HUGE headaches with FlexRAID's tRAID

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

Have you researched whether you can replace one RocketRAID with a newer model? Or would I have to hunt down another 3540?

Not really, I have two already. But I have the 2 series (2320) which is still being made as far as I know. I know their available on Amazon and NewEgg. I was considering moving to 6GB cards though.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I'm just throwing my 2 cents in here because I've had this debate with myself many times over the years. For me, it came down to the fact that if the array fails for some reason, beyond the level of failure (i.e. 1 drive in RAID5, 2 drives in RAID6), I lose everything in the array, not just the data on the failed drive. The same possibility exists if the HW RAID card itself fails and a replacement fails to recognize the array. Additionally, if an expansion or contraction of the array fails, you likely lose the entire array. ...

Exactly. That IS why I use mirrors and pull the slave after replication. You can always put the drive in a PC and recover your data. I am NOT going to re-rip my movies again, to put it bluntly - that really sucked.

I do however keep the "Active Data" on a fully powered mirror and and do incemental backups to an off server drive for my wifes bis. All non movie data is stored like this, but that is a limited size and easily managed. Movies are not easily managed or restored. JMO.

With mirrors you can also keep a third drive around and rotate it through your pair to have an active back up if needed.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by IVB

IIRC you're just JBOD right? How is "data easily recoverable"? Isn't it gone forever upon death?

I'm currently at 3.5TB of data so I quickly ordered a 5th 4TB so I can copy it all to that. I'm most likely going to go the RAID 10 route myself, i'll start with 4x4TB to have 8TB of space, but then just pop in drives 2 at a time.

Easy as in I just have to rip what's missing. As opposed to rebuilding the entire array with the possibility of it failing. Then everything is gone. I'd rather not mess with that.

Let me know how the RAID 10 goes. I'm pretty interested in that.

[Skirge01]

@IVB: If you want to continue using tRAID while working through your issues, you could directly access the drives, bypassing the array piece. Once the array is started, you'll see the "new" drives (not the offline ones) in disk management. If you add a path to those using UNC or drive letters, you can write to the individual disks outside the array and the parity will still get calculated.

[stanger89]

You guys are making me glad I run unRAID

[Skirge01]

If I knew Linux, I probably would've gone that route, too. The learning curve there is just too steep for my blood. When trouble hits, I don't want to also deal with the fact that I have no clue how to do things in the OS itself.

[stanger89]

You just think the glass is half a vacuum that will explode and cover you in a hail of glass shards don't you.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You just think the glass is half a vacuum that will explode and cover you in a hail of glass shards don't you.

Pretty funny comic. Thanks for the read! But, if you're implying that I'm just expecting the worst, you're mistaken. This is coming from first-hand experience with Linux. Starting with my days using RedHat, through my years of hacking Tivos, to my forays into VMware, the Linux side of things has always been the biggest wall I hit. Simply editing a conf file under VMware is ridiculously difficult. It took me nearly 2 hours to figure out how to bring up vi and edit a single line. I spend more time researching commands, syntax, and permissions than actually addressing the issue. If MS ever catches up to VMware, I'll switch at my first opportunity.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Pretty funny comic. Thanks for the read! But, if you're implying that I'm just expecting the worst, you're mistaken. This is coming from first-hand experience with Linux. Starting with my days using RedHat, through my years of hacking Tivos, to my forays into VMware, the Linux side of things has always been the biggest wall I hit. Simply editing a conf file under VMware is ridiculously difficult. It took me nearly 2 hours to figure out how to bring up vi and edit a single line. I spend more time researching commands, syntax, and permissions than actually addressing the issue. If MS ever catches up to VMware, I'll switch at my first opportunity.

I just use WinSCP to edit my ESXi configuration files. And the only one I have to edit that way is the passthru.map file (my spelling is undoubtedly off). The VMX files can be edited from the GUI client on my Windows laptop. I you want to know how I can show you when I get home. You have other ESXi files that you edit?

[panteragstk]

As much as I like my current setup I'm still toying with the idea of running ESXi and setting up multiple OS's that will do what I want (unRAID, Server 2012, Squid, whatever else) so I can avoid the multiple box issue.

Any places I can get some good reading on how to accomplish my goal?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

As much as I like my current setup I'm still toying with the idea of running ESXi and setting up multiple OS's that will do what I want (unRAID, Server 2012, Squid, whatever else) so I can avoid the multiple box issue.

Any places I can get some good reading on how to accomplish my goal?

Quite frankly I used the Atlas thread on the unRAID forums to setup my ESXi boxes. He goes into details of unRAID and WHS2011 setup if I remember correctly. As well as how to use ISO's stored on the ESXi datastore drive and how to RDM drives to a VM (not the preferred way to get drives into unRAID).

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Quite frankly I used the Atlas thread on the unRAID forums to setup my ESXi boxes. He goes into details of unRAID and WHS2011 setup if I remember correctly. As well as how to use ISO's stored on the ESXi datastore drive and how to RDM drives to a VM (not the preferred way to get drives into unRAID).

Thanks. I'll check it out.

[Skirge01]

It's actually quite easy to get ESXi up and running. Even as a Linux novice, I found it quite simple. Tips: You probably don't want to go beyond ESXi 5.1 & install ESXi onto a flash drive. If you have any specific questions, start a new thread and I'm sure the handful of us running it can get you going. For anything you intend to use PCI passthru on, ensure it's supported (e.g. M1015).

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

If I knew Linux, I probably would've gone that route, too. The learning curve there is just too steep for my blood. When trouble hits, I don't want to also deal with the fact that I have no clue how to do things in the OS itself.

just curious, but I do not know linux beyond just a very few commands (ls, cp, rm, cd, ifconfig, I think that is pretty much the sum total of my Linux knowledge...) and I had no issues setting up unRAID

you just stick the unRaid image on a flash drive,
use a text editor (on your windows box) to setup a static IP if you are into that sort of thing...
boot from flash and then use the web gui to setup the array and stuff...
not really anything to be done from the console port, unless you are really into that sort of thing...

what this big learning curve? what am I missing?

but anyway, that is all irrelevant, as IVB is a masochist and went with Flexraid cause he really likes pain... so is his tRaid issues all sorted yet?

[IVB]

for me, its not quite so simple. I pay $0.40/KWh, so having a 2nd machine just lor linux is VERY expensive. Even having an extra 75W in power, 24 hours/day is $22/month. I need a Windows based server for other things, so if I can get 1 machine to do it all i'd vastly prefer it.

I bought the tRAID license but I don't yet know what I'm going to do. I can't get the tRAID service to start upon a reboot, I need to manually do it. But the advantage of SW RAID is powerful, I can access any drive in the pool from any machine so even a 2-disk failure in RAID5 which is normally fatal for a HW based setup is mitigated, you only lose the data on those drives. To me, thats basically a $180 insurance against drive loss impacts from JBOD, which some of you are doing. (Which sounds pyschotic btw).

At least I can now predictably, albeit manually, bring up the service upon reboot. I'm going to try plugging away at getting it working for another 1-2 weeks before giving up. I did buy a 5th 4TB so I can just copy off the media files to that one, and do a HW-based 12TB (4x4TB) RAID5 or 8TB (2x2x4TB) RAID10.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IVB

for me, its not quite so simple. I pay $0.40/KWh, so having a 2nd machine just lor linux is VERY expensive. Even having an extra 75W in power, 24 hours/day is $22/month.

FYI:
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5133.0

25W system (not counting HDDs and controllers since that's common)

That's basically what got me past the hangup of multiple systems, and what I'm running.

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

for me, its not quite so simple.

you do know that we aren't judging you? so no need to try and rationalize your liking of pain...
some people like to juggle geese
whatever turns you on or to each their own and stuff...

Originally Posted by IVB

Even having an extra 75W in power, 24 hours/day is $22/month.

just a thought, but have you ever considered trying to build a slightly more power efficient server?
my unraid server is only ~65W during boot up when all there drives are spun up, idles around 25W when the drives are sleepy, and ~30W when streaming a movie off one of the drives...
of course, those numbers are from when I first built it with 500GB and 750GB drives, now that my drives are mostly 3TB with a couple 2 TB thrown in, not sure how that effects the power? I would guess the newer drives are somewhat better power wise than the old ones? but I haven't stuck my killowat on it since upgrading, so not really sure...
also, I only have 6 HDD's, I meant to have more, I planned on more, but so far, HDD capacity has increased faster then my storage needs...
maybe having an add on card for more sata ports is what gets you to the 75W range?


(note anything that seems somewhat sarcastic in the above post should probably have a or after it... it just seemed somewhat more fun without them kind of like a mini Trolling IVB, but all in good fun, sorta thing)

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

... if I can get 1 machine to do it all i'd vastly prefer it.
...

I did just that with 2008R2, I am running Hyper-V. It is alot more user friendly when it comes to VM's. There just isn't an real good pass through for USB/PCi PCB's. So dong capture in Sage is not an option, but if you can use IPTV, like a Pirme your in.

I have an D525 based atom eeePC for HA, and my R2 server in the my wireing closet and thats it as far as PC's go. I am running 7Mc in a VM, using two Primes. Along with other needed VM's as well. I have 12vm's in total and 6-7 runnig full time on a SupperMicro MBD-X9DRL-3F-O MB w/two 2620's and 64GB ram.

Vmware might be a better choice to be a catch all. But even that has it's limitations. For over a year now, that server has been great.

[IVB]

As skybolt just said, if I can do this with 1 machine, it's by definition greener than 2 machines. Plus this snipped on unRAID makes me leery about even going down that route.

Originally Posted by reggie14

Yeah, my unRAID box is separate. The only alternative would be to virtualize it.

An unRAID box would be cheap. Hard drives will be the dominating cost. Other than that, the box itself could be relatively cheap.

That being said, I have very little confidence in the unRAID developer at this point. It took him way to long to get unRAID v5 out the door, and he's been very slow to get maintenance releases out to patch bugs. Community development has died down, which is kind of a big deal due top the level at which unRAID relies on that community for core functionality (e.g., pre-clearing, UPS support, etc.)

If I was picking something now, I probably wouldn't pick unRAID. I'm not sure whether I'd pick up a QNAP or build a Windows Server.

A QNAP is stupidly expensive, and given that my current box worked fine with HW-based RAID I see no real reason to increase complexity. The only reason to consider tRAID/FlexRAID is to hedge against HW controller failure.

At 4TB drives, I'm also not willing to JBOD/avoid RAID. I can't handle re-ripping this many DVD/BDs. Hell, i'm pissed I ripped my 400 CDs into mp3 format but that was back when HDs were big $$ and I had very little $$, not about to re-rip them into flac/etc now.

Latest thought is to disable the raid pool, play disk tetris since at 4TB drives its pretty easy, and use FlexRAID to generate parity checks behind the scenes.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IVB

As skybolt just said, if I can do this with 1 machine, it's by definition greener than 2 machines. Plus this snipped on unRAID makes me leery about even going down that route.

FWIW, 5.0 "went gold" on August 28th:
http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...?topic=29096.0

Since then there have been 4 point maintenance releases (up to 5.0.4 on 12/7):
http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...?topic=30657.0

so I'm not really concerned about the developer. 5.0 did take a long time to come out, I have no idea what took so long there but things seem to be running as normal now over there.

Now all that said, and as much as I really do like unRAID, I probably agree with you IVB more than you might think. I've had two "major" issues with my unRAID box. The first one was entirely my fault, I shut down the box uncleanly (I don't actually remember why) that took me a good day or so to figure out and get everything back up. But I did get everything back up. Second is I discovered yesterday I've got a drive that's got something funky going that I'm debugging now.

So all my "Go for unRAID" cheering aside I find myself again looking for simplicity.

Frankly I don't trust FlexRAID at all, I mean it's probably fine, but I had a bad experience with the developer long ago (asked about writing to a pool and was told that was a stupid thing and to go pound sand basically), and then the developer has just up and disappeared, and is totally not a class act trying to start fights with unRAID's developer/users over on AVSForum.

On top of that the solution is just not elegant, just seems like a bandaid parity and pooling on top of Windows and all.

Where am I going? Well, I guess I'm falling back to I really miss my ReadyNAS. That thing was great, it was just there and it just worked. There was real support there two, not just some guy and a forum (no offense to Tom/unRAID or FLEXraid), all running on standardized hardware so no weird hardware compatibility gremlins. Just buy disks off the compatibility list and you're set.

To that end, Synology is looking rather attractive now, specifically their 8 bay unit.