New unRAID build - how to migrate?

[dlmh]

I just ordered the following parts:

 

1x Supermicro X7SLA-L (Atom N230, 2x PCIe 8x)

5x Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5 TB

1x Samsung EcoGreen F2 500GB

1x ThermalTake TR2 300W (86% efficiency @ 40W)

1x LianLi PC-A17 case

2x LianLi EX34A HDD-bay (4-in-3)

1x Adaptec RAID 1430SA (4x SATA, PCIe 4x)

2x unRAID Pro (w/ USB stick)

 

The 500GB disk will be assigned as a cache-drive. I'm hoping to get 30W idle power consumption, 60W at full load.

 

Right now I have 6TB @ RAID5 running OSx86. What's the best way to migrate all my current data to the unRAID server?

 

(and is sleep (S3) currently supported?)

[Guzzi]

(and is sleep (S3) currently supported?)

 

depends very much on your MB, BIOS, Adapters, Drivers... I changed my MoBo to get S3 working because I had ACPI-Errors with the old one making WOL impossible.

[Joe L.]

Easiest way to migrate your data, although not the fastest, is to give your new server a different name, and just use your PC's file-explorer to copy the files over.

 

It all depends on your skills and confidence level in working at the Linux command line.  Lots of possibilities exist.

 

What is your experience level?

 

Joe L.

[WeeboTech]

Dunno much about OSx86 otherwise I would contribute there.

I suppose if you are good at the command line and know NFS you can do the mounts manually and rsync that way.

 

Come to think of it, I've done rsync from host to host after enabling rsync with the --daemon argument or setting up /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/rsyncd.conf.

 

this line needs to be in /etc/inetd.conf

Or you could run rsync --daemon manually from the console.

 

Then you need an /etc/rsyncd.conf file.

 

Here's a segment from mine

 

uid             = root
gid             = root
use chroot      = no
max connections = 4
pid file        = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
timeout         = 600


[backups]
    path = /mnt/user/backups
    comment = Backups
    read only = FALSE

[vmware]
    path = /mnt/user/backups/vmware
    comment = VMWare Backups
    read only = FALSE

[music]
    path = /mnt/user/music
    comment = Music
    read only = FALSE

[pub]
    path = /mnt/disk1/pub
    comment = Public Files
    read only = FALSE

[images]
    path = /mnt/disk1/images
    comment = Public Files
    read only = FALSE

[boot]
    path = /boot
    comment = /boot files
    read only = FALSE

[mnt]
    path = /mnt
    comment = /mnt files
    read only = FALSE

[Videos]
    path = /mnt/user/Videos
    comment = VIDEOS
    read only = FALSE

[bittorrent]
    path = /mnt/user/bittorrent
    comment = BITTORRENT
    read only = FALSE

[cdrom_images]
    path = /mnt/user/cdrom_images
    comment = CDROM_IMAGES
    read only = FALSE 

 

 

 

 

I'm hoping to get 30W idle power consumption, 60W at full load.

 

I would really love to hear your performance and power usage after the build put.

Please publish when complete! Thanks!

 

[dlmh]

Thanks for the replies! I read somewhere it's best to add the parity and cache AFTER the migration is done. The parity calculations will then be done overnight when finished.

 

Since my cachedisk normally can reach write and readspeeds of up to 80 Mb/s, I'm hoping I'm able to saturate my Gbit network. Still waiting for the hardware to arrive (as well as my USB stick with unRAID), but I'll post my findings with performance and power consumption when I got it all working.

[heffe2001]

That little supermicro board looks pretty sweet...  I may end up getting one of those to replace my existing Athlon setup, I'm sure it'd use less power, and has 2 8x PCIe's...  I'd probably go with the dual-core for a few dollars more though.

 

[dlmh]

Well, I put together the parts and I'm quite satisfied with the results:

 

Power consumption

Motherboard + CPU + RAM29W

... + Adaptec 1430SA34W

... + 4x Samsung 1.5TB @ powerup92W

... + 4x Samsung 1.5TB @ access55W

... + 4x Samsung 1.5TB @ idle40W

 

I still have to add the cache disk and parity disk, after I've migrated all of my data. I'll still have to test read throughput.

 

Performance

Write speed - no cache - no parity33 MB/s

 

Networking

The onboard dual Realtek GBit cards (RTL8111C) are recognized by unRAID and write speeds are as expected. But I ran in some trouble when streaming movies to my XBMC-box and found out the driver gave errors after some x period of time. I added a Realtek GBit ethernetcard (RTL8169) to the PCI-slot and it solved my problems, throughput seems to have gone up as well. Because of the high system load of the Realtek chip when there's lot of traffic, especially when you have multiple streams, I ordered two Intel PRO/1000 GT cards to get rid of any bottlenecks.

 

Software

I installed SabNZBd for usenet, SSH so I can access the unRAID box remotely and Avahi so that the Samba service is announced to my Mac (like Bonjour), showing a nice XServe icon in Finder . I've posted a HOW-TO in the Software forum to get Avahi going in case someone's interested.

[dlmh]

I've added the cache- and parity drive, but as lots of other users have experienced, the performance of the cache disk with user shares is all over the place.

 

Reading from usershare 35-40 MB/s

Reading from disk 75-80 MB/s

Writing to usershare 8-10 MB/s

Writing to cache disk 35 MB/s

 

The way the cache disk SHOULD work there should be no difference in writing to a user share or directly to the cache disk. The is not the case however. The even weirder thing is the huge difference in read speed between reading from a user share and directly from disk. Having decent GBit ethernet cards with jumbo frames (9000/9014 MTU) really shows the difference, but the gap between user share and disk is.... well... strange!?