45 drives?

[EvilHamster]

I recently recieved a little money and was curious-

 

Is it possible to run unraid on a 45 drive system like sold here?

 

http://www.45drives.com

[EvilHamster]

As the hardware is pretty standard the software should run, the question I have is would I need to buy 2 24 drive licenses to run a 45 drive system?

[theone]

You cannot run 2 unraid systems on the same hardware.  On second thought maybe you can run ESXi with 2 instance of unraid...

[vl1969]

yes you would have to get 2 pro licenses to run this monster :-)

[WeeboTech]

You cannot run 2 unraid systems on the same hardware.  On second thought maybe you can run ESXi with 2 instance of unraid...

 

I don't know that ESX will run well on that system.

 

Since it uses port multipliers (from what I remember) you would have to investigate if the controller supports pass through and PMP.  If it does, then you'll probably be able to support two or more instances of unRAID.

 

You may have better luck with XEN if ESX does not support pass through.

 

Another option is to contact tomm@lime-technology directly and perhaps work something out where you beta a new version.

 

Frankly, I don't know if I would have 45 drives protected by one parity drive.

I would be more comfortable having two or more arrays.

[vl1969]

it looks like this guys use 3 4port PCIe SAS cards

and 9 back plains, so that is 3 back plain for each card

if you can pass though a single PCIe slot you should be able to run 3 unRaid VMs

with 15 drives each. since Plus only get you 10 drives

 

you would need 3 PRO and that is such a waist.

 

[WeeboTech]

it looks like this guys use 3 4port PCIe SAS cards

and 9 back plains, so that is 3 back plain for each card

if you can pass though a single PCIe slot you should be able to run 3 unRaid VMs

with 15 drives each. since Plus only get you 10 drives

 

you would need 3 PRO and that is such a waist.

 

If you can afford a 45 drive system, the cost of a license is peanuts compared to the cost of the hardware.

 

Frankly, I would work something out with Tom directly you wouldn't want too many eggs in one basket anyway.

[vl1969]

I think this guys are a bit  over priced.

by my calculations the hardware costs no more than 2500$

and that rounded, and rounded a lot.

they charge you 5500$. I mean 100% markup?

 

I mean I understand that target market is big data centers that can afford it but still....

[WeeboTech]

I think this guys are a bit  over priced.

by my calculations the hardware costs no more than 2500$

and that rounded, and rounded a lot.

they charge you 5500$. I mean 100% markup?

 

I mean I understand that target market is big data centers that can afford it but still....

 

I think the price is appropriate. There labor and logistic costs. Not everyone is a technician.

You can purchase the chassis and port multiplier backplanes along with PSU for about $1700 or so.

Then you need to add in the cost of cables, time testing, time burning in, etc.

[garycase]

I agree the price is reasonable given the assembly, testing, support costs, etc.

 

However, unless the system supports ESXi (not at all clear) AND the interface cards can be passed through, then it's not a reasonable choice for UnRAID.    If both of those conditions are true, then you could, of course, create 3 15-drive UnRAID systems, as noted above.

 

WeeboTech is, of course, correct r.e. the cost of the licenses => if you're buying a unit like this, plus 45 drives, the cost of UnRAID licenses is truly "in the noise" 

[jbartlett]

That would be three arrays with 56TB usable space if populated with 4TB drives for a total of 168TB of storage (12TB in parity). Starting at over $7k for the drives (NAS level)

 

Would work even better if the idea Tom asked about with having UNRAID work as a master/slave with other UNRAID servers ever comes to pass.

[vl1969]

That would be three arrays with 56TB usable space if populated with 4TB drives for a total of 168TB of storage (12TB in parity). Starting at over $7k for the drives (NAS level)

 

Would work even better if the idea Tom asked about with having UNRAID work as a master/slave with other UNRAID servers ever comes to pass.

 

 

Or if Tom ever consider make unraid support multiple arrays on one system and increase the number of drives.

 

The drive limit is artificial anyway.

[WeeboTech]

That would be three arrays with 56TB usable space if populated with 4TB drives for a total of 168TB of storage (12TB in parity). Starting at over $7k for the drives (NAS level)

 

Would work even better if the idea Tom asked about with having UNRAID work as a master/slave with other UNRAID servers ever comes to pass.

 

 

Or if Tom ever consider make unraid support multiple arrays on one system and increase the number of drives.

 

The drive limit is artificial anyway.

 

 

I believe the current PRO' drive limit is based on the maximum space for drive letters internally in the code.

 

 

/dev/sda - /dev/sdz

 

 

Drives after that require two characters and I think that still has to be worked out

/dev/sdaa - /dev/sd??

[garycase]

Or if Tom ever consider make unraid support multiple arrays on one system and increase the number of drives.

 

The drive limit is artificial anyway.

 

The drive limit may be artificial, but using 45 drives in a single RAID array begs for a failure during rebuilds -- especially with single parity.    Three 15 drive arrays would be a far better setup WRT to data safety.  Even that is pressing the limit for single-parity protection ... most data centers have long since switched to RAID-6 (dual drive failure fault tolerance) for arrays over about 6-8 drives.

 

[vl1969]

Or if Tom ever consider make unraid support multiple arrays on one system and increase the number of drives.

 

The drive limit is artificial anyway.

 

The drive limit may be artificial, but using 45 drives in a single RAID array begs for a failure during rebuilds -- especially with single parity.    Three 15 drive arrays would be a far better setup WRT to data safety.  Even that is pressing the limit for single-parity protection ... most data centers have long since switched to RAID-6 (dual drive failure fault tolerance) for arrays over about 6-8 drives.

 

well isn't that what I said.

I did not mean single array of 45 drives

but single unraid system capable of multiple arrays setup.

let say free licenses would be capable of 2 arrays of 3 drives only(just a bit expansion here )

but  starting from plus licenses  you can have up-to 4 arrays of plus style. etc.

 

and I still think that Tom should really think of moving to btrfs and use that with raid-6

[BobPhoenix]

and I still think that Tom should really think of moving to btrfs and use that with raid-6

Wouldn't that mean the drives no longer have independant file systems but would be stripped like traditional raid?  If so I would never upgrade.  The fact that I can recover most of my data even when I have a multi drive failure is the single BIGGEST feature of unRAID that I want besides the drive pooling.

[vl1969]

and I still think that Tom should really think of moving to btrfs and use that with raid-6

Wouldn't that mean the drives no longer have independant file systems but would be stripped like traditional raid?  If so I would never upgrade.  The fact that I can recover most of my data even when I have a multi drive failure is the single BIGGEST feature of unRAID that I want besides the drive pooling.

no, btrfs does NOT  implement  standard raid.

in fact you don't really have to use the raid at all.

if I read the multiple WiKi properly you can run it much the same as unRaid mode but with benefits of checksum and self healing.

 

[Barziya]

if I read the multiple WiKi properly you can run it much the same as unRaid mode but with benefits of checksum and self healing.

That is not correct.  In unRAID, the md-mod driver takes care of the redundant array, while each data drive has its own independant file system.  If you wand a self healing BTRFS, then you'll have to let the BTRFS filesystem itself be in charge of disk redundancy.  But then there's no place for the unRAID's md-mod driver in that picture -- you lose all the unique features of unRAID.

 

You could possibly have independent BTRFS file systems on each data disk, all on top of unRAID's md-mod driver, but then those individual BTRFS file systems won't be self healing, as they will have no knowledge of the redindancy.  That will also require some reworking of the md-mod driver, because (as of this writing) it crashes with anything other than reiserfs (I've tried that).