HUGE headaches with FlexRAID's tRAID

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by stanger89

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

Yes and your still not "safe", no redunentcy. Period.

I got burned once by RAID5 and I am not going back there ever. Unless I mirror a raid system, which is my next move I believe. I actually have enough disks to do it now, it's just off loading my current store to be able to set that up. That setup with soares is the only "Safe" route you can actually go. IMO.

I have over 1000 movies stored, and I am not going to re-rip them ever agian. That really wasn't fun and took almost a full year to catch back up.

[IVB]

Dumb question: With either Synology or ReadyNAS, aren't you prone to the same HW controller failure I am with my RocketRAID? If the controller dies, you'd need to replace it with the same exact thing.

Although that now brings up an interesting question; my mobo has built-in RAID1. Why don't I just use that and create several RAID1 volumes?

[jerryt]

Synology spins all the dicks up to access one file

[IVB]

Well, stick a fork in me.

[stanger89]

Well, maybe cooler heads will prevail and I'll stick with unRAID....

Originally Posted by Skybolt

Yes and your still not "safe", no redunentcy. Period.

I don't follow, it's got the option of RAID 5, which is redundancy. In addition to that there's RAID 6 which supports two drive failures, and their hybrid RAID which I believe can also be set up for 2 drive redundancy.

I got burned once by RAID5 and I am not going back there ever. Unless I mirror a raid system, which is my next move I believe. I actually have enough disks to do it now, it's just off loading my current store to be able to set that up. That setup with soares is the only "Safe" route you can actually go. IMO.

I have over 1000 movies stored, and I am not going to re-rip them ever agian. That really wasn't fun and took almost a full year to catch back up.

I understand the desire to make things bulletproof, but at the same time I have to remind myself that its really just for convenience/media, so I have to be realistic. I mean to be truly safe, what would you have to do?

Well something like two local servers each with redundant storage (RAID-6 or RAID-10), mirrored, then all duplicated online either with a service or a third offsite server. But lets be real, that's completely impractical for many TB of media storage. Guess it becomes a question of where you draw the line. I guess for me it's at controller/device failures those are just too unlikely. And I've got all my irreplaceable data (digital photos, etc) backed up on Crashplan.

IVB, I haven't actually dug into Synology but I know my old ReadyNAS just used "standard" linux file systems and you could read/mount those drives in any linux box.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by IVB

Although that now brings up an interesting question; my mobo has built-in RAID1. Why don't I just use that and create several RAID1 volumes?

Unless things have changed since my last mobo-based RAID1 (10+ years), the array will only be recognized by the same controller. Once, I was able to use a more recent version of the dead mobo's controller to recognize the array on a new mobo, but I never had that luck a second time. Ever since then, I have avoided HW RAID.

stanger89 is right, though, you have to draw the line somewhere. For me, it's a cost:convenience balancing act. How much money am I willing to spend versus how much time I'm willing to waste re-ripping, re-recording, obtaining missed episodes, etc. Critical items are protected by parity, as well as duplicated to other drives. What I find completely unacceptable is the possibility of losing everything on every single drive in the array. With SW RAID, this is nigh-impossible.

[BobPhoenix]

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. 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.

My unRAID and Win7 x64 VMs are on the same box. I do have 3 ESXi servers. 1 Win7 VM and 1 unRAID VM on each. The Win7 VMs have a SageTV server on each. I use PCI pass through for the tuners for SageTV and PCI pass through for the HDD controller (IBM M1015) for unRAID.

[IVB]

Man I really need to learn about that VM thing. I know its not hard stuff, but real life has me hopping, and there's already a backlog of things to do.

BTW I copied my 3.7TB of data off the array onto a 4TB disk, and reconfigured the 4x4TB into a 12TB RAID5 on the RocketRAID this morning. Did a low-level format since one of the disks was unallocated (FlexRAID rule). Its been 10-11 hours, only 42% done.

But on the upside, literally the second I created the RocketRAID array (using Windows web UI) the OS recognized it, so its already a step up from my FlexRAID/tRAID unreliable experience. I'll add the 5th 4TB as a hot-spare to the RAID5 once the data is back on the array, so I can lose 2 drives and still be fine. In 5 years I've never lost more than 1 drive at a time, and when that happens I overnight a new drive from Newegg so its only exposed for a few days, but this'll even eliminate that.

One thing I would like to point out in Flex's defense that tRAID is only a 2 month old product, so I might look at this again in 12-24 months when its more mature. (Esp given that I *own* the $100 perpetual license). But the developer has got to stop being so aloof.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by IVB

One thing I would like to point out in Flex's defense that tRAID is only a 2 month old product, so I might look at this again in 12-24 months when its more mature. (Esp given that I *own* the $100 perpetual license).

I was going to try tRAID I have a license for RAID-F but just didn't like it. I knew part of the problem was a browser setting but didn't want to spend the time finding a solution. In order to click on an icon in the GUI I had to click about half way between the icons.

But the developer has got to stop being so aloof.

This was another reason I didn't go ahead and get the tRAID license. I get tired of reading all the same questions over and over again but at the same time I don't like the RTFM posts either.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

... Although that now brings up an interesting question; my mobo has built-in RAID1. Why don't I just use that and create several RAID1 volumes?

THE reason to use an off MB card is what Skirge01 stated, you can take the card to any pc and still see your volumes. So if you're leary about HW failures then any MB failure would take out your raid as well. I would stick with your Rocket Raid card.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I was going to try tRAID I have a license for RAID-F but just didn't like it. I knew part of the problem was a browser setting but didn't want to spend the time finding a solution. In order to click on an icon in the GUI I had to click about half way between the icons.

I remember this issue and it was quite annoying. It didn't occur in Chrome, if I recall correctly, but I wasn't going to switch browsers for one program.

This was another reason I didn't go ahead and get the tRAID license. I get tired of reading all the same questions over and over again but at the same time I don't like the RTFM posts either.

I actually don't believe I've personally seen much of that since tRAID has been released, but I do remember that back in the RAID-F days. The thing that still ticks me off is the arrogance of the developer. There seem to be two rules:

1. The developer is always right.
2. The user is always wrong.

That's something which really is unacceptable for someone trying to run a business. You don't belittle your users, let alone your paying customers.

The other annoyance is that there really isn't another solution out there, except for unRAID.

@IVB: Glad you got a solution that works for you. Do keep in mind that RocketRaid cards won't do pass-thru under ESXi, so if you need that, you'll need to see if Hyper-V supports them.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I remember this issue and it was quite annoying. It didn't occur in Chrome, if I recall correctly, but I wasn't going to switch browsers for one program.

Actually for me that WAS chrome never tried IE or Firefox for much the same reason.

I actually don't believe I've personally seen much of that since tRAID has been released, but I do remember that back in the RAID-F days. The thing that still ticks me off is the arrogance of the developer. There seem to be two rules:

1. The developer is always right.
2. The user is always wrong.

That's something which really is unacceptable for someone trying to run a business. You don't belittle your users, let alone your paying customers.

The other annoyance is that there really isn't another solution out there, except for unRAID.

@IVB: Glad you got a solution that works for you. Do keep in mind that RocketRaid cards won't do pass-thru under ESXi, so if you need that, you'll need to see if Hyper-V supports them.

That might not be true for all RocketRaid cards and OS's. I have RocketRaid 622's passed through to Win7 x64 VMs and a Sans Digital external drive enclosures on 2 different ESXi 5.0 servers. The third server is currently using an ASMEDIA 1061 card from MediaSonic to a 8 bay MediaSonic external enclosure passed through to Win7 x64 VM.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by stanger89

... I don't follow, it's got the option of RAID 5, which is redundancy. In addition to that there's RAID 6 which supports two drive failures, and their hybrid RAID which I believe can also be set up for 2 drive redundancy.

How is RAID 5/6 redundency? It gives you a level of drive failure protection but definetly not redundancy. Raid 1 (mirrored) is the only RAID redundancy there is, whether it's a pair of mirrored drives or a pair of RAID 5 arrays.

I understand the desire to make things bulletproof, but at the same time I have to remind myself that its really just for convenience/media, so I have to be realistic. I mean to be truly safe, what would you have to do?...

Bullet proof? not sure that's even possible. Ensureing you don't have to spend a year re-ripping your collection, well thats up to you. For me it's going to be mirrored RAID 5 arrays on the same Server and that's about as far as I will go, and thats a ways off at best.

I had an 8 disk array with a single hot spare. Went away for a long weekend, a fan died and over the course of four days three disks died, along with my 12T collection.

My only point here is that a RAID 5/6 array is not any more safe then a single hard. Hot spares are good, but not redundancy.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

... Do keep in mind that RocketRaid cards won't do pass-thru under ESXi, so if you need that, you'll need to see if Hyper-V supports them.

2008R2 supports Rocket Raid cards just fine, and Hyper-V runs on top of that. So you would set up your shares in the base OS and pass in drives if needed, otherwise just use the shares as you normaly would.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Actually for me that WAS chrome never tried IE or Firefox for much the same reason.

Interesting. Guess it was a case of YMMV. LOL!

That might not be true for all RocketRaid cards and OS's. I have RocketRaid 622's passed through to Win7 x64 VMs and a Sans Digital external drive enclosures on 2 different ESXi 5.0 servers. The third server is currently using an ASMEDIA 1061 card from MediaSonic to a 8 bay MediaSonic external enclosure passed through to Win7 x64 VM.

Apparently not. I tried a 620 and a 640 without any luck. Maybe it's just eSATA that works? If only there were a database of this kind of info. Their own HCL shows no RocketRaid cards at all.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Apparently not. I tried a 620 and a 640 without any luck. Maybe it's just eSATA that works? If only there were a database of this kind of info. Their own HCL shows no RocketRaid cards at all.

The 620 and 622 have the same chipset so I would think they would work. I have not tried it with a Linux VM just Win7. I have a 620 running in my N40L box and unRAID standalone so I know it will work with Linux but I've seen a lot of posts about how bad it is and lots of disconnects. That (lots of disconnects) is what I had with a Sil3132 eSata card and WHSv1 in pass through on ESXi (the preferred card many say for a Linux VM). Never tried the RocketRaid 622 with WHSv1 but expect the same or more problems as the Sil3132. I think because I'm using the RocketRaid 622 in JBOD mode with individual drives presented to Win7 OS that it is working better for me. SageTV is the only thing writing to the drives in my external cages and I'm using most free so I probably get less multi drive access then I otherwise would. That is probably helping me out as I get very few drops (1 every 3 months or so and has gone 9 months before a drop before). As to passing through to a VM in ESXi 5.0 the RR622 shows up as an unknown card with 2 devices. An IDE device and a RAID device. I pass one of the devices (the IDE one I believe but am not home to check for sure) and because it is an unknown device the parent in the device tree in ESXi is also selected. Win7 recognizes it as a RocketRaid card and installs drivers just fine. I guess I should note that the Win7 VMs do not BOOT from them they have a virtual boot drive on the datastore drive in ESXi. The RR622 only connects to my recording drives for SageTV.

[IVB]

What write speeds are you guys seeing on either the SW RAID or the VM/HW stuff?

I'm currently copying over data from my staging 4TB location to the RR3540 array, whereas I was getting 45Mbps with tRAID, i'm sustaining 160Mbps with the RR.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by IVB

What write speeds are you guys seeing on either the SW RAID or the VM/HW stuff?

I'm currently copying over data from my staging 4TB location to the RR3540 array, whereas I was getting 45Mbps with tRAID, i'm sustaining 160Mbps with the RR.

tRAID like unRAID will have writes in the 35 - 45 Mbps range. That is because there are 4 IO operations for each write being done (I'm assuming tRAID does a similar process to unRAID here). Basically - Read data sectors, Read corresponding parity sectors, Write data sectors & Write recalculated parity sectors. Your HW raid card stripes data across multiple drives so is able to achieve a much faster write even though it has to calculate and write parity while doing so. Fast writes are definitely not something unRAID is noted for. But I like the ability it has in that I only loose data for as many drives as have been dropped from the array. When I had a Raid5 HW card I lost an additional drive before the first drive was rebuilt and lost all my data on more than one occasion. If I had a transactional server that needed continuous up time and fast writes I would never consider tRAID or unRAID. I might still use a software raid like ZFS or a HW raid card for that. But for a backup server or media storage I just don't think you can beat the recoverability of non-stripped data with HDD failures.

[Boolah]

Have you guys considered SnapRAID? I recently went through the same debate with myself on how to protect large amounts of relatively static media without mirroring everything and came up against the same issues you're finding with F-RAID, tRAID and unRAID. I finally settled on SnapRAID and have been quite happy with it.

Pros:

• SnapRAID runs on Windows, Linux, OSX and FreeBSD
• You can use drives that are already filled with data when building the array
• Supports up to six parity drives (in versions > 5.0 Older version only support two parity drives)
• Drives can be pulled from the array and be used individually without any loss of data (either on the pulled drive or the drives remaining in the array)
• Protects against silent errors
• It's open source and free (GPL v3)

Cons:

• No GUI (there is a third-party GUI, but it hasn't been updated in a while)
• No real pooling (see the web site for details on the pooling provided)
• No included automation (you'll have to automate it yourself)

SnapRAID is strictly a snapshot RAID system, so it really won't be suitable for content that changes all the time. However, for protecting large amounts of relatively static content, it really works quite well. Moreover, it really is not that hard to use even without the GUI.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

How is RAID 5/6 redundency? It gives you a level of drive failure protection but definetly not redundancy. Raid 1 (mirrored) is the only RAID redundancy there is, whether it's a pair of mirrored drives or a pair of RAID 5 arrays.

It seems what you're calling redundancy, I'd call duplication. RAID-5 is redundant, it can survive a failure. Non redundant storage would be JBOD, spanning or RAID-0.

RAID-6 can support two disk failures.

Bullet proof? not sure that's even possible. Ensureing you don't have to spend a year re-ripping your collection, well thats up to you. For me it's going to be mirrored RAID 5 arrays on the same Server and that's about as far as I will go, and thats a ways off at best.

Well bulletproof is what we all want right? I mean we're all looking for the easiest/best/"most" protection for our effort we can get right. But that was my point, bulletproof is highly impractical (if not impossible) so we each have to decide where to draw the line.

I had an 8 disk array with a single hot spare. Went away for a long weekend, a fan died and over the course of four days three disks died, along with my 12T collection.

That sucks for sure, but I'm not prepared to run 18 drives to duplicate my array. Or maybe more accurately I'm not prepared to buy another 9+ drives outright and potentially replace some of my existing smaller ones to achieve bit for bit duplication.

My only point here is that a RAID 5/6 array is not any more safe then a single hard. Hot spares are good, but not redundancy.

But it is, with a single HDD, if it dies, everything is gone. With RAID-5 two have to fail for you to lose your data, with RAID-6 three must fail.

But that brings me back to one thing I like about the "commercial" solutions, they seem to have much better status/alerting solutions than the roll-your-own (including unRAID). I remember my ReadyNAS would email me if it detected a problem (like power loss).