bkasten

Members
  • Posts

    124
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Converted

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Lost in the Wilderness of Wisconsin

bkasten's Achievements

Apprentice

Apprentice (3/14)

0

Reputation

  1. Yes it is. I have done this for years. I have my unRAID setup with TV and Movies that span many disks (like many others). But, I also have all "user" folders and other "utility" folders concentrated on one disk (2 TB in my case). I keep this single disk spun-up all the time, since this is accessed a great deal, even through the night-time hours. I keep all these shares isolated to one disk via the "includes' settings. It works well for me. bkasten
  2. Keep us informed as to how it works out. :) I will be in the market for a new router sometime this year.
  3. StevenD Although my data needs are not as great as yours, I faced this decision a few years ago. What I eventually decided on was to split the server into two. At the time it made sense. All TV on one, All movies on the other (the 'movie' server also held the small amount of house data that was necessary). At the time, 2TB drives were the norm, and with the flooding in Asia, drive prices went through the roof. From the start, I operated under the full understanding that this was temporary, and that the data would all be reunited sometime in the future. It worked well for me to split the servers. For the most part, it was transparent. Time past and it came time to reconfigure again. Boy was it the right time! I wanted to virtualize unRAID under ESXi 5.5 (yet another Atlas inspired server). The hardware I wanted (not that I knew about before hand) was now available, and at a reasonable cost. Got myself a Supermicro 1150 board with the LSI 8-port on board, nice. And put it all in an R4 case. The great motherboard, and VMware allowed me to reconsolidate like I had never considered before. I was able to migrate all the disparate little servers (old desktops recruited to perform small tasks) all into one server, that was much cooler, and much quieter. The release of the WD RED 6TB's helped a lot too. I think splitting the unRAID server into two was the best plan I ever came up with. Especially since I knew that one day I would recombine them. Just didn't realize at the time how much combining I would do! If your needs are pressing, you may want to consider splitting your server. HDD prices are a bit high now, but they will come down. The sizes are increasing all the time. Right now 10TB drives are on the horizon. They are expensive, but they will come down. Soon you will be able to populate your 15 bay server with 10TB drives, (140TB online!!!). BTW: What to do with the second now idle unRAID server? That is going to be my new (garycase inspired) backup server. The spec are lesser to be sure, but just how modern does a backup server have to be?
  4. I think for a straight-up Ubuntu VM, the simplest thing to use is "sendemail" (please note, the "e" in the center, this is not sendmail.) No configuration needed, and sends mail from the command-line, or script. I use this on all my Mint installs. bkasten
  5. I must confess, I did not. In my defense, I got a lot of good suggestions, which I followed up on, but checking the voltage of the switch power supply fell off the radar. Too bad too, it was in retrospect, brilliant. I am thinking your idea of "transient noise" is plausible. The cards themselves seem to be fine, and operational. They just cannot use that switch. I have been pretty busy, new job and all, but one of these weekends I will dig out my vintage multi-tester and take some measurements. I think that if the switch were passing too high a voltage the cards would be destroyed. As it is, they seem to be working fine, and at full speed too. Thank you Bruce
  6. I think you may have a winner. The ballast in that old lamp is a BIG coil transformer type affair. The surge created from turning it on and off is not well isolated from the PC, since it's on the same surge protector. Try running that lamp straight to the wall outlet and see if it still interferes, if so, get rid of it, or leave it on all the time. Most modern fluorescent lamps are much better behaved, they use electronic ballasts that don't use huge magnetic coils. I have moved the lamp off the isobar, and it no longer is making my USB Hub signal. I am taking that as a sign that it is no longer interfering with the computer. Hopefully this will fix the issue. I would like to thank everyone that offered help on this... It was driving me crazy. bkasten And the final verdict appear to be in. Not the lamp Not the Isobar Not the network cable Not a bad port. It appears to be the NetGear gs105!!! Gone through a few more cards, the last one lasting less than one month. Replaced the gs105 switch, with another one, and the gigabit speed came back to my computer, and has stayed. I had tried different ports on the switch too, so it's not an individual port, it's has to be the whole switch. Just thought I would let everyone know. Bruce
  7. In version 5.06, under "Settings/Share settings", the last option under the "Mover Settings" is a beautiful button. It is labeled "Move Now" with the text 'Click to invoke the Mover". This will kick off the move immediately. Nice little trick I use when I need to. Not very often, but nice to have. ----------- You may find that most days, creating more than 150 GB a day of transferred material may be challenging. I think my top day was 500 GB, and I was working it! Now I was converting DVD's, and not already digital material. I had shelves of DVD's all over my house, way too much to be practical. Most of that is gone. There are many options available to you with unRAID. You may wish to use a larger drive for cache, say a 2TB drive, or even a 1 TB drive. Once you have the lion's share moved, convert the 2TB or 1TB drive to a data drive, and place the 150 Raptor as your cache drive. Or you may fine that most days, the Raptor is enough, with a couple of manually started moves. I guess the point I am trying to make is you are not married to any drive for cache. You can start with one, and change it to another at any time you want. Or, you can "make do" with a smaller drive, and a number of manual moves throughout the day. You may want to start moving your stored data with out parity being active. There is a bit of risk with this option, but some like it. Using this strategy, you will have very fast access to all you data drives. The down-side is that the new data will not be parity protected. At least not until you activate parity, and get through the first build/check. Not for me, but it may be an option for you. Bruce
  8. Like everything else with the unRAID system, it depends on your usage. When I first installed unRAID, I had a massive amount of data to move. It took months to get it all on, Really. But once I got the data all on, my needs for a cache dropped dramatically. I have since really settled down (after 4+ years) to the point where I have a 60GB SSD on each server. This is usually way more than enough to service my daily needs. The few times that I have actually filled 60 GB's in a day, I just kick off the move in the day, and let it all empty out, and then continue. You can actually start moving while it is transferring to the unRAID. This has happened two times so far in 9 months. It also depends on what you have lying around. I just replaced an aging laptop HDD with an SSD, to try and keep the older laptop viable. I am considering that when I recombine my two unRAIDS into one, using that laptop drive as a single cache drive for the unRAID. I like to milk every dollar's worth out of all the equipment I buy. I figure that the 250GB/5400 RPM drive will service my cache needs for a long time. It should still be faster then my gigabit network. If I had a 150GB Raptor lying around, I would sure use it before making another purchase. Not because it's a raptor, but because it is too small (for me) to use as an HDD/Boot Drive/unRAID Storage/etc for any PC's that I have. This is all a matter of personal taste and views. Your needs/wants may not be the same as anyone else's. Bruce
  9. Yes, yes it is that simple. I am currently doing just that. I have a PC, running Win7, with iTunes installed. I call this computer my "Media PC". The share for iTunes is mounted, and it is pointed to that folder for it's source. You can actually point multiple PC's to this folder/share, but make sure they are all running the same version of iTunes, or they can conflict. I use this in conjunction with several Apple Airport Routers to play music throughout the house. All run through the single PC, and outputting to different locations. It's been working flawlessly for several years. Bruce
  10. No s***. That's phenomenal. What kind of migrations have you made? Have you gone from SATA to SAS? So it sounds like the only thing that may damn a migration is NIC or SATA incompatibility. And since I'm going to make this my new server home, I'll run anything by everyone here to see what's good. I assume the only incompatibility issue will be migrating TO an incompatible NIC/SATA, rather than from? My biggest question right now is whether going from onboard SATA LGA755 to SAS cards on LGA1150 will be an issue. Anything after that is gravy. Second question: what about going onboard SATA LGA1150 to SAS cards LGA1150? To answer your question about the type of migrations I have made: When I started with unRAID, I had no old equipment around. That meant I had to buy new. So I bought cheap where I felt at the time I could. That means motherboard/memory/proc. This was my first computer build ever. It worked well for 2 years, but as I ran out of sata ports, and slots, it started to get a bit slow for the monthly parity checks. So I bought a more current consumer grade motherboard, with more memory and a current, low-end proc. This worked well for a while. My next big idea was to split the unit into two. At the time, hard drives were VERY expensive, and still relatively small. So now I have two separate unRAIDs. This has been working VERY well for me. But now there have released/announced some very large HDDs. That and I have caught the virtualization bug. That has me thinking again... I stood up a "test" server for ESXi 5.5. That made me very happy Happy to the point that now I am re-thinking my whole server needs. The current plan is to purchase all new (except the case) with an eye towards a HUGE (well, huge for home use) ESXi machine, tons of memory, etc. Re-combine the two unRAIDs down to one, Run unRAID as a VM, plus all the other vm-servers I have been collecting, and reduce my footprint down to one server (production) in the house. Hopefully, this will free up some hardware for my other test machines I like to have around. Part of the plan will be to compile a list of parts, and submit that list to the board for others to comment on. (That means you garycase, BobPhoenix and others). There is just too much expertise available here to pass up. I think even a seasoned unRAID builder can profit from others.
  11. The short answer: Yup! The longer answer: This is just how unRAID works. Try it out on hardware on-hand, and once you are convinced, build the monster! Or at least a better unit, with parts that are more server-centric. At least that was my view. As far as moving to new hardware? No problem. unRAID doesn't really care about motherboards (as long as it recognizes the chipsets, NIC's etc.). Just unplug the USB-drive (vers. 5 +) from the old unit, and plug it into the new unit, with all the hard drives installed, and you should be good to go. So far, I have migrated 4 times, and I am planning my next migration now. bkasten
  12. It's all a matter of what you are comfortable with. I always try and keep my disks in the 30 degree range. 40 Degrees during parity is not too bad. If it were me, and I wanted a bit more, I would add a second top fan first, and see the result. It seems to me, that case is a little warmer at the top. If I were still not satisfied, then I would go for the side fan. bkasten
  13. I have the same case as yours, and have (had?) the same issues. Well, maybe not as bad. My temps went into the 40's, but that was too hight for me. My solution is really simple, and part of the reason I selected this case. There are plenty of fan openings built in. In my situation, I noticed the upper drives were much hotter than the lower drives. So, I installed a single 140mm fan (blowing out) in the opening near the front. This addition helps move enough air out of the top. In your situation, I would install 2 x 140mm fans in the top. You need to move more air than I do. As a temporary fix, you can open the front door of the case to allow a freer flow of air till you get your fans installed. This worked (works?) for me. Let us know if this works for you bkasten
  14. Tucansam, it can be done, and permissions are not really an issue. I have a similar set-up (remote shared folders), almost all the workstations in my house are Linux. The thing I found is, I cannot successfully mount the whole /home folder. Well, I can, but the mounting is too slow! The computer boots way too fast, and starts writing/reading from the local mount point, and then mounts the remote folder over the top. What I have done instead is to mount the large folders folders within the home folder. That is, Document, Downloads, Videos, etc. On the local machine, the fstab(s) look like this: psalms.local:/mnt/disk1/Videos /home/bkasten/Videos nfs defaults,nolock 0 0 psalms.local:/mnt/disk1/iTunes /home/bkasten/Music nfs defaults,nolock 0 0 psalms.local:/mnt/disk1/Pictures /home/bkasten/Pictures nfs defaults,nolock 0 0 psalms.local:/mnt/disk1/Documentsb /home/bkasten/Documents nfs defaults,nolock 0 0 psalms.local:/mnt/disk1/Downloads /home/bkasten/Downloads nfs defaults,nolock 0 0 On the unRAID server, I have shares that correspond to the local folder names. That is Videos = Videos, iTunes = Music, Pictures = Pictures, etc. These are then all the same (shared) on all my workstations. There is an exception in my system, I have separate shares for Documents, so that users can have a separate Documents are to themselves. You can have one large shared Documents folder, that's up to you. I found this to be the best solution for my network. Besides, you really don't want all the /home files remotely. Linux puts a lot of settings files personal to the users in /home/usename, and you most likely don't want all that shared anyway. I found that I like this system, having shared filesystems for the common shares across the network. Let me know if you have any questions about this. bkasten
  15. Sweet! You got me going jonathanm! Here I thought there was some big deal about making sure you upgraded from 4.7 to 5.05, and all it is is just config files? No problem, went straight to 5.05, assigned the drives as data drives. One showed as unformatted, the other two are showing as data. I think I am good to go! Thanks again Bruce