose BIOS supports  IPMI

A router that supports dd-wrt (or equivalent) where you can set up a VPN to remotely access your parents server's BIOS and system console, and web-interface.

dyndns (or equivalent) so you can remotely log onto the unRAID server at your parents house and perform maintenance as needed.

 

That way you can handle just about everything except a loose cable or dead disk remotely.

 

Joe L.

Thanks again,

Unfortunately, I was trying to re-use a lot of the parts from the current WHS that they had. It was a was Gigabyte board, Athlon 4850e proc, 4 gigs DDR2 RAM, I was all set, bought an m1015 flashed it (took a lot of grief). Was about to start to configure unraid and found out about the stupid HPA on Gigabyte boards.

So I just ordered an Abit replacement that will work with what I have... I occasionally visit them about once a month though. Was planning on spending around $400, I'm already at $800

 

So in terms of email notification when a drive would turn RED (I guess no SMART monitoring). What email application would you recommend I go with?

Thanks again,

Unfortunately, I was trying to re-use a lot of the parts from the current WHS that they had. It was a was Gigabyte board, Athlon 4850e proc, 4 gigs DDR2 RAM, I was all set, bought an m1015 flashed it (took a lot of grief). Was about to start to configure unraid and found out about the stupid HPA on Gigabyte boards.

So I just ordered an Abit replacement that will work with what I have... I occasionally visit them about once a month though. Was planning on spending around $400, I'm already at $800

 

So in terms of email notification when a drive would turn RED (I guess no SMART monitoring). What email application would you recommend I go with?

What version of unRAID are you planning on using? 

 

I use the ones I wrote and are available in unMENU as installable packages.  They work on any version of unRAID.  To me they are the easiest to set up.  I've not tried SimpleFeatures version available if you use the recent beta 5.0rc8a.

 

The e-mail itself is one package, and the alerts are several others.  There is one for overtemp, and another for disk status.  There is not one for changes in smart status, but that is a good idea for an enhancement. (an alert on a change in sectors re-allocated or pending reallocation)  Those combined with temperature are the most critical to track.

Yeah that would be nice. So the email won't specifically go out once a drive fails? I wouldn't want to constantly get emails that everything is fine as I would start ignoring thm after a while, but I want to know right away if a disk fails...

 

Those would be great enhancements that you mentioned. I am using 5.0-RC8

 

BTW, I was reading that people basically use unraid as an appliance. Just set it and forget it... Which is what I was hoping to do. So how do you make sure everything is running smoothly? Seems like you have to keep periodically logging in and checking the drive status?

 

What's your maintenance like?

 

 

Thanks again so much for helping me out.

A couple of thoughts ...

 

=>  First, it's not so simple to set up mail.    I tried the latest version of UnMenu, but could not get it to work -- I had hoped Joe might give me a clue as to what was wrong; but I think my question got "buried" before he saw it    [http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23297.0 ]

 

Joe ... has there been an update to the mail packages since Oct that might help with this?

 

=>  Second, for what you want to do r.e. checking on your parents' UnRAID server, it's probably simpler to simply set up one of their PCs (NOT the UnRAID server) with LogMeIn;  and just periodically log in; access the UnRAID server via the web interface;  and check the current status.

 

=>  Third, if you DO need to tell them to replace a drive;  you could do virtually everything you need remotely except for the physical removal/replacement of the drive.    If you set up wake-on-LAN on the server, you could even have a "Turn on UnRAID" shortcut on their computer, and you could actually turn on the UnRAID box remotely.    You could stop the array; shut down the server;  tell them to remove and replace a drive;  then YOU could turn on the server and add the drive to the array.

 

On the PC, you can simply use a magic packet utility to send the WOL command.    For example, this will turn on one of my UnRAID servers:

"C:\Utilities\WOL Magic Packet Utility\wol-0.5.1-win32\bin\wol.exe" 00:25:90:96:69:C6

 

=>  If/when you DO need to have them replace a drive;  you may want to simply let UnRAID do the initialization.    I really like Joe's PreClear scripts (and always use them) ... but if you're trying to do this remotely, it's not a script that your parents could likely run.    You COULD Telnet into the server from their PC and initiate a PreClear ... but that Telnet session would have to be active for the entire PreClear time (~36 hrs for a 3TB WD Red in my experience ... and even for smaller drives (1-2TB) it's still a very long time).    I'd just let UnRAID initialize the drive ... it takes the array offline during the initialization;  but no Telnet session required.    OR you could PreClear the drive at your home; and mail it to your parents -- if you're going to do this, you may want to have a spare drive at your parent's home that's already been precleared.

 

 

 

I use simplefeatures and it sends the mail you need, it also sends a mail whenever the array is not started (for example after a power failure, or if mom thought she needed to vacuum and used the socket :-)

 

A different email can be setup for errors and general status info (which you can turn off and on).

 

It all works like you expect it to.

 

HOWEVER. Joe is absolutely right in the fact that an error on a "disk" might also be an error with a cable because the server got moved or something..

 

Basically the "on error replace disk" thing will work only there is a reasonable chance that the error was something else and then the replace will not work, even worse: during the time the new disk is rebuilding your system will not be "safe", there is no longer parity untill the new disk is fully up and running.

 

I would advice setting up as you stated, using simplefeatures but the "replace on error" I would not do.. Every time you are over there I would inspect SMART results and see if there are signs of disks that might start failing, if you see those, then replace..

Confirming the email notification on the SimpleFeatures plugin works great for unraid issues.