LTT Storage Rankings

[alpenwasser]

@looney, there is a plot afoot!

Well, several actually.

Still working on some details.

 

 

Statistics

---

Systems Summary
Arithmetic Mean Capacity           27.6 TB
Median Capacity                    21.0 TB
Mode (most common capacity)        15.0 TB (number of occurrences: 6)
Number of Unique Capacities             29

Grouped Distribution
10 TB ≤ capacity < 20 TB                25
20 TB ≤ capacity < 30 TB                18
30 TB ≤ capacity < 40 TB                 2
40 TB ≤ capacity < 50 TB                 4
50 TB ≤ capacity < 60 TB                 1
60 TB ≤ capacity < 70 TB                 3
70 TB ≤ capacity < 80 TB                 1
80 TB ≤ capacity < 90 TB                 2

HDD Statistics
Total Number of Drives                 629
Average Drives per System             11.2
Total Combined Capacity          1544.1 TB
Average Drive Capacity              2.5 TB
Median Drive Capacity               2.0 TB

HDD Statistics, by Size
Capacity              Count              Sum       Percentage of Total
                                                    Count     Capacity
0.50 TB           17 drives           8.5 TB        2.70%        0.55%
0.64 TB            1 drives           0.6 TB        0.16%        0.04%
0.75 TB            2 drives           1.5 TB        0.32%        0.10%
1.00 TB           50 drives          50.0 TB        7.95%        3.24%
1.50 TB           27 drives          40.5 TB        4.29%        2.62%
2.00 TB          256 drives         512.0 TB       40.70%       33.16%
3.00 TB          173 drives         519.0 TB       27.50%       33.61%
4.00 TB          103 drives         412.0 TB       16.38%       26.68%
TOTAL            629 drives        1544.1 TB




HDD Statistics, by Vendor
Vendor                Count              Sum       Percentage of Total
                                                    Count     Capacity
WD               313 drives         756.6 TB       49.76%       49.00%
Seagate          194 drives         517.0 TB       30.84%       33.48%
HGST              43 drives         115.0 TB        6.84%        7.45%
Samsung           36 drives          61.0 TB        5.72%        3.95%
unspecified       32 drives          61.5 TB        5.09%        3.98%
Toshiba           11 drives          33.0 TB        1.75%        2.14%
TOTAL            629 drives        1544.1 TB




 

[MG2R]

-snip-

Everything is better with pi

[alpenwasser]

Everything is better with pi

Well, naturally. However, how about a bar chart for a bit of variety?

[Raboo]

Well, naturally. However, how about a bar chart for a bit of variety?

I like bar charts more

[alpenwasser]

I like bar charts more

 

Well, I'll be playing around a bit in the next few days, maybe get

some feedback on different charts/plots, see what works and what

doesn't.

 

I made a pie chart of all the systems, it's a bit, uhm, undecipherable,

but it looks awesome.

[IdeaStormer]

Everything is better with pi

 

Careful or we'll start a GraphJam episode in this thread

[alpenwasser]

Created some bar charts for the system groupings. Also tried

these in pie chart form, but the long strings for the system

groups kinda break the readibility of the charts.

If anyone has any ideas what could still be plotted I'm open

for suggestions, although I can't make any promises, depending

on how difficult/time-consuming the implementation would be.

[LIGISTX]

Hardware
CASE: Custom Wood Case
PSU: Thermaltake TR2 RX 850
MB: ASRock Extreme4
CPU: Intel i3 2120T
HS: Cooler Master Hyper 212+
RAM: Samsung 8GB DDR3 1600
HDD 1: 8x3TB Seagete ST3000DM001
 

Software and Configuration:
The nas is running OpenMediaVault, didn't want to go with freenas as I don't have a good enough system to implement a ZFS file system yet (need ECC capable CPU/mobo, and a craptone of ECC RAM). It is for storing movies and shows, and all 8 drives are in a RAIDZ2 (software RAID 6 configuration) which allows for two drive failures before data is lost. After the loss to RAID, per the rules I have 18 TB of usable storage space. The CPU is perfect for the job, the Hyper 212 is just on it because I had one around. The RAM is a bit overkill for this file system, but o well. The case is a custom case a friend of mine made me. He is a master carpenter and had a little free time and spare material, so he whipped it up real fast, and for free. Its built like a tank, just isn't finished professionally, but I could always do that if I wanted. It is set up to hold 16 3.5" drives, currently only has 8 in it + the OS drive which is mounted slightly differently.

 

Open Media Vault has been great for my needs. The WebUI is super easy to use, user credentials are easy to create and manage which allows you to easily give access to friends over SFTP with read only privileges. 

 

Also, the OS drive is my old macbook pro hhd (I put a SSD in my macbook). Will get a SSD in there at some point for longevity, but for now this works fine.

 

Usage:
It is a nas, used for movies and TV and software backup. I have a few XBMC clients that I stream to, but my upload is only ~5mbps so I can't stream to my mobile devices and what not in an adequate fashion.

 

Photo's:

Sorry if the res isn't' great, these are from my google drive auto backup. I can probably get some better shots latter

[IdeaStormer]

Photo's:

Sorry if the res isn't' great, these are from my google drive auto backup. I can probably get some better shots latter

 

Where's the pic of it all assembled?

[LIGISTX]

Where's the pic of it all assembled?

Top left pic of the post, it isn't enclosed by anything, the mobo is just chillin like that test bench style.

[alpenwasser]

- snip -

That's a pretty neat system for the HDDs, I like it.

Also, added you in spot #25 with 24 TB.

Top left pic of the post, it isn't enclosed by anything, the mobo is just chillin like that test bench style.

Well, if it works, it works, is what I always say.

[LIGISTX]

That's a pretty neat system for the HDDs, I like it.

Also, added you in spot #25 with 24 TB.

Well, if it works, it works, is what I always say.

Yup, drives slide in from the outsides, one screw each to hold em in. Very snug fit, im sure some vibrations are transferred through the wood, but its a HEAVY case so I honestly think most of it is mitigated. It can be hard to work in, I think I only left 3 inches between each side of hhd banks, but it works out. Don't have to run wires often, well, really ever. lol. Only expanded the array from 7-8 drives thus far. To go more, will need a better SATA card or SATA splinter.

[RandomNOOB]

Looks like we all need to get new drives: http://www.techpowerup.com/204548/seagate-ships-worlds-first-8-tb-hard-drives.html 8TB BABY!

[LIGISTX]

Looks like we all need to get new drives: http://www.techpowerup.com/204548/seagate-ships-worlds-first-8-tb-hard-drives.html 8TB BABY!

Yup. 

 

Hopefully in a few years I will have the funds to build a real server, not just my nas. Planning on their being readily available and affordable 8-12 TB drives. Fill out a good RAID card with 8-12 TB drives... All the winning.

[alpenwasser]

Looks like we all need to get new drives: http://www.techpowerup.com/204548/seagate-ships-worlds-first-8-tb-hard-drives.html 8TB BABY!

Oh, YES!

It's funny, for so long we were stuck with 3 TB and 4 TB drives, and

then within a few months we get 6 TB and 8 TB ones (leaving out the

HGST helium drives which have been out for a while, but are hard to

find for mere mortals and carry a proper enterprise pricetag).

[madcow]

Regarding 8TB drives, yes it is very cool but I wonder.. where will SSD pricing be at by the time these drives become affordable for consumers? At the rate they are growing SSD for mass storage may be realistic in a few years.

[alpenwasser]

Anyone have experience with Btrfs? I've switched from Ext4 to Btrfs for a while now mainly for the transparent compression feature for VM images on my SSD. I am using it on top of LVM on my host but in VMs I use over the entire sdX disk which replaces MBR and GPT. I recently tried out its multi-drive features and was surprised how easy it was to convert a single drive to RAID 0 to RAID 1 to RAID 5 to RAID 10 (or any other combination) all while online and mounted. The filesystem is in beta so the RAID functions would be considered alpha. But it is being improved with every kernel release in both stability/bugs and/or end-user features/additions.

I've seen quite a few people mention that they use it for their

systems (not for server storage, just general OS disk and such)

with good results, but personally I would only use it for storage

if I had a backup of everything that's on it using another filesystem.

Entrusting my data to an FS which is still labeled "Beta" does

not sound all that enticing to me, even if it seems to work pretty

well for the most part. I think I will try it out on my system

disk when I do the next install on a machine though.

 

Who knows, maybe it will eventually even be good enough for me

to consider switching from ZFS.

 

Regarding 8TB drives, yes it is very cool but I wonder.. where will SSD pricing be at by the time these drives become affordable for consumers? At the rate they are growing SSD for mass storage may be realistic in a few years.

If SSD prices for $/GB keep dropping as they have been in the past

few years it's not that unrealistic that they'll be a viable

option in a few years for general storage IMHO.

I do wonder though, considering we've been stuck at SSD capacities

of ~1 TB max for a while now (leaving out the odd exception here

and there) at which point SSDs will start scaling in size again.

[Dr_Frankenstein]

Well it looks like I timed my purchase of the WD Purple drives just right, my second 3TB Seagate started failing yesterday initially I got an email from my Synology that 1120 bad sectors were found, overnight this has gone up to 25272!, most of these have been remapped and 488 are awaiting allocation meaning there is nothing left to re-assign.

 

I have just got a decent deal on a USB 4TB Seagate from Amazon for £89.99 so it will be replacing the failing drive after breaking it out of the USB enclosure.

[alpenwasser]

Well it looks like I timed my purchase of the WD Purple drives just right, my second 3TB Seagate started failing yesterday initially I got an email from my Synology that 1120 bad sectors were found, overnight this has gone up to 25272!, most of these have been remapped and 488 are awaiting allocation meaning there is nothing left to re-assign.

 

I have just got a decent deal on a USB 4TB Seagate from Amazon for £89.99 so it will be replacing the failing drive after breaking it out of the USB enclosure.

Ah, the eternal struggle of drive upgrades.

I have just ordered two WD Greens 3 TB for ZEUS, so that

system will finally be in the rankings again.

[Pidagad]

NAMGS

Network Attatched Multimedia Gaming Storage

 

Hardware
CASE: Bitfenix Prodigy (white + window side panel)
PSU: BeQuiet Straight Power 400W
MB: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX
CPU: AMD A6 5400K 
HS: Alpenföhn Brocken + BeQuiet Shadow Wings PWM 120mm
RAM: 4GB(2x2) DDR3 1333MHz @ 1600MHz
SSD: PNY XLR8 120GB
HDD: 5x 2TB Seagete ST2000DM001

 

---[extras]---

Rear-FAN: BeQuiet Shadow Wings PWM 140mm 

Front-FAN: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 230mm

Noise-insulation mats from Caseking

~ 1 Meter of RGB-LED strips inside the case

6x Nanoxia black sleeved sata cable

1x Nanoxia white sleeved sata cable (SSD)

 

Software and Configuration:
The Server was planed to be plugged in directly to my TV so that I would have been able to watch movies and such via XBMC and also Game on it...Therefore I had a dualboot with win7 (for gaming) and Ubuntu for server purposes, XMBC and what not. As this didn't work out that well I endet up with Arch on the SSD (no GUI) running a software RAID5 via mdadm with the 5 HHDs, so that I have 10TB total/8TB useable space accessable via Samba.

Usage:
I have some movies and series on it which I enjoy mostly on my TV via Plex and a Chromecast or on my Tablet in Bed. Another (if not the biggest) usecase is temporary storing stuff. I do some pc repair for friends and family as a hobby and got used to diskdump their whole storage (mostly 120-500GB) on my NAS before doing anything bigger on their pc's (and yes I ask them before doing so). I normally keep these backups for about 2-3 Months just in case they miss something/need to access their "old" data. I also carry it with me to some LAN parties with friends where it is used to exchange data.

Backup:
The server itself has no complete backups. I think the RAID5 prevents the biggest issues and for the rest I have seperate backups on external drives of really important stuff like pictures.

Additional info:
As you might have noticed the server is currently pretty full. I'm planing on replacing all HDDs with 4/5 TB ones (maybe WD Green's) sometime arround the end of this year. 

 

For those who wonder why there are sleeved sata cables, LED's and what not - This build was planed as an eye-catcher. It currently sits 1,5 Meters high on a IKEA-Kallax (2x4) shelf and looks down on my room...what in my oppinion looks pretty awesome

Photo's:

[alpenwasser]

- snip -

Very nice System, and nice to see a fellow Arch user in the list.

(although I am currently battling an update which completely breaks

my networking, yay!)

[Pidagad]

Very nice System, and nice to see a fellow Arch user in the list.

(although I am currently battling an update which completely breaks

my networking, yay!)

 

Thanks a lot  

 

I have to admit that I've only used Arch for a few months now. I started with Ubuntu 8.04 on my main rig back when it came out and sticked with Ubuntu till 13.10 (laziness wins). 

 

PS: Good luck with the update

[Raboo]

NAMGS

Network Attatched Multimedia Gaming Storage

 

Hardware

CASE: Bitfenix Prodigy (white + window side panel)

PSU: BeQuiet Straight Power 400W

MB: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX

CPU: AMD A6 5400K 

HS: Alpenföhn Brocken + BeQuiet Shadow Wings PWM 120mm

RAM: 4GB(2x2) DDR3 1333MHz @ 1600MHz

SSD: PNY XLR8 120GB

HDD: 5x 2TB Seagete ST2000DM001

Nice Server.

 

Man the Prodigy can hold a lot

[alpenwasser]

Thanks a lot

 

I have to admit that I've only used Arch for a few months now. I started with Ubuntu 8.04 on my main rig back when it came out and sticked with Ubuntu till 13.10 (laziness wins).

 

I have been using Arch since spring 2011, and so far I've been very

happy. I've only had two cases of serious breakage, one in summer

2011 and now this. Unfortunately I don't really have the time (and

motivation, TBH ) to invest hours upon hours into troubleshooting

at the moment, so I might just postpone the update, see if it's fixed

in a few weeks. Then again, things might get even worse...

[connorpiper]

Lol. I have two WD10EZEXs (2TBs total) and then one OS SSD. I have only used 325GB on my two HDDs.

Though I need a new flash drive. I think i'll go from USB 2.0 16GB to USB 3.0 32GB. It takes like 10 minutes to backup 10GBs with that thing.

 

If it's not on a server storing server data. What is the biggest space user?