April 4, 201610 yr Author I'd expect the same jump in parity speed with the current board if you boosted the CPU to an E8400, or perhaps even a Core 2 Quad. It's physically impossible to get more than 50MB/s parity check with that board using the current configuration, no matter the CPU used. My media server has the exact same board (C2SEA) with a dual-core Pentium E6300 (PassMark 1700). This is from my last parity check: "Duration: 13 hours, 19 minutes, 32 seconds. Average speed: 83.4 MB/s " Do you have 16 disks going through the DMI? Exactly what I was wondering. Over the years I noticed my parity speed gradually slow down as I added more and more disks.
April 4, 201610 yr Author ... Sounds like I'm kinda up a creek - replace everything but the drives, power supply and case. Not at all => all you need is a beefier CPU. Here's a Core 2 Duo E8400 which would work nicely for $7.98 with free shipping [This e-bay listing expires in 6 hrs, but there are others similarly priced]. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-2-Duo-SLAPL-E8400-3-0GHz-1333MHz-6MB-Cache-Socket-775-Processor-1366-/262332086792?hash=item3d1435fa08:g:KYkAAOSwQYZWxjtv v6 will run nicely on the E8400. It scores 2180 on PassMark ... a very nice bump from the 634 your old Celeron scores. It's worth $8 just to find out who is right We shall know in about 10 days.
April 4, 201610 yr All on the DMI. Granted with the system being discussed here there are enough additional drives that this would indeed be a bottleneck -- but nevertheless a trivial investment of $8 to bump the CPU up would at least get the checks back to where they were on v5 ... albeit not over 80MB/s, since there are more drives involved than I have on my system. [Although it may not be far off, since 8 of the drives in this system aren't using the DMI channel]
April 4, 201610 yr Community Expert Exactly what I was wondering. Over the years I noticed my parity speed gradually slow down as I added more and more disks. Parity check on v6 is usually a little slower than v5, and like I said in my first post your CPU is almost certainly your main issue, but with your config it's physically impossible to get over 50MB/s.
April 4, 201610 yr Community Expert All on the DMI. Granted with the system being discussed here there are enough additional drives that this would indeed be a bottleneck -- but nevertheless a trivial investment of $8 to bump the CPU up would at least get the checks back to where they were on v5 ... albeit not over 80MB/s, since there are more drives involved than I have on my system. [Although it may not be far off, since 8 of the drives in this system aren't using the DMI channel] Gary please post the controllers you're using but I bet you don't have more than 10 disks on the DMI, the OP has 16.
April 4, 201610 yr ... It's worth $8 just to find out who is right We shall know in about 10 days. Agree ... it'll be interesting to see your results. One caveat: The "worst" of my drives have 500MB platters ... most have either 667MB or 1TB platters. Do you know what your "worst" areal density is for your collection of drives? This will also be a limiting factor.
April 4, 201610 yr Author ... It's worth $8 just to find out who is right We shall know in about 10 days. Agree ... it'll be interesting to see your results. One caveat: The "worst" of my drives have 500MB platters ... most have either 667MB or 1TB platters. Do you know what your "worst" areal density is for your collection of drives? This will also be a limiting factor. I only have two drive models: Seagate ST4000DM000 - per Seagate site: 625Gb/in^2 Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 - for the 5K3000 family it's a max of 411
April 4, 201610 yr That system has a pair of Adaptec 1430SA's. I'm not at home at the moment (out of state for 3 weeks), but in looking at the specs of the C2SEA I must indeed have one of them plugged in to the x16 port (I thought there were a pair of x4 slots) ... so you're right => there are only 10 drives on the DMI channel. Nevertheless, the $8 CPU upgrade will easily put the system back up to the speeds he was seeing with v5 ... and possibly even a bit better. It'll be interesting to see the result :-)
April 4, 201610 yr ... It's worth $8 just to find out who is right We shall know in about 10 days. Agree ... it'll be interesting to see your results. One caveat: The "worst" of my drives have 500MB platters ... most have either 667MB or 1TB platters. Do you know what your "worst" areal density is for your collection of drives? This will also be a limiting factor. I only have two drive models: Seagate ST4000DM000 - per Seagate site: 625Gb/in^2 Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 - for the 5K3000 family it's a max of 411 The Seagates are 1TB/platter units. The Hitachi's are 667MB/platter units -- so they'll be the limiting factor while they're involved. But neither of these will push the speed down to the limits your controllers and bus will, so they're not an issue. Johnnie is right r.e. the DMI restriction => but you'll nevertheless see a very nice boost compared to what you have now when you pop in the E8400 ... I wouldn't be at all surprised if your checks are then faster than they were with v5.
April 4, 201610 yr Author An upgrade would only help with parity check speeds, not read speeds, but that's what your OP is about, if you don't mind buying used, you can get something like a supermicro x9scm-f + a dual core cpu, e.g., g2030 + 4gb of ecc ram for about 150$, much faster and power consumption should be about half your current setup, note however that the SASLPs will be your next bottleneck, 80MB/s with 8 disks, still twice the speed you're getting now, and you can upgrade those later if you want. I'll still keep my eye out for a deal on one of these. Thank you both this has been very helpful.
April 4, 201610 yr Community Expert ... so you're right => there are only 10 drives on the DMI channel. OK, it had to be, 14 disks @ 80MB/s is well above the DMI 1.0 bandwidth. It's worth $8 just to find out who is right We shall know in about 10 days. Well worth it, you should get around 50MB/s, it will shave 5 or 6 hours from your current parity check.
April 4, 201610 yr If you add a M1015 flashed to IT mode and a SAS expander all off the PCIe x16 slot you might get up to 90MB/s. Problem is it would be cheaper if you upgrade to a new MB and CPU to get a similar increase in speed.
April 5, 201610 yr Certainly true that an upgrade will provide faster parity check speeds with a newer version of DMI. However, the initial question r.e. why v6 was so much slower than v5 is purely due to the higher CPU demands of v6 ... and the upgrade to an E8400 will easily resolve that. If the system is used purely as a NAS it may not be worthwhile to upgrade just to reduce parity check times. But if some of the other features of v6 -- e.g. VM's and Dockers -- are desired, then clearly it's time for an upgrade.
April 5, 201610 yr Community Expert When you upgrade the CPU there's one more thing you can do to optimize your parity check speed, nothing can be done up to the 2TB mark, and speed can't be significantly >50MB/s, but depending on where the disks are connected you can have a nice bump after the 2TB mark, e.g.: (speed/times are approximate) Worst way: 8 x 2TB disks on the top SASLP speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 60MBs/ average: 54MB/s, 20Hours Best way: 6 x 4TB disks on the top SASLP, remaining 4TB disks on the bottom SASLP and onboard (don't connect more than 6 4TBs on the bottom SASLP) speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 100MBs/ average: 66MB/s, 17Hours Edited to correct averages.
April 5, 201610 yr When you upgrade the CPU there's one more thing you can do to optimize your parity check speed, nothing can be done up to the 2TB mark, and speed can't be significantly >50MB/s, but depending on where the disks are connected you can have a nice bump after the 2TB mark, e.g.: (speed/times are approximate) Worst way: 8 x 2TB disks on the top SASLP speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 60MBs/ average: 55MB/s, 20Hours Best way: 6 x 4TB disks on the top SASLP, remaining 4TB disks on the bottom SASLP and onboard (don't connect more than 6 4TBs on the bottom SASLP) speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 100MBs/ average: 75MB/s, 15Hours Not a bad idea to optimize the placement of the disks to minimize the DMI bottleneck ... but the math's not quite right. The average would be 67MB/s and it would take about 16 2/3 hours.
April 5, 201610 yr Community Expert Not a bad idea to optimize the placement of the disks to minimize the DMI bottleneck ... but the math's not quite right. The average would be 67MB/s and it would take about 16 2/3 hours. You're right of course, I used to know that, I guess forgetting stuff it's part of getting older
April 5, 201610 yr ... I guess forgetting stuff it's part of getting older Yep. Along with slower healing when you injure things; arthritic joints; etc. :-)
April 5, 201610 yr Author When you upgrade the CPU there's one more thing you can do to optimize your parity check speed, nothing can be done up to the 2TB mark, and speed can't be significantly >50MB/s, but depending on where the disks are connected you can have a nice bump after the 2TB mark, e.g.: (speed/times are approximate) Worst way: 8 x 2TB disks on the top SASLP speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 60MBs/ average: 54MB/s, 20Hours Best way: 6 x 4TB disks on the top SASLP, remaining 4TB disks on the bottom SASLP and onboard (don't connect more than 6 4TBs on the bottom SASLP) speed up to 2TB: 50MB/s speed after 2TB: 100MBs/ average: 66MB/s, 17Hours Edited to correct averages. Great suggestion, at least till they are all 4tb drives.
April 5, 201610 yr ... Great suggestion, at least till they are all 4tb drives. Just buy all 8tB drives and use half as many ... then you can get 100MB/s checks :-) ... or, of course, you could just bite the bullet and upgrade the motherboard/CPU
April 5, 201610 yr Author ... Great suggestion, at least till they are all 4tb drives. Just buy all 8tB drives and use half as many ... then you can get 100MB/s checks :-) ... or, of course, you could just bite the bullet and upgrade the motherboard/CPU Oh, I've got my eye on a couple ebay auctions. If I can manage a swap for approx $150 as suggested I'll definitely do it.
April 5, 201610 yr ... Great suggestion, at least till they are all 4tb drives. Just buy all 8tB drives and use half as many ... then you can get 100MB/s checks :-) ... or, of course, you could just bite the bullet and upgrade the motherboard/CPU Oh, I've got my eye on a couple ebay auctions. If I can manage a swap for approx $150 as suggested I'll definitely do it. Probably worthwhile for your main system ... but I note you also have a backup ("secondary") system that also has the C2SEA => I'd probably just update that with an E8400, since I assume it's purely used as a NAS.
April 5, 201610 yr Author Probably worthwhile for your main system ... but I note you also have a backup ("secondary") system that also has the C2SEA => I'd probably just update that with an E8400, since I assume it's purely used as a NAS. Yeah, it tends to get the scraps leftover from the primary system as it's generally not worth putting any more into it directly. With only 8 drives it does not have a speed issue but if I have the processor anyways then why not..
April 6, 201610 yr Author Any thoughts on this? http://www.ebay.com/itm/222072289263 Could the builtin LSI 1068E controller be used?
April 6, 201610 yr Could the builtin LSI 1068E controller be used? I think it should work, but not with disks bigger than 2 TB. https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40619.0
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