Need advice with old hardware/move to ver 6

[relliott64]

1st, I have been a long time, although basic unraid user since I purchased my license in 2010.

I use unraid exclusively for backup of files.

My current set up is the following:

Unraid version 5.0 RC16c

ASRock B75 pro3m with celeron g1610 @ 2.6ghz

2ea. SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 sata cards

A combination of 2gig and 3gid drives (13 drives total)

 

I am looking at replacing all my drives with WD 10gig Elements. (5 data drives, 1 parity)

 

Can I just replace the the drives (parity 1st) one by one, until they they are all swapped out, and then upgrade to unraid 6? Is there an issue with the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 cards and ver 6?  Should I upgrade to version 6 1st, and then start swapping drives?

Or, should I replace the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with something more compatible, and then start the whole process?

 

My last option, I'm thinking of, is to purchase a new motherboard (with 6 or 8 SATA ports), and forgo the SATA card altogether, but this is a more expensive way to go, because of new board, ram, cpu.

 

I have a lot of data on my current setup, so I want to be very careful when when I make my changes.

 

EDIT: just realized that my current motherboard has 8 SATA ports on board (5 SATA 2.0 and 3 SATA 3.0) so maybe eliminating the 2ea Supermicro SATA cards is the answer because the 8 onboard sata ports should be plenty with the 10g drives. Now, I'm really confused!

 

Just looking for suggestions before I start the process.

Thanks, Rick

 

Edited November 6, 2019 by relliott64

[trurl]

For example:

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/70252-supermicro-aoc-sas2lp-mv8-8-port-sassata-compatible-with-unraid-6/

 

I don't think you mentioned, how much RAM do you have?

[relliott64]

Only 4GB of ram currently installed, although the ASRock B75 pro3m board will support up to 32.

I have gotten the occasional parity errors like others (not corrected), and have ran parity again and not gotten any errors so this may be the fault of my supermicro sata card.

With only looking at 7 drives going fwd ( 5 data, 1 parity, 1 cache) I may just eliminate the addon cards and go with the onboard sata ports. Not sure what that process would be like.

Edited November 6, 2019 by relliott64

[trurl]

3 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

Only 4GB of ram currently installed, although the board will support up to 32.

Should be fine for NAS only. If you want dockers or VMs more would be good. Maybe not enough CPU to go very far with that though.

[Zonediver]

10 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

Only 4GB of ram currently installed, although the ASRock B75 pro3m board will support up to 32.

I have gotten the occasional parity errors like others (not corrected), and have ran parity again and not gotten any errors so this may be the fault of my supermicro sata card.

4GB are ok but i recommend a minimum of 8GB - and avoid the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 - this controller is known to make problems.

Use a SLI 9207-8i or similar.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Zonediver

[relliott64]

My current MB will support an i5 or i7 processor, so I could go that route with a bit more ram and be set for a while I would think.

[Zonediver]

3 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

My current MB will support an i5 or i7 processor, so I could go that route with a bit more ram and be set for a while I would think.

I am using the same MB since 2013 - no problems with it.

[relliott64]

Appreciate all the comments so far.

Zonediver, your setup looks like what I should shoot for. The I7 processors can be had for a reasonable price, and extra ram also.

Does the LSI SAS 9207-8i use the same breakout cables as the supermicro card?

Also, is is just a plug and play process to remove the supermicro, and install the LSI SAS 9207-8i? Does it matter which cable goes to which drive or will unraid sort that out on it's own?

 

[Zonediver]

15 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

Appreciate all the comments so far.

Zonediver, your setup looks like what I should shoot for. The I7 processors can be had for a reasonable price, and extra ram also.

Does the LSI SAS 9207-8i use the same breakout cables as the supermicro card?

Also, is is just a plug and play process to remove the supermicro, and install the LSI SAS 9207-8i? Does it matter which cable goes to which drive or will unraid sort that out on it's own?

 

The LSI has 2x Mini-SAS SFF-8087 connectors - i dont know the connectors of the supermicro, but google (or the manual) will tell you.

Usually you can just swap it - both controllers are HBAs.

unRAID identifies the HDDs over the serialnumber - so it doesnt matter where to connect.

I did my change few weeks ago - 2x Adaptec 1430SA against the 9207-8i - straight forward and pretty simpel.

Be aware: The LSI 9207-8i needs active cooling of 200lfm because its a Server-HBA.

 

Edited November 6, 2019 by Zonediver

[relliott64]

According to supermicro's website, their card has "Internal Connectors2 SFF 8087 connectors" so it looks like they are the same so I'm set on cables.

Do you think it is safe for me to do the upgrade to ver 6 prior to replacing the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI card?

Also, do you see any advantage one way or the other as to which drives you have connected to the MB sata ports vs the LSI?

 

[Zonediver]

18 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

According to supermicro's website, their card has "Internal Connectors2 SFF 8087 connectors" so it looks like they are the same so I'm set on cables.

Do you think it is safe for me to do the upgrade to ver 6 prior to replacing the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI card?

Also, do you see any advantage one way or the other as to which drives you have connected to the MB sata ports vs the LSI?

 

I would first change the HBA and then upgrade - i am not sure if v6 supports the supermicro properly.

Important: Connect the cache-SSD at the light gray SATA-III-port (Intel) on the mainboard - dont use the ASM1061 for the SSD - they are only connected over PCIe x1.

The LSI-controller has a problem with trimm - rest doesn't matter - all disks are slower then SATA-II.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Zonediver

[SpecFroce]

Before you make any software changes, remember to backup your USB-drive so you can roll back any configuration changes as needed. Before replacing any drives In the array, I would upgrade to the latest Unraid version.

[relliott64]

Thanks for the reminder to back up the USB drive before doing anything.

 

I have just purchased the LSI SAS 9207-8i and the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX to cool it. Looks like the fan will just screw into the heatsink fins of the card, unless you use that fancy bracket that Zonediver posted a picture of but I can't find that for sale anywhere.

 

So, next week, I'll replace the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI SAS 9207-8i w/fan, and make sure everything still works.

Then, I'll back up my USB drive, and upgrade to V6.

I plan to start replacing my smaller 2/3g drives with 10g WD models after that. (Hoping for black Friday sales on these)

I'll worry about the ram/cpu upgrades once I get everything set up.

 

Sorry, but I do have one more question. Zonediver mentioned to "Connect the cache-SSD at the light gray SATA-III-port (Intel) on the mainboard"

Since that port is currently connected to a data drive, and I currently don't have cache drive is it a simple procedure to install the SSD cache drive on that port and switch the data drive connection to a different port and unraid is smart enough to make the proper changes?

 

I'm also going to be loosing a drive when this is all said and done, because I have 14 drives now (13 data, 1 parity) with no cache drive and that use up my 14 sata ports. I will be adding  a cache drive so one of the data drives will be going away. I'll have to factor that into my plan.

[Zonediver]

This is the Link to the Bracked

https://www.shapeways.com/product/NET3LH5QP/fan-bracket-for-lsi-9207-8i?productConfiguration=104311341&etId=192375185&utm_source=automated-contact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=order-shipped&utm_content=5

[Zonediver]

9 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

Thanks for the reminder to back up the USB drive before doing anything.

 

I have just purchased the LSI SAS 9207-8i and the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX to cool it. Looks like the fan will just screw into the heatsink fins of the card, unless you use that fancy bracket that Zonediver posted a picture of but I can't find that for sale anywhere.

 

So, next week, I'll replace the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI SAS 9207-8i w/fan, and make sure everything still works.

Then, I'll back up my USB drive, and upgrade to V6.

I plan to start replacing my smaller 2/3g drives with 10g WD models after that. (Hoping for black Friday sales on these)

I'll worry about the ram/cpu upgrades once I get everything set up.

 

Sorry, but I do have one more question. Zonediver mentioned to "Connect the cache-SSD at the light gray SATA-III-port (Intel) on the mainboard"

Since that port is currently connected to a data drive, and I currently don't have cache drive is it a simple procedure to install the SSD cache drive on that port and switch the data drive connection to a different port and unraid is smart enough to make the proper changes?

 

I'm also going to be loosing a drive when this is all said and done, because I have 14 drives now (13 data, 1 parity) with no cache drive and that use up my 14 sata ports. I will be adding  a cache drive so one of the data drives will be going away. I'll have to factor that into my plan.

You can change both drives - the SATA-Port doesn't matter - unraid indentifies the disks over the serialnumber.

And by the way: You have 16 SATA-ports:

6 on the Intel Chipset

2 on the ASM1061 and

2x4 on the LSI-controller.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Zonediver

[relliott64]

Awesome, Thanks for all the help.

[Zonediver]

2 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

Awesome, Thanks for all the help.

You are welcome 😉

[JonathanM]

You are currently running ReiserFS. It is HIGHLY recommended to move off of that ASAP. You are in an ideal situation to accomplish that, what with migrating to larger drives.

 

You can't change file systems until you upgrade to 6.X, but you should be planning the file system migration as practically the first thing after the 6.X step.

 

How much data (GB) is on the array right now, and how full are each of your drives? The file system can't be changed in place, you must copy data from the ReiserFS drives to a freshly formatted blank drive with the new FS. Rebuilding drives can NOT be used to change filesystems.

[Dissones4U]

14 minutes ago, relliott64 said:

So, next week, I'll replace the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI SAS 9207-8i w/fan, and make sure everything still works.

Then, I'll back up my USB drive, and upgrade to V6.

Be sure to read the forum Upgrading unRaid-5 to unRaid-6 I recently upgraded from 6.3.2 to 6.7.2 and although it went well there was some prep work involved depending on plugins etc.

 

13 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

The file system can't be changed in place, you must copy data from the ReiserFS drives to a freshly formatted blank drive with the new FS.

Ha, I was just typing a question about that, I read that xfs was introduced in v6 and is the preferred FS so I was curious how this would work!

[relliott64]

I have a total of 24.5TB with 80.6GB free.

Like mentioned prior, they are mostly 2tb drives with 1ea. 3tb drive, and a 3tb parity drive.

 

I'm wanting to add 5ea. 10TB WD data drives and 1ea 10TB parity drive, eventually adding a SSD cache drive.

I currently have 14 drives in my case, and that is all it will fit. So, I will be replacing 6ea 2TB drives with 10TB versions.

I currently have 11 shares set up, in highwater 3 mode. (Note that I was always confused about how these should be set up for file storage only)

 

It sounds like its going to be quite the process!

 

[JonathanM]

Can you move things from drive to drive so the current 3TB is empty? If so, after you get settled on 6.X then rebuild parity with a 10TB, swap and rebuild the empty 3TB with a 10TB, format it XFS, then go nuts copying 4 of your 2TB drives to the fresh XFS 10TB. After they are all copied, format them XFS, rebuild to 10TB, and that will be all your new 10TB drives installed and XFS.

[relliott64]

I don't have enough free space on the server, but I have a couple external usb drives that I could move the data to if I new how to do that.

Here is where I REALLY show what I don't know about unraid.

The 3TB drive is disk 10 in the array. When I click on the little folder icon next to the DISK10, it opens up the page showing me what is on the drive. It must be they way I set it up, but all shares show under each drive folder icon, but of course the files inside are different in all of them. The shares are spread amongst all of the drives.

Once I am looking at the content of the individual drive folder, how do I actually move the data? Drag and drop doesn't work. I'm accessing it though my windows 7 PC web browser.

[relliott64]

Ok, I think I got it going through mapping my network in Windows 7. Can see all the disks and whats on them. So, it appears that I can copy everything off of disk10 this way. It won't matter that my shares are spread all over all of the drives?

 

Does Version 6 treat shares the same way, where you must select the option such as highwater 3, etc? I'm only backing up files.

[relliott64]

Your way of setting everything up jonathanm seems like a great plan that even I can follow, so I really appreciate the help.

Rick

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, relliott64 said:

Ok, I think I got it going through mapping my network in Windows 7. Can see all the disks and whats on them. So, it appears that I can copy everything off of disk10 this way. It won't matter that my shares are spread all over all of the drives?

 

Does Version 6 treat shares the same way, where you must select the option such as highwater 3, etc? I'm only backing up files.

As you surmised, each share is a root folder on the drive, and all the root folders are combined to give the user shares that you generally use. What you must never do is mix disks and user shares when moving or copying files, go disk to disk, or share to share, never from disk to share or share to disk.

 

The basic allocation methods to spread the shares over the disks are generally the same from 5 to 6.

 

There is a whole sticky thread on migrating file systems, I recommend giving it a read.