ftp222

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  1. Supermicro motherboards that have "-F" at the end have IPMI built in which allows nearly complete remote access to the machine over network interface (video, keyboard/mouse, even power & BIOS control)... Thus, no need for separate video functionality. I know several who have setup their servers hardware wise without ever attaching a monitor, put them away in the basement doing all the software install/setup remotely and never needed to see the hardware again for years. This answer pretty much summed up why I didn't go with the 1245v3. If at some point I want to use the 1240v3 CPU in a workstation I can and most likely there will be far better graphics options available by that time. The system is humming along very nicely with 5-6 VM's running and I just ordered the other 16GB of memory to install this week.
  2. I just finished up my Haswell ESXi build with a Supermicro X10SLM+-F (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823). I chose the E3-1240v3 Xeon CPU and 2 sticks of Kingston 8GB DIMM's (kvr16e11/8i). I will be adding another 2 sticks of memory next month to bring it up to 32GB. For the most part, the build was simple and straight forward. If you haven't read about it already the i210 Intel NIC chipset is not supported off of the ESXi 5.1 ISO, so you'll need to roll the NIC drivers into the media (http://www.servethehome.com/install-vmware-esxi-5x-intel-i210-intel-i350-ethernet-adapters/) - this is easier than it sounds and takes about 5 minutes. I went with the X10SLM+-F for the 2 i210 NIC's - the X10SLM-F has 1 i210 and 1 i217 NIC, which is not yet supported by ESXi, but might be in the near future. The motherboard I received from Newegg had a problem with 2 of the DIMM slots - it would only recognize memory in 2 of the 4 slots, so I had to do a cross-ship replacement with Supermicro. They over-nighted a new board and I was up and running the next day. Working with Supermicro's tech support was one of the easiest and best experiences I've had with tech support, so I have no issues recommending their products. I upgraded my original ESXi server, which already had unRAID virtualized, so I was just doing a motherboard/cpu swap and fresh ESXi install. My previous build was a Q9400 on an Intel S3210SHLC board, which is still pretty nice. The new Haswell build is much quicker in all of my VM tasks, but I don't notice it much with unRAID (not that I expected to). There is one other board I considered, which is made by Intel - S1200v3rpl. It does have 4 x8/x4 slots, but I could not find this board anywhere for a reasonable price.
  3. This would be Great!! Two thumbs up from me on this idea.
  4. I upgraded my backup system from 5.0 Beta 10 to 5.0 RC5 and everything is working great. Parity check speeds are exactly what they were in Beta 10. The only issue I noticed is in the "upgrade notes" - They state the array should not start automatically and to verify every drives partition type; however the array did start automatically so I did not have the chance to check the partition type before starting the array.
  5. Agreed! My unRAID server has 16 drives in it, is on 24/7, and spins down drives after 30 minutes of inactivity. The server is running on ESXi and has other VM's accessing 2 other drives in the system constantly that do not spin down. My total electric bill for last month - $41 - and that includes everything else in the house. Your $30 estimate is not realistic. Please post a list of your hardware so we can better assess what may be happening. My guess is your A/C unit started running this month and that is what accounts for the majority of the $30.
  6. +1 from me on this one too. Currently at 14 Data drives and a bit nervous to add more without extra protection. Would LOVE to see this feature added in a future release.
  7. I agree with these, but I think they are things I can live with. The standard file system of unRAID is awesome though.... hmmm. If you read the article closely, it looks like upon a failed drive, the system will move your data around to other drives if space is available and recreate parity. This sounds just like Drobo to me, but I sure hope it is executed better. I love unRAID and it has saved my bacon more than a few times over the last 4 years, but I really need to take a close look at this solution.
  8. Just saw this article on the Building Windows 8 Development Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/05/virtualizing-storage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx This sounds very interesting and could potentially have me moving away from unRAID. Not that I am unhappy with unRAID - quite the opposite - but the read/write speeds get to me at times. There are a couple of features I don't like how they are implementing: 1. Thin Provisioning - I like the concept and use it all of the time at work and home; however explaining this concept to a normal person is going to be a challenge. 2. Mirrored Protection - Can spread a folder across several drives. If you lose enough disks, you could lose certain files in a folder and make it very difficult to tell what files are missing/lost. 3. Power Savings - Parity protection appears to stripe across all disks, which will be a problem for those of us looking for maximum power savings - like unRAID gives us. Otherwise, this looks like something to check out. As mainly a Windows user, I am very interested.
  9. I am running the same setup with ESXi 4.1. I believe the M1015 was not supported until 5.0 Beta 8. I am running Beta 9 still as I don't fully trust the newer betas yet.
  10. I am running 14 WD Green drives off of 2 IBM M1015's through ESXi - a mixture of 1-2TB EACS, EADS, EARX drives. No issues whatsoever.
  11. I have used both solutions and the bottom line is if you have the hardware to support it, put unRAID on VMware ESXi. Running VMware on top of unRAID will make any VM's you run slower and depending on what they are doing, they could be a whole lot slower. Taking the reverse, unRAID is only VERY minimally slower running on top of VMware. If you have systems that need to be on 24/7 then build an ESXi box, virtualize everything and have it over with. You'll be happier in the end.
  12. I found in another thread the steps to get the drive back into the array: 1. Unassign Red drive from array 2. Start array with Red drive (Disk 4 in my case) unassigned. 3. Stop Array 4. Re-assign Red Drive back to array. 5. Start array Upon doing this, you are forced to rebuild the disk, which is not the preferred solution. I tried the "mdcmd set invalidslot 99" command before hitting start, but that did not work, the drive went into the rebuild state. Luckily the drive rebuilt without any issues; however this is not the way it worked in the 4.x series. Is there not a way to do the "trust my parity" procedure in the 5.0beta series?
  13. I have been running 5.0beta9 for a couple of weeks without any issues. I just swapped out my power supply and now have Disk 4 flagged with a Red Ball. I have tried the "trust my parity procedure" as described by Tom in this post: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13866.msg131378#msg131378 I only ran the "mdcmd set invalidslot 99" and started the array as I believe that should set it correct, but that did not work, the disk is still Red and the array comes up as unprotected. I have rebooted, swapped SATA and power cables, but nothing changes it from Red. I have also run a SMART test and status and everything passed and looks normal. How can I get Disk 4 back into my array? My syslog of a fresh boot is attached, please help! syslog-2011-08-22-2.zip