Caselabs M8 server

Amount of storage in this system: 54TB

Case: Caselabs M8

PSU: Corsair AX850

Motherboard: Supermicro X8SIL

CPU: Intel i3-550

RAM: 2x2GB Micron 1333Mhz DDR3

Controller Cards: 2 x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 1 x Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

Hard Drives: 3 x Seagate ST4000DM000, 2 x Seagate ST3000DM001, 4 x Seagate T32000542AS, 2 x Seagate ST2000DM001, 1 x Seagate ST2000DL003, 9 x Western Digital WDC WD20EARS, 2 x Western Digital WDC WD20EARX, 2 x Western Digital WDC WD30EFRX

Primary use is storage of media. Secondary use is storage of backups for other computers.

Nice build 

Just out of curiosity, how long does a parity check take with that mix of 2/3/4TB drives?  [This results in 3 different "slowdown" points as the drives reach their inner cylinder areas]

Around 22 hours, I don't think I've done a full parity check since I added the 4TB drives over the last few weeks. The parity checks are running pretty slow since I added the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card though. Parity checks used to run at 75-80MB/s, now I'm lucky to get 55MB/s. I used to run more drives off the motherboard before I got the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 so maybe I'm saturating the PCI-E bus during a parity check. Disk rebuilds are running at the same 55MB/s. Once the 2TB drives are finished the speed moves up to close to 95-100MB/s.

Is that a custom sata power rail?

Is that a custom sata power rail?

Yes they are. On the PSU side are 2 x 6 sata power cables (16AWG cable), on the main side is 1 x 4 sata power cable (18AWG) and 2 x bog standard Corsair IDE power cables. I hate the IDE cables with a passion and will probably make some custom cables one day. Bear in mind the only custom cables I've ever made are on this PSU and the previous Corsair HX650 PSU.

Is that a custom sata power rail?

 

Yes they are. On the PSU side are 2 x 6 sata power cables (16AWG cable), on the main side is 1 x 4 sata power cable (18AWG) and 2 x bog standard Corsair IDE power cables. I hate the IDE cables with a passion and will probably make some custom cables one day. Bear in mind the only custom cables I've ever made are on this PSU and the previous Corsair HX650 PSU.

To build those custom power rails, did you follow one of the basic how-to videos on youtube?

Is that a custom sata power rail?

 

Yes they are. On the PSU side are 2 x 6 sata power cables (16AWG cable), on the main side is 1 x 4 sata power cable (18AWG) and 2 x bog standard Corsair IDE power cables. I hate the IDE cables with a passion and will probably make some custom cables one day. Bear in mind the only custom cables I've ever made are on this PSU and the previous Corsair HX650 PSU.

 

To build those custom power rails, did you follow one of the basic how-to videos on youtube?

I'm fortunate enough to be an electrical engineer so I already had the necessary basic skills and tools. I did have to source the components and crimp tool from various international sources as they just weren't economically available in New Zealand.

That's a hell of a setup. You are a braver man than I am with that many disks in your array. I've made a resolution that I'm not going above 10 disks until we get P+Q parity. With disks being as large as they are now, two disk failures at once would mean a hell of a lot of data loss.

Now if BackBlaze would only offer a Linux client I'd just back up everything to the cloud and keep adding disks without worrying about dual parity but until either of those things come I'm swapping out my smaller disks for 4TBs to add more storage space.

...  two disk failures at once would mean a hell of a lot of data loss.

Surely you have backups !!

I have 40TB of data on my two UnRAID arrays ... and a complete set of backups for every bit of it.  If it's worth building fault-tolerant servers to keep the stuff handy, it's certainly worth having a safety "tucked away" copy of all that data !!

It would, of course, be a bit of a PITA to restore the missing data, but even that would be almost exclusively "computer time" & not "my time" 

...  two disk failures at once would mean a hell of a lot of data loss.

 

Surely you have backups !!

 

I have 40TB of data on my two UnRAID arrays ... and a complete set of backups for every bit of it.  If it's worth building fault-tolerant servers to keep the stuff handy, it's certainly worth having a safety "tucked away" copy of all that data !!

 

It would, of course, be a bit of a PITA to restore the missing data, but even that would be almost exclusively "computer time" & not "my time" 

Of the important stuff I do. I'm trying to make a complete backup of everything to CrashPlan but their servers are so slow, at the current rate it's going to take over a year to do a complete backup of my server. If I could upload at my full upload speed cap I could do it in less than 10% of that time.

But for the movies and TV shows that make up 98% of what is stored on my server I just don't feel it's worth it to spend the thousands of dollars to build a redundant server. All of it can be redownloaded if I had two disk failures, or even a complete system loss if there was a fire or something. It would just be a pain in the ass. Important stuff also goes to a server running the free version of unraid with 4TB total storage at my parents house.

I agree that if you're "okay" with losing it, it's okay to not have it backed up.  I've spent MANY years collecting all this stuff, and definitely don't want to do it again !!    [used to burn backups to DVDs ... still have over 2,000 in binders ... but haven't done that in several years, since disk capacities got > 1TB).    I simply copy everything I'm going to write to the server to a backup disk;  and when the disk gets full I pop in a new one and store the old one in a DriveBox and put it in my fireproof/waterproof safe.

I've considered just building a complete 2nd server for this -- you can build a 44 TB server these days for just over 2K => that would let the backups be fully automated, always online, and, as a side benefit, fault-tolerant.

What do you really stores on those hard drives?

I have 4 disks on Unraid.. more than enough for me

What do you really stores on those hard drives?

 

I have 4 disks on Unraid.. more than enough for me

Personally I have over 1000 HD movies and about 145 complete TV series, 99% of which are also in HD. Most of that is only 720p HD too. Were it all full 1080p Blu-ray quality it'd take up 2-4 times the 24TB it takes up now.

What do you really stores on those hard drives?

 

I have 4 disks on Unraid.. more than enough for me

Currently I've got around 1000 Blu Ray ISOs, 200 DVDs, photos, backups, TV series, and just general data.

Media is what really grows an UnRAID store (as you can see by what folks have listed above).

I have system images of all my PCs (~ a dozen systems);  ISO copies of every software DVD I've had for over a decade;  all the downloads I've collected over the years;  all of our family photos and videos;  all of my records that I've digitized over the years (a LOT); etc. ==> and you're right ... all of that easily fits on a share that only occupies a few TB.

... then I've also got all our music (over 700 LPs that I digitized in addition to all the CDs and MP3's we've collected -- but this is another relatively small share (fits on a single 2TB drive with lots of room to spare).

THEN ... the real "space consumer" ... I've got over 3500 movies !!

I don't store our recorded TV on UnRAID ... that's all on a separate HTPC that has 8 TV tuners and it's own 8TB of space for recordings [anytime it starts to get full I just add more space  ]

I do not backup the recorded TV ... but everything else (i.e. both of my UnRAID servers)  is ALWAYS backed up.  If my media server was hit by lightning (unlikely with the VERY good protection I have plus a UPS) and completely wiped out, it would certainly be a PITA, and cost a good bit of cash;  but I could rebuild a nice new box in a couple days and then copy my backup disks to it, and I would not lose a thing 

I do have a few TB of recorded TV I want to keep ... and that I simply copy to one of my UnRAID servers (and thus it also gets further backed up).   

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

Certainly agree ... I don't know anyone who's doing that ==> did you see a specific post you're referring to??

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

 

Certainly agree ... I don't know anyone who's doing that ==> did you see a specific post you're referring to??

No, I am just saying

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

I'd disagree slightly. If you have a cache drive encoding a video with, say, the handbrake cli app works great. It'll read it from the array and write the output to the cache drive.

 

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

 

I'd disagree slightly. If you have a cache drive encoding a video with, say, the handbrake cli app works great. It'll read it from the array and write the output to the cache drive.

What your cache speed like? read and write.

 

Unraid is not suitable for videos editing and encoding videos from/on Unraid server.

 

I'd disagree slightly. If you have a cache drive encoding a video with, say, the handbrake cli app works great. It'll read it from the array and write the output to the cache drive.

 

What your cache speed like? read and write.

~120MB/s read and write. And I'm not talking about video editing, by the way. I mean something more along the lines of converting a DVD ISO to an x264 MKV, for example, or converting a 1080p MKV to 720p. For those type of tasks if you have a cache drive you're fine.

Agree that if you're using the cache for the write operations there's no problem using the UnRAID box.    That eliminates the write bottleneck of the protected array ... and reads from the array are done at "disk speed" with no problem.

The comment r.e. not using UnRAID to do high data-rate editing/capture/etc. was based on using the protected array.  The cache drive is just like any other drive -- UnRAID or not.