unRAID virgin - questions before ordering Pro license.

[dimes007]

I intent to repurpose a Dell Dimension 9200 as an unRAID and VMWare server.  The general machine specs are:

Core 2 Duo E6300 (VT supported), 4gb RAM

P965 chipset, ICH8R, 6 SATA ports

Room for 6 HD in case.  PCI x1, x8 (x4 electrically) and x16 slots for expansion.

 

I belive my initial disk setup will be:

2 x 320gb disks in Raid 1 through Intel Matrix Raid - VMs, swapfile and Cache drive

2 x 1.5tb (Both are Seagates. Sigh. Using 1 as parity.  I'll upgrade firmware when I migrate data.)

1 x 720gb Seagate

1 x 320gb Seagate

 

This will give me ~2.5TB of unRAID protected storage and 320gb of Raid 1 protected storage.

 

My questions are as follows:

 

Anything crazy about this setup?  I'm not thrilled about using 2 of 6 spots outside of my unraid Array but I know I will run VMWare and running it on the unRAID array does not seem to be encouraged.

 

Can I boot with a 32gb Flash drive and use it for cache or swap file?  (Now I only have a 1gb and if it is to remain I can order Pro for my GUID)   Any advantage to using a big flash drive over just another place to share and throw files temporarily?  I can put the pagefiles for my VMs on flash for sure but I do not know if there is any performance benefit.

 

I know that unRAID does not support NIC teaming but, will I be able to dedicate a 2nd NIC to the VMs?

 

Its generally accepted that NFS gives better performance then Samba but it seems people do not use the NFS Client freely available in Vista and XP.  Is there any particular reason why this isn't used more often?

 

I've very impressed with unRAID thus far and am looking forward to becoming a contributing member of this community.

 

All for now.  Thanks,

 

--dimes

[WeeboTech]

2 x 320gb disks in Raid 1 through Intel Matrix Raid - VMs, swapfile and Cache drive

...and 320gb of Raid 1 protected storage.

 

Anything crazy about this setup?  I'm not thrilled about using 2 of 6 spots outside of my unraid Array but I know I will run VMWare and running it on the unRAID array does not seem to be encouraged.

 

Expecting to run VMware may be a bit of work. You will need to do this through the community as it is not a supported set up.

You will need to recompile the kernel and handle everything manually.

 

As far as RAID 1 through intel matrix raid..

This could possibly work, but chances are high it will be allot of work.

In addition, using it as a cache drive may not work at all.

UnRAID likes to take over the whole drive.

 

You CAN do raid 1 on this drive via hardware with a Silcon Image chipset (internal or external).  SIL5744.

This is the only way I know how to do it today. It does work, I've tested it.

 

 

Can I boot with a 32gb Flash drive and use it for cache or swap file?  (Now I only have a 1gb and if it is to remain I can order Pro for my GUID)  Any advantage to using a big flash drive over just another place to share and throw files temporarily?  I can put the pagefiles for my VMs on flash for sure but I do not know if there is any performance benefit.

 

No matter what you will need a USB key to lock the license to the USB Key's GUID.

This 32GB Flash drive.. are you talking SSD or a pen / compact flash drive?

 

You can use it, but there may be a performance penalty depending on how the flash drive is hooked up to the system.

 

 

 

[Joe L.]

Flash drives may only be "written" to a finite number of times.  (for arguments sake, let's say 1 million times)

 

If you use it as a "temp" file system, or as a cache drive, or as a "swap" drive and wrote to it once a second it would last a bit over 12 days.

 

Ok, at once a minute we could get it to last about 2 years...

 

You can put a swap file on any hard-disk... even one that is part of the protected array... you just need to enable it after the array is started, and disable it before stopping the array.  Or... get any old IDE diak and use it...

 

unRAID will fit on a 128 Meg flash drive... A 1 Gig flash drive is fine. I have my 1Gig flash drive loaded with many versions of unRAID and lots more add-on packages than most will ever have, and I still have a quarter of it free.

 

... A 2 Gig flash drive far larger than most will ever need... 4 Gig's are fairly cheap these days, but way overkill.  Remember, you'll use all of 64k or so of it.... and any extras can live on any of the data disks in the array...  32Gig is just a waste of an expensive flash drive.

 

Joe L.

[dimes007]

Current setup is:

Core 2 Duo E6300 (VT supported), 3gb RAM

P965 chipset, ICH8R, 6 SATA ports

 

Current disk setup is:

Protected Array:

3 x 1.5tb (2 x 1.5tb 7200RPM Seagate, 1 x 1.5tb WD Green.  1 of the Seagates is parity)

Other Disks:

2 x 320gb disks (Looking to do Raid 1 for VMs, swap and Cache)

 

Mostly through these forums currently running:

• unmenu + cxxlib, lsof, SMART Tools
  
• unraid_notify + socat (for ssl) + |mail
  
• jed (text editor)
  
• powerdown
  
• monthly_parity-check.sh[/li\]
  

 

Most of my data is copied and organized onto the 3tb of protected storage.

All packages load and work as expected. 

 

I did play around with formatting and mounting an additional disk and making custom shares in samba.

 

But of course..  you more you learn the less you know.

 

Next up is getting a drive to mirror to use it as a cache drive, VMWare and swap.

 

I setup the two disks in a raid 1 mirror using ich8r.  I expected linux to see only 1 phsyical disk or nothing at all.  To my surprise the system saw two separate 320gb physical disks. 

 

I can load the installpkg for mdadm.  Has anybody setup a software Raid 1 using mdadm?  There are devices already names /dev/md1 and /dev/md2.  Does that mean that if I add mdX will unRAID break. 

 

I know its mentioned I can get an add in real (realer?) hardware raid card but a) i'd rather not spend $ b) i fear driver drama and a recompile since I don't know about such things and c) machine and controller portability of unRAID complimented better by software raid.

 

Thanks.

[dimes007]

UPDATE!

 

Current setup is:

• Core 2 Duo E6300 (VT supported), 3gb RAM
  
• P965 chipset, ICH8R, 6 SATA ports
  

 

Current disk setup is:

• Protected Array: 3 x 1.5tb (2 x 1.5tb 7200RPM Seagate, 1 x 1.5tb WD Green.  1 of the Seagates is parity)
  
• Other Disks: 2 x 320gb disks (Future RAID 1 for VMs, swap and Cache)
  

 

Mostly through these forums currently running:

• unmenu + cxxlib, lsof, SMART Tools
  
• unraid_notify + socat (for ssl) + |mail
  
• jed (text editor)
  
• powerdown
  
• monthly_parity-check.sh
  

 

Most of my data is copied and organized onto the 3tb of protected storage.

All packages load and work as expected. 

 

I did play around with formatting and mounting an additional disk and making custom shares in samba.

 

But of course..  you more you learn the less you know.

 

Next up is getting a drive to mirror to use it as a cache drive, VMWare and swap.

 

I setup the two disks in a raid 1 mirror using ich8r.  I expected linux to see only 1 phsyical disk or nothing at all.  To my surprise the system saw two separate 320gb physical disks. 

 

I can load the installpkg for mdadm.  Has anybody setup a software Raid 1 using mdadm?  There are devices already names /dev/md1 and /dev/md2.  Does that mean that if I add mdX will unRAID break. 

 

I know its mentioned I can get an add in real (realer?) hardware raid card but a) i'd rather not spend $ b) i fear driver drama and a recompile since I don't know about such things and c) machine and controller portability of unRAID complimented better by software raid.

 

Thanks.

 

[BRiT]

The unRAID "md" driver replaces the normal Linux "md" driver (raid 0/1/4/5/6/10). Short of rewriting unRaid's MD with emHttp the two can not co-exist.

[Joe L.]

The unRAID "md" driver replaces the normal Linux "md" driver (raid 0/1/4/5/6/10). Short of rewriting unRaid's MD with emHttp the two can not co-exist.

Correct... about all that is the same is that both use the same name for their device.  You cannot have the unRAID "md" device and the usual linux "md" device too.

 

What some have done, on motherboards that support it for their cache drive, is set up hardware mirroring... but then the spin-down features don't work..

 

Joe L.

[dimes007]

The unRAID "md" driver replaces the normal Linux "md" driver (raid 0/1/4/5/6/10). Short of rewriting unRaid's MD with emHttp the two can not co-exist.

 

Yikes.  I was afraid of that.  Hopefully installpkg mdadm didn't break anything.  But it does explain why my mdadm --create didn't work.

 

 

[dimes007]

Correct... about all that is the same is that both use the same name for their device.   You cannot have the unRAID "md" device and the usual linux "md" device too.

 

What some have done, on motherboards that support it for their cache drive, is set up hardware mirroring... but then the spin-down features don't work..

 

Joe L.

 

I'm rebooting now to rid myself of mdadm.  Hopefully I did no real damage.  I don't even think I wrote to the unRAID array since installing the mdadm package so I think I'm OK.

 

I did expect to be able to do a true hardware RAID 1 with ich8r but it didn't work.  Is there any other way to do software Raid that doesn't use MD?

 

It is more the fault tolerance of VM that I care about.  If my cache drive isn't Raid 1 I'm OK with that.  If I can't get Raid 1 I'll have to somehow take backups of VMs snapshot files (virtual drive increment files) while the VMs are online.  I'm not sure if that's possible but that's all that I can think of.

[Joe L.]

Raid1 is possible...

 

As said earlier in this thread by Webotech

You CAN do raid 1 on this drive via hardware with a Silcon Image chipset (internal or external).  SIL5744.

This is the only way I know how to do it today. It does work, I've tested it.

[WeeboTech]

RAID1 is possible, but only at the hardware level with the Steelvine chipset.

 

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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111044

 

There are a number of external sata units based on the SIL5744 Chipset.

 

This is a an easy way to double your ports if the controller supports port multiplers.

Add RAID1, RAID0, SAFE33 or SAFE50 if the controller does not support port multiplers.

 

The nice thing about the external SATA units is you could use it to transfer massive amounts of data by using the USB portion on another machine.

[boof]

Flash drives may only be "written" to a finite number of times.  (for arguments sake, let's say 1 million times)

 

If you use it as a "temp" file system, or as a cache drive, or as a "swap" drive and wrote to it once a second it would last a bit over 12 days.

 

Ok, at once a minute we could get it to last about 2 years...

 

Very O/T but this reminded me of the time about 8-9 years ago when USB flash drives were just hitting the market / affordability zone.

 

A chap at my work was very proud that he'd managed to create a linux distro  and have it boot entirely from his brand new USB stick.

 

Unfortunately he'd literally treated the USB stick as a hard disk - and so had swap and all system / log file activity going to it.

 

It lasted less than a day of usage before the stick failed. He was most upset.

 

[WeeboTech]

Flash drives may only be "written" to a finite number of times.  (for arguments sake, let's say 1 million times)

 

If you use it as a "temp" file system, or as a cache drive, or as a "swap" drive and wrote to it once a second it would last a bit over 12 days.

 

Ok, at once a minute we could get it to last about 2 years...

 

Very O/T but this reminded me of the time about 8-9 years ago when USB flash drives were just hitting the market / affordability zone.

 

A chap at my work was very proud that he'd managed to create a linux distro  and have it boot entirely from his brand new USB stick.

 

Unfortunately he'd literally treated the USB stick as a hard disk - and so had swap and all system / log file activity going to it.

 

It lasted less than a day of usage before the stick failed. He was most upset.

 

 

And now you can get the Flash drives in USB & eSATA format. Designed for speed!

[dimes007]

RAID1 is possible, but only at the hardware level with the Steelvine chipset.

 

There are a number of external sata units based on the SIL5744 Chipset.

 

The attractive aspects of software Raid 1 was portability in the event of failure.  If software Raid 1 in the linux world always uses MD then that is dead.

 

Using a big USB drive as VM storage is dead due to limited [re]write cycles.  Thanks.

 

I now have a single drive as /mnt/cache awaiting my trials with unraid (and a pro key).  Once it's good to go, at those prices, I'll bite for Raid 1.  Just to be clear though.  The solutions (SIL5744 Raid 1) you mentioned work with stock unraid, no kernel compiles needed to get other drivers in?