jmone

Got your 10GBe yet? All working well for me

I have a bunch of the 8TB Seagates in 2 x 40TB Pools that hold my BD Rips - Works great (I have 4TB Hitachi as my "landing drives").

Only one way to fine out!

I looked at 10GBASE-T as I too had existing (mix) of Cat5e/6 runs but after reading decided it was just as cheap and more reliable to go fibre. The spec for 10GBASE-T Lengths is: - Cat 6a : 100m - Cat 6 : 55m - Cat 5e : Not officially supported but some claim you will be fine for small runs but to check the error rates.

Nice! ... and cheap! 10G is great

It's not for all but I certainly did not pay anywhere neat $800 per device! There are a heap of 2nd hand 10Gb PCI-e adapters staring around US$100 / Transceivers for $20. New pre-terminated cables are also reasonably priced. A few desktop boards are now also shipping with 10Gbe. 10Gb switches are another matter (they are still $$$$) but my existing switch already had two SFP+ ports so I thought... why not.

thanks - ... another thing with the setup, these cards are 4x PCIe, and my slot on one PC was auto configured to 1x. I was "only" getting 2.5Gb/s transfer between the two PCs. Changed it to 4x and throughput jumped to 9+Gb/s - Nice!

Nothing is every straightforward. Turns out these adapters don't support WOL (so can't wake it up using the Lights Out wigit for example). Tired to see if I could use the Mobo Ethernet adapter just for WOL.... but of course WinServer doesn't like Consumer NIC much (edit - tried a few drivers and it has now disappeared from Device Manager so may have stuffed this port altogether.)... Thinking thinking...

Yup, such a "pool aware" utility would be perfect!

So got it all installed and working. With large files copies, I used to get a max of 110MB/s between the pools over the network (eg maxing out a single Gigabit Link). I now get a max of 150MB/s, some 36% faster (eg maxing out the single HDD at each end). But as I now how heaps of 10Gb goodness, I also can now kick off a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th etc) copy between other HDD and get another max of 150MB/s per disk. I've had to twice copy all the contents from one pool to another (40TB mix of large, med and small files). It took almost a week over Gigabit. Just the extra 36% would cut days of that.... but in addition I could kick off a copy (outside DrivePool) for each drive in my pool and such a task would then be well under a day. It would be nice to have "FreeFileSync" style compare/sync between pools in DrivePool as it could then support a thread per physical drive instead of one per pool. Thanks Nathan Note: I started to look at 10Gb when Intel / MS no longer supported teaming / VLAN on their Dual NIC cards under Windows 10. Look like they have now fixed this (MS released patches, Intel has verified, and plan to issue an updated driver in June).

Free File Sync is also multi threaded, but it kind of matters in what order the files are being read and written as if there is a thread for each physical drive the increased throughput would be high, but if it is all from the same drive then it will max out at the speed of the one drive. I've not yet got the equipment (and may not for some time), but the last time I had to duplicate my 40TB over the network it took a week. 10GB "could" cut that down to under a day but only if not bottlenecked. If/When I get the equipment I'll give a real world update....just thinking out loud for now. Thanks Nathan

I'm thinking of upgrading my switch and connection between my two Servers (Main and Backup) to 10GB. This should move the performance bottleneck from my current 1GB link to the speed of my HDD giving a bit of a boost, but it will be nowhere near 10GB/sec on a single copy from one drive to another over the network. Given I have 8+ drives in each pool is there any thoughts on how to do copy that can do simultaneous reads from multiple drives on Pool 1 --> write to multiple drives on Pool2? Thanks Nathan

Just reporting back after a couple of months with 0 issues using ReFS on both my pools.

FYI - I just activated my Licence just fine using the Windows Server Essentials Dashboard DrivePool Plugin. Prior to that I was trying to activate it from the Drivepool App in WSE itself.

I'm on ReFS you know! No ChkDsk for me Also I had another user ask me if DrivePool supports VSS (Drive Bender does not), but could not find a definitive answer on the forums.

File uploaded Thanks Nathan

I'm on 659 Beta. I'll try the restore all settings later if I need to (still have 26 days to go!)

Testing on 2012R2 went fine so uninstalled DriveBender, purchased another DrivePool licence but I can't seem to activate it. I punch in the Lic Code, hit enter, and it says "Licence Activated" but when I close this Window it stills says I'm in Trial mode. Did this a few time (with a reboot in between) but same result. Apart from that it is all looking good. Thanks Nathan

Thanks - as I thought from my reading regarding the drive enumeration, but just wanted to check that the "wbadmin delete catalog" soln did not also remove the Client PC backups, only the server's OS backup. Ran the cmd, removed the Server Disable Backup registry key I'd added, restarted WseMgmtSvc, and my opened the dashboard.... all is good (Users and Devices are all there) and WseMgmtSvc does not crash! Now re setup the Server OS backup and have kicked it off....but really you have to do this every-time and new HDD is added! Why is this stuff so hard... Edit - I also had to Run Event Viewer and clear log Applications and Services\Microsoft\Windows\Backup\Operational as the old (now non existent backups) were still being shown in the Dashboard. No doubt about it! - Nice double entendre by the way!

Looks like I've broken the Server 2012 R2 Essentials Dashboard (no users, no devices) and it is Slow to open. Getting the following errors: - Users and Devices are empty - From the Dashboard I see that Windows Server Essentials Management Service (WseMgmtSvc) is not running - If I try to start it from Services, I get "Windows could not start the Windows Server Essentials Management Service service on Local Computer. Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly" After a bit of googling, so far I've tried in order without luck: - Replacing DevicesInfo.xml with DevicesInfo.bak - Running "sfc /scannow" (fixed a bunch of stuff, rebooted) - Tried changing SATA ports that the OS/Backup Drive is using on the Mobo (I'd read that changed drive enumeration from different controllers can cause the issue). Anyway.... any (non destructive) suggestions? Thanks Nathan PS - I'd normally post on WeGotServered but I figured Christopher will pick it up here and there is already all the background. Edit : Got a bit further. If I Turn off Server Backup by Default then the dashboard will show my user, devices and their backups (and WseMgmtSvc will start). I then tried formatting and removing the WS2012R2 Backup disk vol, the removed the Server Disable Backup registry key, and WseMgmtSvc then will error out again. Tested that I can back up from a Client and open prior backups. The only thing I can not do at present is backup the server drive itself.

OK, so it lives! My observations were: Norco 4220: I was spoilt using Lian-Li cases in comparison to the 4220 which is much more "agricultural" - The Norco Mini SAS cables are too short to reach all corners of the case. If they were 0.6m instead of 0.5m it would be ideal. I can just "stretch" them to fit between the M1115 ports and the back plane but the tension on a couple of these would keep the Goldern Gate Bridge up - The cable holes in the Fan backplane are oddly positioned (offset) from backplane connectors. It's best to take out two of the fans to get them in and even then I keep disconnecting some of the Molex connectors trying to get the Fans back in. - The PS connector has no quick snap slots (if fact nothing on this case is screw-less) - Plenty of Room to work on the board and using SAS really keeps cable mgt easy. - No Cut fingers - No issue with the rail kit mounting and fitting to the rack (my 800mm depth rack is the bear minimum) Other Stuff: Like all things, the physical swap does not take that long and off course it fired up just fine... but stuff did not work "right" out of the box: - The Mini-SAS to 4 x Sata (Reverse Breakout) cables work! ... though it took me a bit to work out what drives were my OS, OS Backup and which SATA controller mapped to which Physical Drive bay. - I could not get the 2nd M1115 card to be recognised in Windows Device Manager and it was taking ages to trouble shoot, so between boots I started googling for SAS Expanders (and cursing Chris). Anyway, after uselessly playing with settings, a BIOS Update fixed it. - So the Top Row is driven by the Mobo, and the other 4 Rows from the 2 x M1115. I also still have 4 x spare sata ports for other uses if needed. - A nice solid 110MBs (GB sized files) / 70MBs (MB sized files) connection between my two PC Pools, which is pretty good. Looking forward to seeing how it goes once MS/Intel fix the teaming issue on Win10. I've got it all in the rack and doing a DrivePool conversion (from Drivebender). I need a few bits for the rack then I'll post a pic of it mounted. Thanks Nathan

Given the success after a couple of weeks of testing I've purchased a Lic for this PC and now moved on to testing DrivePool on my 2012R2 Essentials Box (also ReFS drives). Used the same process to move the files from DriveBender to DrivePool. All went fine (had to manually removed some long file paths).

I've got all the gear minus the M1115. After reading all the threads about issues with the 4220 and Rail Kits - I was happy to find it was not too hard to get it into the rack and thankfully it all fits (had to re-config the rack post spacings however). Once I get the the M1115 I'll need to install all the bits into the case..

Thanks - Just ordered: 1 x Norco RPC-4220 2 x Norco 0.5M Mini-SAS(SFF-8087) to 4xSATA (Reverse Breakout) 5 x Norco 0.5M Mini-SAS(SFF-8087) to Mini-SAS(SFF-8087) Multilane SAS Cable 1 x Norco 26" Sliding Rail Kit - 3 Section, Ball Bearing, Supports from 2U to 5U chassis 1 x Norco SA-2100 Rack Mounting Screw & Nut - 20pcs 2 x M1115 Lets see how it goes (got extra cables as..... you need extra cables!)

Couple of Q on how these cases work in general: - Depth: My Rack is only 770mm from door to door. If the Norco 4220 is 650mm that only leaves 120mm for the cables on the back and the Handles on the front. How much extra width does the handles make to the 650mm as I can not find this measurement? - Cables: I take it you use these "SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 SAS Cables" to go from a M1115 to the Backplane. If I also want to use the SATA ports on my Mobo, in additioin I then use a "4 x Sata to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) cable" - Eg I could use 2 x M1115 + 4 x Mobo Sata => 20 Drive bays. My thinking is I'd use the 2 x M1115 to handle the Pool of 16 Drives, + my mobo SATA ports for the 2xOS drives as I currently do.