[Advice] how to get started - home storage server

[heimdali]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

UnRAID is a software product, it's a hypervisor (KVM) and NAS combo. It's sort of like Proxmox.

 

Edit:

UnRAID really does benefit from cache devices. You'll have to forgive my lack or understanding about how UnRAID works because I don't use it (and wouldn't want to) but it uses a dedicated parity device and is more file based than block based so that is why performance is so much better with a cache device.

 

I'm really not a fan of UnRAID.

I didn´t say unraid wouldn´t benefit from cache on SSDs.  It´s conceivable that it will benefit from that when the conditions are such that it can.  It´s also conceivable that a hardware raid will benefit from SSD cache, yet only when the condidtions are such that it can.

 

I don´t know if I want to try unraid.  I´m tempted to, and perhaps I will because I happen to have hardware here I can do that with.  I only don´t feel that I would need it, though that might change when I try it.

 

Other than that, I do have hardware raid, and P410s probably don´t do JBOD (if unraid needs or prefers that).  How else would I connect 18+ disks some of which are SAS disks to a board that has only 6 SATA ports than with some sort of controller card which is reliable, sufficiently supported and doesn´t cost a fortune?

 

To be curious, how is the performance with unraid when you have 6 disks in a RAID5, another 8 in another RAID5 and 2 in a RAID1, plus 2 disks for the system in RAID1 --- and no SSDs that could be used as cache?  How do perform consumer SSDs under a sustained heavy load when used for a cache with unraid?

 

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, heimdali said:

I didn´t say unraid wouldn´t benefit from cache on SSDs.  It´s conceivable that it will benefit from that when the conditions are such that it can.  It´s also conceivable that a hardware raid will benefit from SSD cache, yet only when the condidtions are such that it can.

Yea I just mean it's far more beneficial to use a cache device than with most other things. I've got an LSI 9361-8i with FastPath and CacheCade upgrade and after trying out SSD caching didn't bother to continue to use it, one big downside is you can't move the array to another card unless it also has CacheCade feature enabled. 

[heimdali]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yea I just mean it's far more beneficial to use a cache device than with most other things. I've got an LSI 9361-8i with FastPath and CacheCade upgrade and after trying out SSD caching didn't bother to continue to use it, one big downside is you can't move the array to another card unless it also has CacheCade feature enabled. 

To use the LSI card or the SSD caching?

 

One good thing with Smart Arrays is that you can generally move the array to a different model.  Just be careful when the controller announces it has detected illegal drive moments ...

 

What I mean is that when you have a storage system that can deliver what is required of it and far more than that, you could still use an SSD cache or switch to a different storage system because it´s conceivable that using an SSD cache can be an improvement or because the different storage system may, in theory, be better, but what would be the benefit or the improvement?  The storage system would still meat and exceed the requirements, but at a higher cost, increased complexity and with more parts that can fail.  Sometimes, less is more.

 

Caching can also be futile.  I´ve seen recordings from IP cameras fill up a ZFS cache device which was a totally useless thing to do and only served to wear out the SSD and to block more relevant data from being cached.  I turned it off, but that´s again more complexity and more maintenance required.

 

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, heimdali said:

To use the LSI card or the SSD caching?

Nah for UnRAID because if you're using parity you really only ever get the performance of a single HDD.

 

9 minutes ago, heimdali said:

One good thing with Smart Arrays is that you can generally move the array to a different model.  Just be careful when the controller announces it has detected illegal drive moments ...

You can with LSI, but you can't move an array with SSD cache to a card that doesn't support it (it's a paid extra feature). The array import will fail.

 

Edit:

Also I've used basically every RAID card since SCSI Ultra Wide 2 from Adaptec, 3ware, LSI (and OEM IBM, Dell, HP when they used LSI), HPE etc. I don't miss the days of having to make sure you terminate the end of your SCSI chain . Now I mostly work with Netapp storage arrays, IBM/Lenovo V3700 and at the low end HPE DL380's with P841 + disk trays.

[heimdali]

So you specialized in storage?

 

Those terminators and cables used to be expensive, not to mention the disks and controllers.  I still have some perfectly good SCSI disks laying around and even a controller, but buying the cables and terminators which I don´t have anymore just isn´t worthwhile.  One could almost say that 12TB disks are really cheap

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, heimdali said:

So you specialized in storage?

 

Those terminators and cables used to be expensive, not to mention the disks and controllers.  I still have some perfectly good SCSI disks laying around and even a controller, but buying the cables and terminators which I don´t have anymore just isn´t worthwhile.  One could almost say that 12TB disks are really cheap

I'm a Systems Engineer so I do a lot of stuff: Commvault, VMware, Nutanix, SCCM, SCOM, SQL, RDS and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting too since we host a lot of VMs and physical servers for departments and I have to deal with their support vendors for their software.

 

One of the upsides and also downsides to being so heavily involved with backup infrastructure is I end up touching everything and then I also do configuration management and automation too so that's another see and touch everything role.

 

I work at a university in the IT department and we have 3 campuses spread across the country with a datacenter in each location, only two large ones really though and they are the DR site for each other.

 

3 hours ago, heimdali said:

One could almost say that 12TB disks are really cheap

Well it is if your using 9.2Gb 15K disks, 12TB is huge! 

[Salacious B Crum]

unRAID is a hybrid as I understand it and I'm by no means an expert on it but can tell you that the file system on my cache drives is set to btrfs and my array is set to xfs by default my current drive configuration is 4 4TB drives 1 parity and 3 data and the 2 cache ssd's, I had the two ssd's on hand I am unaware what role 2nd ssd actually plays other than there is an annoying issue that your array indicates an warning indicator when only 1 cache drive is installed by putting the second one in it corrected that so I don't see the warning but I must assume that it is redundancy that the second drive supports

[heimdali]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

I'm a Systems Engineer so I do a lot of stuff: Commvault, VMware, Nutanix, SCCM, SCOM, SQL, RDS and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting too since we host a lot of VMs and physical servers for departments and I have to deal with their support vendors for their software.

 

One of the upsides and also downsides to being so heavily involved with backup infrastructure is I end up touching everything and then I also do configuration management and automation too so that's another see and touch everything role.

 

I work at a university in the IT department and we have 3 campuses spread across the country with a datacenter in each location, only two large ones really though and they are the DR site for each other.

 

Well it is if your using 9.2Gb 15K disks, 12TB is huge! 

Cool, you have a fun job   And now I know whom I can ask stupid questions when I encounter a problem along these lines

 

They are large disks, 18 and 36GB.  Things have gone out of proportion: I have more RAM than that now.

 

12TB is still huge ... and it´s amazing that they can fit that much onto a 3.5" disk.  It´s a good thing because not having to run a lot of disks saves a lot of power.

 

Hm, thinking about it, the OP wanted to get 4x6TB for $1200.  The Seagate 12TB is about €439 here, and the HGSTs cost a bit more.  I´d go for the 12TB disks instead.  That doesn´t cost much more, gives me less disks that can fail, saves power and SATA connectors and is like more futureproof.  It makes more sense to me.

 

[heimdali]

4 hours ago, mrbilky said:

unRAID is a hybrid as I understand it and I'm by no means an expert on it but can tell you that the file system on my cache drives is set to btrfs and my array is set to xfs by default my current drive configuration is 4 4TB drives 1 parity and 3 data and the 2 cache ssd's, I had the two ssd's on hand I am unaware what role 2nd ssd actually plays other than there is an annoying issue that your array indicates an warning indicator when only 1 cache drive is installed by putting the second one in it corrected that so I don't see the warning but I must assume that it is redundancy that the second drive supports

Hybrid?

 

It makes sense, btrfs was designed with SSDs in mind, and using it for cache on SSDs is unlikely to hurt anything when the cache is redundant.

 

[Death Whisperer]

I don't want to delay my reply so...

sorry for the delayed message, work and all that.

 

this weekend I'll start experimenting with some HDs I have.

I intend to reply to those who wrote me. hopefully tomorrow I'll have some spare time.

thanks for the replies and info. you guys rock!