HKR Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 What if we connect the cache SSD first and let it write the HPA on it? Will that be a problem? Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 IMHO the problem is a bit overblown. As long as one of the hard drives connected to the motherboard already has an HPA on it, the bios will not create another one.So what happens if the HPA hard drive is the one that fails? Now you've got your motherboard creating a HPA on one of the drives that is needed for the recovery. Yes, it requires a perfect storm of failure to actually bite you, but if it does you will not be saying the problem is overblown. Nope, because as a general rule, HPA is only created on drives when the BIOS tries to boot from them (which should not happen). So, in your case, you could replace that drive. The new drive will not have HPA on it. You could then force HPA onto it if you're really paranoid about a boot failure. Rebuild problems will only happen if: - The parity drive did not have HPA and you try to replace it with a drive that has HPA - Parity drive has HPA and the data drives which are the same size do not. My whole point is to avoid having HPA go onto the parity drive, which is fairly easy to do. Make sure that the data drives are in lower numbered sata ports (so that if HPA decides to go on, it will hit them first), and force it onto a data drive. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 What if we connect the cache SSD first and let it write the HPA on it? Will that be a problem? Better solution than a data drive. Put parity into the highest slot. Like I said, nothing is a given, your mileage may vary depending upon the mobo, but all my gigabyte boards have responded this way. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Thanks for the clarification. I was looking into sata controller cards as i would need one due to lack of enough sata slots on my mobo. Then i came accross something called a sata multiplier card, what it seems to do it multiply your 1 sata port into 5, so you can hook up 5 sata HDD through that card. Do these things actually work? I dont want to get a raid card as it would shoot up my budget a lot. Port multipliers do work, if the chipset supports it - you'd have to research it. But, your speed during parity checks will suffer, as all the traffic to those 5 drives is going to be limited to the maximum speed of the single port. A better option would be either a 4 or 8 port SAS card. Probably around the same price, and no speed impact Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 IMHO the problem is a bit overblown. As long as one of the hard drives connected to the motherboard already has an HPA on it, the bios will not create another one.So what happens if the HPA hard drive is the one that fails? Now you've got your motherboard creating a HPA on one of the drives that is needed for the recovery. Yes, it requires a perfect storm of failure to actually bite you, but if it does you will not be saying the problem is overblown. Worst case scenario is that a few hundred k of data is going to be garbage at the end of the drive. If a boot failed and HPA went onto a data drive that didn't previously have it, a few hundred k will be corrupted. (with my data, I'd probably only see it as a movie that went blocky) If a boot failed and HPA went onto the parity drive, not sure how unRaid would handle a rebuild since parity is no longer the biggest drive. Why I try and keep it on data drives, and why I arrange drives to have parity never get it. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 12, 2015 Author Share Posted February 12, 2015 I think i am gonna pull the trigger and order the GA-H97M board as asus seems out of stock everywhere. I am getting the Asus B85M-G, do you think its a good choice? Do you think this SAS card is a good choice? http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0050SLTPC/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1423762798&sr=8-4π=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=6+port+sata+card&dpPl=1&dpID=51kKzkZ6iVL&ref=plSrch However i dont understand there are no sata ports on the card the connectors look different ? How do i connect my HDD?? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Do you think this SAS card is a good choice? http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0050SLTPC/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1423762798&sr=8-4π=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=6+port+sata+card&dpPl=1&dpID=51kKzkZ6iVL&ref=plSrch Not a card I know anything about. However i dont understand there are no sata ports on the card the connectors look different ? How do i connect my HDD?? That is because you will need the appropriate SAS->SATA cables for the board. Each SAS port breaks out to 4 SATA ports. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 12, 2015 Author Share Posted February 12, 2015 Can you link me to something which would work for me?? I am fairly new to the whole sas card senario. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Can you link me to something which would work for me?? I am fairly new to the whole sas card senario. There are different types of cable - you need the correct type for the board you buy. The card technical description should tell you what is needed, Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Can you link me to something which would work for me?? I am fairly new to the whole sas card senario. Where are you based? A lot of people including myself use M1015 based cards. They come from various manufacturers and require flashing the firmware so the disks are presented to UnRAID as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) Might be helpful if you told us which country you're in. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 I live in India and option available are very limited There isint a single raid controller available on any of the Indian sites thst is why i have to get it from amazon and ship it to india. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Is the LSI SAS9211-8i 8 a good choice? I am able to get this on ebay shipped to India. Does this work out of box with unraid? Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 No, not out of the box, it would require cross flashing if it were to work and I don't know if that is possible with that particular model. Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 A LSI 9211-8i is what my M1015s are cross flashed TOO. Since he is talking about a 9211-8i no cross flashing is necessary. However I don't know if the 9211-8i comes with IT or IR firmware. If it comes with IT firmware than it should work without flashing at all. If it comes with IR firmware then the IT firmware will need to be flashed for unRAID to be able to use it. Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 A LSI 9211-8i is what my M1015s are cross flashed TOO. Since he is talking about a 9211-8i no cross flashing is necessary. However I don't know if the 9211-8i comes with IT or IR firmware. If it comes with IT firmware than it should work without flashing at all. If it comes with IR firmware then the IT firmware will need to be flashed for unRAID to be able to use it. You're quite right, I assumed that it would come with IR firmware, and assumption is never a good thing in this game! Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 15, 2015 Author Share Posted February 15, 2015 All right so i just went ahead and ordered the SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 off ebay for a good deal i got it shipped. It should be here in a week. Rest of my hardware has arrived and i am planning to do the install tommo. I had a few questions thought: 1) I have 1 SSD for cache, 6 HDD for data, 1 for parity, which license key do i need to buy? Slightly confused if i need the Plus or Pro license? 2) If i connect the drives now via on board Sata connectors can i later swap them out to connect them via the Supermicro SAS card that arrives later during the week? Can this cause any problems? 3) What other plugins etc should i look into installing and any links for guides to do that same. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 1) I have 1 SSD for cache, 6 HDD for data, 1 for parity, which license key do i need to buy? Slightly confused if i need the Plus or Pro license? For that you would need the pro license. You are using one too many drives for the Plus license. See here for details of the licenses. 2) If i connect the drives now via on board Sata connectors can i later swap them out to connect them via the Supermicro SAS card that arrives later during the week? Can this cause any problems? Should be no problems. unRAID v5/v6 recognises drives by their serial number, not by how they are connected. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 17, 2015 Author Share Posted February 17, 2015 I have read about 'split levels' in the unRaid setup however i dont quiet follow what it means, anyone here can break it down and explain to me what it is and how it work? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 I have read about 'split levels' in the unRaid setup however i dont quiet follow what it means, anyone here can break it down and explain to me what it is and how it work? They control how files are allowed to be split across drives. In effect the value you specify how many folder levels (including the share name itself) from the file path can be replicated (i.e. split) across drives. Any folders/files that exceed this value are limited to the disk on which they were first created. Many people use this to do things like constrain all episodes of a particular TV show (or Season within a show) to be constrained to a single disk drive. Whether you want this is up to you. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 17, 2015 Author Share Posted February 17, 2015 Say i have a series called 'ABC' which further has 10 folders for 10 season, which further has 24 folders per season, so what split level should i set so a complete season get written to the same disk? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Say i have a series called 'ABC' which further has 10 folders for 10 season, which further has 24 folders per season, so what split level should i set so a complete season get written to the same disk? If the path is something like 'ShareName/ABC/Season n/further detail' then you will want a split level of 2 as that will allow the first two elements 'ShareName' and 'ABC" to exist on multiple disks, and anything under ABC will be constrained to the disk on which they are first created (which would be selected using the Allocation Method setting). Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 18, 2015 Author Share Posted February 18, 2015 Thanks for the help, i am about to buy the unRaID License key however it seem these steps mentioned here are no longer applicable? http://lime-technology.com/registrationkeys/ When i click the 'main' tab i dont see any option other then the home page where it show the disk info. Quote Link to comment
dgaschk Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Post a screen shot. Quote Link to comment
HKR Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Got it solved, emailed support team and Jon got back in a min and helped resolve it. however i am getting very poor performance out of the array, while transferring files the speed starts off at around 8-9MB/sec and goes to a max of about 30-35MB/sec and while a transfer is ON if i try to play a movie from that disk it never loads and i have to cancel the transfer in-order for it to start streaming. Anything particularly i should look at or to improve the speeds? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Perhaps a quick summary of the current hardware and how the disks are connected might help to see if any potential performance bottlenecks can be identified? Also, are you using wired Gigabit LAN or is their a WiFi link or 100Mb wired LAN involved? Quote Link to comment
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