Few questions before i migrate from SnapRAID to UNRAID

[Socrates]

Hi all,

So i have been with snapraid for a while, and now working on moving to unraid. I am setting up a new array for this. New empty hard drives etc.

I am yet to receive the disks i ordered.. it should be in before this friday, hence in the mean time i am gathering all the information necessary to build a robust, solid, fill it and forget it kind of a setup. Hence gathering all the information.

Please enlighten me with the best practices on how i can get going. Let begin with baby steps first. I have a few questions, and then i will graduate slowly asking and reading more questions. Please note, i dont want to be baby fed, but dont want to get into the wrong track and implement configurations that is good for nothing.

 

So here are a few questions.

1. I have setup unraid on a ESXI virtual machine.. (I understand its not supported, but i have my reasons and i cannot choose other way). So in this ESXI host i also have SnapRAID setup on a VM. Both are connected to esxi through different HBA LSI cards. I have mapped the snapraid pool to my HTPC, and so will i do the same with UNRAID.

So should i use copy paste method from my htpc from snapraid to unraid pool? All the disks in my snapraid array are 4TB disks, but for unraid i have 8TB disks. So how should i copy the data from snapraid to unraid.. i have a total of 60TB worth of data.. how can i expediate it?

 

2. Cache drive.. can i plug an SSD into one of my bay in the 24U supermicro chassis, and then present it to the unraid through the dash board?

Do u recommend any ssd drives or high performance/enterprise grade, what size is recommended?

[testdasi]

What is your file system for the SnapRAID?

 

Assuming it's one of the widely supported by Unassigned Devices plugin (and that you have the appropriate license) then the process is pretty straight forward:

1. Boot unRAID, install Unassigned Devices plugin, reboot
2. Add your (NEW) drives to array but leave parity slot blank
3. Mount your SnapRAID drives as unassigned devices (as far as I know, SnapRAID and unRAID are pretty similar in the sense that each disk has its own file system)
4. Run parallel sessions of cp between disks <-- this is where the time saving comes from e.g. copy old disk 1 to new disk 1 , parallel with old disk 2 to new disk 2 etc.
5. Add parity disk to slot and built parity
6. Reverify the copy (e.g. checksum)

If it's not supported then you will have to go through the slow process of copying files over the network which isn't parallel (or you might slow things down significantly if 2 parallel processes draw data from the same drive).

 

 

What size depends on what you want to use it for. You can even run without cache. Also no brand / performance / grade restriction. Whatever you have laying around really.

 

[Socrates]

15 hours ago, testdasi said:

What is your file system for the SnapRAID?

 

Assuming it's one of the widely supported by Unassigned Devices plugin (and that you have the appropriate license) then the process is pretty straight forward:

1. Boot unRAID, install Unassigned Devices plugin, reboot
2. Add your (NEW) drives to array but leave parity slot blank
3. Mount your SnapRAID drives as unassigned devices (as far as I know, SnapRAID and unRAID are pretty similar in the sense that each disk has its own file system)
4. Run parallel sessions of cp between disks <-- this is where the time saving comes from e.g. copy old disk 1 to new disk 1 , parallel with old disk 2 to new disk 2 etc.
5. Add parity disk to slot and built parity
6. Reverify the copy (e.g. checksum)

If it's not supported then you will have to go through the slow process of copying files over the network which isn't parallel (or you might slow things down significantly if 2 parallel processes draw data from the same drive).

 

 

What size depends on what you want to use it for. You can even run without cache. Also no brand / performance / grade restriction. Whatever you have laying around really.

 

 

Thanks for your replies.

I yet have to receive my drives hence I am laying a bit low. However I have completely setup the environment and have followed SpaceInvaders video tutorials.

I am currently on SnapRAID on Windows 10 Pro environment, and the drives are pooled using FlexRAID pooling solution. The pool is mapped to my windows based HTPC.

So here is another question.. as you suggested to use "Unassigned Devices" with multiple sessions to copy (use cp command in putty termina), but even before that, how do i map the previous drives (snapraid+flexraid pool) over to unraid?

A little background.. I am setup using ESXi Virtual environment, yes i know unraid recommends standalone setup.. but as i said earlier in my post, i cannot do that, cos I have my entire server stack up and running on a home appliance firewall, AD, DHCP, DNS server etc all configured over my ESXI's various VM hosts.

So I have assigned a 4U SuperMicro for the Unraid server, and it is connected through a LSI HBA card.

Same goes with SnapRAID, its on different 4U supermicro server but within the same ESXI Host, again this VM is setup using its own LSI HBA card.

 

So how do i mount the snapraid pool over to unraid server or unraid does that automatically due to unassigned disks?

 

Also, should i disable cache disk when i am begenning to transfer my 60+TB data from Snapraid to unraid disks?

 

My second question for today is... As i mentioned earlier... my disk array is on a 4U supermicro server, with 24 bay SAS2 controller Board, this has its own dedicated motherboard. Is it ok if i connect the Cache disk to one of the sata port on the motherboard, rather than making use of one of the existing empty bay drives?

 

Here is a pic of my setup.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Socrates

[testdasi]

Sorry but I don't know enough about esxi to say. Normally just moving the HBA card over to a new VM will bring all the disks connected to it. But yours are in 2 different servers so not sure.

 

As for cache, any SATA port is fine.

[primeval_god]

13 hours ago, Socrates said:

Also, should i disable cache disk when i am begenning to transfer my 60+TB data from Snapraid to unraid disks?

I dont think you need to "disable it" if you are following the steps @testdasi outlined.

On 9/19/2018 at 7:50 AM, testdasi said:

Run parallel sessions of cp between disks <-- this is where the time saving comes from e.g. copy old disk 1 to new disk 1 , parallel with old disk 2 to new disk 2 etc.

In the step suggested above you will be copying directly to disk shares rather than through the user share system. I believe that will bypass the cache drive, regardless of whether it is disabled or not. If you use a different procedure and copy through user share system, you will want to disable the cache drive I think.