Hello everyone,

 

Recently, I've been noticing my unraid server performance and reliability is really lacking when I have some plugins running (sab, transmission, dropbox, mysql, etc etc).  I couldn't be happier with the server performance when unraid is running in vanilla mode, however there is an obvious loss of functionality.  As a result, I've started to consider using unraid in a VM, and use another OS (ubuntu perhaps?) to manage dropbox, sabnzbd, transmission/utorrent, etc etc.  I have a MS Technet Subscription, so I may run a form of Windows Server 2012 Essentials for automated windows PC backup.... regardless, here is the hardware I have at my disposal.

 

Case: NORCO 4224 (v3?)

 

Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O (flashed to 2.00b)

 

CPU: Intel Xeon Qc E3-1230 Processor (Sandy Bridge)

 

Power Supply: CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX850

 

Memory: Don't remember brand offhand, but it's 8GB ECC unregistered memory (I accept I will likely have to go to 32GB of some form of memory here).

 

HBA: M1015 Flashed to 9211-8i P15 IT mode

 

SATA Expander: Intel® RAID SAS Expander RES2SV240 (flashed to 1.3 firmware)

 

Traditional Hard drives:

4 x 3TB WD Red

6 x 2TB WD Green (combination of EARS/EARX)

2 x Samsung Spinpoint F4

1 x Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000

1 x 1TB WD Green

1 x 750GB WD

1 x 650GB WD

1 x 500GB Seagate

 

SSD at Disposal

3 x Crucial 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" SATA III CT256M4SSD2

1 x Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F240GBGT-BK 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

2 x Intel 320 Series 160 GB SATA 3.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid-State Drive

2 x Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M160G2XXX 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

1 x OCZ Technology 32 GB Onyx Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1ONX32

1 x Kingston SSDNow S100 16GB 2.5" SATA II Industrial Solid State Disk SS100S2/16G

 

Now these are all the SSD's I own, shared between desktop, laptop, HTPC, etc etc.  I don't mind doing a round of musical chairs with these SSD's, provided I have enough left to have a decent amount of space on my desktop (was looking to place my Crucial m4's in my desktop, and everything else was fair game, but I can be convinced otherwise).

 

What I would like

 

I would like some suggestions as to which SSDs I should use and where I should use them (currently I have the Corsair Force GT as my unraid cache drive). 

 

I also have zero experience with VM (apart from running windows on my macbook through parallel's).  I have gone over the ATLAS thread, but of course any other input is welcome.

 

Also, should I consider getting an intel NIC?

What specifically do you notice wrt bad performance/functionality.. See my sig. I am pretty ok with current performance..

What specifically do you notice wrt bad performance/functionality.. See my sig. I am pretty ok with current performance..

 

I suspect most of the issues relate to transmission, but periodically I notice insanely slow parity check speeds, in the case of a dropbox plugin, it wiped my dropbox directory (luckily recovering files in dropbox is easy).  CouchPotato is acting up, ... but when I plug in my vanilla unraid USB stick, everything works like a champ.  No super slow web interface, very fast parity checks, no syslog file complaining of REISERFS issues that blow up to 2GB (happened last night).

 

In other words, I'm not convinced that unraid can work as reliably as both a file storage/manager and with applications that run continuously (mysql, bit-torrent, etc etc).  Given that I have the hardware where I can isolate more of these tasks, it seems to make sense to me.

Well.. it is a given that the more you single out functionality the more reliable a system will be.. True in all cases. Allthough I have to admit that what you describe must be something else, I use a reasonable amount of plugins and do not experience these issues.