Full ssd based system

[Antdonn]

Hi , 

 

‘I’m wanting to build a nas system entirely of ssd based drives. The capacity many Cary from 4tb - 8tb and some for redundancy

1. The sound is 0

2. Lower power comsumption

3. Cheaper

 

is there any advise you can give me, as I’ve read many articles, and am confused as a can of spaghetti, plus I’m not a millionaire to afford iornwolf drives.

 

Thanks in advance 

 

antdonn

 

 

[trurl]

SSDs are not currently recommended in the parity array due to uncertainties about how they may work with parity. 

[itimpi]

6 hours ago, Antdonn said:

 

3. Cheaper

Not sure where you get this idea ?    In my experience SSDs are significantly more expensive than HDDs of the same capacity. 
 

At some point SSDs will probably become cost-effective so I expect that Limetech are looking at all the issues that need resolving to allow SSD’s to be safely used as array drives.

[trurl]

You can create a cache pool of SSDs and have redundancy that way. You would have to also have at least one data drive in the array in order to start, but you could conceivably work with just the cache pool.

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/46802-faq-for-unraid-v6/#comment-480421

 

[RogueWolf33]

@Antdonn

 

I was actually able to find a HP Proliant DL380 G7 with 2 x Intel Xeon X5660 2.8 GHZ and 32 Gigs of RAM on ebay for a great price. it was something like 150 bucks if I remember correctly.

 

By the time the item arrived, it was apparent that the reason it was so cheap is that it had been dropped. I do not think it was in shipment either. I ended up getting refund of half of that making my current investment around 70 bucks. To sweeten the deal I asked for drive caddies to save further money. No matter, it booted and the components worked. This thing had a nice 8 bays I could use. (Due to chassis warping I only could effectively use 7 of them though)

 

I Started with a 32 Gig small Samsung USB and a hodgepodge of sata drives simply using the built in raid controller. I was forced to configure raid 0's on the controller before the OS would see them.

 

I eventually purchased a 4 TB HDD for parity. (My logic here was that anything large enough to house parity for the future was going to be WAY too expensive in SSD's)

 

Finally, one by one I started switching over all HDD's to SSD's. First 500's, and now I have 6 x 1 TB in SSD. The only mechanical I have is  my Parity still. The Server comes with 4 network ports in it so I bonded these and purchased a switch.

 

I was not too picky in SSD's the reason for this was the slowest SSD's are still going to out perform a lot of mechanical drives on the market if not all of them. I look for longevity in them. Crucial's MX Series seem to have a great life span and they offer up a nice robust warranty to go with them for a decent price (A bit more than the sandisk line but I believe the warranty is longer if I am not mistaken)

 

In a perfect world I would have gone all Crucial MX series 1 TB and then move up. However, I pieced this thing together, I think I have 2 x WD Blues, 2 x Inlands, and 2 x Sandisks. All 1 TB. 

 

I haven't seen any issues outside of when I would try to upgrade or move around drives. this was just recently with Debris from dust building up getting into the sata ports giving me a world of hurt. (And other issues that were my own making which we will just chalk up to life lessons)

 

I would say in hind sight, some research to do on a system you plan to install SSD's in. 

 

1. Backplane - Be sure the backplane is not older in the server you purchase or you can upgrade it to a standard that will handle the speeds your SSD's put out.

 

2. Raid controller - A lot of people seem to be using LSI controllers I believe. They are flashed to "I.T. Mode" this allows a fluent passthrough to the Unraid OS without having to mess around with configuring the virtual disks in a controller BIOS before being able to see the disks in Unraid.

 

3. Consider how many disks you want to use and purchase a chassis that will compliment all of them. Even if you only start with 2 or 3, you want room to grow. I am currently considering PCIe expansion for my system as a possible parity solution and then utilizing my 7th slot on top of that but that is on the horizon.

 

I think that is it! If you have any additional questions hit me up!

 

 

[itimpi]

Just checking - you do realise that Trim is not supported on SSDs that are in the main array, so their performance can degrade over time as they run out of free cells.

[Antdonn]

Cheers thank you, one system I’m just burning in now is a 11 drive system, 1 x ssd is, 8 x for the pool, with 1 hot spare, and 1x 760gb as a cache drive for vms , and a 1.5tb drive for  Vm;s .  2x nic GBE .  The performance is stunning.  For additional sata ports I used a £26 pci-e 8 port sata card, as board had 6 on board.

 

supprising the 6 core cpu and 12gb ram. 

 

Todays burn test will involve.

5 PC’s

1x MAC Air

1x MAC Pro

 

all backing up 60gb group of mixed files 3 times over....

 

next nas nas will be full SSD, but will take approx a month to validate, 12 1tb ssd + 1 cache + 1 log ! 

 

‘’Thanks for the input. 

 

‘’Rich 

 

[Antdonn]

This a a 50/50 I’ve read a lot of research about this, and it’s outdated, “according to new drive specs” it’s not an issue.  Soon find out, but I do think the entire community needs a definitive answer.

[mytime34]

How is the server doing? Any failed SSDs yet?