Back to Basics

[opentoe]

I thought upgrading to V 6.6.7 would have solved my slow read issues but it has not. I'll perform a read test, get a miserable 3MB/sec reboot the server and back to 30+ MB/sec. I even installed an add on Ethernet card, so that is not a problem. Apparently soon as I start to experience the slow read speeds with my media player all I need to do is a server reboot. Then it will jump back up to 30+MB/sec for a random time.  Memtests done, mainboard diagnostics, BIOS defaults, virtual on or off. Here is something I do want to try. I am currently using 3 6Mbit add on cards. 32GB of memory and an i7 3930k processor. I'd love to try another mainboard out. The board would have to accept an i7-3930k Intel Procesor and DDR3 memory. Of course it would need ample slots for the three add on cards. Finding it hard to aquire a board with this configuration UNLESS I condense two of my 8 port SATA cards into one card but since that's old tech these days that costs a small fortune really. Anyone recommend a good 16 port 6Gbit card or even a single 32 port 6Gbit card PCI-E of course. I'm basically just changing things up to see what makes any difference. I'd love to find a main board, but one that can hold 3 PCI-E 8 port cards and has a socket 2011 is tough to find. I always wanted to try a 32 port 6Gbit card but I think once I saw the price tag I ran the other way and that was a couple years ago. Not sure if they are even made anymore and are affordable?

 

Actually, all I would need is a nice 16 port 6Gbit card and can use one of my 8 6Gbit cards I have already. Server can only hold 24 drives.

 

Well, if anyone can recommend some hardware to try, let me know. My entire house looks like a tornado hit it and I have boiled it down to the mainboard itself, the three identical 8 port SATA add-on cards or the software on the USB stick itself.

 

 

Another question, I want to go back to basics. I've already dumped all my VM's and dockers and now I want to MAKE CLEAN a USB stick but keep the current disk configuration. Do a perform a MAC BOOTABLE ( preserving a backup of course on my entire stick ) and then just copy disk.cfg and my key over? Or should I just do a MAKE BOOTABLE and select the drives manually myself from a previous screen shot right before I took the server down?

 

Thanks-

[kizer]

Personally I'd copy over the /config folder all together since it holds your shares, drive assignments and every other setting you've ever setup that can easily be changed. 

[Frank1940]

 

First thing I would do is make a screen printout of the Main Page, then go to the Settings page and make screen prints of the Identification, Network Settings, Global Shares Settings, UPS Settings, SMB, Confirmations, Display Settings, Notification Settings, and Scheduler tabs.   Some of the information, you will not be needing but having the printouts will allow you to setup the configuration so that the server 'looks' to outside devices as though nothing has changed.  

 

With either of your two approaches, there is not a lot of difference in the amount of work to get things working in the basic server-only configuration.  Plan on devoting an hour or two to get things working...

[opentoe]

Did what I said I was going to do, running off a clean USB stick with no alterations, plugins or anything. Unfortunately my ghost in the machine still plagues me. I did have another license handy so I built a tiny 4 drive array and if I want to watch a movie uninterrupted I'll copy the movie file over to this small 2TB array and watch it from there instead of watching it from my main unraid system. It really is sad to come to this point and can't even watch a movie off my main array. I really wish I can find an inexpensive socket 2011 Intel board that has three PCI-E slots for my array cards. I really want to eliminate the mainboard and see if I can find a socket 2011 with 3 PCI-E. I wonder what everyone is doing today, since some of the hardware to build one of these boxes is pretty much obsolete. You can still buy the SuperMicro 8 port add on card, but really, what else is there if you want to build a mega system? I'm still using really old 2TB drives that will eventually replace if I see fit.

 

[CHBMB]

On 3/29/2019 at 10:23 PM, opentoe said:

Well, if anyone can recommend some hardware to try, let me know. My entire house looks like a tornado hit it and I have boiled it down to the mainboard itself, the three identical 8 port SATA add-on cards or the software on the USB stick itself.

Which controllers are you using now?  The Dell Perc ones or the Supermicro ones?

 

[opentoe]

On 4/7/2019 at 4:26 AM, CHBMB said:

Which controllers are you using now?  The Dell Perc ones or the Supermicro ones?

 

All three are Supermicro cards. I have also used the Dell perc cards and flashed them  ( IT mode ) with the same results. I've always chalked it up to being a small glitch or something like that and it will just go away by itself. The only thing I have left to do is try to flash the firmware on the mainboard, but I think the only firmware left is a beta. Not sure it is worth it. Don't want to brick it, or I'll really be stuck. I've also disabled the controllers on the mainboard. Just 5 minutes ago went to watch a movie, so now I always do a speed test first with my media player and it is reading at 7MB/sec. If I jump on a work station and do a read ( copy ) from that same server I get great results. 85-100MB/sec. So right now all I'm going to do is reboot my unraid server and perform a read test again on the same file and see what the results are......................blah. They were the same. So I shut down my temporary 2TB unraid server I just made, shut down Plex that runs on my Windows machine and shutdown a small desktop that I have running in the living room for just web browsing. Tried a speed test again and it was a solid 34MB/sec. Talking about ghosts in the machine. Can't be my small temporary unraid server I just built. That was just for testing and it is mostly powered off anyway. The livingroom desktop I do some developer work on it sometimes and have lots of programs installed and only have the Windows 10 anti virus defender BS installed. I'll leave that desktop off for a while and see what happens. I checked out my streams and didn't see any connections as I did before so this is really a tough one. I think my head will explode now. Cover your screens. 3, 2, 1,  boom.

 

 

 

[JonathanM]

Couple more things to try.

 

Turn off wifi temporarily and run your tests.

 

Reboot router and switch and retry speed tests without touching server or clients.

[opentoe]

On 4/12/2019 at 7:02 AM, jonathanm said:

Couple more things to try.

 

Turn off wifi temporarily and run your tests.

 

Reboot router and switch and retry speed tests without touching server or clients.

Will do this when I notice the speed dropping.