HUGE headaches with FlexRAID's tRAID

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Yep. That or the 24 drive version. I think 20 is plenty though.

Actually I would want a 28 drive version. 24 drives for unRAID VM and 4 drives for Win7 SageTV VM. But with minor mods I can get my Lian Li V2000s to support 28 drives. 24 drives with NO mods just 1 Double Twin and 2 5x3 cages.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Yep. That or the 24 drive version. I think 20 is plenty though.

The 24 drive version doesn't have a disk slot (cd/dvd) or usb plugs on the front. Twenty should sufice, I would think as well.

[panteragstk]

So. I got the basic version of UnRAID and set it up in virtual box on one of my pc's. I got it up and running really quickly. Shockingly simple actually. I created an array of 2 8gb drives with an 8gb parity drive.

I killed the array by removing one of the disks after I had totally filled them up with data (music files) and it alerted me and stated that the data was intact, but was unprotected. The drive was not the parity drive.

I then created another drive of the same size, but blank and started the VM again. I added the new blank disk and the rebuild was pretty fast. Then did a parity check. All data is back. Stupid simple.

I really like it. I now know why you guys love it so much. Even with a drive "failure" it recovered without issue.

Now I just need to get to know the software better and get some of the plugins going and report back.

I'm glad that I can either run UnRAID in a VM or run another server OS in a VM since UnRAID now has a virtual box plugin. Nice to have options.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I'm glad that I can either run UnRAID in a VM or run another server OS in a VM since UnRAID now has a virtual box plugin. Nice to have options.

You almost had me. I was willing to set up a VM for testing unraid, but I don't think it's feasible due to the constraints they put on the trial and how unraid itself works. Still, does anyone know the answer to these questions?

1. How do you install unraid under ESXi? Is there an image you can import into ESXi?
2. Do the drives you add to the array need to be empty (i.e. will they be wiped)?
3. Can you access the data on the drives outside of unraid? (I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "no".)

Due to #2, I'm suspecting that you can't "test" unraid without completely abandoning your existing solution. I have 8 drives, which means I'd need the pro license and, again, because of #2, I'm guessing I would need to buy new drives and slowly transfer the data over. That makes such a "test" impractical and a full move quite time consuming.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

You almost had me. I was willing to set up a VM for testing unraid, but I don't think it's feasible due to the constraints they put on the trial and how unraid itself works. Still, does anyone know the answer to these questions?

1. How do you install unraid under ESXi? Is there an image you can import into ESXi?

There's this, I haven't tried it though:
http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...?topic=26639.0

2. Do the drives you add to the array need to be empty (i.e. will they be wiped)?

Yes

3. Can you access the data on the drives outside of unraid? (I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "no".)

Yes, unRAID uses ReiserFS so you just need to be able to read/mount a ReiserFS drive.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

You almost had me. I was willing to set up a VM for testing unraid, but I don't think it's feasible due to the constraints they put on the trial and how unraid itself works. Still, does anyone know the answer to these questions?

1. How do you install unraid under ESXi? Is there an image you can import into ESXi?
2. Do the drives you add to the array need to be empty (i.e. will they be wiped)?
3. Can you access the data on the drives outside of unraid? (I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "no".)

Due to #2, I'm suspecting that you can't "test" unraid without completely abandoning your existing solution. I have 8 drives, which means I'd need the pro license and, again, because of #2, I'm guessing I would need to buy new drives and slowly transfer the data over. That makes such a "test" impractical and a full move quite time consuming.

Your complaints are the same as mine. I'm willing to spring for a dual license due to a friend wanting an UnRAID box too so the cost isn't all that high. I'm not all that keen on moving all the data, but I needs new drives so I can make it happen. I just don't want to pay for software I don't end up using.

I fully plan to implement a RAID like solution at some point, but I won't be using "production" data. Putting drives into a VM gives me some idea of whether or not the software will do what I want. Virtual drives work the same way as if I had physical drives in the system. I do plan to use some spare drives when I get the chance, but that hasn't happened yet.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

You almost had me. I was willing to set up a VM for testing unraid, but I don't think it's feasible due to the constraints they put on the trial and how unraid itself works. Still, does anyone know the answer to these questions?

1. How do you install unraid under ESXi? Is there an image you can import into ESXi?

Stanger pointed you to an HDD image which will boot unRAID. Directions for setting up unRAID and ESXi are here:http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...?topic=14695.0 NOTE this was also a PC build thread so the lots of the first post are on his PC setup. But from post 2 and on it was almost exclusively how to setup ESXi and VMs like WHS2011, unRAID, how to RDM drives, how to pass through SASLP-MV8 cards with link to original thread, etc...

2. Do the drives you add to the array need to be empty (i.e. will they be wiped)?

unRAID will zero the drives when you add them to the array. This takes a long time. That is why unRAIDer's use an AWK script that preclears the drives first outside of the array. Then when you add the drive to the array it only has to format it with reiserfs to then be used to store data. link to AWK script here:http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

3. Can you access the data on the drives outside of unraid? (I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "no".)

Any linux distro can read it without a problem. You can install products to read reiserfs disks in windows. here is a google search that lists a few:https://www.google.com/#q=read+reiserfs+windows+7

Due to #2, I'm suspecting that you can't "test" unraid without completely abandoning your existing solution. I have 8 drives, which means I'd need the pro license and, again, because of #2, I'm guessing I would need to buy new drives and slowly transfer the data over. That makes such a "test" impractical and a full move quite time consuming.

unRAID has a free version. TWO data drives and ONE parity drive that you can use for testing. Then if you like it with 8 TB of data (4TB HDDs) you can buy the plus or pro license if you want to expand past the free version. But you can't use it with a WINDOWS formatted (NTFS) disk - NO.

[Skirge01]

Thanks, everybody, for all the info and links! That's certainly more promising than I was expecting. I'm still of the belief that I would need to go "all in" with unRAID and hope it works, much like I did with tRAID. Given that I just did that about 2 months ago, I'm not ready to sink more money and a ton of time into yet another solution. Maybe I'll revisit this when TV goes on hiatus for the summer.

I do have one remaining question... do I have to RDM my drives to use them in unRAID?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Thanks, everybody, for all the info and links! That's certainly more promising than I was expecting. I'm still of the belief that I would need to go "all in" with unRAID and hope it works, much like I did with tRAID. Given that I just did that about 2 months ago, I'm not ready to sink more money and a ton of time into yet another solution. Maybe I'll revisit this when TV goes on hiatus for the summer.

I do have one remaining question... do I have to RDM my drives to use them in unRAID?

The preferred method is to get a MB/CPU/BIOS that is VT-d (or IOMMU for AMD) compatible and just pass through the card to the unRAID VM. Doing it this way allows unRAID to get drive temperatures and spin them down when not in use. That isn't available for RDM.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

The preferred method is to get a MB/CPU/BIOS that is VT-d (or IOMMU for AMD) compatible and just pass through the card to the unRAID VM. Doing it this way allows unRAID to get drive temperatures and spin them down when not in use. That isn't available for RDM.

Perfect. I went with the M1015s because they're known to work with pass through (and already am doing that), so I'm good there. I know that's a popular board for unRAID users, too. In fact, I think I used info on the unRAID forums to flash it to IT mode.

[panteragstk]

So I went ahead and set up a physical machine with UnRAID. I used some 320gb drives I had lying around. Got some blu-rays copied to the server without issue. However, 24Mbps is painfully slow. I'll have to find a way to copy at a higher speed or it will take a year to copy my existing data.

I think once I get the pro version and can use active directory my 2012 server will play nice with the UnRAID server. Right now I have to copy files from one of my clients. Drag and drop from one server to the other. Not optimal, but it works.

Nice thing is I used a board that is pretty old, but apparently is still alive. I'm going to do some testing with re-ordering the drives and upgrading to beta 6.0 of UnRAID to see how it does with my data.

Next test will be to randomly move the drives to new hardware to see how it handles that.

All of those test will tell me how rebuild times will look. I'm not excited about the future purchase of the software and two 4tb drives to get started, but once it's done it's done.

If all those tests pass I think UnRAID will be my new NAS software.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

So I went ahead and set up a physical machine with UnRAID. I used some 320gb drives I had lying around. Got some blu-rays copied to the server without issue. However, 24Mbps is painfully slow. I'll have to find a way to copy at a higher speed or it will take a year to copy my existing data.

I routinely get 35-40 on my 2TB+ drives. One thing you can do to speed up access is to NOT install a parity drive until you have copied your files over to the array. This will then write files to the drives as fast as they (the drives) can take it. Naturally it is frowned on in the unRAID forums because if you didn't have the original copy you could loose your data with ANY drive failure. But as long as you don't destroy the original data until you have a parity drive setup/calculated/checked it does make transfers happen much quicker.

[panteragstk]

So I've tested UnRAID pretty thoroughly.

My test:

Install on an old motherboard with two PCI-e 16x slots that operate in 8x each. Endless expansion card options.

1.6ghz celeron e1200. 1gb memory

UnRAID v 5.05

Easy install. Couldn't be more simple. Recognized all hardware without issue.

I wanted to see what happened if I upgraded to v6 beta 3. Put the files on the flash drive after configuring the latest stable v5 build. No issue. Found all drives with no problem. Array and data in tact.

Unplugged SATA cables and swapped them around. No issue. UnRAID verifies drives based on serial number. I didn't have to do anything it just worked.

Installed an old 2 SATA port card. Unplugged the drives from the on-board SATA ports and into the card. No issue. It just worked.

I've thrown everything I can think of at this software and it just works without issue. I was sure the random hardware change would kill it. I was wrong.

Even the beta software is solid. Granted, I don't have anything important so if I lose any data it doesn't matter, but I'm still impressed.

The next test is to unplug a drive and see if my data is still accessible.

EDIT: Data drive unplugged. Only one data drive (out of two) plugged in along with the parity drive. All data still accessible.

EDIT 2: Plugged removed data drive into Windows 7 PC. All data readable. Deleted volume. Put drives back into UnRAID box. UnRAID array started the rebuild process. All data accessible.

That's it for the testing. I'm sold.

[Skirge01]

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get tRAID working and I've come to a conclusion: Don't let SageTV use to the pool.

That has resolved all of my issues. I don't know why tRAID's storage pool can't handle SageTV's disk activity, but I've proven that's the culprit. I still think it sucks that I can't use that feature with Sage, but this is an acceptable solution. My "spinning circle" is gone from everywhere; I haven't seen Sage perform this quickly in YEARS. The beauty of this solution is that I can still use the pool for everything else (utorrent, direct rips, simultaneous backups, shared user folders, etc) without any problems and I don't need to play file tetris.

Here's what I needed to do:

1. Turn off storage pool caching (screenshot attached; might need to reboot afterwards)
2. While tRAID is running, go to Windows Disk Management
3. Assign a path or drive letter to each PPU in your tRAID array
4. Ensure your new paths are shared correctly
5. Remove SageTV's access to the tRAID shares
6. Create new, empty folders with the same name as your tRAID shares and give SageTV full access to them (these paths MUST match the ones you deleted from step #5 exactly)
8. Add the individually mapped folders from step #3 to SageTV
9. Run a manual media refresh in SageTV
10. Ensure you have no duplicates pointing to the old tRAID shares and then remove those shares from SageTV

With direct access to the drives, my write speeds are fantastic now, averaging about 60Mbps. Obviously, when I write directly to the pool, it's a bit slower.

Also, if anyone was having issues with the pool becoming inaccessible to other computers, I found a solution here.

[Fuzzy]

I think that was suggested quite some time ago. Sage gains nothing from the pool, as it handles the file tetris fine. I think you still gain the near time RAID capability when you right directly to the PPU's, so do that and it's best of both worlds.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I think that was suggested quite some time ago.

Yeah, by me! What I wasn't aware of at the time was that I'd still be able to have access to the pool.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Sage gains nothing from the pool, as it handles the file tetris fine. I think you still gain the near time RAID capability when you right directly to the PPU's, so do that and it's best of both worlds.

Correct. I thought that part was obvious, since if I weren't using the pool plus I had no parity protection, tRAID wouldn't be doing anything. In that case, my post would have simply been that I had stopped using tRAID.