NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

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mattdev: Sep 30, 2004; Gentlemen of taste, refinement, luxury.

Women want us, men want to be us.

kloa posted:

http://www.synology.com/products/compare_spec.php?lang=us&product_id_list=76%2C84%2C62#compare_show_top

InternetJunky posted:

I just (~3 hours ago) placed an order for the DS411. The j version seems to skimp on RAM and the processor is a bit slower.

Thanks, guys.

I suppose that the only concern I still have is whether or not it will play all of my media files on the PS3. I use PS3 Media Server right now and it plays basically everything. Will the Synology still do this or do I need to still run PS3 Media Center for certain types of :filez:

# ? Dec 27, 2011 18:50

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# ? May 10, 2024 09:51

Evilkiksass: Jun 30, 2007; I am literally Bowbles IRL

DO A KEGSTAND BRAH

Do you need to hack the bios on the N40L as well to use the last sata port with AHCI? Does it just work as is? Can it be done at all since it is not the N36?

# ? Dec 27, 2011 22:11

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

Only differences between the N36L and N40L are:
1. RAM (amount)
2. CPU (different frequency)

Other parts are the same from the tear-downs I've read. So the BIOS should work just fine between both models.

# ? Dec 27, 2011 22:16

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

Has anyone had any major performance issues with the N40L's onboard NIC in *nix/bsd?
I'm running 5x 2TB WD20EARX drives and an 8GB flash for OS with Ubuntu 11.10 x64 installed. With either ZFS or MDADM arrays, over a gigabit network I get 6-7MB/sec transfer speeds!
I have flashed the BIOS to enable AHCI and I've run wdidle3.exe on all 5 drives.

Copying Windows Server 2008 R2 to USB now to see if it's a *nix driver issue with the onboard nic.

Obviously Erratic fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Dec 27, 2011

# ? Dec 27, 2011 22:40

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

I can't imagine the 0.2GHz difference between the N36L and N40L doing a whole lot for the performance of the microserver.

Obviously Erratic posted:

Possible onboard NIC issues.

Well, your speeds are a lot lower than the speeds I was getting (and you don't describe drop or anything else like Steakandchips and I both have reported?) Furthermore, the Linux drivers for the N36L work just fine as far as I know.
Try sticking FreeNAS on a 2GB usb disk instead of Win2008R2 since I imagine you want zfs in the first place - it's always possible to buy an Intel 82574L based NIC which should solve any NIC issues on FreeBSD at least.

Have you tried doing:

code:

time dd if=/dev/random of=/path/to/pool/dd.tst bs=1M count=1K

Followed by:

code:

time dd if=/path/to/pool/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=1M

If you do it, you might also want to open a second TTY and do "zpool iostat 1" as that'll give you real-time read and write speeds of each drive in your pool, refreshing every 1 second.

Tangentially related, if any of you don't have an ODD, you can fit 2 3.5" disks in the ODD bay and use the eSATA connector on the outside for a 6th disk (which will also be ACHI enabled by the bios update mentioned on the last page). With 6x3TB in ZRAID1, that's +10TB of usable diskspace
I've also seen a built-report where the guy put in a ACHI enabled SAS connector and put 4 disks in the ODD tray - which would give you +15TB (though the cost of building something like that with HDD prices being what they are, isn't easy to comprehend). I wish I could remember where I found that link..
_{I can't remember the exact number in the base 10 vs base 2 calculation, so I ballparked the numbers.}

EDIT: %darr: Nope, it had pictures and everything - and it was 4 3.5" drives (I know 4x2.5" will fit in an ODD tray, but those drives have less capacity and usually slower rpms). This was all about maximizing poolsize.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Dec 27, 2011

# ? Dec 27, 2011 22:49

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

D. Ebdrup posted:

I've also seen a built-report where the guy put in a ACHI enabled SAS connector and put 4 disks in the ODD tray - which would give you +15TB (though the cost of building something like that with HDD prices being what they are, isn't easy to comprehend). I wish I could remember where I found that link..
_{I can't remember the exact number in the base 10 vs base 2 calculation, so I ballparked the numbers.}

Possibly this one?:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038049739&postcount=468

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:05

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

D. Ebdrup posted:

EDIT: %darr: Nope, it had pictures and everything - and it was 4 3.5" drives (I know 4x2.5" will fit in an ODD tray, but those drives have less capacity and usually slower rpms). This was all about maximizing poolsize.

Yep, seen that one before. He was laying them on top of each other, horizontally. So four 3.5" fit in there. It was a tight squeeze, I remember that.

E: Found it:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037301406&postcount=311

That the one?

Steakandchips fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 27, 2011

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:15

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

D. Ebdrup posted:

I can't imagine the 0.2GHz difference between the N36L and N40L doing a whole lot for the performance of the microserver.

Well, your speeds are a lot lower than the speeds I was getting (and you don't describe drop or anything else like Steakandchips and I both have reported?) Furthermore, the Linux drivers for the N36L work just fine as far as I know.
Try sticking FreeNAS on a 2GB usb disk instead of Win2008R2 since I imagine you want zfs in the first place - it's always possible to buy an Intel 82574L based NIC which should solve any NIC issues on FreeBSD at least.

Have you tried doing:
code:
time dd if=/dev/random of=/path/to/pool/dd.tst bs=1M count=1K
Followed by:
code:
time dd if=/path/to/pool/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=1M
If you do it, you might also want to open a second TTY and do "zpool iostat 1" as that'll give you real-time read and write speeds of each drive in your pool, refreshing every 1 second.

Thanks, I haven't tried the DD commands or the iostat command just yet - this was just real-world data transfers (mix between large and small files) and I seemed to be getting that speed pretty reliably.

I'm copying FreeNAS now and will give it a try - I really wanted to use Ubuntu as an all-in-one type server. File Server (ZFS) + SabNZBd + Sickbeard/Couchpotato so was steering clear of FreeNAS for the moment.

I'll report back soon!

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:20

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Steakandchips posted:

Yep, seen that one before. He was laying them on top of each other, horizontally. So four 3.5" fit in there. It was a tight squeeze, I remember that.

E: Found it:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037301406&postcount=311

That the one?

I recall it being on a blog, but I may be wrong. Also, those images aren't working for me at least (they're probably hosted on tinyimg).

Obviously Erratic posted:

Thanks, I haven't tried the DD commands or the iostat command just yet - this was just real-world data transfers (mix between large and small files) and I seemed to be getting that speed pretty reliably.

I'm copying FreeNAS now and will give it a try - I really wanted to use Ubuntu as an all-in-one type server. File Server (ZFS) + SabNZBd + Sickbeard/Couchpotato so was steering clear of FreeNAS for the moment.

I'll report back soon!

The dd commands and iostat will give you real-world speeds on the disk themselves.
How much memory do you have? Remember the golden rule of 1GB for every TB you have (so you'd need 10GB, unfortunately the HP Microserver in all flavors only support 8GB maximum).
FreeBSD is the way I'd recommend going in that case. Sure, when it comes right down to it, choosing between various Linux and Unix implementations is a matter of taste so go with what you decide - just know that FreeNAS is only a tiny part of what FreeBSD can do.

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:43

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

D. Ebdrup posted:

The dd commands and iostat will give you real-world speeds on the disk themselves.
How much memory do you have? Remember the golden rule of 1GB for every TB you have (so you'd need 10GB, unfortunately the HP Microserver in all flavors only support 8GB maximum).
FreeBSD is the way I'd recommend going in that case. Sure, when it comes right down to it, choosing between various Linux and Unix implementations is a matter of taste so go with what you decide - just know that FreeNAS is only a tiny part of what FreeBSD can do.

I'm running 8GB non-ECC DDR3 RAM.
I've fired up freeNAS and created my pool - copying a large file in and still getting exactly the same transfer speeds. What am I doing wrong?

Do I now go back and investigate my network? It's all running gigabit through a DGND3700 modem/router.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:50

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

It really does look and sound like it's not gigabit everywhere. Double check that poo poo.

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:52

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

D. Ebdrup posted:

I recall it being on a blog, but I may be wrong. Also, those images aren't working for me at least (they're probably hosted on tinyimg).

They are indeed on tinyimg. Rehosted the most salient one for your viewing pleasure:

# ? Dec 27, 2011 23:54

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

Fat good a hard drive does in a file server if there's no power or signal to it. Look close. I'll say that a Microserver can fit 4 3.5" disks in the hot swap bays and a 3.5" and 2.5" in the upper 5.25" bay comfortably and without modding the case.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 00:26

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

Steakandchips posted:

It really does look and sound like it's not gigabit everywhere. Double check that poo poo.

Hey, you were right!
My desktop copying to my Microserver is now hovering between 35 MB/Second to 40 MB/Second - this still seems a lot lower than others have mentioned.

Any clues as to why? All default config for FreeNAS - the only thing I can think is that maybe my BIOS flash didn't stick properly? These are "largish" files - 700MB to a gig.

EDIT: It's currently only utilising a max of about 50% of the gigabit link at the moment

Obviously Erratic fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Dec 28, 2011

# ? Dec 28, 2011 01:25

Minty Swagger: Sep 8, 2005; Ribbit Ribbit Real Good

Can the PSU handle all those drives without an issue? Its a little baby one isnt it?

# ? Dec 28, 2011 01:25

Galler: Jan 28, 2008

It's 150 watts and hard drives only pull 5-10 watts each. I would be a lot more concerned about temperature than power consumption.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 01:38

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Obviously Erratic posted:

Hey, you were right!
My desktop copying to my Microserver is now hovering between 35 MB/Second to 40 MB/Second - this still seems a lot lower than others have mentioned.

Any clues as to why? All default config for FreeNAS - the only thing I can think is that maybe my BIOS flash didn't stick properly? These are "largish" files - 700MB to a gig.

EDIT: It's currently only utilising a max of about 50% of the gigabit link at the moment

I currently get about 35-45MB/second using my onboard NIC on my ~~NIC~~ N36 without jumbo frames. So your mileage matches mine, roughly.

Two improvements possible.

1. Onboard NIC on the Microserver on FreeNAS is not as fast as a standalone NIC, as Debdrup mentioned earlier, and also has been known to drop connections. Switching to a standalone NIC will fix this.
2. Enable Jumbo frames, i.e. 9k MTU on all devices on the intranet, and it should speed it up.

Bear in mind I haven't tried 1. yet myself as I'm still waiting for delivery on it sometime this week, but I have excellent expectations given the huge amount of similar issues others have had (google this poo poo). I won't be doing 2. yet as my laptop doesn't support Jumbo frames (desktop and NAS do, but the laptop writes to the NAS all day long...).

Debdrup may have some input when he gets up!

BotchedLobotomy posted:

Can the PSU handle all those drives without an issue? Its a little baby one isnt it?

Yes, yes. People have been running 6 drives plus a low wattage PCI-E graphics card and another sata card off it, with no issues. It has enough juice, don't worry.

Steakandchips fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Dec 28, 2011

# ? Dec 28, 2011 02:16

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

Steakandchips posted:

I currently get about 35-45MB/second using my onboard NIC on my NIC without jumbo frames. So your mileage matches mine, roughly.

Two improvements possible.

1. Onboard NIC on the Microserver on FreeNAS is not as fast as a standalone NIC, as Debdrup mentioned earlier, and also has been known to drop connections. Switching to a standalone NIC will fix this.
2. Enable Jumbo frames, i.e. 9k MTU on all devices on the intranet, and it should speed it up.

Bear in mind I haven't tried 1. yet myself as I'm still waiting for delivery on it sometime this week, but I have excellent expectations given the huge amount of similar issues others have had (google this poo poo). I won't be doing 2. yet as my laptop doesn't support Jumbo frames (desktop and NAS do, but the laptop writes to the NAS all day long...).

Debdrup may have some input when he gets up!

Thanks dude, really helpful.
35-40MB/Sec should really be OK as long as it's sustainable. I'll be streaming media to XBMC over gigabit and that's really about all it'll be doing the majority of the time.
I'll definitely see if I can dig out a standalone NIC and slot it in - though I doubt I have a low-profile bracket (should be OK just for a quick test though)

# ? Dec 28, 2011 02:33

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Test XBMC first, before investing in a new NIC. I can stream 1080p content just fine from mine, with no drops etc as it doesn't even saturate 100Mbps ethernet, let alone GigE.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 02:44

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

Steakandchips posted:

Test XBMC first, before investing in a new NIC. I can stream 1080p content just fine from mine, with no drops etc as it doesn't even saturate 100Mbps ethernet, let alone GigE.

So, I ran "zpool iostat 1" and got this output;

code:

tank         131G  8.93T      0    136      0  15.8M
tank         131G  8.93T      0  2.01K      0   236M
tank         131G  8.93T      0      0      0      0

Except, I only have 7.13T pool? 5 x 2TB WD20EARX drives:

code:

root@oblivion:/tank/music# zpool status
  pool: tank
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:

        NAME                        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank                        ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1-0                  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee203de2b9c  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee205fd69e5  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee206074cf8  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee25b4bb4c2  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee25b52ab88  ONLINE       0     0     0

Is "zpool iostat" simply calculating the TOTAL size not including the parity? or have I done something wrong?

I've now managed to get it writing around 50MB/Sec which I'm pretty happy with for now, I might try tweaking ZFS a little and see what I can get out of it.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 09:40

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Obviously Erratic posted:

Is "zpool iostat" simply calculating the TOTAL size not including the parity?

Yes.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 09:45

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Obviously Erratic and Steakandchips posted:

about Microserver.

Yep, that's exactly the issue at hand with the NIC and FreeBSD. If you were to run those dd commands and do the math, you'd probably see +200MBps transfer rates on your disks due to the way zraid1 works (at least that's what I get).

Oh man, that image. That's exactly what I remember.

Well, 1080p isn't more than ~25Mbps (at least not with :files:, bluray disks are usually at 50Mbps, and the highest broadcast 1080p is from DVB-S2 at 35Mbps) - but the problem isn't as much the ability to saturate gigabit, it's that the connection will drop and it's really annoying having file transfers all over the place.

Regarding 9k jumbo frames, any device which is capable of doing it should be configured to do it - just because those devices will work with it just fine and any other device won't have any problems running at 1500 which is the default.

BotchedLobotomy posted:

Can the PSU handle all those drives without an issue? Its a little baby one isnt it?

As far as I know, yes - remember that the harddisks start up staggered so there isn't a huge drain on the PSU.

Obviously Erratic posted:

Benchmarking zfs with dd

Why would zpool iostat count the parity drive? You won't even be able to use the space on that drive anyway.
Are you only getting 50MBps on the dd transfers on the server itself? Try adding "conv=sync" to the first line.
Do those drives have 4k sectors? If so, you need to account for that when creating your zraid1.
Finally, what drives do you have in your desktop?

Also, I don't get why you guys are satisfied with just getting half speeds.
I demand maximum performance from what I've bought and built. :black101:

Thinking about it.. With casemodding (eg. making the shell of the microserver bigger), I think you could fit up to 10 drives in all utilizing the internal SATA port and the external eSATA port plus a JBOD SAS connector of some description (I don't think pci-express x1 had enough bandwidth for 4 disks though, so you can't fit 14 disks in it).

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Dec 28, 2011

# ? Dec 28, 2011 09:48

Gism0: Mar 20, 2003; huuuh?

There's also this bad boy..

http://andysworld.org.uk/2011/08/25/skynet-ssdsupersan-hp-proliant-microserver-with-a-6-bay-hot-plug-sata-drive-bay/

# ? Dec 28, 2011 10:19

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Gism0 posted:

There's also this bad boy..

http://andysworld.org.uk/2011/08/25/skynet-ssdsupersan-hp-proliant-microserver-with-a-6-bay-hot-plug-sata-drive-bay/

There is, but 2.5" drives don't have enough platters / disk density to compete with 3.5" drives, and to fit it you'd need a pci-express x4 4 port JBOD SATA/SAS(+breakout cable if SAS) controller.

Also, if he's not using the internal bays, why he doesn't just get 4x 3.5" to 2.5" and a 2x 2.5" drivebay to fit in a 5.25" tray, I don't know.
This guy must've been running FreeBSD 8.0.1-BETA2 or something earlier, as those had problems with istgt (the FreeBSD iscsi daemon) as that was fixed in -BETA3.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Dec 28, 2011

# ? Dec 28, 2011 11:37

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

D. Ebdrup posted:

Why would zpool iostat count the parity drive? You won't even be able to use the space on that drive anyway.
Are you only getting 50MBps on the dd transfers on the server itself? Try adding "conv=sync" to the first line.
Do those drives have 4k sectors? If so, you need to account for that when creating your zraid1.
Finally, what drives do you have in your desktop?

Also, I don't get why you guys are satisfied with just getting half speeds.
I demand maximum performance from what I've bought and built.

Unfortunately I'm running WD Green Drives in both the desktop and server. I was able to hit and sustain around 80mb/sec when transferring about 300gb of 1gb files.
I built and tested a pool with a shift=12 for the advanced format drives but didn't see any difference in performance so am now using a shift=9

My dd test on the server itself got 78mb/sec however I didnt try it with the "conv=sync" option.

# ? Dec 28, 2011 11:58

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Obviously Erratic posted:

Unfortunately I'm running WD Green Drives in both the desktop and server. I was able to hit and sustain around 80mb/sec when transferring about 300gb of 1gb files.
I built and tested a pool with a shift=12 for the advanced format drives but didn't see any difference in performance so am now using a shift=9

My dd test on the server itself got 78mb/sec however I didnt try it with the "conv=sync" option.

What does "diskinfo -v ada0" report for sectorsize? Should tell you whether they're 4k sector drives or not - I believe they are though, so just build the pool with ashift=12 if that's the case. It's good practice, and while there may be other factors limiting the speed right now, you definitely should be able to manage +200MBps if the pool is setup properly and everything is running as it should.

Did you run the dd test with ashift=12 or ashift=9?
Please don't do any benchmarking with file transfers from the server to your computer or the other way around, use the two dd commands for every test - that eliminates the NIC/router/switching/lack of jumbo frames/whatever else might be wrong completely.

The conv=sync just pads input blocks to the input buffer size with spaces.

Here are my speeds with 4x HD204UI 4k sector drives
_{I'm using /dev/zero because the CPU isn't very fast when it comes to generating random data, I've added the conversion to MBps}

code:

[debdrup@nerd-nas] ~# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/storage/dd.tst bs=4096 count=1M conv=sync
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes transferred in 35.596464 secs (120657133 bytes/sec, 115.07 MBps)
[debdrup@nerd-nas] ~# time dd if=/mnt/storage/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=4096
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes transferred in 8.440626 secs (508844631 bytes/sec, 485.27 MBps)

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Dec 28, 2011

# ? Dec 28, 2011 12:23

Obviously Erratic: Oct 17, 2008; Give me beauty or give me death!

D. Ebdrup posted:

Here are my speeds with 4x HD204UI 4k sector drives
_{I'm using /dev/zero because the CPU isn't very fast when it comes to generating random data, I've added the conversion to MBps}
code:
[debdrup@nerd-nas] ~# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/storage/dd.tst bs=4096 count=1M conv=sync
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes transferred in 35.596464 secs (120657133 bytes/sec, 115.07 MBps)
[debdrup@nerd-nas] ~# time dd if=/mnt/storage/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=4096
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes transferred in 8.440626 secs (508844631 bytes/sec, 485.27 MBps)

So, here is how I look with Ubuntu 11.10 x64 with raidz1 in ashift=12:

code:

root@oblivion:~# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/tank/media/dd.tst bs=4096 count=1M conv=sync                                         
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 23.4945 s, 183 MB/s

root@oblivion:~# time dd if=/tank/media/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=4096
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 6.90671 s, 622 MB/s

Those numbers look good, yeah?
ZFS compression & dedup off, sync=standard.

Obviously Erratic fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Dec 29, 2011

# ? Dec 29, 2011 00:15

Wicaeed: Feb 8, 2005

Let's say I was semi-curious about fooling around with some ZFS storage, but only had an old as bones PowerEdge 2600 w/1TB worth of 10k U320 SCSI Harddrives in it, could I possibly install something that would run ZFS on it?

# ? Dec 29, 2011 02:14

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

Wicaeed posted:

Let's say I was semi-curious about fooling around with some ZFS storage, but only had an old as bones PowerEdge 2600 w/1TB worth of 10k U320 SCSI Harddrives in it, could I possibly install something that would run ZFS on it?

will mostly depend on the disk controller.

# ? Dec 29, 2011 02:37

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Wicaeed posted:

Let's say I was semi-curious about fooling around with some ZFS storage, but only had an old as bones PowerEdge 2600 w/1TB worth of 10k U320 SCSI Harddrives in it, could I possibly install something that would run ZFS on it?

If you just want to gently caress around with it to learn ZFS and not to store any data, you can just use a VM and install Solaris or BSD. You can use a flat file as a block device to make your pools with. I'm not sure about BSD, but I know in Solaris you can use mkfile to make a sparse file, so without taking up any space you could have 10 2TB drives to gently caress around with.

# ? Dec 29, 2011 03:39

Dilbert As FUCK: Sep 8, 2007; by Cowcaster; Pillbug

Has Freenas 8 gotten any better? I really like 7, but I need some DRBD support soon and last time I tried 8 isci kept loving up and esxi would not attach it. I know openfiler has it but would like to stay with Freenas unless they are keeping that terrible buggy/slow web interface they put in 8

Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Dec 29, 2011

# ? Dec 29, 2011 03:41

T.C.: Feb 10, 2004; Believe.

I've been looking into different network storage solutions. Currently I have some critical data automatically backed up to an external twice a week and do a full system backup of my non-OS non-application data every couple of months.

This is a giant pain in the rear end, plus I've got two machines and a stupidly set up sharing arrangement for media between them that I'd like to rectify.

I've looked into some of the solutions and, like when I originally looked into doing this a couple of years back, am still not entirely happy with what's out there, but it's gotten better.

Just for context, not having to gently caress around too much is worth more to me than a few hundred bucks.

Windows Home Server looks like it's about to crash and burn without HP being on board and the removal of Drive Extender. This actually really annoys me, because it seemed like a good concept and drive extender was the killer app that really sold me on it. Who wouldn't want a multi disk setup that lets you use all different types of disks and add and remove drives mostly at will? I'm still tempted to say 'gently caress it' and buy a version of this that supports drive extender.

The ZFS solutions look neat, but while I'm sure I could get it working, I could end up in a situation where I could have an application issue and can't fix it without an idiotic amount of screwing around because I'm not familiar enough with the operating system. I used to screw around with Linux and BSD and things, but I just don't have the time or interest anymore that I did when I was a teenager. I'm tempted to buy one of the pre-setup systems but I'd be concerned that I might get into a situation in two years where I have a drive failure, have a problem pop up with rebuilding the array and don't understand enough about the underlying concepts of the OS to properly troubleshoot it.

So I'm likely left looking at something like the Synology stuff. They look relatively full featured within the limitations of RAID and seem like they're pretty much plug and play. Can I throw a wireless adapter in one of these things, toss it in a closet and let it do it's thing after I've set it up? Say in five years the actual NAS hardware fails (RAID controller, motherboard, or something else not worth replacing in this kind of prebuilt appliance setup) and I can't replace it in kind. Am I going to have trouble recovering my RAID array on a different hardware setup?

# ? Dec 29, 2011 06:22

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Obviously Erratic posted:

Those numbers look good, yeah?

Those numbers are just fine - are you still getting slow NIC file transfer speeds between the server and your desktop? If so (and you want to stay with Ubuntu), try upgrading to the latest firmware and drivers for your NIC.

Wicaeed posted:

Let's say I was semi-curious about fooling around with some ZFS storage, but only had an old as bones PowerEdge 2600 w/1TB worth of 10k U320 SCSI Harddrives in it, could I possibly install something that would run ZFS on it?

The RAID controller is a PERC4/Di and the drive controller is a LSI Logic 53C1030, so assuming those controllers can use disks in JBOD (not all PERC controllers can, in which case you just add however many disks you have in seperate RAID0s.

Corvettefisher posted:

Has Freenas 8 gotten any better? I really like 7, but I need some DRBD support soon and last time I tried 8 isci kept loving up and esxi would not attach it. I know openfiler has it but would like to stay with Freenas unless they are keeping that terrible buggy/slow web interface they put in 8

FreeNAS 8.0.2 is every bit as stable and fast as you can want (even the webui is no longer slow). iSCSI works (the problem you had got fixed in 8.0.1-BETA3 as I recall). The only thing missing is the extendable add-ons FreeNAS 0.7 had, but that's supposedly coming in FreeNAS 8.1 or 8.2 which should be out shortly after newyears.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Dec 29, 2011

# ? Dec 29, 2011 10:58

Scuttle_SE: Jun 2, 2005; I like mammaries; Pillbug

I'm looking into getting the Synology DS411+II, looks like a solid machine with some neat features (iSCSI, rsync-target and stuff).

From what I can read the box comes with 2GB of ram. Is this upgradeable? Would be nice to have 4GB right from the start...

# ? Dec 29, 2011 12:17

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Scuttle_SE posted:

I'm looking into getting the Synology DS411+II, looks like a solid machine with some neat features (iSCSI, rsync-target and stuff).

From what I can read the box comes with 2GB of ram. Is this upgradeable? Would be nice to have 4GB right from the start...

Where did you read it comes with 2GB? They were lying bastards.
It comes with 1GB SODIMM DDR2 PC26400 800MHz memory, but can be upgraded to 2GB judging from various posts on Synology's forum. Synology DSM 3.2 is plenty feature rich (there's almost no, if any, difference between hardware versions except amount of drives it can handle, cpu and memory).

I guess the only way to get more out of it would be to install a Linux or Unix flavor on it (since it's a dualcore amd64-capable ATOM D510 at 1.8GHz).
However, if you do that you run into the problem that you really can't run zraid1 on it as 2GB is too little memory (unless you don't plan on putting very big drives in it). 1 GB for every 1 TB of diskspace, including parity drive.
There are of course other software raid solutions, but you'd have to google something like UnRAID or whatever else you end up finding.

EDIT: ↓ I'm well aware of it as I have two Synology boxes here at home that I use for network backup.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Dec 29, 2011

# ? Dec 29, 2011 14:27

T.C.: Feb 10, 2004; Believe.

D. Ebdrup posted:

I guess the only way to get more out of it would be to install a Linux or Unix flavor on it (since it's a dualcore amd64-capable ATOM D510 at 1.8GHz).

The Synology software, DSM, is a Linux flavour. It's built on the Linux kernel and you can Telnet or SSH into a shell if you'd prefer to be more hands on than the web interface.

# ? Dec 29, 2011 14:54

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

SubCrid TC posted:

Windows Home Server looks like it's about to crash and burn without HP being on board and the removal of Drive Extender. This actually really annoys me, because it seemed like a good concept and drive extender was the killer app that really sold me on it. Who wouldn't want a multi disk setup that lets you use all different types of disks and add and remove drives mostly at will? I'm still tempted to say 'gently caress it' and buy a version of this that supports drive extender.

I'm right there with you. I've been using WHS for years, and even with my microATX board's 4x SATA port limit it's been great. You can jump through some hoops and get 3TB drives working on it, though it's stuck on 32-bit, so no decent RAM levels. When I build a new computer I'll likely do a server reinstall onto my old desktop board, which will net me a better processor and more SATA ports. It really is a good solution if you can deal with the limitations.

# ? Dec 29, 2011 16:10

Scuttle_SE: Jun 2, 2005; I like mammaries; Pillbug

D. Ebdrup posted:

Where did you read it comes with 2GB? They were lying bastards.
It comes with 1GB SODIMM DDR2 PC26400 800MHz memory, but can be upgraded to 2GB judging from various posts on Synology's forum. Synology DSM 3.2 is plenty feature rich (there's almost no, if any, difference between hardware versions except amount of drives it can handle, cpu and memory).

Hmm...the cpu is a Atom D525, and according to Intels website it is capable of 4GB, or am I completely misreading stuff?

# ? Dec 29, 2011 18:07

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

necrobobsledder posted:

about awesome fileserver

Going through all of that again, because I'm not going to need quite that many spindles in the forseeable future...any reason not to use the on-board SATA ports exclusively, instead of starting off with the LSI card?

# ? Dec 29, 2011 18:37

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# ? May 10, 2024 09:51

Minty Swagger: Sep 8, 2005; Ribbit Ribbit Real Good

SubCrid TC posted:

Windows Home Server looks like it's about to crash and burn without HP being on board and the removal of Drive Extender. This actually really annoys me, because it seemed like a good concept and drive extender was the killer app that really sold me on it. Who wouldn't want a multi disk setup that lets you use all different types of disks and add and remove drives mostly at will? I'm still tempted to say 'gently caress it' and buy a version of this that supports drive extender.

Its a niche raid system not many people use (license costs money vs free) but UNRAID does this really well. Performance isnt mind blowing, but its stable and modular enough (if your whole pc exploded leaving 1 or 2 drives left, those drives can be read in any linux environment) that it keeps me feeling safe(er)

I still keep a big beefy HDD at the office I mirror the REALLY important stuff to, because a badass raid setup wont do much when it gets stolen or there's a flood/fire/whatever.

# ? Dec 29, 2011 19:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

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