Migrated to i9-7900x build - Samsung NVME does not show up as cache, dockers gone, Win10 VM gone, One data hd gone - Help


Do2a-2d

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Hi all,

 

Thanks in advance for your help.  I am fairly new to Unraid and have been using it to host a media server with various relevant dockers and a Win10 VM for about 6 months now on a i7-4790k based machine without any major hiccups.  As I needed the 4790k for a different purpose, I built a i9-7900x based rig to replace the Unraid media server (see specs below).  The Samsung NVME and all the HDDs used are from the old 4790k rig.

 

The Samson NVME was being used as the cache drive in the old rig.  When I boot the new machine I can see the NVME in the bios but it does not show up in Unraid also missing are all the dockers and the VM.  (I suppose because the appdata folder was on the cache drive).  All the shares are still there and I can access the files in the shares from other machines on the network - windows based and Nvidia shield.

 

Also one of the hard drives is not showing up in the array.  I don't know if this is due to the use of the Marvel controller card.  It is currently controlling 2 hdd - one is recognized and the other is not.  The controller card was not used in the old rig.

 

Any suggestions on how I can recreate the dockers without having to set up everything from scratch?  I see that there is an appdata folder in the shares and there seems to be a utility in Unraid to restore the dockers but I am hesitant to try as I do not want to screw anything up beyond repair.   I understand that the VM may need to be re-created due to the changed hardware specs.

 

Thanks.

 

Main Rig

UNRAID 6.4.0

Intel Core i9-7900x

Gigabyte Aorus x299 Gaming 9

64gbs Corsair Vengence DDR4 3000

Samsung 960 M.2 250gbs - cache (CURRENTLY NOT BEING RECOGNIZED)

Marvel 8 port HDD controller

iStarUSA 3.5" x 5 bay hotswap disk cage

EVGA 850W P2 power supply

Seagate Enterprise level 8TB HDD - parity drive

Misc HDDs for a total of 20TB storage space

 

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I have a 7920x!  Have not seen any other users on x299! Nice to have someone with similar config! 

 

First I would say that the Marvell is a bad idea. Too many problems with drives dropping offline. (See below what to do)

 

If not for that, i'd say your other problem would be easy to fix. Stop the array, assign the NVMe to the cache slot, and restart the array. That should fix the problem with your Dockers. If not, post back and I have some additional ideas. If you have a screenshot of the old array config, you might look at the driveid and compare it to the driveid of the drive as recognized by the new motherboard. Must be a minor difference. The driveid I any referring to is the manufacturer followed by model followed by serial number that is displayed by the gui.

 

The dropped disk is either because of bad cabling or the Marvell. Suggest getting an LSI SAS9201-8i which would only set you back about $50 on eBay.

 

To replace a failed disk, assuming you have not written anything to the array, I would do the following. It is a little involved but not too bad.

 

Install the drive that was kicked as an unassigned device. Mount it and make sure that the contents look good. If they do, unmount, remove as UD, do a new config, assign all the disks to their slots as they were originally, including the.kicked one, click trust parity, and start the array. Check all your disks and make sure all looks good. Then run a correcting parity check. Might find a few sync errors but probably not if you did no writes.

 

Post back with any questions.

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13 hours ago, SSD said:

Stop the array, assign the NVMe to the cache slot, and restart the array.

The NVME now does not appear in BIOS either.  This board has 3 M.2 slots and I will have to check the manual to see if there are any restrictions on which slot to use in combination with the PCIe lanes.  Will try later tonight.  So no dockers so far.

 

13 hours ago, SSD said:

First I would say that the Marvell is a bad idea

Ok.  Will replace it with a LSI card as suggested.  Is there any difference between or preference for LSI SAS9201-8i / LSI SAS9210-8i / LSI SAS9211-8i  These seem to be available on eBay for a nominal cost but I don't want to get something that is not compatible with Unraid.

 

14 hours ago, SSD said:

To replace a failed disk

After reading your reply, I took out the marvel card and connected the 2 drives that were in the cage directly to the motherboard to sata ports.  Restarted Unraid and the missing drive came up.  Stopped the array, assigned the drive to slot 2 (where it previously sat) and restarted the array.  It was going through a parity check on the drive when I left for work.  Should be ok.

 

14 hours ago, SSD said:

I have a 7920x!  Have not seen any other users on x299! Nice to have someone with similar config

Nice!  the 7900 was an impulse buy after I lost out on a dual motherboard with pair of Xeon e5 2686v3 from Korea.  I picked up the x299 for ~$150 less than retail.  Together they still cost less than the Xeons so that was some consolation.  I don't know if the x7900 is overkill for an Unraid media server but hey, why not?  Future proof, no?

 

Thanks for your help.  I 'll post after I fiddle with the NVME

 

 

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The board is Gigabyte Aorus x299 Gaming 9.  The NVMe slots have heat shields and I think I am not seating the drive properly.  At least I hope it is something as simple as that.  I did an initial CPU, RAM and NVMe install (different NVMe stick) to do a stress test.  I installed Win 10 on the drive and let the system run.  Did some overclocking (I am absolutely new to OC) and the system was stable at 4Ghz for more than 6 hours.  I did not have the heat shield attached to that stick so will try the Samsung in the same slot without the heat shield.  Let's see...

 

What are you using your rig for mostly?  12 cores for minesweeper :D

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I also bought mine on eBay. Low ball offer that was accepted. The CPU was professionally delidded by Silicon Lottery to replace the thermal compound between the cores and the IHS. Make it run much cooler. I ran a long rogue test with all cores running at 4.5Ghz and it is running vet stable.

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Is it worth delidding and over clocking to run Unraid and dockers?  I was thinking about it but am not sure of the benefits.  Are you running a custom water loop?  With my 360mm AIO, temps will reach beyond 86C at anything over 4Ghz.  I have profiles for 4.3Ghz and 4.6Ghz but I have to include the 3 and 6 point offsets respectively for downclocking when running CPU intensive tasks such as Prime95 stress testing. (Also I am new to this OC thing so I am just Googling and trying to follow what others are doing).  I do not play games so that is not a use case for me.  I do sometimes run massive excel models which bog down a "regular" CPU.  I intend to use the 4790k for a work machine and see how it handles these models so was thinking of delidding that one or I might use a 6 core Win10 VM in Unraid.

 

Thanks for the helpful chat. 

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  • 1 month later...
15 hours ago, hatemjaber said:

I'm planning on an x299 build with an I-9, glad I ran across this post. It will be my first unRaid server.

 

Which processor are you considering? Mine is 12 core 7920x. I bought it because it was a good price on eBay, and had already been delidded. You might look on Silicon Graphics website. They sell delidding services, but also sell CPUs they have delidded and certified at various overclocking levels. Mine is about about the lowest rung of overclockability, but runs cool enough that I can run all cores at the rated turbo speed. I am very happy with the performance! (And I am air cooling with a Noctua DH-15S). I was absolutely floored at how much faster this is than my 4 core Xeon.

 

Motherboard? I went with the Asrock X299 OC Forumla for 2 reasons.

 

1 - "Silicon Lottery" listed 4 motherboards recommended to use. And this was one of them. Very very good voltage regulation and high quality parts. And a few dollars cheaper than others.

2 - It has extra PCIe x8 and x4 slots which I wanted for possible enhancement to multiple graphics cards, controllers, and other controllers.

 

The only negative, besides BIOS screens looking dated, is that it supports only 4 memory slots (64Gb max) vs 8 (128Gb max). I figured it was a fair trade. 64G is overkill for me right now and can't imaging it becoming a bottleneck any time soon.

 

I liked buying at the lower end of the 7900x line. That leaves room to replace the CPU with up to the 8 core 7980XE, which I expect will eventually drop in price on eBay in a few years that will give a nice upgrade without new everything. Everything else I looked at was at the top of the line with no where to go but a complete replacement.

 

Good luck and ping with any questions.

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@SSD I appreciate the feedback! I was considering going with what you have since you had no issues with your setup. I was looking at the 7920X also, I think it's the best bang for the buck. The board that I was looking at was the supermicro C9X299-PGF; it's a new board for them and I read quite a few places that supermicro was headache free solution with unRaid. After seeing your post, I reconsidered the Asrock and leaning in that direction instead. I want something that will work and will be headache free. I don't use plex and all the other entertainment docker containers etc.. that I've seen others using. I just plan on using it to run whatever OS I want to run for work, and in some cases I might want to run multiple at the same time for testing and mock deployments. As long as I can run linux, windows, and mac and be up to date for years to come, that's the most important thing to me.

 

I'll be price shopping now and start collecting stuff as I run across good deals. 64 gb of ram is plenty for what I want to do also, it's the graphics cards that are going to be tricky. I want to pass through at least 3 cards to 3 vm's that I can fire up anytime.

 

I will post back as I put this together and let you know how it turns out.

 

Thanks again!

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@hatemjaber

 

Pros: The SM C9X299-PGF has some nice features. I like the 8 memory slots. IPMI is awesome if you are running headless. 5G LAN. It also has a VGA port, which is a feature I really like. I am not much for running headless.

 

Cons. Don't like the number of PCIe slots. It has 4 full size and one x1. vs ASRock with 5 full size, one x4, and one x1.

 

Same: A very nice feature is having the M.2 slots hang off the CPU and not off the PCH. So many things hang off the PCH that they will bottleneck a fast M2.SSD. I wound up buying a cheap PCIe card that allowed me to mount my M2 in an x4 CPU slot.

 

SuperMicro gets good marks - would not advise you against one. Just comes down to what features mean most to you.

 

I will report something. Can't call it a pro or a con. There are several 2.0 controllers, but they and the USB 3.0 controllers wind up grouped together making passthrough impossible. The good news is that there is a USB 3.1 port that is separate and can be passed through. And I use that and it works just great for my Logitech Unifying controller for keyboard and mouse. But it is one and not 2 or 3, which is what I had hoped for. I need to check if there is a BIOS update that might help, or reach out to ASRock and see if they can fix the problem.

 

I see the SM has a similar complement of controllers. Would it also group them? No idea. At least with the ASRock you know you have one that works. The the SM you may get several or none. And giving up a precious PCIe slot for a USB card is not fun.

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