So I'm in the process of migrating to a new unraid build running in ESXi and everything is going surprisingly well, but before I actually move the disks there are a few issues left unexplained.

 

No matter the combination of disks (virtual and/or physical) I "only" get around 50-60MB/s during parity check. This isn't exactly slow, but it's still well below my current tower which runs quite consistently at ~80MB/s - on hardware that is nowhere near as good as the new server. Even if I map two virtual disks from two independent SSDs, this is still the performance I'm getting.

 

What's your experience? Is 50-60MB/s to be expected?

 

 

Another thing, and this is what's holding me back on moving the disks, is that plugins (.plg) located in /boot/config/plugins won't install automatically. I can installplg them manually and they work fine - even after a reboot.

This isn't a big issue, but since it's such a basic feature I'm worried I've set up something wrong...

 

 

I'm using the pre-built VMDK posted on these forums and unraid is currently installed on a 3GB USB3 stick. The disks are being passed through on a ASM1062 controller.

Can't help you with your plugins.  I only have one TRUE plugin installed in ESXi 5.0.  The VMware tools.  And even on that one I just put the .tgz in the Extras folder I created.  The Extras folder is suppose to install before plugins and was recommended for the tools.

 

I get 100-130MB/s at the start of parity checks/builds depending on the drives.  The only time it is less is if I've had a bad drive or cable.  And that is with a SAS expander for most/all of the drives.  One thing I did have problems with on my first expander was hooking up both connections from my M1015 to it.  That limited my drive count so I wasn't too upset and didn't spend any time trying to find out why the dual connection to the SAS Expander was causing me problems.  It should work as others have done it that way just fine.

I've installed the VMware tools using the plg. They work fine, but had to install them manually too. I am planning on running most of my existing plugins in seperate VMs, but I hate not knowing why it's not working as intended!

 

Well, you have twice the speeds I'm getting during parity check... I have no idea what's wrong...

Pinch, what are you using for disks?

 

And when are those 50-60MB/s speeds occurring?  Or is this an overall average?

 

I just finished upgrading my disks to an all 3GB ST3000DM001 array and my parity check speed increased substantially.  It starts out in the 160-170MB/s area and drops to about 90MB/s at the end. 

 

Total parity check time for the system in my sig below is now 5.5 hours.  This is down from 8.5 hours when I had a 2GB WD Green and two 1.5GB Seagate drives in the array.

 

I have just the openVMTools and openSSH plugins installed.