[Plugin] CA Auto Turbo Write Mode


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Does turbo write work with 6.9? I had some issues after updating where turbo write was not being enabled even with all the drives spun up but it worked fine after uninstalling the plugin and manually changing to reconstruct write.

 

I also perpetually get this notice on the plugin "An update to this plugin is available" but when I check for an update nothing is shown?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have noticed that the turbo write plugin is not working with WD white label red drives it seems.

 

Checking the logs it shows smartctl drives as being active even when they are spun down. Seems to be a bug with the smartctl, it seems like it can't read the data since the drive is spun down as it hangs for a second and then uses the last known values?

 

Not sure if there is a fix for this or if it is a known issue.

 

How does the unraid UI figure out if a drive is spinning?

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/31/2020 at 8:35 PM, TexasUnraid said:

Does turbo write work with 6.9? I had some issues after updating where turbo write was not being enabled even with all the drives spun up but it worked fine after uninstalling the plugin and manually changing to reconstruct write.

 

I also perpetually get this notice on the plugin "An update to this plugin is available" but when I check for an update nothing is shown?

I have the same error, it doesn't realise the disks are spun up

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What HBA card(s) are you using?

 

Ok, was doing some more testing, I have had turbo write disabled since it was not working.

 

I have kinda given up on turbo write detecting drives being spun down, it would be cool if a second option for enabling turbo write could be added.

 

If a drive is being written to at more then X MB/s for more then Y seconds it enables turbo write. It then disables it again Z seconds after writing is finished.

Edited by TexasUnraid
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 weeks later...

It only counts data drives, so in your case you would select 1, otherwise it would not do anything.

 

Also, 2 parity drives with only 2 data drives is serious overkill. Think someone did the calculations and a second parity didn't start making sense by the numbers until something like 15-20 data drives IIRC.

 

Personally I would pull the second parity drive and use it as a cold backup of the most important data, possibly get another data drive to make a mirror backup of the data drives you store offline in a safe place like a fire safe.

 

Parity is not a backup, it is only the first line of defense. The only things I trust to parity are things that can be replaced.

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19 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

Also, 2 parity drives with only 2 data drives is serious overkill. Think someone did the calculations and a second parity didn't start making sense by the numbers until something like 15-20 data drives IIRC.

 

I have an older Supermicro server with 12 x 3.5" bays and an LSI card with 4i and 4e so planning to increase array size by adding more drives.

 

 

19 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

Personally I would pull the second parity drive and use it as a cold backup of the most important data, possibly get another data drive to make a mirror backup of the data drives you store offline in a safe place like a fire safe.

 

Parity is not a backup, it is only the first line of defense. The only things I trust to parity are things that can be replaced.

 

Yep understand. I am doing a remote back up of documents and photos. TV shows, movies etc aren't backed up as I can always find them again.

 

 

19 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

It only counts data drives, so in your case you would select 1, otherwise it would not do anything.

 

Thanks. But I am still not sure why a drive needs to be spun down at all for it to work? Maybe I just am not understanding it conceptually. And what is the recommended % of drives as spun down?

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21 minutes ago, newunraiduser5 said:

Thanks. But I am still not sure why a drive needs to be spun down at all for it to work? Maybe I just am not understanding it conceptually. And what is the recommended % of drives as spun down?

The only point of this plugin is to allow for the use of turbo write without always forcing all drives to be spun up anytime you write to the array.

You can enable turbo (aka, reconstruct write) all the time in the disk settings menu but if you want to write a 100kb file to 1 disk, all disks will be spun up to do that.

 

This plugin allows for only the drive that is being written to, to be spun up and then if a lot of drives are being written to it will automatically switch over to turbo write for faster write speeds.

 

Lucky you on the supermicro case, I have been looking for one myself but they are all stupidly expensive all the sudden. Yours is a 3U case right? Is it possible to fit a 120mm fan in there? I have been debating looking for the 3U version but only if I could cram 120mm fans in place of the stock ones. Not scared of some custom fab, just not sure if the chassis is physically tall enough.

 

edit, realized it must be a 2u, the 3u are 16 bays.

Edited by TexasUnraid
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44 minutes ago, TexasUnraid said:

The only point of this plugin is to allow for the use of turbo write without always forcing all drives to be spun up anytime you write to the array.

You can enable turbo (aka, reconstruct write) all the time in the disk settings menu but if you want to write a 100kb file to 1 disk, all disks will be spun up to do that.

 

This plugin allows for only the drive that is being written to, to be spun up and then if a lot of drives are being written to it will automatically switch over to turbo write for faster write speeds.

I think I fundamentally dont understand turbo write so will read into it! Is there a FAQ of sorts on it?

 

 

45 minutes ago, TexasUnraid said:

Lucky you on the supermicro case, I have been looking for one myself but they are all stupidly expensive all the sudden. Yours is a 3U case right? Is it possible to fit a 120mm fan in there? I have been debating looking for the 3U version but only if I could cram 120mm fans in place of the stock ones. Not scared of some custom fab, just not sure if the chassis is physically tall enough.

 

edit, realized it must be a 2u, the 3u are 16 bays.

Thanks yes this is the 2U case. But generally on fans, you can use IPMITools to adjust them by passing raw commands. So the default IPMI "optimised" mode is still loud but if you run the following at start up, it will get it down to a normal level. The first one is to turn the IPMI setting to "full". This is the only setting where the Supermicro IPMI doesnt actually adjust fans i.e. on any other mode, if you pass raw commands, it will ignore them after 30 seconds and do their thing. The second two are to change the fans to a value out of 64 with 64 being full. Mine is set at 16 in the command below.

 

ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x01
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x00 0x16
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x01 0x16

 

There are def cheaper 3u units out there. I paid through the roof for mine because I wanted 2 GPU cards (one for the W10 VM and the other for Plex transcoding in the docker.

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2 hours ago, newunraiduser5 said:

I think I fundamentally dont understand turbo write so will read into it! Is there a FAQ of sorts on it?

 

 

Thanks yes this is the 2U case. But generally on fans, you can use IPMITools to adjust them by passing raw commands. So the default IPMI "optimised" mode is still loud but if you run the following at start up, it will get it down to a normal level. The first one is to turn the IPMI setting to "full". This is the only setting where the Supermicro IPMI doesnt actually adjust fans i.e. on any other mode, if you pass raw commands, it will ignore them after 30 seconds and do their thing. The second two are to change the fans to a value out of 64 with 64 being full. Mine is set at 16 in the command below.

 

ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x01
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x00 0x16
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x01 0x16

 

There are def cheaper 3u units out there. I paid through the roof for mine because I wanted 2 GPU cards (one for the W10 VM and the other for Plex transcoding in the docker.

What is the min RPM you can get the fans down to? My server lives in the living room, I find much more then ~1000RPM to be noticeable with most fans. Above ~1300 can get annoying when watching a movie for example.

 

With 120mm fans I have found I can generally keep things cool and stay around ~1000rpm or less depending on the room temp. During the summer I have to bumb them to 1000, in the winter I can turn them down to 600-800.

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2 hours ago, trurl said:

 

Thanks!

 

26 minutes ago, TexasUnraid said:

What is the min RPM you can get the fans down to? My server lives in the living room, I find much more then ~1000RPM to be noticeable with most fans. Above ~1300 can get annoying when watching a movie for example.

 

With 120mm fans I have found I can generally keep things cool and stay around ~1000rpm or less depending on the room temp. During the summer I have to bumb them to 1000, in the winter I can turn them down to 600-800.

I get them down to about 1000 and its typically fine unless I have a very heavy workload.

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3 minutes ago, newunraiduser5 said:

Thanks!

 

I get them down to about 1000 and its typically fine unless I have a very heavy workload.

Interesting, didn't know they could go that low and still keep things cool. What temps do the drives sit at with 1000rpm? What kind of drives are you using?

Edited by TexasUnraid
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6 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

Interesting, didn't know they could go that low and still keep things cool. What temps do the drives sit at with 1000rpm? What kind of drives are you using?

A bit of context. I live in Singapore so its almost always 30 degrees Celsius

 

So during the day (when I am working from home), I will run then at 1000 RPM but the air conditioning set at 24 degrees. 1000 RPM keeps the CPU and PCH at around 50 to 55 degrees. Drives will be sitting between 30 to 35 degrees.

 

At night, when the air conditioning is off, I just turn them back up to 3000 RPM and it will keep the server at around the same temp.

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1 hour ago, newunraiduser5 said:

A bit of context. I live in Singapore so its almost always 30 degrees Celsius

 

So during the day (when I am working from home), I will run then at 1000 RPM but the air conditioning set at 24 degrees. 1000 RPM keeps the CPU and PCH at around 50 to 55 degrees. Drives will be sitting between 30 to 35 degrees.

 

At night, when the air conditioning is off, I just turn them back up to 3000 RPM and it will keep the server at around the same temp.

Thanks for the info, it is very helpful. Very similar situation to here in Texas about ~8 months of the year anyways.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/15/2020 at 7:23 AM, Brucey7 said:

I’m away on holiday for 2 weeks and have 3 unraid servers, auto turbo write does work on one, another is a backup with no drives.  I’m not sure what the host controllers are.

Further, this doesn't properly work on either server.

 

The bug seems to be as follows, with a polling interval set at 30 seconds.

Start a large number of files copying to the server, 

Spin up the array,

Each file is copied for up to 30 seconds in read/modify/write before switching to reconstruct write

Next file in the list begins in read/modify/write mode for up to 30 seconds again

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  • 2 months later...

I've never had success in having this plugin detect when drives are up or down, so uninstalled it years ago.

However, remembering that it also allows scheduling, I thought I'd re-install it to have turbo write enabled during the day, then disabled during the night (allowing most of my disks to sleep during Mover operations).

So I installed it two days ago, and set a schedule for it to enable Turbo Write at 8am for 13 hours:

Cron:

0 0 8 ? * * *

However, today I noticed that I was writing directly to the array, but none of the other disks were being read (ie Turbo Mode was not enabled).

Does the scheduling only work if I have the "Enable automatic turbo mode" option enabled?

As I've never had the plugin successfully detect when drives are spun up, I don't want to enable this option in case it keeps turning turbo mode on when it shouldn't be turned on, and keeping my disks forever spinning.

In other words: is possible to use the scheduling functionality without using the disk detection functionality?

Many thanks.

Edited by jademonkee
clarity
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  • 8 months later...

@Squid

Thanks for very useful plugin that really speed up the array speed if not used cache.

having some strange things, maybe i dont get some think.

 

all disks spin down after - 1 hour

i set auto in Tunable (md_write_method) ,

set enable auto turbo mode - ON ,

disk spun down - 1.

shedule1 enabled - yes - 0 10 * * * - 300

shedule2 enabled - yes - 0 17 * * * - 300

 

and after that turbo mode is always enabled and also all disks is not spin down .

even i set sheduler, its not turn off turbo after 15:00 and after 22:00 like i set up it.

and when i power on server in 8:00 its also on .

where i can check if some problem maybe?

 

 

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Does invoking turbo write spin all the drives up itself? What I mean is, if I have it set to invoke turbo write when 4 drives are spinning (6 spun down of 10 total), will it automatically spin all the drives up even if no writes are happening? So If I have 4 people streaming plex, and all 4 people happened to pic media that is on 4 different drives causing them to spin up I know this will change it to turbo write. I just want to make sure that it wont also spin up all the drives until one of them is actually writing. I read through the explanation of turbo write, and this entire post but didn't see this specifically called out. 

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