January 29, 201313 yr OK; I'm 5.86 of my current 6.5T array full. Gotta do something soon. Questions... 1. At what point, do I not have enough space...to off-load a smaller drive for a bigger one? (I assume...for example...if I'm going to take a 1T drive out of the array, and add space by replacing it with a 2T drive; I need a certain amount of space in reserve for the off-load? I'd actually assume 1T, or whatever capacity that particular drive was at...but I guess common sense might be wrong in this case?) 2. I could just bite the bullet, and expand my 6-drive array (out of 12 hot-slots). Been just running off the board for a while now. If I were gonna get a card...is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009 still the go to? Or is there something "better", faster, cheaper now? 3. Sorry, couldn't resist; when the hell will 5.0 be ready? I've been waiting to go to bigger drives for too long now. Thanks, CD
January 29, 201313 yr 1. No extra space is needed to replace an array drive. 2. That is not the card for your motherboard. See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12404.0
January 29, 201313 yr I think I'm right in saying that (providing the replacement drive is smaller than your parity drive) you can simply remove the old drive and replace with the new (larger) drive. The original contents of the older (removed) drive will automatically be rewritten to the new drive and the total size of your array/free space will be increased by unRAID.
January 29, 201313 yr Author ^^^ Thanks guy. Duh; I guess now that I think about it...if the redundancy to rebuild a drive you were replacing wasn't already there, it wouldn't be much of a RAID system would it. Never can be too careful, when it comes to potential data loss. Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks
January 29, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking.
January 29, 201313 yr OK; I'm 5.86 of my current 6.5T array full. Gotta do something soon. Questions... 3. Sorry, couldn't resist; when the hell will 5.0 be ready? I've been waiting to go to bigger drives for too long now. Thanks, CD OK, I assume that you have a completely working unRAID system at this time. My advise to you is to make the shift to version 5.0 rc11 now. (If you have been following the last couple of release candidates, you will see that there are very few people are really having issues and the biggest issue is with Intel based hardware.) Version 5.0 will be essentially be rc11! You really want to do this before you start doing a hardware upgrades. That way, should you have a problem (not really likely), you will troubleshooting only one change--- not two or more. And, in the remote event you should find a unique problem, you will find it BEFORE 5.0 gets released. Remember that the work on the 64bit kernel will begin with the release of 5.0 and that will most likely end work on version 5. Second item to consider--- going to ver 5.0, will allow you to use HD larger than 2TB. You may find that you will get more bang for your buck if you replace your parity drive with a 3TB drive. Use the server for a couple of weeks to make sure that the new parity drive is without issue. Then replace that a 1TB drive with the old 2TB parity drive. I think if you look at the cost per TB, you will find that 3TB drives are the way to go.
January 29, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots.
January 29, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots. OK - I may well have been confused with a PCI-X card plugged into a PCI slot However the motherboard mentioned has no PCI-X and does have PCIe x16 so the conclusion stands.
January 29, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots. OK - I may well have been confused with a PCI-X card plugged into a PCI slot However the motherboard mentioned has no PCI-X and does have PCIe x16 so the conclusion stands. Didn't see the MB in his sig. Yes with that board PCIe cards are the only way to go.
January 29, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots. OK - I may well have been confused with a PCI-X card plugged into a PCI slot However the motherboard mentioned has no PCI-X and does have PCIe x16 so the conclusion stands. The most commonly used card is the AOC-SASLP-MV8. It is a PCIe x4 card. A PCIe x4 card should work in any x4, x8 or x16 slot.
January 30, 201313 yr Author Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots. AWESOME SAUCE! If it's that stable, and the time is ripe to spring...I'll take the leap of faith (soon). You're right; I like the idea of going bigger with the parity, and replacing a smaller driver with the old one (as I've done before). But I also need to e x p a n d the array; so the ^^^ discussions were a great help everyone. Thanks!
January 30, 201313 yr Dgaschk, can you give me a quick explanation about the differences in the card that I pointed to and the others? My board will handle PCI-e or PCI-express, and therefore that's "better" somehow than the PCI-x card? Thanks PCI-X is an old standard. It can only support 1 or 2 drives simultaneously running before it saturates the available bandwidth so this is a significant bottleneck. A Pci-e 16x card can handle 8 drives all running simultaneously without bottlenecking. On a PCI-X buss slot (usually only available on older server MBs) a PCI-X card works just fine with 8 drives. My X7SBE server with 2 AOC-SAT2-MV8's got 70-90MB/s parity checks with 21 drives spread on 2 cards and 6 MB ports. Now with a PCI slot using more than 2 drives would be extremely slow on anything requiring more than 2 drive access. Like parity checks, drive rebuilds or drive simulations. I don't see a post listing whether MB has PCI-X slots but I would expect it doesn't. So going PCIe would be better and the cards can be used in future builds. My AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards like his link are worthless to me now that my servers don't have PCI-X slots. AWESOME SAUCE! If it's that stable, and the time is ripe to spring...I'll take the leap of faith (soon). You're right; I like the idea of going bigger with the parity, and replacing a smaller driver with the old one (as I've done before). But I also need to e x p a n d the array; so the ^^^ discussions were a great help everyone. Thanks! Your Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT will limit you to 10MB/s parity check speeds maybe even less if you use a AOC-SAT2-MV8 in the PCI slots. To use the SAT2-MV8 correctly you need a MB with PCI-X slots - they are NOT the same as PCI or PCIe slots. For your Gigabyte board you should use a PCIe card. Specifically for unRAID 4.7 you would want to use a SASLP-MV8 as a cheap and workable option. I have several of them and used them when I updated my X7SBE motherboard to X9SCM MB.
February 10, 201313 yr Author Just about to pull the trigger on an aoc-saslp-mv8...when I came across this http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8-Channel-Adapter-Channel/dp/B005B0Z2I4/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1360460225&sr=1-1&keywords=aoc-sas2lp-mv8 I was about to ask what the dif, when I guess I came across the answer (in another post). You can use the AOC-SASLP-MV8. The performance will be identical using HDD. SATA 3 is only required if using SSD or a port multiplier.
February 10, 201313 yr The AOC-SAT2-MV8, which is a PCI-X card which is also compatible with the older PCI bus standard ,that you were asking about is a good card though not as good as the newer ones... They are readily available for CHEAP on eBay also! :-) I am actually going to pick up some of them soon myself due to lack of available PCI express slots and old mother-board reasons... (still running the old 4.5.3 just prior to the safety features being put in to prevent people from blowing away their unRAID drives when they might (in that version) show as unformatted, when they have data on them on power-up... (yes I actually do have good reasons for staying at that scary version level) If you have PCIe x4 (or higher) available, the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is a far better choice to go with however. It is not limited to the much slower PCI bus, so access to multiple drives at the same time will go MUCH faster. The AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is newer and about the same price as the AOC-SASLP-MV8, so may also have more life for future upgrades with potentially better performance down the road... (but you may want to upgrade to the 5.x platform first since I am not sure at which 4.x version driver support apeared for the newer AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card.)
February 10, 201313 yr I would stick to the SASLP.. I believe a few ppl have had issues with the SAS2LP. The two most common controller cards in builds discussed/posted about/owned by users of this forum are by far are the AOC-SASLP-MV8 and the IBM M1015 flashed to 9211 IT mode - always best to stick with what most other people use so you can easily get support.
February 11, 201313 yr Just about to pull the trigger on an aoc-saslp-mv8...when I came across this http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8-Channel-Adapter-Channel/dp/B005B0Z2I4/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1360460225&sr=1-1&keywords=aoc-sas2lp-mv8 I was about to ask what the dif, when I guess I came across the answer (in another post). You can use the AOC-SASLP-MV8. The performance will be identical using HDD. SATA 3 is only required if using SSD or a port multiplier. I said this but have recently discovered that the PCIe x4 bus can become saturated by more than 6 HDD drives if the drives are new models. E.g, the new Seagate drives reach speeds over 150MBps. The SAS2LP uses PCIe x4 2.0 and can not be saturated by 8 HDD. The SAS2LP with PCIe 2.0 is a better choice to maximize performance with new drives. SATA 2 is sufficient for drives up to about 250MBps but the PCIe 1.1 bus will be saturated.
February 12, 201313 yr Author ^^^ Shit; now I'm more confused than ever lol Guys, obviously I am no expert when it comes to this stuff. As you guys can probably tell from my sig...my board has pci-x 1, x8, and x16 slots. My array will be 12 drives max. I want to switch-up to a 5 beta soon, and start running 3T drives. The SAS is like $100, SAS2 like $100+; but I see SAT2s for like ~$25! I see the threads...but they're all like "if your board has this...and you're running these kinda drives", etc, etc. Obviously I don't want to spend $150 on an SAS2, if...because of my board options...a $25 SAT2 will do. Help??
February 12, 201313 yr ok... yes I understand the confusion. What I would look at to help make a choice comes down to this: SAT2s for like ~$25+ - CHEAP! - Works well but slow with PARITY CHECKS and drive RE-BUILDS in a PCI slot - USE STANDARD SATA CABLES! SAS is like $100 - MORE$ - newer well proven user base - MUCH faster with parity and rebuilds - NEED SAS TO SATA REVERSE CABLES for standard drives connection. SAS2 like $100+ - even more $ - NEWEST, works well for most people - faster again, but not as big of a performance jump as from the SAT2 to the SAS - NEED SAS TO SATA REVERSE CABLES for standard drives connection.
February 12, 201313 yr You want SAS or SAS2. The SAS is fast and reliable. The SAS2 is faster and will support new fast drives with no bottleneck slowing performance. The SAS2 is newer and there have been reports of slow performance due to driver issues. Driver issues should be fixed eventually and you may not even experience the issue. If you can return the item I'd get the SAS2. If return is not an option then get the SAS.
March 1, 201313 yr Author ^^^ OK; I finally pulled the trigger on an SAS. As I understand the proceeding posts...the SAS, while a generation behind the SAS2...should pose few installation problems, yes? I'll be looking to do the following, in this order... - Install the SAS card, to expand my array capabilities - Upgrade to a 5.x rc, so I can move up to a 3T drive - Replace my 2T parity drive, with a 3T - Move the old 2T parity drive, into the storage array Help...as always...is welcome (and necessary). TIA
March 15, 201313 yr Author Sh*t; does migration to 5.0...really involve all this http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Migrating_from_unRAID_4.7_to_unRAID_5.0
March 15, 201313 yr Sh*t; does migration to 5.0...really involve all this http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Migrating_from_unRAID_4.7_to_unRAID_5.0 NO!!! The Wiki lists all of the issues that anyone has encountered and how to resolved them. Most people have few issues if they follow the instructions through the 'Test and Reboot' section. The Wiki is intended to provide resources for almost every case where there is an issue and what steps to follow to resolve it. It can save a lot of user panics and postings on the forum by having a centralized reference point.
March 15, 201313 yr Author ^^^ Shew! OK...wd30efrx arrived today; so the first step is to give this a go over the weekend. Please; perk up your ears, and be ready to help! lol
March 15, 201313 yr Author ^^^ OK...another sh*t(!); but this time it's more like "sh*t...is that all there is to it"? (finding some wood to knock on) I think I'm done! Did these 4 steps (I didn't have any users so no need for step 5 really, right); all appears fine. Array started; parity valid...I can access my files! I guess the acid test, will be trying to stream tonight; make sure all my machines can still find the unRAID server (you know, permission issues and such). If I'm out of the woods...I will tell you; I love, love, LOVE unRAID!!! That's why I was so incredulous...when I thought the upgrade was all that rig-amoral; because I've never found unRAID to be anything but simple, simple, simple. Those guys at LT are geniuses. 1. Prepare the flash: either shutdown your server and plug the flash into your PC or Stop the array and perform the following actions referencing the flash share on your network: Copy the files bzimage and bzroot from the zip file to the root of your flash device, overwriting the same-named files already there. If present, delete these files from the flash (sorry, you will have to re-enter all your users after booting this release): config/passwd config/shadow config/smbpasswd 2. Reboot your server. Once boot-up has completed, you should see "Stopped. Configuration valid." array status with all disks assigned correctly except for the Cache disk. If you previously had a Cache disk assigned, you will need to re-assign it manually and re-apply any unique configuration settings for it. 3. Carefully examine the Identification strings for each disk. If you see "MBR: error", or "MBR: unknown" for any disk, do not Start the array; instead post your finding in the Forum announcement thread for this release. If everything looks ok, click Start to bring the array on-line. Note: there is a new configuration setting on the Disk Settings page called "Enable auto start". If you set this to "Yes", then upon next server boot, if the array is valid, then it will be automatically Started (this is the old behavior). 4. Go to Utils/New Permissions and execute that utility to change file ownership and permission settings. This is necessary for proper operation of the 5.0 security model.
March 15, 201313 yr Author Next up...replace the parity drive (and then use old parity in the data array). This is old...but some things never change? 1. Run preclear on the new drive a couple of times (not necessary but will stress test the drive to find early failure) 2. Take out the old party drive by disconnecting it 3. Hook up new parity drive and assign it as parity once the computer is started back up 4. Let parity rebuild and then run a check on it to make sure nothing is going funky 5. Shut down the server and hook the old parity drive back up 6. Run preclear on the old parity drive and let it complete 7. Assign the old parity drive to a slot in your array and your all done
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