New X7SPA based unRAID build, comments please...

I'm about to start my first unRAID project. Target is a low formfactor 12 bay server which in theory would store 12x4 = 48TB (minus parity). Which brings me to my first mistake, the board i've ordered, a Supermicro  X7SPA-HF-D525, won't support 4TB drives according to them...

Anyway, the components:

- Board: Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA-HF-D525.cfm

- 2x 1GB DDR3 memory taken from my Mac Mini

- Controler: Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP MV8 http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-sas2lp-mv8.cfm

- 3x 4-in-3 SATA hotswap units, Norco SS-400 http://www.norcotek.com/SS-400.php

- fast USB stick (32MB/s read/18MB/s write) Transcend JetFlash 500

- PSU Corsair Professional Series HX650 (modular)

- SATA/SAS breakeout cables and stuff, some fans

The enclosure will be a relatively small Sharkoon Tarea box: http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/tarea with some Noctua silent fans.

I'm hoping the SAS2LP will support 4TB disks, it would be nice to start of with 6x 4TB (20TB + 4TB parity) and expand later. It's a pity the X7SPA doesn't support 4TB disks, so my guess would be that the capacity will max out at 8x4TB (SAS2LP) + 4x3TB (onboard) = 40TB + 4TB par. Which is more then enough for the next couple of years anyway...

What is the best unRAID version to go with? The latest v5 release candidate? I've read on the forum that the stable 4.7 does not support the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controller?

Any other comments? Thanks in advance!

They probably just meant that it wouldn't BOOT from a drive > 2TB.  You might try to see if you can see the entire drive after booting unRAID from the flash drive before you order a controller.  You will need unRAID 5.0 if you want to use > 2TB drives.

That board does support 3TB drives so I would assume it would support 4TB. just not as a boot drive.

Correct, the sas2lp-mv8 does not work in 4.7. you need to run a V5 beta. (the same for 3 and 4TB drives)

Ok, thanks. I will get me a 4TB disk anyway to test it, and take it from there.

First things first, assemble the thing. Looks impressive

I've replaced the annoying loud fans in the Norco SS-400 with Noctua fans. Higher rpm, but NO noise... much better.

Replaced the rubber feet from the bottom and placed them on the side panel, so the thing can be placed horizontal, which looks the business thanks to the near-symmetrical enclosure.

Update. Installed the board + controller & most of the wiring. The SAS cables need some tyding up

The Thing will start without errorbeeps or smoke... so that's ok havent got round to actually booting it up.

Very nice.

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk 2

Update. Bought a Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 4TB disk last week, to see if it was compatible with the motherboard and controller and unRAID, which it was. Also this way i could get some experience with unRAID, the hardware and the preclearing. All went pretty wel, preclearing took 41 hours, and i was able to add the disk in unprotected mode as a data disk, so i could play with the machine a bit.

In the meantime, i've bought 5 more Hitachi 4TB disks, and started 5 concurrent preclearing jobs. Doing all 5 at the same time does slows it down a bit compared to doing one disk but it beats doing them sequentially, which would take the rest of the week... stil, all 5 will take about 48 hours or more... which still is like forever Unbelievably BORING process. I hope the result of a working unRAID machine in the end will make me forget about this really annoying preclearing stuff...

Update. Bought a Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 4TB disk last week, to see if it was compatible with the motherboard and controller and unRAID, which it was. Also this way i could get some experience with unRAID, the hardware and the preclearing. All went pretty wel, preclearing took 41 hours, and i was able to add the disk in unprotected mode as a data disk, so i could play with the machine a bit.

 

In the meantime, i've bought 5 more Hitachi 4TB disks, and started 5 concurrent preclearing jobs. Doing all 5 at the same time does slows it down a bit compared to doing one disk but it beats doing them sequentially, which would take the rest of the week... stil, all 5 will take about 48 hours or more... which still is like forever Unbelievably BORING process. I hope the result of a working unRAID machine in the end will make me forget about this really annoying preclearing stuff...

I actually run 3 cycles on my preclears. On a 3TB 5400 rpm Hitachi that takes 5 days. On a 4TB 5400 rpm Hitachi, it takes 7 days. But what is a week in relation to knowing if your drive is solid to store your data on? And, your parity build/rebuild will take the better part of a day on that system with a 4TB parity drive. As drive densities continue to grow, these times will only increase, so get used to it.

what is a week in relation to knowing if your drive is solid to store your data on?

True...

All precleared, now experementing with copying, split levels etc.

Transfer speed (no cache) fluctuates a bit but at the moment is a constant 36MB/s, which is pretty good if i compare to others

jowi,

Are these read (from unraid) or write (to unraid) speeds?

Writing to a protected unRAID array from a Windows 7 machine over GB network. Will try some read speads later.

Those are very good speeds !

I get ~20-25MB/sec writing to a protected array (without cache drive) using X7SPA D510 and WD20EARS drives.

My read speeds are ~50MB/sec.

Do you jumbo frames turned on?

Reading speeds from the array to a windows pc start at 100MB/s but quickly slow down to about 58MB/s and stay there.

I do have jumbo frames (4088 bytes) on the Windows pc, not sure about unRAID.

What Windows version are you using? XP/Vista/7 ?

Windows 7 64bit Home Premium version.

I dont get it; after a reboot speed is down to 14MB/s... wtf...

I dont get it; after a reboot speed is down to 14MB/s... wtf...

You might have a script running? perhaps cache_dirs or a parity check?

No, there are no extras running... the speed seems erratic at times. Sometimes it even goes up as high as 40MB/s, and not for just a second but for like 10 or 20 minutes. If i start a new copy after that, it's at 30-32 again... or even lower. Or higher. Weird.

there are a lot of factors to keep in mind. not to mention fragmentation of the source file. what else your source PC is doing. total network usage, Where on the disk your file is being written/read from (drives get much slower for files on the inner sectors). is the source file continuous or lots of little files (a single 25GB BR rip will take a fraction of the time of 25GB of pictures). if the destination/source drive also doing other tasks like indexing or reading files even just excessive paging.

Even with an SSD cache drive, some of my copies can be 115MB/s and some can be 40MB/s based on the above things.

No, there are no extras running... the speed seems erratic at times. Sometimes it even goes up as high as 40MB/s, and not for just a second but for like 10 or 20 minutes. If i start a new copy after that, it's at 30-32 again... or even lower. Or higher. Weird.

Copying from Windows you are using Samba (SMB) network protocol, and I have found in the current Linux 3.x kernel that it fluctuates a lot more than on the older builds. As long as your average transfer comes in around 20Mb/s or higher, then your system is on par. For a first time copy, depending on the volume of data, I usually disable the parity drive, move all the files, then rebuild parity. An unprotected array that doesn't have to write parity information will run much faster transfer speeds. Of course, the data in the new array isn't safe until that parity is built.

For a first time copy, depending on the volume of data, I usually disable the parity drive, move all the files, then rebuild parity. An unprotected array that doesn't have to write parity information will run much faster transfer speeds.

I'm doing this myself at the moment as well, i unassigned the parity disk for the time being. But the speeds arent't that much higher, it won't get over 50MB/s.

For a first time copy, depending on the volume of data, I usually disable the parity drive, move all the files, then rebuild parity. An unprotected array that doesn't have to write parity information will run much faster transfer speeds.

I'm doing this myself at the moment as well, i unassigned the parity disk for the time being. But the speeds arent't that much higher, it won't get over 50MB/s.

That's about right for a network transfer. If that's still not fast enough, you could just pull the drive(s) out of the Windows box, mount them temporarily on your unRAID box, and then transfer them over the local SATA bus. That will get you the fastest speeds, probably in the 70 - 80 Mb/s range.

Can you do this with NTFS formatted hdd's ?