24tb unRAID and more coming.

[DigitalLF]

Hi!

 

I'm on a trail license right now and i have a problem.

 

My hardware raid SAS Expander died (Intel stopped making the card about 5 years ago) so i had to replace parts so i sold my LSI hw RAID card and got a HBA instead and a hotswap chassi to be used for ESXi and unRAID that now are up and running with the help of PLOPKEXEC and a usb drive.

 

Before i had 3x RAID6 (5x 3tb) and now i want to change it when i move into the world of unRAID.

 

To save all my data i needed to buy 2 8tb drives so now i also have 2 WD Red (not pro).

 

Would you guys think it would be ok to use:

 

2 8tb parity drives

3 8tb drives (BTRFS)

 

For example how does Linus Tech Tips, Deadmau5, Austin Evans, iJustine do they just add all bigger drives in one array and have a few in house when a drive breaks?

 

What about when i add another 8Tb would it still be ok?

 

 

[tdallen]

Sure, an array of 2 8TB parity drives and 3 8TB data drives running BTRFS will work.  unRAID is very flexible.  I'll tell you that most people would run 1 parity drive with only 3 data drives due to the small risk of double drive failure - but you can certainly run 2.  I'll also mention that most people would run XFS on the data (original post said parity, bad typo doh!) drives - it's better established and more mature than BTRFS.  But BTRFS is fine.  When you want to add another drive you just stop the array, add the drive, and start it back up - parity will resync and you're good to go.

[DigitalLF]

2 minutes ago, tdallen said:

Sure, an array of 2 8TB parity drives and 3 8TB data drives running BTRFS will work.  unRAID is very flexible.  I'll tell you that most people would run 1 parity drive with only 3 data drives due to the small risk of double drive failure - but you can certainly run 2.  I'll also mention that most people would run XFS on the parity drives - it's better established and more mature than BTRFS.  But BTRFS is fine.  When you want to add another drive you just stop the array, add the drive, and start it back up - parity will resync and you're good to go.

 

i did not see a option for XFS on parity and BTRFS on data drives. But i will buy 3 more 8 Tb today then.

 

Am I taking a big risk running with BTRFS without a UPS?

 

 

[Frank1940]

Here is a link to a thread which presents the statistics and discussion on the various parity choices--- None, Single and Dual.

 

        https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/50504-dual-or-single-parity-its-your-choice/

 

In the end, the decision is yours to make but remember that if you opt for Dual parity because of data loss concerns, the need for an offsite second backup is just as important.  In any case, you should already have a offsite backup scheme to prevent the loss of unreplaceable data in case of a major man-made or natural disaster that destroys the server itself.  

 

[trurl]

15 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

In any case, you should already have a offsite backup scheme to prevent the loss of unreplaceable data in case of a major man-made or natural disaster that destroys the server itself.  

Doesn't really take a major disaster. Loss of files are only a user error away.

[tdallen]

1 hour ago, DigitalLF said:

i did not see a option for XFS on parity and BTRFS on data drives. But i will buy 3 more 8 Tb today then.

Yeah, my bad.  I meant to recommend running XFS on the data drives and typed parity by mistake.  Parity doesn't have a file system.  XFS is the most common file system on data drives under unRAID, though.

[DigitalLF]

How about CACHE or CACHE-POOL?

 

Would i need it or will i get above 100mb/s anyway?

[JorgeB]

unRAID doesn't stripe the data disks, so maximum performance is the slowest disk, with turbo write enable, still usually good to fully saturate gigabit but depending on the disks and hardware used, except possibly when writing to the end of a disk.

 

Cache pool or a single fat cache device like an SSD or NVMe device can get much faster speeds.

[DigitalLF]

One final question hopefully.

 

i now got 3 of the 5 drives in my rack XCASE chassi and then i was wondering if unRAID knows about SGPIO?

 

I can't tell what drive is where.. i want Drive1 and Drive 2 to be PARITY and rest will be DATA.

[BobPhoenix]

13 hours ago, DigitalLF said:

Am I taking a big risk running with BTRFS without a UPS?

I think so.  I have a UPS for each of my computers as well as another for my router, switch and DirecTV STBs.  But I don't think a file system has a bigger risk over another without a UPS.