Hi guys,

My name is Esse and I am a total newbie with the UnRaid solution.

I will not let this stop me and I am seeking some advice. 

 

My hardware:

 

ASUS AT5IONT-I with 4GB RAM

ST Lab A-520 4 Channels Raid Card SATA 6Gbit/s PCIe 4x      (Is this card supported by the way?)

Various HDD:s

 

My main question is how to place my Parity (the largest drive I have) and Cache drive (probably some 64GB SSD) for best throughput.

Mobo holds 2 SATA II and on the controller card there is 4 SATA III.

 

What would the experts say, on board controller or card?

 

Cheers

 

Esse

 

Generally you put the drives you want the fastest access to on-board and the rest on controllers. The way unRAID works having a faster parity doesn't matter much because the slower data drives won't make use of the parity speed. The only time a faster parity helps is when writing to multiple data disks at the same time.

Hi Esse,

welcome to the unRAID forums.

Since you already own that card, just give it a try.

 

It seems to be common in russia because google shows many hits over there.

Please feedback and tell us if you obtain

- SMART values

- temps

- full drive size for drives with <2.2TB size

- and spindown through that card.

 

There is another problem I see with that board, but you have to double check that yourself.

I couldn't find information on the PCIe version. All I found is, that it has only 1 lane (the physical connector is x4 only).

If you are lucky it has PCIe 2.0 that delivers 500MB/s for your controller card - you're fine then.

If it's PCIe 1.1 you should not connect more than 3 drives of your array to that controller.

You most likely will experience somewhat limited parity check speeds.

Connect the slowest/oldest drives to the controller card.

Use the remaining port for your cache drive.

Thx guys, I now found out that it has PCIe 2.0 

In this case it seems logical that I connect parity and cache at the on board controller.

 

@Fireball3

 

It will be a while until I have all parts for this build, waiting for that controller card.

I will not use larger drives then a 2GB to start with, sorry.

The rest of your questions I will try to answer when the day for the build comes.

 

Cheers

 

Esse

Don't wait until you get all of the hardware in hand to start testing.  You don't need any drives (except for a flash drive) to fire up the free version and make sure that the network chip set is supported.  If you have any old SATA hard drive, you can also check the add-in SATA card and verify that it has support.  By the way, that card can not be run in the RAID mode.  It has to run a JBOD (or IT) mode for it to work with unRAID.

Hi Frank,

The thing is that the computer in question (to be the unraid build) is still in use.

The controller card will take some time to get as the distributor did not have them on stock.

I was thinking of not do any RAID, JBOD, just hooking up drives to that card.

Do you think that will work or does the card need to have one of the configs you mentioned?

 

/E

There are dedicated cards, so called HBA (host bus adaptors) for our use (unRAID or ZFS).

Quality RAID cards sometimes can be flashed to a so called IT (initiator target) mode which provides the same funcionality.

 

But there are many cards out there, especially the cheap ones, calling themselves RAID and are in fact

a host adaptor offering some basic RAID functionalities.

All of them rely on parity calculations done by the CPU and are therefore called fake RAIDS.

Many of those cards are configurable to pass through the drives to the OS without interfering.

There are also those that need configuration as JBOD in order to pass through the drives.

In addition to that, some controllers will allow configuration only if the drives have a valid

parition - this is not acceptable for unRAID.

You see, the range is very wide and you can only tell if and how it works, if you tried it.

The fist one is the guinea pig. 

 

In your case we will hopefully hear soon.

 

Hi Frank,

The thing is that the computer in question (to be the unraid build) is still in use.

The controller card will take some time to get as the distributor did not have them on stock.

I was thinking of not do any RAID, JBOD, just hooking up drives to that card.

Do you think that will work or does the card need to have one of the configs you mentioned?

 

/E

 

You can still test out that the network chip set is supported in unRAID as not all chip sets are.  Just configure any flash drive you have available with unRAID and reboot the computer from the flash drive.  You should be able to get to the GUI from another computer.  If you can't get to the GUI you want to resolve that issue now-- not after you have purchased a lot of other stuff.  (unRAID will not do anything to any hard drive you have attached to the computer until you tell it to do so!  You can return the computer to its current use by removing the flash drive and rebooting.)  I recommend doing this as not all network chip sets are supported by unRAID and I would think you would want to find this out as soon as possible. 

Thx again guys, and yes Frank I will try to set up a USB stick for the job.

But I already read some wiki or another user who had success with the same network chip as I have. But you never know...

 

I will be back when I have tested. 

 

/E

Just dropping by to say that the network came up fine with Version 6 Beta.

 

Will the plugins and container be available after I set up an array?

Cant wait to get my gear for this build 

 

Thx again guys!

 

/E

Just reporting back that the built went great!

 

Well, almost..

 

Before I got my Plus key I started in free mode and all went fine.

I did set up 2 Data and 1 Parity drive, all 1TB drives.

Now, after I got the plus key in the config folder, added another 1TB  drive and fire up again, the server do not find the new drive?

Is there a way to verify that my Plus key is working, or could this be something else?

 

/E

 

This may seem like stupid advice but open up your flash drive in Windows Explorer and double check that your 'plus.key' file is actually in the config directory on your flash drive...

 

Do you have preclear_disk.sh installed on your system.  If you do, you can run the following code on an attached monitor and keyboard (or in a telenet session):

 

cd /boot
preclear_disk.sh -l 

 

You can find more information on Preclear here:

 

  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

 

   

Hi Frank,

I did that already and the file is in place.

I do not run any scripts yet.

The fourth drive shows up in the boot order of the bios, but it seems unRAID cant see it.

But maybe this is the way it should work if the system do not recognize the key file? It still believes it is in free mode?

 

/E

Hi Frank,

I did that already and the file is in place.

I do not run any scripts yet.

The fourth drive shows up in the boot order of the bios, but it seems unRAID cant see it.

But maybe this is the way it should work if the system do not recognize the key file? It still believes it is in free mode?

 

/E

 

As I understand,  if the key file is missing, then only three drives show up.  I have the plus key files on both my servers.  When I stop the array, I have dropdown boxes to select and assign a parity disk, five data disks, and a cache disk.  After the array is started, only the disks that I previously assigned are visible. 

In the dropdown boxes there are only the 3 drives I did start the free version with present. One is missing here 

 

/E

 

 

As I understand,  if the key file is missing, then only three drives show up.  I have the plus key files on both my servers.  When I stop the array, I have dropdown boxes to select and assign a parity disk, five data disks, and a cache disk.  After the array is started, only the disks that I previously assigned are visible. 

In the dropdown boxes there are only the 3 drives I did start the free version with present. One is missing here 

 

/E

 

When I described what I saw when a stopped the array (on the Main page of the GUI), was for my test bed server (see description below in signature block) which only has the three 1Tb drives installed.  It was after I stopped the array that I had dropdown boxes to assign additional drives.  (Remember, I (like you) have only three drives installed!)  If you stop your array and don't have the extra boxes, then the plus key is not working.  I don't believe that you can assign a new drive with the array running.  It must be stopped!

 

 

As I understand,  if the key file is missing, then only three drives show up.  I have the plus key files on both my servers.  When I stop the array, I have dropdown boxes to select and assign a parity disk, five data disks, and a cache disk.  After the array is started, only the disks that I previously assigned are visible. 

In the dropdown boxes there are only the 3 drives I did start the free version with present. One is missing here 

 

/E

 

When I described what I saw when a stopped the array (on the Main page of the GUI), was for my test bed server (see description below in signature block) which only has the three 1Tb drives installed.  It was after I stopped the array that I had dropdown boxes to assign additional drives.  (Remember, I (like you) have only three drives installed!)  If you stop your array and don't have the extra boxes, then the plus key is not working.  I don't believe that you can assign a new drive with the array running.  It must be stopped!

 

Then the plus key must be broken, the array is stopped when you boot up the server after adding the key, but still only 3 drives of 4 comes up.

 

/E

post your syslog from a fresh boot. it will say "PLUS KEY DETECTED" if it found it.

This back and forth is getting confusing.

 

To tell if the key is working - with the array stopped you will get drop-down boxes for the number of drives you paid for.

 

To tell if the hard drive is not recognized - with the array stopped the drive does not show-up in any of the drop-down boxes.

 

You seem to be saying the new hard drive does not appear on any of the drop-down boxes, which has nothing to do with the key file.

 

To see if the Key is activated was too easy 

In the header area of the webGui it say´s ‘unRAID Plus.

 

This is weird, like I posted previously, the BIOS boot order (in my case pressing F8 during boot) presents all 4 drives.

The third and fourth drive is connected to the same controller card, but in unRAID I only see the third.

 

The solution was to replace the new SATA cable that came with the controller card and: Voila! unRAID found the drive.

 

Mission completed for now.

 

Thank you all for the support!

 

/E