I was wondering the best way to upgrade a Md-1500. Not to sure how to find the bottleneck on the system, eg the memory, proc, ...  Or if it is worth it just to gut the mobo proc and mem. and start from scratch.  Thx guys !

Which motherboard is in your MD-1500?

Sry for the extended delay.

 

I believe the motherboard is a asus p593-vm

I personally would gut the internals and start from scratch.  By today's standards, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and SATA cards are all slow and more or less obsolete.  The case and drive cages are still fine to use.  See my prototypes thread (link in my sig) for some recommendations as to modern components with no bottlenecks.

Also wondering if it it worth it to go with a 6g sata hard drive setup.

Also wondering if it it worth it to go with a 6g sata hard drive setup.

6GB/s HDD get you nothing with unRAID.  An x8 card will be faster than an x4 card (the SASLP2 vs. the SASLP).

 

Only SSD drives will approach the SATA3 speed limit, spindle based HDD can hardly reach SATA1 speeds.

Thanks for the fast replies !!

 

Couple a questions about this (off Raj's Designs)

 

This is a budget setup.  What changes could I make to maximize Transfer speed?

 

15 Drive Budget Box (pics using different 5-in-3s and a different motherboard)

Mobo: ASUS M4A78LT-M (Non LE version)

CPU: AMD Sempron 145                                      ( could I do the 150? )

RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333

PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W        ( will the 7200 rpm's affect this decision? )

Case: Xigmatek Utgard Original CPC-T90DB-U01

SATA Expansion Cards:

    Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card

    SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132)

Cables:

    0.5m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male w/ Latch to SATA 7pin Female (x4) Forward Breakout Cable x 2

    non-locking SATA x 5 (2 included with motherboard)

Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500 x 3          ( Don't need these )

Hard Drives: Green drives (5400 rpm or 5900 rpm), such as WD Green, Hitachi CoolSpin, Samsung EcoGreen, and Seagate LP

Cost: $635 + shipping + cost of hard drives

Capacity: 28 TB

Expandability: None.

Thanks for the fast replies !!

 

Couple a questions about this (off Raj's Designs)

 

This is a budget setup.  What changes could I make to maximize Transfer speed?

 

15 Drive Budget Box (pics using different 5-in-3s and a different motherboard)

Mobo: ASUS M4A78LT-M (Non LE version)

CPU: AMD Sempron 145                                       ( could I do the 150? )

RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333

PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W         ( will the 7200 rpm's affect this decision? )

Case: Xigmatek Utgard Original CPC-T90DB-U01

SATA Expansion Cards:

   Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card

   SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132)

Cables:

   0.5m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male w/ Latch to SATA 7pin Female (x4) Forward Breakout Cable x 2

   non-locking SATA x 5 (2 included with motherboard)

Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500 x 3          ( Don't need these )

Hard Drives: Green drives (5400 rpm or 5900 rpm), such as WD Green, Hitachi CoolSpin, Samsung EcoGreen, and Seagate LP

Cost: $635 + shipping + cost of hard drives

Capacity: 28 TB

Expandability: None.

1. More RAM

2. 7200RPM cache drive

3. SAS2LP instead of the SASLP

4. Use a 7200RPM drive for the parity drive instead of a Green drive.

If you choose to use 7200 rpm drives for your data/parity drives, then you would need a beefier PSU.  However, I second prostuff's suggestion to stick with 5400 RPM data/parity drives and use a 7200 RPM cache drive (or possibly even an SSD with high sequential write speeds if it is in your budget).  This scenario will allow you to use the same lower powered PSU and you will ultimately save power and heat.  Your write speed to the array will be very fast.  Your read speed will be fast enough.

 

More RAM will help with transfer speeds of small files (files that are smaller than the RAM capacity).  For larger files it won't make a difference.

 

I disagree with prostuff on the point of the SASLP vs the SASLP2.  If you were building an array of all 7200 rpm drives with SATAIII connections, then maybe the SASLP2 would be worthwhile.  For standard green drives it won't make any difference.

I disagree with prostuff on the point of the SASLP vs the SASLP2.  If you were building an array of all 7200 rpm drives with SATAIII connections, then maybe the SASLP2 would be worthwhile.  For standard green drives it won't make any difference.

The difference you will see using the SAS2LP is that it is x8 and has more bandwidth available to it.  It will be faster on a parity check/ drive rebuild and accessing mulitple disks all on the controller at once.  You won't gain much/if any from accessing a single drive at a time.

Prostuff, you point is very valid.

 

While there is something to say for the sas2lp-mv8 over the saslp-mv8 in tearms of parity speed,

Keep in mind, the boost is not a lot. The sas2 is much harder to find at this point. The sas2 also only works on v5beta12-12a at this point. It really is unsupported just yet and fluke it works becaue Tom is trying to fix the 1118e issue. We might roll back kernels in b13 for all we know (unlikely but who knows)..

 

The saslp-mv8 is easy to get, cheaper, and well supported in unraid.

I would agree at this point in time with raj.

 

Let's leave the beta testing those that have test rigs or back ups.

I am sure at a later date I will change My view of this issue.

Yo,

 

I just bought 2 SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Sata-600 cards for 110€/p (148$) in Belgium. the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 Sata-300 cards were 95€/128$ a piece.

So for 15€ price difference I went for some future-proof cards! Same for my server I have bought a Intel E-1230 with a Supermicro X9SCM-F board and 8 gigs of ram.. a bit overkill for Unraid but I am not sure if I will stick to Unraid and come to the conclusion my mobo isn't fast enough....just to be on the safe side!

I would like to buy also a SSD for cache but heard that Unraid doesn't support garbage removal yet! So still waiting on that one!

 

gr33tz

That's true, unRAID doesn't support TRIM or garbage collection on SSDs at the moment.  However, I view it this way - you will only want to use an SSD as a cache drive, it doesn't make sense to use one as a parity or data drive.  Using an SSD as a cache drive has many benefits, such as fast transfer speeds, low power consumption, and no spin-up lag (very important for certain programs).  The lack of TRIM or garbage collection means that the SSD will wear out a bit sooner than it otherwise should.  Even still, if you completely filled it and emptied it once per day it should still last 1 - 3 years, roughly the same as a standard hard drive under high use.  Think about the capacities and speeds of SSDs that will be available in 1 - 3 years...it is very likely that you will want to upgrade by that time anyway.  So my position is that if you want an SSD as a cache drive, go for it, there's no reason to wait.  Just make sure you get one with good sequential write speeds, there are some on the market that have sequential writes that are slower than most hard drives!

In my experience. The ssd was only slightly faster then a 7200rpm drive in normal array caching.

 

 

But there were tons of advantages. Power consumption. no drive wake up lag if you let the spinner go to sleep. Simultaneous drive access was the biggest advantage. Writing to the drive from 2pc's at once didn't hurt much, the network was the bottleneck. Also writing to the cache while the mover is running is much better.  With my spinner, it was very slow to write to cache while mover ran.

 

I am sure a modern ssd will still last years before unraid kills it. And by then it will be obsolete.

 

Just avoid OCZ ssd's in unraid for now. They report their temp as 127deg. That messes with the overheat monitors tripping an alarm.